Brokenhill

What does Broken Hill’s fabric mean to it?

/perceived

SUBURBAN

FILM SET

FILM SET

FILM SET

| AA BROKEN HILL VISITING SCHOOL AUSTRALIA

/conceived SUBURBAN

POST INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE

SUBURBAN

LANDSCAPE

THE ARID GARDEN

| AA BROKEN HILL VISITING SCHOOL AUSTRALIA

INTRODUCTION

The Third Landscape – an undetermined fragment of the Planetary Garden – designates the sum of the space le over by man to landscape evolu on – to nature alone - Gilles Clément

The AA Broken Hill Visi ng School is an 11 day architectural workshop conducted by the Architectural Associaon School of London in the remote arid town of Broken Hill. It is to be held from the 13th of September un l the 23rd September 2014 with its ini al Open day to be held in Sydney. The workshop is open to all architectural students of the world who are expected to convene in Sydney where they will commute by train to Broken Hill on the third day of the programme.

The AA Broken Hill school workshop’s aim is to explore Broken Hill as a territory charged with unique and very specific urban situa ons. Whose very fabric is a direct tes monial output of its historical narra ve as a town whose very existence came about from the plundering, extrac on and working of its landscape to create an industry that would come to support the economy of Australia. The form of Broken Hill’s landscape both natural and urban has evolved over me in response to it’s mining industry’s pa erns of produc on. Consequently, the nature of its urban landscape has transformed from being industrial/suburban/landscape to post-industrial/suburban/landscape as its main industry, mining, has wound down.

The quesƟon that the workshop aims to speculate on is what can Broken Hill’s story be from this point on?

Can it also have other narraƟves that come out of the present day Broken Hill rather than the past - where an alternaƟve experience of the space of Broken Hill is acƟvated?

// COURSE OUTLINE SEPTEMBER 2014

THE ARID GARDEN

| AA BROKEN HILL VISITING SCHOOL AUSTRALIA

HISTORY

In 1883, a boundary rider named Charles Rasp stumbled upon the world’s largest ore body of lead, silver and zinc when patrolling fences in the arid western regions of NSW, Australia. With 20 years, the town named as Broken Hill had accumulated a popula on of 20,000 and had established the Broken Hill Proprietary Company (BHP), the na on’s richest mining company which for the next 50 years would supply Australia’s major source of export income.

Therefore both a workforce and town emerged organically in response to the needs of the corpora ons to expand and produce. Corpora ons have moved in and out over me causing fluctua ons in employment pa erns. Evidenced in the houses built is the concept of occupying a plot of the town for a temporary amount of me.

BHP itself, moved onto steel produc ons and offshore ventures and ul mately merged with Dutch Biliton plc in 2001.

Today, the popula on is less than 18 000 with the main ac ve mining company being the Chinese owned firm Perilya.

Line of Lode / Broken Hill

// COURSE OUTLINE SEPTEMBER 2014

What does Broken Hill’s fabric mean to it?

/lived in

SUBURBAN

HERITAGE

RESIDENTIAL

RURAL

THE ARID GARDEN

| AA BROKEN HILL VISITING SCHOOL AUSTRALIA

THE APPROACH

Taking cues from the fabric itself, we will treat it as ma er that has evolved to both signify and facilitate a way of life that has been shaped both by the basic human needs of habita on and the self percep on of iden ty as an individual that is bound to an aliena ng landscape and a material,and psychological, drive to master it.

Taking reference to Lefebvre’s no on of the produc on of space, students will be asked to move from the realms of the social to the sensorial, so as to comprehend the space as lived in, as conceived and as perceived.

We will also document evidence that reflects the town’s inhabitor’s a tude towards temporary occupa on versus permenant presence in terms of use and building materials.

The main medium we will be working when addressing these themes will be the moving image.

Aspects of Broken Hill

// COURSE OUTLINE SEPTEMBER 2014

THE ARID GARDEN

| AA BROKEN HILL VISITING SCHOOL AUSTRALIA

METHODOLOGY

Broken Hill, is one of many remote and arid loca ons that have featured many mes in Australian film history, as the main se ng for numerous films exploring the complexity, if not darker side of the human psyche. Themes, such as an individual’s sense of aliena on and iden ty displacement provoked by their se ngs were explored in films such as ‘Wake in fright’ directed by Ted Kotcheff, where the vastness of the landscape appears simultaneously as an unchartered terrain and as an oppressive anxiety laden constraint.

These genre films will be used as a source of reference in terms of framing devices, camera movements and what they signify.

SITES OF SPECULATION We will then zoom into 4-5 specific chunks of the town plan where the suburban meets post industrial meets landscape and divide the class into groups to explore one chunk each. Our main tool is the digital camera where students will be asked to weave and work with a route within these spaces as the main spine to the plot of a movie.

The students will then go through the process of documen ng, edi ng, sampling, specula ng, inser ng a prop, intervening, collaging and layering so that the students will work up their proposal as a movie as their final product. Their movies will be accompanied by drawings of the spaces they have inves gated in their movie and their spa al transla on of their proposal.

The final day will be a day of presenta ons of these movies and drawings infront of a group of invited guests. This will be followed by presenta on of Cer ficates and a BBQ.

Wake in Fright by Ted Kotcheff (1971) Group W NLT Produc ons Mad Max by George Miller (1979) Kennedy Miller Produc ons Walkabout by Nicolas Roeg (1971) Max L Raab Produc ons

// COURSE OUTLINE SEPTEMBER 2014

What does Broken Hill’s fabric mean to it?

/perceived

SUBURBAN

FILM SET

FILM SET

FILM SET