Suburban Dreamscapes | Independent Thesis | Amelia Smith

SUBURBAN DREAMSCAPES AMELIA SMITH M|Arch Independent Design Thesis Supervisor Prof. Justyna Karakiewicz

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CONTENTS THESIS STATEMENT

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THESIS ELABORATION

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PART I : CONTEXT

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SUBURBAN DEVELOPMENT (1950 TO NOW) SUBURBAN GROWTH (NOW TO 2050) CRITICAL DISCOURSE ARCHITECTURAL DISCOURSE ARCHITECTURAL PRECEDENTS

PART II : PROJECT

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PROGRAM | DREAMS PROGRAM | METHODOLOGY INITIAL ARTEFACT ANALYSIS

CONCEPT DESIGN

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PHYSICAL-ABSTRACT-PHYSICAL PARTI AND CONCEPT

SKETCH DESIGN PRECEDENTS OVERVIEW PART I : ANALYSIS PART I I: DESIGN RESPONSE SKETCH DESIGN REFLECTION

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CONTENTS TESTS AND FAILURES

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DREAMLAND HOUSE FOR THE FUTURE SELF

A SUBURB IN THE SKY

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MYTH-OBJECT | ANALYSIS HORIZONTAL | VERTICAL| VOLUMETRIC TRANSLATIONS PSEUDO CODE & WALLACEI SOLUTIONS SOLUTION SPACE

STRUCTURAL FRAMEWORK PRECEDENTS AXONOMETRIC

LIVING MATRIX| UNITS DISPERSAL PROTO-TYPICAL UNITS ELEMENTS RECAST

DREAMSCAPE: FINAL MODEL PSEUDO CODE DRAWINGS AND RENDER RENDER

FINAL PANELS CATALOGUE BIBLIOGRAPHY

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THESIS STATEMENT This thesis proposes an interrogation of the endurance of the quarter acre dream as a dominant (sub)urban mythology.1 The critical discourses surrounding; the “ontology of dwelling” 2, habitus 3, and myth, serve to frame the architectural analysis of modern Australian vernaculars 4 within this thesis, and their degradation into cul-de-sacs of “non-place”.56 Six examples of suburban built form will be examined; isolating aspects, artefacts, patterns and moments which become objects of myth. This thesis proposes a reinterpretation of these objects with the aim of engaging social, cultural, and spatial imaginations, offering an alternative to current suburban mythologies.

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1 The term “mythology” is used here in relation to Roland Barthes’ concept of the tendency in society to create modern myths. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, (New York, 2012).

2 Kim Dovey, Framing Places: Mediating Power in Built Form, (New York, Routledge, 2008), 48.

3 Michael Grenfell, Pierre Bourdieu : key concepts, Second edition. ed., Key Concepts, (Routledge, 2014).

5 Vernacular here describes the non-architect, developer led built projects that proliferate suburban Australia, and not the traditional use of the term to connote building practises that stem from a regional culture and which make use of local materials and knowledge, traditional building methods and local builders.

5 M. Augé, Non-Places, (London, Verso, 1996).

6 These terms and their relevance to this project will be expanded on in the Critical Discourse chapter of this Hypothesis.

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Figures:

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THESIS ELABORATION PART I: THE CONTEXT The premise of this thesis is that our current patterns of suburban development are outdated, unsustainable and problematic. The creation of socio-cultural expectations elide the role that ideology and power have in the formation of space/place, rendering architecture a natural, neutral “framework of everyday life”1.

In order to probe the causal factors behind Melbourne’s patterns of urbanization it is necessary to ask why, despite the development of technology, construction techniques, planning regulations and shifting cultural demographics, the developer-designed large detached house has remained the most prevalent architectural form within the burbs.2 This architectural object has become a myth-form, the built expression of an ideological phenomenon; that of the Great Australian Dream (of home ownership).3 This thesis posits that the mythologization of the suburban home into the quarter acre dream has resulted in these built forms becoming naturalized within the Australian imagination.

As Barthes claims in Myth Today,4 a myth is a system which distorts a text (by text Barthes means a ‘readable’ sign; an image, an architectural style, a gesture). This distortion takes a contextually specific action (the individual house) and transforms it into an essence or concept (the detached house is the dream).

The built expression of this particular Australian mythology can be traced throughout historically through patterns of land settlement, policy and economic incentives, it has become the trend towards suburban sprawl; leading to low qualities of life, intense social isolation, regional dislocation, obesity and a dependence on private vehicles.567 1 Dovey, Framing Places, 2.

2 Infrastructure Australia, Future Cities: Planning for Our Growing Population. Australian Government (2018).

3 4 Bartes, Myth Today, in Mythologies, 1958.

5 Brendan Gleeson and Samuel Alexander, Degrowth in the Suburbs: A Radical Urban Imaginary (2018) 6 Justyna Karakiewicz, Promoting Sustainable Living (Taylor & Francis, 2015) 7 Loretta Lees, Hyun bang Shin and Ernesto Lopez-Morales, Planetary Gentrification, (Polity Press), 46.

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Suburban Development: 1950 to now In Chris Maher’s analytical essay; “Australian urban character: pattern and process”1 the historical development of Melbourne city is explored through the tracing of the historic social, political and economic factors that have generated our current urban conditions.

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Maher posits that urban development in Melbourne can be characterized by three main factors; 1. the absence of existing built/urban histories, 2. the investment (or divestment) in particular transport technologies, and 3. the vast expansiveness of the Australian continent, and thus the presence of cheap land at the peripheries of the colonial urban settlements. These factors in combination with the value given to space as both an economic and social commodity, resulted in the dispersal of the built urban environment of Melbourne. Maher argues that the “attitudes of the population to space and to housing” 2 were a clear legacy left by the colonial desire for clean open space after the experience of land scarcity, overcrowding and poverty in England throughout the 19th century.

