RELATIONALITY

Jessie Lewis on 18 May 2023

RELATIONALITY

CONFIGURING POTENTIALS AND AFFECTS

The attentiveness that characterises attunement to Country can be understood as a manifestation of another area of interest across the tactics, that of relationality. This attends to the configuration of the elements and actors in a scenario or setting, and focuses on the nature and quality of their connections and interactions. A relational architecture is concerned more with the emergent ‘in-between’ than the pre-defined ‘already there’. Relational tactics in architecture can be broadly divided into social and spatial categories. The socially-oriented tactics set up generative configurations of people to shape process and outcomes. This extends beyond the usual consultative and participatory methods to encompass more open, contingent setups, yielding unpredictable journeys of discovery, respect, and trust. This includes those tactics that describe attitudinal change: advocating postures of unlearning, humility, vulnerability, and acceptance, offering profound rethinking of received notions of professional expertise and responsibility.

Spatial relationality involves the orchestration of spatial and material ensembles to yield programmatic potentials and experiential affects. Manipulation of boundaries and interfaces; the opening of apertures and gaps for views, links, connection, separation; the use of geometry, pattern, and the configuration of elements to yield a harmonious or dissonant constellation – these tactics are part of the fundamental vocabulary of architecture. In this context, they are deployed to yield potentials and affects supporting decolonising objectives established through other tactics and processes.

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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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RETURNING CULTURAL MATERIAL TO COUNTRY

Jessie Lewis on 16 May 2023

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RETURNING CULTURAL MATERIAL TO COUNTRY

LINKING FIRST NATIONS' CULTURE, HISTORY AND ARCHITECTURE

Phillips/Pilkington Architects

LOCATION
VIC
Breakaway Creek
Gunditjmara Country

The Keeping Place & Business Centre redresses corrosive colonial actions by re-homing ‘stolen’ cultural artefacts and supporting an on-going Gunditjmara economic future. Gunditjmara have occupied the area around Tae Rak (Lake Condah) for millennia with many eventually ‘re-homed’

in the former Lake Condah Mission, where this project is located. The Lake Condah possum skin cloak, ‘collected’ in 1872 and displayed in the Melbourne Museum is the focus of the cultural repository. These cloaks provided weather protection but were also intimately linked with a person’s life story and connection to Country, recorded in designs on the cloak. The museum-grade repository also houses spears, recently excavated stone tools and eel traps.

The design of the Keeping Place promotes connection to Country through the use of the circular plan and the domed roof, together with volcanic rock and timber, all traditional forms and materials of the Gunditjmara, which provide a story-telling link with the possum skin cloak. The project continues Gunditjmara care of Country, being self-sufficient, independent of all power and water needs.

phillipspilkington.com.au/projects/cultural/

gunditjmirring.com

CLIENT
Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation Inc. RNTBC

ARCHITECT
Phillips/Pilkington Architects

ENGINEERS
PM Design (all disciplines)

QUANTITY SURVEYOR
Heinrich Consulting

LANDSCAPE DESIGN
Viesturs Cielens design

CULTURAL HERITAGE MANAGEMENT PLAN
Context in Association with Extent Heritage Advisors

BUILDER
AW Nicholson

PHOTOGRAPHER
Terry Hope Photography

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Subtraction

Jessie Lewis on 16 May 2023

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SUBTRACTION

CUTTING THROUGH THE COLONIAL

Nervegna Reed Architecture (Anna Nervegna + Toby Reed)

LOCATION
VIC
1 Neill Street Maryborough
Dja Dja Wurrung

Subtraction is the act of cutting through colonial architecture in order to reveal and open up space for multiple viewpoints, readings, experiences, histories and stories. Subtracting and erasing (tactics also used by colonialism to opposite ends) can be used as ways of investigating and provoking new heightened and inclusive visual and spatial experiences. The tactic of Subtraction can literally cut through the colonial architectural order, opening up dynamic ruptures in the historic order, while encouraging multiple perspectives, viewpoints and program possibilities.

In the Wartaka (coming together with purpose) we discussed this strategy (and the others) with the Djandak and Djaara Members design team. We discussed the idea of, rather than performing a ‘normal’ historic reconstruction of the building back to its 19th century state (and ideology), we would slice through the building, subtracting elements, to reveal and create spaces which connect cultures, multiple ideologies, beliefs, histories and stories: a system of design tactics which reveals new, multiple truths in the spaces (and unsettle the notion of a single dominant colonial ideology).

