Ben Cottam, Author at Unsettling Queenstown

THE ADVOCATE

Ben Cottam on 16 May 2023

THE ADVOCATE

MUIR+OPENWORK

LOCATION
VIC
St Andrews Place, East Melbourne
Wurundjeri Country

The project is an unpicking of a certain kind of State Space. A site that only held the sanctioned voice of “the civic” now makes space for other voices,
Other invitations, and other forms of occupation.
Tactics

A political and societal shift has occurred, signaling a state of regress. A significant site. Bookending a particular time, a particular place. Adjacency. The Commonwealth. The Fitzroy Gardens. An authoritative voice borrowing the landscaped vistas beyond. Firm. Defiant. Present. Silent.
Purple planting is employed as a signifier of the memorial’s cause. This is not simply a landscape intervention. This is a formal and political intervention.

Family Violence is not ‘concluded’
Acknowledgment of the immeasurable
No names
But individual memories
This is a memorial in motion
A memorial that provides the space for this acknowledgment to occur. Resilient. Silent.

An erosion of colonial cultural heritage
A smudging of the past
In this role, architecture is the advocate for societal change
It is the enabler for education. It is the enabler of many voices.
It listens. It sits. It nurtures. Resilient. Firm.

A collaging of parts to make a whole
These are not singular gestures they are informed gestures
Layered
A slippage of form
Feet touching the ground
A meeting of parts, a meeting of cultures
This is not one voice, this is many

Decolonise

DESIGN TEAM MEMBERS
Alessandro Castiglioni
Amy Muir
Liz Herbert
Marijke Davey
Mark Jacques
Toby McElwaine

INDIGENOUS ADVISOR
Sarah Lyn Rees, JCB

STRUCTURAL ENGINEER
Phil Gardiner, WSP

TRADITIONAL CUSTODIANS AND CULTURAL ADVISORS
Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural
Heritage Aboriginal Corporation
Boon Wurrung Foundation
Bunurong Land Council Aboriginal
Corporation

STAKEHOLDERS AND COLLABORATORS
Department of Premier and Cabinet,
Office for Women
City of Melbourne
Victims Survivors’ Advisory Council
Forced Adoption Practices

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MAKING VISIBLE

Ben Cottam on 16 May 2023

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MAKING VISIBLE

CAPTURING THE TIME AND LABOUR OF CARING

Lucinda McLean, Susan McLean

LOCATION
VIC
Somers
Coolort, Boon Wurrung Country

These prints are made with my mother. She comes to stay with me, and we spend time observing the life of the Indigenous garden that I have been slowly regenerating for over 20 years. This regeneration work is done with the knowledge that I gained from her, and it takes the time and the labour of caring. At this time in her life, when she no longer has the capacity to remember the immediate past or plan the future, her observation of the moment is even more acute.

Ten minutes of a sunny day exposes the cyanotype print. A print is made with the vegetation not of it. (A mushroom spore print is made overnight when she stays, the pressing of leaves, flowers and seaweed takes longer). It is, at the same time, making her life visible and plants visible.

Contemplating recent writing by Lesley Head, we ask how we can work in a more direct relationship with plants and the labour of caring:

‘… the invisibility of plants in human history is closely tied to the invisibility of women… often accompanied by children’ p 121

…That is, as written by Western historians.’ p 5.

Zena Cumpston, Michael-Shawn Fletcher and Lesley Head. Plants: Past, Present and Future. Australia, Thames and Hudson, 2022

nmbw.com.au

AUTHORS
Lucinda McLean
Susan McLean

PLANT SPECIES
from left to right:
04/12/22 Dichondra repens
03/01/23 Austrodanthonia caespitosa
06/01/23 Lagenophora stipitate
12/01/23 Pelargonium australe
15/01/23 Bursaria spinosa
15/01/23 Themeda triandra
19/02/23 Pandorea pandorana
19/02/23 Daviesia latifolia

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UNBOUNDING SITE AND TIME

Ben Cottam on 16 May 2023

UNBOUNDING SITE AND TIME

EMBEDDING ACTIONS IN ONGOING SURROUNDS

NMBW Architecture Studio + Leigh Woolley

LOCATION
TAS
Mt Wellington,
kunanyi, lutruwita

Unbounding creates evolving relationships between place, material and individual experience.

