RELATIONALITY - SPATIAL Archives - Page 2 of 2

Site Geist II

Jessie Lewis on 16 May 2023

SITE GEIST II

“[...+THE BUILDINGS THEY ARE SLEEPING NOW]”

Paul Wakelam Architect & Great Southern Dance

LOCATION
TAS
Cranbrook & Swansea
paredarerme

The visual language and conceptual articulations of this tactic resonate strongly with the Biennale’s overall themes. Site Geist II offers a transdisciplinary reading of relationality as a tactic that potentially yields correspondingly rich architectural manifestations.

Site Geist II prioritises sustained close relationship with site by mapping imagined choreography onto walls of settler buildings using string and dowel. The architect adopts a relational approach by looking for places of instigation from the wall ‘itself’, negotiating ever-changing encounters between constructed artefacts and materials, evoking an archeological dig. The insertion of dowel into extant crevices, avoiding imposition, engenders linework that dances over the wall. These ‘constellations’ of point and line to plane are ephemeral in both appearance and construction.

Site Geist II is part of a larger investigation that faces troubled histories and uncertain futures, unsettling notions of settlement. By opening new terrains of performance and building, we’re asking what shared sovereignty – in the broadest sense; with landscape, bodies, constructed artefacts and multiple species – might look like.

paulwakelamarchitect.com/topography-dance

greatsoutherndance.com.au

ARCHITECT
Paul Wakelam

CHOREOGRAPHER | DANCER
Felicity Bott

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IDENTITY BRICKS

Jessie Lewis on 15 May 2023

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IDENTITY BRICKS

SYMBOL OF RECIPROCITY AND MUTUAL EXCHANGE

University of Melbourne with Lyons, NMBW Architecture and Jefa Greenaway

LOCATION
VIC
University of Melbourne Parkville Campus
Woi Wurrung (Wurundjeri) people of the Kulin Nation

Permanently embedded into the structural columns of a heritage building within the Student Precinct, Identity Bricks serve as creative recognition of this site as an Indigenous place with a continuing and diverse First Nations presence.

The Identity Bricks Project invited Indigenous students, staff and alumni to share and embed their cultural stories and journeys in a permanent installation on campus – they symbolise reciprocity and mutual exchange related to working on Wurundjeri Country. Through this exchange, participants acknowledge the gifts they have received from Country and its custodians, and gifted something of their story, Country or community in return.

Identity Bricks is a culmination of the combined efforts of the Architectural team, Murrup Barak Melbourne Institute of Indigenous Development, Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development and the wider Indigenous community at the University of Melbourne.

students.unimelb.edu.au/student-precinct/gallery/identity-bricks

PRECINCT LEAD ARCHITECT
Lyons

BUILDING ARCHITECT
NMBW Architecture

CULTURAL STRATEGY
Jefa Greenaway

ART CURATOR
University of Melbourne

ARTIST
Eucalyptus leaves – Charlie Miller, Kanolu and Gangulu

CONTRACTOR
Kane Constructions

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ONE BLOCK AT A TIME: ANGASTON HILL

Jessie Lewis on 15 May 2023

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ONE BLOCK AT A TIME : ANGASTON HILL

USING JENGA* AS AN ANALOGY FOR HOW THINGS CAN BE NOT ONLY CONSTRUCTED BUT DECONSTRUCTED

Taylor Buchtmann Architecture

LOCATION
SA
Angaston, Barossa Valley, South Australia
Peramangk Country

One Block at a Time is a central tactic of employing micro incisions, or small manoeuvres. Exercising them strategically, exploring where we can open gaps to insert, intervene and subvert.

Each project provides a baseline for the next. We’ve learnt that changes that are very difficult to achieve on a project the first time, become almost easy next time. We expand our multi-tactical approach to the limits of each project.

Incremental (or marginal) gains are talked about in sport.

The law of incremental gains: Small incremental improvements in any process amount to a significant improvement when they are all added together. The concept came to prominence in 2012 in cycling.

We use this approach on each project, and to advance our work project to project. The opposite of death by a thousand cuts!

Jenga* provides an illustration – small manoeuvres for maximum impact. Eventually the whole topples. Our practice size is small. Our ability to impact decolonisation is small. With this approach we see opportunity for change in and with our projects.

