Shirui Zhong

Materialising Crowd Pressure at Buchanan Street Station explores how the rhythmic social pressure of crowd movement can be translated through the physical process of screen printing. Based on on-site observation, I divided a 240-second cycle following a train’s arrival into three phases: Burst (0–20 seconds, 112 people per minute), Dissipation (20–90 seconds, 28 people per minute), and Vacuum (90–240 seconds, 12 people per minute).

Rather than treating the three phases as separate digital compositions, the project uses printing as a research method. A shared printing system is transformed through variations in ink, pressure, registration, repetition and residue. Heavy ink and repeated overprinting create accumulation and visual pressure for Burst; reduced ink and fragmented transfer communicate Dissipation; while residual impressions and large areas of unprinted paper express the absence and waiting of Vacuum.

Developed through iterative physical print testing, the final outcome is a series of twelve A2 screen-printed posters that translate crowd density, movement and rhythm into material traces on paper.