The Female Factory is a historical occurrence in Australia, a holding bay for convict women arriving at the Colony. The World Heritage listing of the site (operating 1826-1856) in lutruwita / Tasmania generated a design competition. We presented both a conforming competition locating an embroidered visitor centre within the archaeological courtyards, and a future stage. The future stage proposed the incremental relocation of the buildings to the surrounding historic areas outside the courtyard walls, but within the extents of the nearby quarry walls ‘made’ through the process of quarrying sandstone for the construction of the factory. The future stage returns the courtyards to their powerful empty condition and embeds them in the local surrounds.

The proposal engages with durations; from the contemporary and ongoing repair of the walls to the geological time of the kunanyi / Mt Wellington sedimentary deposition and uplift revealed in the quarry walls. The layered unbounding of site and time acknowledges convict labour and points to something of the brutality of the colonial project.

nmbw.com.au

ARCHITECT
NMBW Architecture Studio

ARCHITECT + URBAN DESIGNER
Leigh Woolley

STRUCTURAL ENGINEER
OPS Engineers

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MAKING WITH

Ben Cottam on 16 May 2023

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MAKING WITH

CONTINUING THE EXISTING THROUGH THE NEW

NMBW Architecture Studio

LOCATION
VIC
Flinders, Westernport
Warn-ma-in, Boon Wurrung

Making with is an attitude and approach to working with the existing and place. It denotes an acceptance of working with the given as a starting point to create something new. Making with brings the processes of designing and making together, and includes acts of careful taking away, rearranging, and patching. The stages typically called demolition and construction are not bounded and separate, rather they occur in a richer syncopation, not necessarily one before the other, or without detail design relationship and possible ambiguity between the two.

The original Flinders house was built by a fisherman and his daughter, later two fish shop rooms facing the street were added to the front of the house. The connection of the original house to the place through its fishing family history is drawn through the making of the new project. The outcome is a continuity of siting, materiality and colour of the original house and outbuilding in the new volumes. The blue colours come from the colours of the existing house, in their original and faded forms, the red and white colours from the fish shop blind.

nmbw.com.au

CLIENT
Mairéad McMahon

ARCHITECT
NMBW Architecture Studio

BUILDER
McMahon + UTRI

STRUCTURAL ENGINEER
Phyland Consulting

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UNSETTLING GROUND

Ben Cottam on 16 May 2023

UNSETTLING GROUND

NURTURING AND INVITING IN

NMBW Architecture Studio + Openwork

LOCATION
VIC
Richmond, Melbourne
Naarm, Boon Wurrung and Woi Wurrung Country

We ask how we can relate to the ground as active and remember what lies dormant.

While much historical and contemporary urban practice is based upon an approach of ‘settling’ of ground, the Richmond factory conversion is an urban ‘unsettling’ of ground. This two-story brick building is a former factory filling the extent of its site. Taking away is a significant part of the project. A large cut-out is made in the existing continuous ground floor concrete slab, exposing the ground. A cut-out in the first level slab above and new large skylights bring natural light down to the ground.

Material taken away is rearranged and reused. Decisions around reuse consider the capacity for materials to be in relationship with and catalysts for the conditions of the wellbeing of the ground and plant growth. The holes in the concrete slabs, made through both coring and cutting of the concrete, make circular and square blocks of concrete that will be rearranged into stacks to support plants and create microclimates for the plants to erode, trespass, and grow out of the rubble and waste of the building.

nmbw.com.au

CLIENT
Tripple

ARCHITECT
NMBW Architecture Studio

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT
Openwork

STRUCTURAL ENGINEER
FORM Engineers

BUILDER
Never Stop Group

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CULTIVATING QUIET

Ben Cottam on 16 May 2023

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CULTIVATING QUIET

INFRASTRUCTURE FOR REFRAMING ENCOUNTER

Thomas Capogreco, Richard Le Messurier

LOCATION
TAS
Queenstown
timkarik, lutruwita

This tactic seeks to unsettle accepted spatial boundaries within Queenstown, by siting inventive fine-grain architectural elements and furniture at the threshold of private and public space. The proposed détournement of outdoor inhabitation aims to de-escalate the stakes of this legal (read: colonial) categorization, via an encounter with the work of acoustic ecologist, Gordon Hempton, who foregrounds the primacy of listening over seeing, and whose reconception of quiet unearths a deeply rooted font of colonial hubris. For Hempton, quiet is an affective energy which emanates positively through the eco-cultural fabric of a space.