This process created building cuts and subtractions through the existing building and produced new horizontal spaces through the gallery to the Dja Dja Wurrung Indigenous interpretive sculpture garden and its stories of fire and water, and vertically through the truss structure towards the bell tower, opening up a perspective never before seen, and not part of the original colonial design intention.

nervegna-reed.com.au/projects/cgag

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
Nervegna Reed Architecture

INDIGENOUS SCULPTURE GARDEN DESIGN
Dja Dja Wurrung Aboriginal Corporation and Three Acres Landscape Architecture

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Cutting Spatial Channels

Jessie Lewis on 16 May 2023

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CUTTING SPATIAL CHANNELS

ERODING THE COLONIAL SPATIAL SYSTEM

Nervegna Reed Architecture (Anna Nervegna + Toby Reed)

LOCATION
VIC
1 Neill Street Maryborough
Dja Dja Wurrung Country

This tactic involves cutting and overlaying spatial connections through existing architectural space, opening up the spaces to allow for multiple perspectives. The colonial system is eroded, yielding new levels of enquiry and consciousness and allowing space for multiple, alternate histories, stories and viewpoints which are permanently linked to place and Country.

The space within the channels is treated as form or ‘space-objects’ within existing built fabric. These channels collide and cross in complex ways reflecting the dual cultures of the colonial and the Indigenous. This erodes the ideology of the existing, effecting ruptures in the spatial system and thereby its attached ideology. Eroding the existing colonial architectural form encourages acknowledgement, enquiry and perception. The tactic allows for the suppressed but enduring link to place and Dja Dja Wurrung Country, via the spatial channel connections to the Indigenous Interpretive Garden, which explores the themes of fire and water.

nervegna-reed.com.au/projects/cgag

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
Nervegna Reed Architecture

INDIGENOUS SCULPTURE GARDEN DESIGN
Dja Dja Wurrung Aboriginal Corporation and Three Acres Landscape Architecture

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Displaced Geometries

Jessie Lewis on 16 May 2023

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DISPLACED GEOMETRIES

RECONFIGURING GEOMETRICAL SYSTEMS

Nervegna Reed Architecture (Anna Nervegna + Toby Reed)

LOCATION
VIC
1 Neill Street Maryborough
Dja Dja Wurrung

This tactic uses geometry to question our spatial reality. Through a careful manipulation of geometry (part of the basis of architectural design practice) and our expectations, including placement, context and
use, we can effect a questioning of our spatial reality. Architectural composition as practiced in colonial architecture was part of a varied rule book which paralleled the ideology of the dominant political system. Displacing geometry can question these rules and the attendant ideology. This happens with object/context displacement, scale and other geometrical viewer expectations and relationships. Displacing geometries is a condition that can defy and displace the hierarchy of the colonial system, interrogating and re-imagining new relationships with the built environment. This can help make connections between histories and help indigenise our built environment for a more inclusive future.

‘Pure geometry’ can be refigured to engage the visitor in a game of interpretation, whether it be circle, moon, sun or arch (which have been stripped, cut and displaced). These refigured and recontextualised geometries allow for diverse readings and experiences.

Inside the gallery, the ‘white cube’ gallery walls are cut half-moons revealing the 1861 brick walls behind. The building spaces connect with the sculpture garden through geometrical subtractions to reveal history in a new way. The polycarbonate moon (and sun) wall faces the garden, lighting up within the garden at dusk like a big full moon or sun, connecting the gallery with the garden and providing an image that resonates with all cultures.

nervegna-reed.com.au/projects/cgag

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
Nervegna Reed Architecture

INDIGENOUS SCULPTURE GARDEN DESIGN
Dja Dja Wurrung Aboriginal Corporation and Three Acres Landscape Architecture

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Non-negotiables

Jessie Lewis on 16 May 2023

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NON-NEGOTIABLES

Sibling Architecture

LOCATION
VIC
Preston, City of Darebin
Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country

The traditional relationship between client and architect is anchored by a brief which drives the scope and informs the parameters of the project. Where a project seeks consultation with external groups such as traditional owners, stakeholders and end users, rich and important opportunities are often revealed.

In turn these ideas require safeguarding throughout the lifecycle of the project, and the concept of non-negotiables recognises the importance of this safeguarding process. It is the role of the architect to facilitate this type of design mandate for the client and communicate to other third parties such as planning and building authorities.

Non-negotiables can be understood to sit in parallel with a client’s original brief, and offer a new layering once other voices are consulted. The Darebin Intercultural Centre established key project non-negotiables, opportunities that were highlighted through consultation with Cultural Stakeholders and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung traditional owners.

One such non-negotiable was making a space for ceremony.

The privatised, cellular interior of the colonial-era building was representative of the ideals and values of society when built
in 1893, and is clearly at odds with the intercultural centre’s ambitions for light, accessibility, inclusivity and diversity.

The spatial arrangements of this fortified interior were inherently inflexible, and do not allow contemporary or collective ceremonies to take place. The structural complexity of radically remodelling the interior walls required a significant allocation of the project budget, but the outcome achieved spatial flexibility and anticipated new forms of occupying space such as collective narrative circles.