The historical city of Melbourne continues to shape the contemporary city, this is particularly noticeable when observing the development of transport infrastructure. The economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s coincided with both population growth and the increased accessibility of private vehicles, resulting in a wealthy middle class for whom a lack of well-connected suburban public transport was not an issue.

The result was a seemingly inevitable drift towards dispersed urban forms even in the earliest stages of Melbourne’s settlement. Subsequent urban development entrenched a pattern of growth which, in conjunction with political divestment in public transport, the economic boom of the 1950s and the policy push towards home ownership, has led to the “predominance of suburban development” 3 within Australian cities. The prevalence of suburban sprawl has resulted in Australian cities some of the largest, yet least dense in the world.4 1 C. Maher, “Australian urban character: pattern and process,” in Urban Planning in Australia: Critical Readings, eds. J. Brian McLoughlin and Margo Huxley (Longman Cheshire: Melbourne, 1986), 13-31.

2 Maher, “Australian urban character”, 18.

3 Maher, “Australian urban character”, 18.

4 Demographia World Urban Areas: 2019

Figure 2: London in the 19th century, overcrowding and poverty are rife, and with that came dirt, stench, disease and crime. From this context, space signifies wealth and health.

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Figure 1: Melbourne City Growth, 1850 to 2017, based on data from Plan Melbourne (2017).

City Area vs. Population Density 2

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Melbourne and Sydney, Australia’s two most populous cities, rank 31st and 42nd respectively as the largest by area cities in the world. With populations of under 5 million, Sydney and Melbourne are also some of the least dense urban areas in the world. Melbourne’s 1,600 people per square kilometer on average is evidence of the city’s sprawling built form.

Modes of Transport for Work Travel

The greenfield construction practices and large suburban plot sizes in combination with low-density living, has been made possible by several factors. Namely, the economic/ population boom in conjunction with the increased accessibility of private vehicles.

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The graphs on the right show the trends from 1910-2010 in Sydney and Melbourne (both with very similar populations and densities) of the different modes of transport that people take to their place of employment.

The y-axis numbers indicate the number of annual trips (in millions).

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As is visible in the trend lines of the graphs, the period post 1950 saw a huge uptake in car usage relative to other modes of transport. Recently with greater sustainability awareness public transport has seen increased usage.

Coleman S (2016). Built environment: Livability: Transport. In: Australia state of the environment 2016, Australian Government Department of the Environment and Energy, Canberra

Population Change; Melbourne 1947-81

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Suburbanisation This diagram attempts to illustrate the relative growth/decline in different urban zones from 1947-1981, in Melbourne the general trend has been towards outer-suburban expansion, with a slow decline in both the CBD and middle urban areas. The economic downturn in the late 1970s explains part of this decline in the CBD, however these figures also seem to demonstrate the relationship between socio-cultural expectations as well as technological advancements explored through the transport graphs on the previous page. The dream of space, access to vehicles and the presence of cheap land have all resulted in the growth of the suburban fringe.

Chapter 8: Land use and Transport Planning in Australian cities: capital takes all? Ian Alexander

Suburban Growth: now to 2050 Despite the overwhelming evidence that current practices of suburban expansion are not only environmentally unsustainable, they are also economically, socially and physically unsustainable, Plan Melbourne1 outlines the expected development of greenfield housing stock almost entirely at the suburban fringe.

In 2019, the 2050 projection of Melbourne’s population was predicted to reach 7.7 million people, an increase of more than 2 million people within the greater Melbourne area. To accommodate for this huge influx of people, the state government has committed to the construction of 50,000 new homes between 2020 and 2024, all of the prospective dwellings are at the outer edges of the current metropolitan region. In effect these construction projects will create 12 new suburbs on the periurban periphery.2

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Historically the growth of suburban developments on the city fringes has not been echoed by an associated growth in public transport networks, nor by the construction and expansion of road-infrastructure.

The proposed housing constructions in Plan Melbourne likewise fail to connect into any established urban transport infrastructure, resulting in the continuation of car dependence at the outer urban edge.

A 2018 report by Infrastructure Australia into current and projected population trends and their related infrastructure needs, found that 1.4million people living in the outer suburbs did not have access to public transport within walking distance of their homes.3 It is clear that the continued sprawl of Melbourne will entrench disadvantage and lower qualities of life, the Heart Foundation’s 2014 report Does Density Matter?

Found a correlation between urban sprawl and car-dependency, which the report went on to claim resulted in lower health outcomes namely higher instances of obesity and heart disease. 4 So, why do we continue to build at these outer edges?

The reasons are numerous and complex, ranging from economic imperatives, to cultural expectations, planning policies and social connections. In her essay The Suburbs Strike Back, Margo Huxley explores the conflict between middle-distance (established) suburban residents and government attempts to change the character of built form in those areas. Huxley uses the example of the 1996 Good Design Guide and the Save Our Suburbs group to explore the interactions between planning policies and regulations in conjunction with Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and cultural capital.5 Huxley claims that the resident-led groups such as SOS act when their habitus is fundamentally threatened by the “homogenizing tendencies of governmental regulation”.6 1 The state governments 2017-2050 growth and development plan for Melbourne, accessed March 2020; https://www.planmelbourne.vic.gov.au/the-plan 2 C. Dominic, “Nightingale Inner-City Development Proposed for Ballarat Amid Fears of Urban Sprawl ‘Social Disaster’.” ABC News. (2019). Accessed 16 March 2020.

3 Infrastructure Australia, Future Cities: Planning for Our Growing Population. Australian Government (2018).

4 Udell, T, M Daley, B Johnson, and R Tolley. Does Density Matter. National Heart Foundation of Australia (Melbourne: 2014).

5 M. Huxley, “The Suburbs Strike Back” in The Power of Planning (Kluwer Academic Publishing, 2001) p.110.

6 M. Huxley, “The Suburbs Strike Back”, p.113.

Figure x. Percentage of jobs that can be accessed within 60 minutes in the AM peak. These diagrams exemplify one of the key issues with urban expansion into the future; the inequitable relationship between the suburban fringe and places of employment.