This project does not seek to instantiate quiet via physical barriers, nor via the means of direct antagonism. Rather, this gesture seeks to cultivate a silence that emanates, in service of incidental eco-social encounters and thoughtful deliberations. Abundant in unrealized eco-acoustic affordances and highly exposed to public activity, this site possesses high potential for the subversion of everyday life. In this way, the maneuver aims to reshape social relations by providing physical frameworks by which quiet can emanate.

cultivatingquiet.space

TACTIC CONCEPT AND WRITING
Richard Le Messurier
Thomas Capogreco

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LINGUISTIC TRUTH

Ben Cottam on 16 May 2023

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LINGUISTIC TRUTH

PLACE NAMING AND LANGUAGE

Tanner Kibble Denton Architects

LOCATION
NSW
Alexandria
Gadigal / Cadigal Land

Alexandria Park Community School is on Gadigal Land and is a fully connected learning precinct for over 2,000 children between the ages of 4 to 18 years.

Framed around the idea of ‘Clouds’, the project is a community-focused precinct that means different things to different people. Blurring the perception of the site boundary and merging the outdoor play areas of the school with the adjacent public park, the project sought to decolonize the approach to enclosure.

A key tactic of dual language place naming and wayfinding was used by the project team to embed a positive approach to social inclusion, decolonizing the institutional nature of schools. Working with our cultural mentor and linguistic advisor, the project team developed inspiring concepts for naming gathering spaces, administration, the library, and sporting zones, reimagining the way these parts of a school should be named that together created a narrative for the school that was deeply rooted in the place.

Building upon the graphic concepts of artist Tony Albert in the 2016 book “Alexandria Park Community School is Gadigal Land,” the design and graphic realization of language is the result of real community engagement.

southsydneyherald.com.au/local-teacher-and-elder-recognised-at-Aboriginal-education-awards/

tkda.com.au/projects/alexandria-park-community-school- architecture

CLIENT
Department of Education / School
Infrastructure NSW

ABORIGINAL CULTURAL
REPRESENTATIVES
Uncle Terry Denzil,
Aunty Deborah Daley

CULTURAL MENTOR AND
LINGUISTIC ADVISOR
Shayne Beckham

SCHOOL PRINCIPAL
Diane Fetherston

ARCHITECT
Tanner Kibble Denton Architects
ARTIST
Tony Albert

GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Leading Hand Design

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT
Context Landscape Architecture

PROJECT MANAGER
Savills

CONTRACTOR
Richard Crookes Constructions

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A Sc(ore) for Listening

COUNTER-PACE

UNSPOKEN

Ben Cottam on 15 May 2023

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UNSPOKEN

A QUESTIONING OF THE MYTH OF SETTLEMENT

Paul Johnston Architects

LOCATION
TAS
Tasmania
lutruwita

Questioning our presumptions is fundamental to making sense of the world. This is especially true in the making of architecture in Tasmania where the past is presented in a conclusive manner, yet the origins of settlement are hidden or disguised. Our cultural privilege today exists only at the expense of the Indigenous Palawa of lutruwita. The cultural amnesia of dispossession and genocide is perpetuated in institutions that represent cultural heritage today. And yet concepts of heritage are intimately related to notions of truth as evidenced in its buildings.

These are stories unspoken.

We propose a tactic to re-contextualize the making of colonial architecture inclusive of invasion that re-evaluates the myth of settlement from which new narratives may emerge.

Central to this inquiry are the landscapes at the heart of Aboriginal culture that were appropriated, exploited, and re-imagined as Arcadian and Picturesque places, complete with a village and church, a ‘little England’. These structures occupy prominent aspects across the countryside, marking the land, yet they remain without a critical understanding of their making.

They are now the places where such truth can be spoken.