Angaston Hill is a cluster of dwellings housing four generations. A family – each different, yet clearly related. Three houses are organised as a series of plateaus connected by ramped and stepped circulation, around
a central linear axis. Universal access is fully integrated. Angaston Hill explores ideas of prospect and refuge, and provides space to be together and apart.

tbarch.com.au

BUILDER
Bartsch Builders

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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_ COLLABORATION

Ben Cottam on 15 May 2023

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REVOLUTIONARY TERRAINS_ COLLABORATION

MULTIPLE VOICES IN REAL TIME AND PLACE

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

Revolutionary Terrains is a collaborative research workshop by UniSA Masters of Architecture students. A team of 18 students and architectural educators explored ways of reading and depicting Australian regional landscapes, architecture and artefacts as a terrain of colonial ambition, imposition and obsolescence.

Initial exercises played with unconventional and physical modes of researching place and space. Next, a group road trip from Adelaide to Warracknabeal, across nine Aboriginal lands and declining country towns, charted 16 archetypal ‘monuments to the everyday’ (e.g. post offices, courthouses and silos) as uncanny objects. These formed the material for a co-operative photographic journal, speculative drawings, animation and public exhibition.

Allied with Studiobird’s After Warracknabeal [2019] and Parallaxis for the Adelaide 2020 Festival, the project’s ostensible focus is the redundant 1890 Warracknabeal Court House, and its regeneration as a community artspace: but more critical is its role as an immersive educational experience for students, one that benefits from fresh eyes and tactics on familiar places.

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.

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Minus

Jessie Lewis on 15 May 2023

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MINUS

THE ARCHITECTURE OF SUBTRACTION

Louise Wright, Urban Lab, Monash Art, Design & Architecture

LOCATION
Birrarung, Bulleen, Naarm
Bolin Bolin, Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country

This tactic accounts for the post settlement occupation along the Birrarung, Naarm (Yarra River, Melbourne) by built form such as industrial buildings, carparks, sport fields and so on that disrupt and deny ecosystem functions through vegetation and habitat removal, sealing over of soil and ecosystem modification and fragmentation.

The tactic involves the ‘cutting out’ of built form from an aerial photograph making explicit the occupation and subsequent denial of life through the symbolic white space of the paper.

Widely applicable as a tactic, this example is from the riparian corridor of the Birrarung at the Bolin Bolin Billabong, a gathering site for the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and one of the few billabongs remaining in Melbourne

As a teaching tool the white space is considered: what was there, what could be reparative in the modified ecosystem, how does this white space interrupt systems at a micro and macro scale, what planning tools do we have and do we need to subtract built form rather than add, and can the programs removed exist elsewhere in novel ways that might in their turn regenerate an urban area?

TACTIC CONCEPTUALISATION
Louise Wright, Practice Professor

IMAGE PRODUCTION
Anne Barlow, Architecture Student

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RELATIONAL INTERFACE

Ben Cottam on 15 May 2023

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RELATIONAL INTERFACE

CONNECTING NARRATIVE TO PLACE THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

N’arweet Carolyn Brigs AM, Justin Buckley, David Chesworth, Taylor Coyne, Alexis Farr, Laura Harper, Xavier Ho, Ana Lara Heyns, Sonia Leber, Jon McCormack, Marilu Melo Zurita, Oscar Raby

LOCATION
VIC
Rippon Lea Estate, Elstenwick, City of Glen Eira, Melbourne
Boon Wurrung Country

Hidden Rippon Lea is an immersive sound and augmented reality experience delivered through an app, which explores memory, plant and animal life, infrastructure, and waters at Rippon Lea Estate in Nairm (Melbourne). The project works to challenge the colonial legacies of the site – to recognize that it is Boon Wurrung Country, connected to a wider ecological and hydrological landscape.

We used a relational interface in the app to enable visitors to interact with sound layers through a physical gesture – looking up and looking down. Unfolding soundscapes can be selected and heard by tilting the phone across five horizontal strata of the site: sky, canopy, understory, ground, and underground. This open-endedness invites the listener to explore and influence the soundscape through their own movement in a reciprocal process of exchange. The app overlays a one-to-one abstraction of the underground pipes, visualized as a shimmering refraction of the above ground world, activated as the visitor looks down, beyond the apparent boundaries of the earth. As the visitor lingers, listening, they hear the voice of N’arwee’t talking of looking up and looking down to be aware of our place in Country.