The maps above have been taken from the Infrastructure Australia report, looking at the future of Melbourne’s development, attempting to identify the best-fit strategies for urban growth into the future.

These maps explore three possible density scenarios and their affect on access to places of employment. One of the main issues with the spread of Melbourne’s suburban expanse

Figure x. Number of Detached Dwellings by Area: 2011

is its dislocation from transport infrastructure and places of employment. Often economic imperatives force lower-income families to buy at the fringe in poorly designed/constructed homes. The lack of close employment can lead to further economic difficulties and entrench disadvantage.

Figure x. Number of Detached Dwellings by Area: 2016

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Figure x. Reference scenario: 2016. % Access to Green space within a 5 minute walk from their home.

Figure x. Expanded scenario: 2046. % Access to Green space within a 5 minute walk from their home.

Figure x. Centralised scenario: 2046. % Access to Green space within a 5 minute walk from their home.

Figure x. Re-Balanced scenario: 2046. % Access to Green space within a 5 minute walk from their home.

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Access to Green Spaces

These maps show the percentage of population within a 5-minute walk to any green space, for each suburban region of the city. Green space excludes natural/bushland areas, and must be at least half a hectare in size (roughly half a standard rugby field).

These maps show the number of park hectares per 1,000 persons, within each suburban region.

In contrast to the cultural association that low density means more greenery and space, these analytical maps published in the 2018 Infrastructure Australia report indicate that with an increasing and dispersed population access to green spaces will decline.

The graph on the right illustrates the projected

Car Dependency and Transport into the Future

access to jobs, hospitals, schools and green spaces.

Remarkably, in every category except for “access to hospitals�, the future scenarios all fail to meet the standard set by current practices.

Considering existing issues with our transport system; heavy congestion, infrequent service, poorly connected services, a case can be made for needing to drastically reconsider either the existing infrastructure, or perhaps more pragmatically, the way in which we envisage the city. What is clear throughout these reports is that current modes of practice cannot continue as per usual, the dispersed, quiet and livable city of the 20th century will not be able to accommodate 7 million people.

Figure x. The report sought to model three future scenarios for Melbourne, even the current figures themselves illuminate car dependence as a city.

A key component of this thesis is the interpretation of the architectural objects that have been produced in response to the ‘Great Australian Dream’1. The economic, historic and political motivations behind this dream have been touched on briefly in both; Suburban Development and Suburban Growth. These sections attempt to trace the sudden explosion in home-ownership from 1950, and provide a historical context to the creation of this suburban dream myth that has continued virtually uninterrupted and untouched by the change in cultural tastes or design innovation that has shaped the other aspects of our collective lives.

Many academic studies, governmental reports and individual stories point to the degeneration of this dream into a dystopia of entrenched disadvantage, car dependence and illness that have resulted from our suburban development.

The projection of this trend of urban development into the future calls into question why exactly we continue to dream of the detached house on a suburban plot? The evidence-based observations outlined above come from a diverse field of professionals and academics from many different fields of interest, the vast majority of these actors being highly critical of the effect that Melbourne’s pattern of development has taken.

The continuation without major deviation of this suburban dream cannot simply be explained by claiming a lack of political will to change planning policy and regulation. Nor does a solely economic explanation surfice, the detached house has become an myth-object, something to “aspire to”2. This thesis seeks to understand our cultural idée fixe of the suburban detached house requires an interrogation of the socio-cultural frameworks that lead us to dream of suburban houses. The philosophic studies of how these cultural structures are formed will be continued in Critical Discourse.

1 J. Kemeny, “The Ideology of Home Ownership,” in Urban Planning in Australia: Critical Readings, eds. J. Brian McLoughlin and Margo Huxley. (Longman Cheshire: Melbourne, 1986), 251.

2 2 M. Huxley, “The Suburbs Strike Back”, p.110.

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CRITICAL DISCOURSE As my thesis investigation has developed, it became clear that my research would have to expand beyond specifically architectural discourse in order to understand the socio-political drivers behind the architectural phenomenon that I am exploring.

A more specific analysis of architectural discourse and precedent studies are addressed in the following sections, however it was important to trace the ideas that pertain to this thesis back to the underlining philosophical concepts upon which much architectural theory builds on.

The key question of this thesis; why has the detached, large, suburban ‘home’ endured? Requires critical frameworks to begin to unpack the elements within it. Particular focus was paid to theses that explored the concepts of home, expectation-desire, aesthetic taste and myth.

The Ontology of Dwelling

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More than almost any other architectural object, the suburban house, speaks to our understanding of place and space, at an ontological level house becomes home through “the lived experience of the body in space”.1 Within a phenomenological framework the significance that we attribute to the home is justified, it’s not just a house; for Heidegger there is no being outside of the action of dwelling.2 Heidegger disrupts traditional understands of ontology, positing that ontology, one’s being, is inherently linked to and shaped by the individual’s experience or Beingin-the-world.3 The re-definition of place as a product of practice rather than an effect of built form, is crucial in understanding the way that a house becomes a home and the significance of this on an individual’s sense of being.

Subsequent theorists such as Merleau-Ponty extrapolate Heidegger’s arguments further, dwelling itself is understood to be the active embodiment of space, collapsing the opposition between the physical body and the external world.

In architecture this phenomenological approach to the understanding of place and space is developed through the writings of Norberg-Shulz, notably in Existence, Space and Architecture (1971), which will be discussed in Architectural Discourse.

Habitus

Habitus is an extremely important concept in understanding the reasons behind the aesthetic tastes of individuals or social groups. Bourdieu defines the term habitus as “the complex net of structured predispositions into which we are socialized at a young age”4. The habitus defines the rules of the game- the social protocols, rituals, gestures, cultural assumptions and beliefs that structure our everyday experience. Bourdieu argues that we are both socialized by and in the habitus; “the habitus implies a ‘sense of one’s place’ but also a ‘sense of the other’s place’. For example, we say of an item of clothing, a piece of furniture or a book: ‘that’s petty-bourgeois’ 1 Dovey, Framing Places, 46.