AUTHORS
Paul Johnston, Melika Nejad

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REVOLUTIONARY TERRAINS_ PLURALITY

Ben Cottam on 15 May 2023

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REVOLUTIONARY TERRAINS_ PLURALITY

RECOGNISING SIGNIFICANT SPATIAL, TEMPORAL AND OCCUPATIONAL LAYERS

Dr Rachel Hurst, Dr Katica Pedisic, Dr Matthew Bird
UniSA Masters of Architecture Research Practices 2019

LOCATION
Adelaide, Murray Bridge, Tailem Bend, Coonalpyn, Keith, Bordertown, Nhill; Dimboola, Warracknabeal
Kaurna, Ngarrindjeri, Ngargad, Bindjali Bodaruwitj, Jupagalk, Wergaia, Jadawadjali, Jaadwa, Wotjobaluk

Revolutionary Terrains is the result of a collaborative research workshop by UniSA Masters of Architecture students. It uses experimental ways of reading and depicting Australian regional landscapes, architecture, and artifacts as a terrain of colonial ambition, imposition, and obsolescence.

Across nine Aboriginal lands and declining country towns, 16 archetypal ‘monuments to the everyday’ were selected as evidence of conscious and incidental colonization. These town halls, silos, clubs, and courthouses were reimagined as speculative drawings of uncanny objects, invading the lands of First Nations peoples.

Each alien image is oriented simultaneously to origin, destination, and the star Acrux – central to the Emu in the Sky, Koodjal Koodjal Djookan, and Southern Cross constellations, significant to both First Nations and Western cultures. Animated as a 16-minute video, the ghostly journey superimposes multiple perspectives of place, occupation, time, and signification. What might be the ‘afterlife’ of the things we build if we consider and care for them in larger cultural, temporal, and celestial contexts?

Watch animation

PROJECT LEADERS
Dr Rachel Hurst, Dr Matthew Bird

PROJECT PRODUCTION
Dr Katica Pedisic

PROJECT ASSISTANTS
Rupert Piccoli, Edward Ramsay

PROJECT PARTICIPANTS
Agastya Adhar, Courtney Bain, Hana
Broughton, Nathan Buder, Hisham
El-Jourdi, Yong Gan, Ryan Herbst,
Blake McDougall, Milad Nahravani,
Alyssa Nelson, Bec O’Brien, Billy
Roumeliotis, Giulia Talotta, Shannon Wark

PROJECT INSTITUTION
University of South Australia.

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REVOLUTIONARY TERRAINS_TOOLS

Ben Cottam on 15 May 2023

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REVOLUTIONARY TERRAINS_ TOOLS

LOOKING AT ORDINARY THINGS WITH EXTRA-ORDINARY TOOLS

Dr Rachel Hurst, Dr Katica Pedisic, Dr Matthew Bird
UniSA Masters of Architecture Research Practices 2019

LOCATION
Murray Bridge Silos, Coonalpyn Institute, Coonalpyn Silos, Keith Garage, Keith Memorial Institute, Keith Silos, Bordertown Institute, Bordertown Town Clock, Bordertown Silos, Bordertown Bowling Club, Nhill Post Office, Warracknabeal Town Hall
Kaurna, Ngarrindjeri, Ngargad, Bindjali Bodaruwitj, Jupagalk, Wergaia, Jadawadjali, Jaadwa, Wotjobaluk

Revolutionary Terrains is a collaborative research workshop by UniSA Masters of Architecture students. It uses experimental ways of depicting Australian regional landscapes, architecture, and artifacts as a terrain of colonial ambition, imposition, and obsolescence.

Gathering photographic data on a group road trip across southeastern Australia, students selected recurrent typologies, the built evidence of both conscious and incidental colonization. From nine towns and Aboriginal lands, these 16 archetypal ‘monuments to the everyday’, such as post offices, courthouses, and silos, were reimagined as uncanny objects, rolling through – invading – the landscape.

Using hybrid analogue drawing and iPhone apps, individuals made multi-perspectival images of each edifice, layered simultaneously from origin, destination, and cosmic viewpoints. These depictions collapse traditional and contemporary representational tools but also the temporal stasis of conventional drawing. The basis for a final stage animation, the works connect the lineage of embodied hand-drawing to the currency of 21st-century virtual communication.

Watch animation

PROJECT LEADERS
Dr Rachel Hurst, Dr Matthew Bird

PROJECT PRODUCTION
Dr Katica Pedisic

PROJECT ASSISTANTS
Rupert Piccoli, Edward Ramsay

PROJECT INSTITUTION
University of South Australia