INDIGENOUS ELDER
N’Arwee’t Professor Carolyn Briggs
AM

CLIENT
National Trust of Australia – Victoria,
Justin Buckley

PROJECT LEAD
Laura Harper

RESEARCH TEAM
N’Arwee’t Professor Carolyn Briggs
AM, Justin Buckley, Taylor Coyne,
Alexis Farr, Laura Harper, Ana Lara
Heyns, Maria de Lourdes Melo Zurita,
Jon McCormack

IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE AND AR
Oscar Raby

SOUND RECORDING AND COMPOSITION
David Chesworth, Sonia Leber, Taylor
Coyne

WEB DESIGN
Xavier Ho

IMAGE CREDIT
Oscar Raby, Xavier Ho, Laura Harper

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JOINING

Ben Cottam on 12 May 2023

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JOINING

CULTURAL ARCHITECTURE MUST JOIN, NOT SEPARATE

Ashley Halliday Architects, Wax Design, the City of Port Adelaide Enfield, Kaurna Traditional Owners and Yitpi Yartapuultiku Custodian Group

LOCATION
SA
Yarta Puulti (‘Sleeping Place’), Estuarine Mangrove River System, Port Adelaide,
South Australia, 34.51S 135.30E
Kaurna Yarta

Yitpi Yartapuultiku (the ‘Soul of Port Adelaide’) is located on Yarta Puulti (‘Sleeping Place’), an Estuarine Mangrove River System in Port Adelaide. It is a place for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people to join and be immersed in Aboriginal culture, to promote a deeper understanding and respect for Country, and to remind us that everything is connected – land, water, sky, cosmos, flora, fauna, body, and spirit.

Kaurna cultural direction required the building should not separate but join. Trails, storylines, and local cultural sites are fluid within and beyond the site, including Tiilbruke, Taltaityai, Lartelare, the Mudlangga to Yertabulti track, and various totems. All trails arrive at the ‘joining place’, a central place at the heart of the site-wide cultural program. The building form is prised apart to form shelter and promote gathering. Seven woven skylights represent a range of key cultural narratives, including the Seven Sisters Dreaming. The long-axis of the building is aligned with ‘Karta’ (Kangaroo Island), and the curved northern end is oriented toward ‘Lartelare’. The portal structure frames views to key cultural reference points through and beyond the site.

participate.cityofpae.sa.gov.au/yitpiyartapuultiku

CLIENT
City of Port Adelaide Enfield

CULTURAL DIRECTION
Kaurna Traditional Owners and Custodians

ARCHITECT/PROJECT LEAD
Ashley Halliday Architects

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT
Wax Design

INTERPRETIVE DESIGN/WAYFINDING
Exhibition Studios

FILM MAKING
Living Stories

PROJECT MANAGER
Moto Projects

CULTURAL DESIGN FACILITATOR
Brave & Curious

DESIGN COLLABORATORS
PT Design, Lucid, RLB, Cirqa,
Wavelength, Golder, Succession
Ecology, Resonate, Eatscape, D Squared, Buildsurv

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MEDIUM HYBRID-NESS

Jessie Lewis on 9 May 2023

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MEDIUM HYBRID-NESS

MEEANJIN CURFEW BOUNDRY

Parafeeld [Ayano Toki and Yohei Omura], NMBW Queensland Office [Andrew Wilson]

LOCATION
QLD
Brisbane
Meeanjin, Maiwar [Turrbal and Jagera/Yaggera]

Our tactic, Medium Hybrid-ness yielded sites adjacent to the curfew boundary established by colonists for Meeanjin [Brisbane] to exclude Turrbal and Jagera people after dark that straddled Maiwar [Brisbane River], an explicit urban marker of the treatment of First Nations people. We amplified First Nations presence and assembled a diverse cultural mix for Meeanjin, where compression of time and spatial density register at medium scale.

We accounted for First Nations significance, changes over time, historical evidence, urban form, networks of social space and current use to unlock the potential of the sites and contribution to the city. Speculations were developed against the backdrop of Brisbane’s selection for the 2032 Olympics and pressures associated with rapid development and population increase. The inner city has attracted significant development generating hybrid conditions often involving fragments of remnant infrastructure.

Here we offer the Story Bridge site, that bisects Kangaroo Point, marking one boundary. We speculate on a lively variety of uses in spaces under the bridge and strategic connections between the bridge deck and Turrbal Country below.

medium-hybrid-ness.com

AUTHORSHIP
The work presented is an outcome of a Masters Research Course run in the School of Architecture at the University of Queensland in Semester 1, 2021.
Fahmi Bahmdan, Bowen Chen, Jonathan Cheong, Thomas Cleary, Andrew Davis, Edward Huang, William Jenkins, Pui Kuan Lao, Eojin Lee, Kevin Li, Mohamad Faris Mohd Asri, Eric Nguyen, Emily Richter, Yutao Shen, Moe Soe, Jinghe Tian, Ryan Wallace, Jack Young, Lingwei Zeng, Rui Zeng