2 Nader El-Bizri, Phenomenology of Place and Space in our Epoch: Thinking along Heideggerian Pathways, in, The Phenomenology of Real and Virtual Places, ed. Erik Champion (London: Routledge, 2018), 123-143.

3 4 Dovey, Framing Places, 20.

or ‘that’s intellectual’.”5 In this way the habitus both structures and is structuring, it addresses the dichotomy between the individual’s experiential agency which is normally considered somewhat autonomous, and their disposition towards certain actions, beliefs or choices. The illusion of autonomy can be seen throughout the suburbs, it is your house, or rather your expectation of what a house should be, an expectation that has been formed however subtly by the structurization of the habitus, embedded in such familiar forms of dwelling.

Figure x. The American Dream? The concepts outlined in Critical Discourse allow

Bourdieu argues that it is an individual’s internalization of these spatialised and temporal rules which, constituting habitus makes its operations unconscious 5 Barthes, Mythologies, xix.

the thoughtlessness or naturalisation of these structures is what lends them ideological power.

Bourdieu’s theorization of capital interacts with the concept of habitus as well as introducing important frameworks for understanding systems of exchange; cultural, social as well as economic.

Economic Capital

Is defined as any form of wealth that can be easily turned into moeny; cash, assets, shares.

Symbolic Capital

The over-arching term for forms of exchange that are not economic (at least not superficially economic), within symbolic capital Bourdieu defines several different forms of capital, namely cultural, social, and scientific. Symbolic capital, unlike economic capital, defines itself not as a form of exchange but as a field with intrinsic meaning, it is essentilist6.

This claim of inherent worth is seen in its forms of production; the claim of the intrinsic value of an artwork, and therefore the distinction of those who can understand/value it.

Cultural Capital

Cultural capital refers to the accumulation of manners, credentials, knowledge and skill, acquired through education and upbringing.

Cultural capital can be embodied as the predispositions or propensity 6 Grenfell, Pierre Bourdieu; Key Concepts (2014), p.100.

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of an individual within that field- these predispositions return being generated by the attitudes and values determined by the habitus. Capital can also be objectified in things such as art objects, food, dress, and buildings. Objectified cultural capital does not refer to the actual owning of these items, but rather the decision to chose them.

Social Capital

Form of trust in social relations or networks of family and friends it is inherently different to cultural capital because it is collective, rather than individual. Is expressed by notions of organisation such as; place, community, class.

These theories have been explored within architectural discourse by Kim Dovey, whose study Framing Places maps the complicity of the built form in producing symbolically powerful buildings which create the environment for the continuation of social and political domination.

Mythology

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The key theoretical text that this thesis explores in relation to architectural form is Roland Barthes’ work Mythologies (1972). Barthes work draws on several currents of thought stemming from the “discursive turn in social theory”7 of the mid-late 20th century. Myth as Barthes defines it, is a form of speech, it is in essence a semiotic system of signs that serve to deliver intentional messages, transforming artificial conditions into naturalized ones. Barthes demonstrates the function of myth to be a form of an injunction, compelling its audience to wrongly associate the form of the myth with an essence, creating sets of expectations, dreams, desires, and identities.8 Barthes semiotic work stems from de Saussure’s “vast science of signs”9 in which language can be seen as structuring our understanding of the world through the arbitrary interplay of signifier/signified. Barthes conceives of myth as a second order language, a metalanguage which is tied to the structure of language by its use of signs.

The diagram below, taken from Myth Today (the essay at the end of Mythologies in which Barthes analyses myth systems in contemporary society), outlines this tie.

Within language a word has an arbitrary meaning that is formed by the relation between the signifier and the signified, a signifier is the word; rose, the signified is the physical object that exists in the world. The sign is the product of this association, it is the meaning of the word rose.

Barthes claims myth as second-order language because it appropriates the language sign, emptying it of its historical meaning so as to fill it with another meaning; the second-order signified. In order to avoid 7 Dovey 8 Dovey, Framing Places, 46 9 Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. (London: Vintage, 2012), 140.

confusion between language systems and myth systems, Barthes utilizes the terminology form and concept instead of signifier and signified. The sign of the myth system, he refers to as signification.

Figure x. Marlon Brando in Julius Caesar, one of the myths that Barthes decodes is “The Romans in Films” were he discusses the artifice of the cinema; the plastered down and parted fringes to indicate that the actor is in fact ‘a roman’ and the excessive sweating of the cast bar Caesar.

Mythologies explores the myths that construct everyday life through a process of decoding 29 (or 54 depending on the English-edition) myths of Barthes’ contemporary French society. The necessity of exposing these myths is to bring to light the “ideological abuse”10 behind the myth and the role it plays in narrating everyday experience as a natural condition. One of Barthes’ key critiques of myth is that it alienates the context, the history of the sign. Barthes uses the example of the Basque chalet in Paris to demonstrate this point 10 Barthes, Mythologies, 133.

of the de-contextualisation and simplification of the sign through myth.

The site specific, materially defined and formally consistent Basque chalet becomes alienated from this complex and idiosyncratic architectural history, it is distorted through its relocation to Paris (a highly urban city) the lack of a barn, external stairs or dove-cote, the vernacular style of the basque house is mimicked but only in generalizations. The stripping back of architectural form constitutes a kind of “emptying”11 of the sign’s historical meaning. Thus the form of the myth is the chalet, the concept is the neologism of basque-ness, and the signification of the myth is the establishment of this basque-ness as fact, as natural.

How are Myths Read and Received?

Barthes claims that myths are received, not read, in other words- the reader is passive in the construction of the myth’s meanings. This allows the myth to avoid interpretation or analysis and is fundamental to its ability to naturalise myth-objects. Myths are intentionally aimed at an audience, it is their “arrest” of the sign that serves to freeze meanings and makes them difficult to decipher.

