Lalaland

Project site here.

Lalaland (definition)
A fictional, nonphysical place where people out of touch with reality live and where nonsensical ideas come from; often used sarcastically pertaining to where one’s mind has gone.
Where have you been: Lalaland? (said to a person whose mind was wandering.)
She lives out in Lalaland. (said of a person considered out of touch with reality.)

There is a touch of satire to everything in Lalaland. Within the remains of what was, hide small inklings to what might. Books and manuscripts that once served to inform pursuers of science lie strewn across floors of the central edifice, overrun by creepers . The Bamboo thicket flourishes alongside a rubbish pile for chemical containers. A door stands elsewhere, duteously locked, unaware of the ceiling long caved in. Verdant greenery encompasses the rust and bister of decay, remonstrating in the very spirit of benevolent anger. Often, as we enter, the large generator – one of Lalaland’s most delicious ironies – seems to chug to life, like a cantankerous old operator heaving forth the hand-crank to a long forgotten amusement park, animating torpidly its various wonders. It isn´t difficult to imagine those great green doors in likeness of the Narnian wardrobe, a magical portal that  removes us from our daily insincerities, if only for a brief while.

A project developed by Abhishek Chatterjee as part of his PhD in Design research at the University of Porto.