Phoebe Vendil

IMPRESS ME, THEN STAY AWHILE

This is a collection of my work from this year — fragments, tests, and traces that came together to form a building.

IMPRESS ME, THEN STAY AWHILE is a proposed intervention within Summerhall Arts Centre, Edinburgh. It reclaims Block C — a long-disused wing of the old Royal Dick Veterinary School and reimagines it as a public printmaking studio. The site has a layered history: industry, community, art. 

My proposal asks the building to speak up; to say, “HELLO, I AM HERE”, to meet the city with a sense of presence.

I have been thinking about how the act of printing might become architectural: the slip of a register, the buildup of ink, the way each layer interacts with the next. These quiet shifts build structure. They push and pull. They leave new impressions on what was already there.

The architecture becomes lively. A little eccentric. Maybe even a bit stubborn.

It is a building that hopes to be noticed, then linger with.
Because perhaps architecture, like a print, is less about permanence than impression.
And perhaps the best kind of impression is one that makes you want to stay awhile.

PRINTING AS PROCESS

Relief print is a repetitive process. The unpredictable state of repetition allows for misalignment, the shift of the register, an offset. With this offset, the static movement of the structure givres room for new spaces to be produced.

A repetition of print. A misalignment. The process of risograph printing began to bleed into the drawings I produced — layering, shifting, slipping out of register. What began as a method of reproduction became a way of thinking. Each drawing, like each print, was a site of adjustment. Imperfections were embraced; traces were left behind. In this way, the architecture grew not from precision alone, but from process — messy, iterative, and full of movement.

1:200 Model + Site Model

1:50 Model

Sketchbook Excerpts