Barthes expresses three different ways in which myths can be deciphered; one can focus on the form of a myth “the empty signifier”12 the object (image, building, gesture) of the myth, allowing the concept fill the empty signifier so that it becomes a symbol. Barthes uses the 11 12

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example of the poster that shows a young black boy giving the salute of the republic (see figure opposite) to illustrate this point. From this first method of reading myth, the signifier; a black child soldier becomes an example of French imperialism. Barthes links this understanding of myth to myth-producers; the journalist looking for an image that will symbolise a certain concept. It is an important characteristic of myth is that the form of the myth-object itself is replaceable, Barthes gives the examples of alternative images that could be filled by the concept of French imperialism; “a French general pins a decoration on a one-armed Senegalese, a nun hands a cup of tea to a bed-ridden Arab”13.

The second method that Barthes illustrates operates by considering the “full signifier”14, this method of interpreting myth allows the distortion between original sign, and the form to become apparent- the distortion elucidates the concept filling the new signifier. This process of distortion is analysed to show how myth is an “alibi”, a way of covering over the distinction between the sign and an essence.15 This is described by Barthes as the deciphering of a myth- the action of the mythologist. 16

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The third method is similar to the process of receiving the myth, it focuses on the myth as a dynamic whole, taking the ambiguity of the myth’s signification- that it is “both true and unreal”17. This position allows the reader to see the child-soldier as the “presence” of French imperialism, Barthes argues that it is at this level- that of recognising the naturalisation of the myth that one can move from a semiological interpretation to an ideological interpretation of myth.18 The slipperiness of myth lies in its avoidance of theories or analytical positions, the functioning of myth simple; it “states facts and posits values”19. The shallowness of the myth, its dislocation from history lends myth a false sense of obvious-ness. Because of this flatness, Barthes labels myth “de-politicised speech”, the myth itself is seen as innocent by its receiver, the motivation and ideology driving the concept is hidden by the presence of the myth.

This thesis proposes that the quarter acre dream is an example of a modern myth, the “falsely obvious”20 that frames and limits our understanding of both the urban fabric and architectural form. In order to explore this myth, I will be utilising the methodologies that Barthes outlines for reading myth. Visually and diagrammatically exploring the distortion on architectural objects and their transformation into motivated-form.

13 Barthes, Mythologies, p. 151.

14 15 16 Barthes, Mythologies, p. 153.

17 18 19 20 Barthes, Mythologies, xix.

Figure x. Paris Match cover,

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ARCHITECTURAL DISCOURSE Within architectural discourse I will be focusing on theories that relate to the expression of ontology and dwelling (Norberg-Shulz and Dovey), Australian suburban contexts (Boyd), and the architectural exploration of sign systems and their distortion (Derrida and Eisenman). In order to extend my thesis within the architectural discipline, an investigation of the theorization of suburban architectural forms is necessary. In particular my focus will be on suburban architectural forms in Melbourne, however a broader consideration of architecture in relation to the ideas outlines in Critical Discourse will also be explored.

Ontology and Dwelling Kim Dovey

Domestic Desires: House and Enclave (2011) In “Domestic Desires: House and Enclave”,1 Dovey explores the detached suburban home of California and Australian cities, linking conceptual frames of habitus and the ontology of dwelling to an understanding of the persistence of the suburban house as an architectural form.

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Dovey demonstrates through the spatial syntax analysis of suburban ‘genotypes’ how spatial structuring perpetuates the subversion of key dialectics; the private is privileged over public, familiar over strange etc.

This particular ideological framework allows the house to become a home, establishing a “spatial and cultural order” that continues the habitus of the subject whilst also grounding their “ontological security”.2 It is the “exclusion of difference”3 which Dovey argues is so damaging within the cul-de-sacs of the suburban fringe, combined with the “falsely obvious”4 spatial programming that structures these as architectural objects. Dovey’s study is deeply rooted in critical as well as architectural discourse and is a text that makes its arguments on the relation of space to power in a highly theorised way, relying on textual and syntactic analysis rather than formalist critique.

Dovey utilises spatial syntax analysis to develop his arguments in relation to both American and Australian suburban forms. He finds that these ‘model’ housing types are programmed in a highly segregated and structured way.

Dovey argues that the intense disjunction of the internal spaces within the house can be seen less as a functional requirement of the house, but rather a spatial expression of the push towards normative forms of living; that of the nuclear family.

Dovey connects his spatial analysis to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus through the close reading of predispositions that are apparent in developer-built and led estates. The house is a form of economic capital, however its design, program, materiality and interior finishes are determined by cultural and symbolic capital. 5 1 Dovey, Framing Places, 157.

2 Dovey, Framing Places, 158.

3 Dovey, Framing Places, 157.

4 Barthes, Mythologies, xix.

5 See the section on Bourdieu in Critical Discourse for a definition of these two terms.

FROM TOP; New estate in Tarneit, Melbourne from an aerial view. House under construction on a greenfield site in Melbourne’s outer West.

Le Corbusier, La Tourette

Norberg-Shulz

Existence, Space and Architecture (1971) Norberg-Shulz was heavily influenced by first structuralist theory, and in his later work by theories of phenomenology, his goal was to redefine architectural space, to develop an approach in which architectural physicality and form was understood as an inherent component of an individual’s ontological security.6 Norberg-Schulz argued that architectural space, was in reality “existential space”7. The architectural expression of these spaces should, he posited, be informed by four forms of “existential space”; 1. geography and landscape, 2. the urban context, 3. the house, and 4. the object.8 Schulz links dwelling to Heidegger’s concept of dwelling as being grounded in the house.9 Norberg-Schulz’s project was to “make a site become a place”, a goal that he traced throughout photographs and analysis of vernacular and architectural examples. His thesis was aimed at combating the “loss of place” that the process of modernization was seen on having on built urban forms. 10 By grounding architecture in the discourse of phenomenology, Norberg-Schulz attempted to assert architectural form as having an essential/inherent meaning.