Safeguarding and making a space for ceremony was an absolutely necessary non-negotiable for the project. By adding non-negotiables into the architectural process with equal importance to the brief and design we safeguard the ideals of a collective design outcome for everyone.

siblingarchitecture.com/projects/darebin-intercultural-centre/

CONTRIBUTORS
John Tanner
Nicholas Braun
Amelia Borg
Lauren Crocket

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PURGE

Jessie Lewis on 16 May 2023

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PURGE

Sibling Architecture

LOCATION
VIC
Preston, City of Darebin
Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country

The adaptive reuse of heritage buildings inevitably means confronting past histories and architectural ambitions that challenge how we occupy space today. It remains a fundamentally important strategy within Architecture to re-use, salvage and strategically appropriate existing conditions in a world of finite resources.

The tactic of Purge is used to negotiate the challenging intersection of past material histories that are encountered via adaptive reuse. Purge deliberately strips away colonial-era fabric of the existing architecture in order to provide agnostic spaces that are welcoming and accessible to all.

The Darebin Intercultural Centre project employed this purge tactic – negotiating the interior of the significant colonial-era civic building through a deliberate material purge of the original internal building fabric.

This reset took advantage of the lack of heritage controls of the interior, deliberately stripping away the ornate hard plaster decorations throughout the spaces. These decorative elements are reproductions of an idealised European form of nature, essentially colonial-era signs and symbols.

However, the colonial-era building is also a manifestation of people’s labour, energy, and resources and materials from Country. These buildings and spaces invariably remain an important asset for the community that shouldn’t be erased, but purged of colonial symbols to be sensitive toward the diverse user group and respectful to traditional owners.

siblingarchitecture.com/projects/darebin-intercultural-centre/

CONTRIBUTORS
John Tanner
Nicholas Braun
Amelia Borg
Lauren Crocket

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A Cultural Reading of Place

Jessie Lewis on 16 May 2023

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A CULTURAL READING OF PLACE

THROUGH THE LENS OF COUNTRY

Aileen Sage Architects with Dr Danièle Hromek Of Djinjama, Jean Rice Architect, Dr Noni Boyd and the City of Sydney

LOCATION
NSW
Redfern
Gadi Country

Redfern is a place of national significance. Of activism, social resistance and change.

The challenge of this project was to upgrade an existing 1880s Victorian Italianate building and to make it both physically and psychologically accessible. There was also a strong desire to recognise an engaged and proud community and to celebrate knowledge keeping and continued cultural practice in this prominent location.

Re-read through the lens of Country, this place is celebrated and honoured. Once prevalent turpentine forest is remembered, and the powerful owl recognised as a symbol of resilience.

We consider the tangible and intangible aspects of our projects through conversations, long term learning and experimentation and by building relationships. We hope that these discussions will progressively grow, then flourish and have impacts well beyond the physical manifestation or boundaries of the site or project.

Through the process of working together; of analysing, deconstructing and reconstructing; we seek a better understanding of Country, not just through the building itself, but through the conversations that this tactic affords, embedding cultural, environmental and social value.

aileensage.com/publiccommercial#/redfern-community-facility/

PROJECT TEAM
Aileen Sage Architects with Dr Danièle Hromek of Djinjama
Jean Rice Architect
Dr Noni Boyd and the City of Sydney

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SITE GEIST I

Jessie Lewis on 16 May 2023

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SITE GEIST I

“KEEP LISTENING UNTIL YOU FIND THE BEAUTY”

Paul Wakelam Architect & Great Southern Dance

LOCATION
TAS
Hunting Ground Jordan River kutalayna | Hobart nipaluna | Port Arthur & Sloping Main premaydena

The visual language and conceptual articulations of this tactic resonate strongly with the Biennale’s overall themes. Site Geist I offers a transdisciplinary reading of the Unsettling Queenstown project’s foci of narrative and temporality and potentially yields correspondingly rich architectural manifestations.

The films revisit journeys of those who came before us through capture of contemporary bodies dancing in historic topography. We move where they once moved in a weaving of two scales of time: the architectural – slow and durable, and the bodily – fluid and mercurial. This linking yields experientially transformative encounters with place and history as, within the frame of the film, ‘then’ and ‘now’ are compressed.

The ‘spirit’ of site resides simultaneously within the dancers’ bodily responses to site and residually, within the architecture itself. We are making single-shot, one-point perspective films capturing nervous systems, 200 years on, dancing within ruins of the machinery of colonization. Can we displace our ‘imperial eye’? Animate and inanimate materiality combine as the remains of extractive settler worlds are tactically intertwined with deeply listening bodies.

paulwakelamarchitect.com/topography-dance

greatsoutherndance.com.au

ARCHITECT
Paul Wakelam

CHOREOGRAPHY
Felicity Bott

FILMMAKER
Nicholas Higgins

COMPOSER
Dean Stephenson

DANCERS
Olivia McPherson
Alya Manzart
Robert Alejandro Tinning Tra Mi Dinh
Gabrielle Martin
Woolf Wakelam