6 7 8 9 10 See also the projects of Venturi, Jacobs, and Rossi who also were highly critical of Modern Architecture and its relation to the urban environment.

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Australian Suburban Contexts Robin Boyd

The Australian Ugliness (1960) Robin Boyd’s seminal, and still relevant, The Australian Ugliness (1960) is argued from a generally formalist architectural point of view.

Boyd identifies and theorises on specific aspects of suburban built form; namely the trend of featurism or veneer(ism) and the manifestation through architectural elements of a distrust of formal theory, a phenomenon which Boyd associates with ‘cultural cringe’.

Boyd lambasts featurism on two main fronts; firstly the making-up of materials or elements to look like something else. For example, the ‘brick veneer’ house, fake stone vinyl over kitchen floors, the artificial flowers at Darwin airport.11

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The second front is less obvious, but Boyd argued, more insidious; “the disguising of the reality of an environment by means of introducing arbitrary distractions”.12 Boyd thought of architecture and more generally, ‘good design’ as having the quality of wholeness, in his critique of the Featurist city he laments a lack of coherence in architectural style.

The suburban house was to be a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ that would respond to the particularities of the Australian environment, respond to the needs of its inhabitants, clarity of design-intent, and proportion.

Featurism was not only the product of ‘bad design’ but at a deeper cultural level connected to what Boyd termed “Arboraphobia,”13 the fear of trees and other aspects of the native environment. This deep fear is not linked to necessarily the ‘messiness’ of the natural- after all a hedge is a piece of nature as well- but rather to the colonial terror of Australia’s “wild, ancient landscape”.14 Throughout his writings (essays, book, newspaper articles) Boyd reached a wide and variegated audience and his message of site specificity, flexible programmes, and material attentiveness remains vital and innovative to contemporary architecture today. Through Boyd’s architectural practice (which will be discussed in more depth in the Precedents section) he facilitated democratic and wide-reaching designs for everyday people.

Boyd’s theoretical work and architectural practice remain an example of the potential for our suburban spaces.

11 12 Robin Boyd, The Australian Uglines, (Text Classics: 2012), 271.

13 14

Figure x. Mlebourne, 1960. The Gothic revivalist churches mix with more contemporary styles and materials, generating an example of the mismatched Featurism that Boyd accussed Australian cities of succumbing to.

Figure x. Contemporary house in Bulleen (a middle Eastern suburb of Mlebourne), the almost Tuscan columns frame not the entrance to a temple or a grand public space, but rather the private vanity of the modern house. The entablature is bare, with no clear differentiation between the architrave, frieze and cornice except for the odd arch that disrupts the horizontal integrity of the lintel above the door.

Figure x. Stone House, (1953) designed by Boyd for a client in Sydney who had read The Australian Ugliness.

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Architecture and Distortion Derrida & Eisenman Choral works (1996)

Throughout Choral Works, the relationship between philosophy and architecture is explored in order to develop a subversive approach to architectural creation/practice. The book focuses on transcripts taken from working sessions between Derrida and Eisenman on the La Parc de la Villette project in Paris, eventually Derrida criticises Eisenman’s approach, and questioning the validity of Deconstructive architecture.

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Derrida in the Norris interview1 stresses the importance of heterogeneity and multiplicity within the Deconstructivist movement, stating that even when practicing “creative Deconstruction” (artistic or architectural projects that aim to be ​deconstructive​), there can be no ruling style, aesthetic, field or “gesture”. For a project being truly Deconstructive, Derrida claims that there can be no individual; “self-privileged authorial voice”2, the rejection of multiplicity within Eisenman’s work is the root of the lack of “radical” reinvention that Derrida sees as the potential for architecture in conjunction with a Deconstructivist critique.

In addition to Eisenman perpetuating the role of the architect/​demigure, another fundamental difficulty between Deconstruction as Derrida theorizes and practices and Eisenman’s projects lies in the presence and physical reality of the built form that cannot be ellided or subverted through a formal approach. The formal approach that characterises Eisenman’s architectural work addresses the anthropocentric traditions of architecture through a reexamination of certain basic dialectics; structure/decoration, abstraction/figuration. However, because of Eisenman’s ffocus on representation rather than experience, the Deconstructive treatment of the architectural project deals more with the formal envelope than the foundational relationship between these dialectics.

The question of inevitable transformation that has to occur when moving between d ​ iscourse ​and ​action​, as Eisenman states; “Architecture requires one to detach the signified not only from its signifier but also from its condition as presence.” it to be expressed in physical reality.

Deconstructivism transcribed onto architecture. Eisenman’s projects such as the Romeo and Juliet project, and proposal for the Parc de la Villette, work on the premise of a dislocation between form and function, a key tenant of traditional of western archetypes, by subverting the dominance of the human body as the ruling scale.

In this context, Eisenman suggests that whilst what he is doing is not necessarily deconstruction in the strictly Derridian form- it is Deconstruction in an architectural form, the process of translating the ideas of deconstruction into architectural language requires a “third” term; presentness.

1 2

Figure x. Paris Match cover,

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PRECEDENT STUDIES 1. The Australian Home

2. Dreaming of Future Dwellings

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1. THE AUSTRALIAN HOME Small Home Service 1947-1953 Robin Boyd and RVIA Boyd’s collaboration with The Age, Myer and the RVIA in bringing about the ‘Small Home Service’ was an enactment of the design principles that he sets out again in The Australian Ugliness (1960). Examples were not always designed by Boyd himself, however they were always accompanied by a brief segment of text written by Boyd and published in The Age as a form of democratization of architectural service. The plans were complete (with construction drawings and details) and cheap (selling for 5 pounds at the time), allowing architecture to engage with communities for whom the architect’s fee made the process inaccessible.

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The success that Boyd and the Small Homes Service had is evident in the numbers of constructed homes; up to 5,000 houses were built from these plans, Boyd estimated that this accounted for 15% of all homes built in Victoria at that time. This combination of popular media coverage with an architectural vision demonstrates the role that creative imaginations can have in shaping the expectations and desires within broader society.

The cap on how many houses were designed using the same plan; 25 in the CBD and 25 in the country, meant that unlike contemporary off the plan buildings, these would retain an aspect of uniqueness to them. An important compromise between the ‘authored’ architectural object and the generic approach of developer led estates.

The plans themselves were well-designed, site responsive, materially articulated and economic. As both land and building materials were scarce (and thus expensive) these small homes were designed to fit onto blocks of varying sizes and orientations. The annotations indicated ideal location and orientation on site, the flexibility and costs of material usage.

The houses were designed to be adaptive to the changing needs and circumstances of the socially mobile migrant communities post 1947.

Generally formal entrance halls were dispensed with, spatial layouts were less prescriptive; large multi-functional spaces began to generate the concept of “open plan living”, whilst large windows and spacious rooms extended the interiority of the space. Despite being “small homes” through good design and innovative use of materials, especially the extensive use of glass created a sense of openness and connection to nature, the immensity of the land was engaged with at a personal, suburban scale.

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Fig. x A page from the RVIA Small Home Service, Plan Folder 30 “Holiday Homes” published in The Age (circa. 1950)

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Offset House (2015) Otherothers; Grace Mortlock and David Neustein Developed as a speculative project for the Chicago Biennial in 2015, Otherothers “Offset House” questions the built form of the ‘McMansion’ and its relationship to the “Australian Dream”.1 The project looks at subverting the hard divisions between public and private that these large, detached houses display. The project literally ‘offsets’ the outer boundary of the built form, moving it into the interior of the house, effectively creating a permeable semi-public zone. By shrinking the outer edges of the house, Otherothers critique the excessive size of these tract-built homes, the decrease in private space corresponds to an expansion of community spaces within the proposal. By removing the fences at the boundaries of the site, Otherothers effectively re-purpose the traditional quarter acre block into a community park.

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It should be noted that the newly ‘public’ space created by the dismantling of solid fences is not truly ‘public’ in its accessibility. There is still a measure of seclusion and of ownership inherent in the internal facing of this ‘public’ space. That being said, this level of community rather than public access effectively forces a greater level of social interaction between people who are otherwise isolated in and by their large, secure houses.

Architectural Process: The Offset House celebrates the “most successful and longest running project, lightweight timber frame construction”2, the typically brick veneer is stripped away to reveal the delicate, functional and aesthetic framework beneath. This ‘offset’ and exposure of the internal frame opens the house to the external world, expanding rather than internalizing the workings of everyday life.

1 Pozniak, “Offset House: reframing the Australian Dream,” Architecture AU (September, 2016).

2 Otherothers, Offset House, Chicago Biennial 2015.

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Fig. x

The need for re-working and adaptation within existing housing stocks is communicated with urgency and wit in Otherothers project. Although it doesn’t directly address the economic climate of housing in Australia, the celebration of the light-weight frame exposes the Australian Dream for what it is; fragile. 3 Offset House does not prescribe solutions, but rather an image of reworking, it inherently criticises the planning policies, and economic profiteering that have formed the suburban environment as it is today, without condemning the individuals who inhabit these spaces. Rather, Otherothers posit alternative ways in which existing forms can be reclaimed, adapted and ameliorated to better serve the people who live there.

Offset House blurs the line between reality and symbolism; it is ‘buildable’ architecture, and abstracted gesture.

3 Pozniak, “Offset House: reframing the Australian Dream,”.

The Halfway House (2010) Alex Selenitsch

The Halfway House a project published in; Halfway House; The Poetics of Australian Spaces (2010), is an important precedent for my thesis investigation because it eloquently investigates both personal narratives and collective experiences.

Selenitsch documents the relationship between built forms (architecture) and the formation of identity, the role of history and the importance of dwelling. The “Five Dwellings” project traces the spatial expressions of five different decades and the journey throughout these spaces and decades of “becoming Australian”.1 The text which accompanies the drawn project is divided into four way sections; Front Yard, Suburban Block, Walk-Through, and Back Yard.

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This way of narrating the story of an architectural objects offers a different perspective to most other precedents, it allows the reader to experience the movement through space- between thresholds of public/private, inside/outside, and through history. Selenitsch’s use of prose allows the reader to experience a journey not only through ‘the house’ but also through the cultural, social and historical relationships that these spatial forms both structure and are structured by.

The section on the Suburban Plot was especially interesting to me, the isolation of the “paling fences”2 as the physical expression of land division and land ownership, and thus the identifiable element of the suburban block resonates throughout Melbourne today. Selenitsch posits an interesting question around the way in which the transience of built form; its propensity to decay, be renovated, knocked down, relocated, is offset by the permanence of the fence. Although the architectural expression may change- as it does over the Five Decades houses- what remains constant is the framework of the boundary fence.

1 Alex Selenitsch, “The Halfway House”, in Halfway House; The Poetics of Australian Spaces, eds. Jennifer Rutherford & Barbara Holloway (2010) 2 Selenitsch, “The Halfway House”, p.72.

1. 1950s Halfway House:

2. 1960s Das Englische Haus:

Explores the arrival of a European migrant family, exploring the “built image of relocation, nostalgia

“The confrontation with the English language”, the house is split into two; mirroring the dialectic between spoken and written speech, or drawn and built architecture.

and hope.”

3. 1970s Journey North: Dual forces of modernization and a kind of nostalgic longing for the “British Imperial” past, the house becomes both an “archaeological site” and a modern object.

5. 1990s One Roof: Explores the vitality and difference, the piecemeal approach, that multiculturalism has had on built form, and cultural experience.

The ideas of renovation, addition and adaptation converge underneath a “complex hip roof”.

4. 1980s Four Ways: Four transformations are expressed through the separate pavilions that get incorporated onto the site; one in each corner.

Relates questions of identity and geography to the vital role of an outhouse in the success of a dwelling.

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The New House (1953) John Brack

Because of their inherent abstraction, artworks can often address questions of society, politics and culture that architecture finds difficult to separate from the pragmatic constraints of the site and client.

In ‘The new house’ by John Brack, the interior of a suburban family is explored. The figures in the artwork; the husband in his suit, and the wife in her nice dress and kitchen apron, epitomise both gender and class roles associated with the average middle-class home in the early 1950s.

This idealised image captures the importance of ‘the home’ for the conservative ideology of the Menzies era, the atomisation and emphasis of the individual was a key part of this ideology.

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However, this ideal is seen through Brack’s arrangment as having an inherently flat quality- it is all surface phenomena; from the Van Gough replica on the wall, to the bareness of the room itself. There is a kind of hollowness that pervades the image, from the half smile of the house wife to the bareness of the walls.

The composition of the artwork, being on a narrow vertical canvas represents the austerity of the 1940s, as if the couple and more broadly, the cultural milieu has not quite adjusted to the decadence and rampant consumerism of the post-way boom period.

Family Home: Suburban Exterior (1993) Howard Arkley

Arkley holds a mirror up to the Australian house, and more broadly the suburb in this artwork.

The techni-colour and slightly hazy quality of this work transforms the artwork from being simply a representation of a physical reality into a sophisticated mediation on the cultural construction of form. The image “reproduces a supremely dizzying, even alienating form of the collective hallucination”1, and it is this visual representation of the suburban dream that fascinated me about Arkley’s artworks. If it were not for the soft, hazy feel of

the spray painting that was Arkley’s identifiable style, the artwork would look like just another advertisement in a real-estate magazine with its perspective distortions and idealised weather.

This painting explores the experience of the Australian suburban home, the form is one of familiarity; the triple fronted brick house, which owing to its popularity with builders and buyers is still a highly relevant architectural form today.

This ‘recognisability’ of both Brack’s and Arkley’s works can be explained by our familiarity with the

1 Charlotte Hallows, Satellite Cities and Tabloid Life, Monash University Museum of Art (2004).

myth that they study; the quarter acre dream. It is the eternalization of the myth that , its intransience that is conveyed by the flatness of the work of art.

These images are at once unsettling and deeply comforting, exploring both the tautology of the suburban house (it just is), and the ontological security to be found in familiar spatial relationships and hierarchies.

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2. DREAMING OF FUTURE DWELLINGS Living Pod (1965-67) David Greene (Archigram) Living Pod was one of the earlier attempts to combine the ideas of mobility and technology with forms of dwelling. The idea of the self-contained capsule explored ideas related to autonomy, autonomy from the urban environment and its existing architectural forms.

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The idea of a “pod” also linked to fellow Archigram member; Peter Cook’s Plug In City- the ideas worked in conjunction; the city would become in effect a vast system of infrastructure, that encouraged modulisation and conglomeration, the mobile pod could then ‘plug-in’ to the body of the city.

Another element of Green’s design proposal was the Space Age style

of the pod itself, the idea of self-containment and autonomy meant that at a theoretical level architecture was comprised of only essential, functional elements. In a sense the push towards austere and hyper-functional spaces sought a justification of architecture for architecture’s sake.

Themes of inflation, membrane, plastic and interactive architecture can be seen in the highly inventive design of the Living Pod, the white is reminiscent of a space-suit, even the rounded windows are similar to the face window on an astronaut’s suit. The exposure of services on the exterior of the pod are a symbolic as well as functional gesture.

Externalised services would allow for more room on the interior of the pod, as well as allowing for services and interchange when ‘plugging in’ to the city grid. The symbolic function of the services are their utilitarian over-tones, the decoration of the pod is in effect the display of functionality- in this way a functional system becomes the decorative element of the architectural type.

House of the Century (1972) Antfarm The House of the Century was built in 1973 on the shores of Mojo Lake, the house was meant to be a holiday home, its interior comprised of generous living spaces and a tower for entertaining and to capture views.

The house’s organic forms are modeled on the inflatable structures Ant Farm was famous for, however the building itself

was actually built with concrete sprayed onto metal form-work.

This building, now destroyed, is one of AntFarms only built projects, and demonstrates the search by young architects of new, vital forms that spoke to contemporary progressions in technology and society.

The lack of proliferation of these building types

(similar to Bini shells, Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes) invites the question of what elements are needed to generate a sense of dwelling, or is it rather a question of the lack of mythology connected to these buildings.

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A Home Is Not a House (1965) Reyner Banham & François Dallegret In his article “A Home is not a House” with accompanying drawings by François Dallegret, Banham vehemently criticises the American suburban house, what we would now refer to as a ‘McMansion’.

As the title suggests Banham is disputing the phenomenological connection between the physical house and the sense of home-dwelling.

These criticisms focus on the lack of environmental sustainability and the excessive consumption of resources that these bloated residential houses have become.

The drawings by Dallegret illustrate the arguments that Banham is making, abstracting and lending us images of what the future dystopian vision is for these houses. On the previous page Dallegret’s Anatomy of a Dwelling fluidly illustrates the over-running of the house by the services that make it functional, to quote Banham; “When your house contains such a complex of piping, flues, ducts, wires, lights, inlets, outlets, ovens, sinks, refuse disposers, hi-fi reverberators, antennae, conduits, freezers, heaters – when it contains so many services that the hardware

could stand up by itself without any assistance from the house, why have a house to hold it up?”

In the article Banham and Dallegret propose an architecture of nomadicy and self-reliance, the dwelling becomes enmeshed in the vitality of its general site (the earth) rather than the static space of the site (specific).

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Bernard Tchumi The Manhattan Transcripts (1976-81)

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In “Tschumi on Architecture: Conversations with Enrique Walker”, Tschumi outlines the overarching thesis of his career as a reexamination of the relationship between space and its use.1 In the post-May 1968 milieu it seemed to young architects such as Tschumi that architecture needed to find different ways of engaging with the political, the everyday and its own complicity with power.

Eisenman for example sought a redefinition of architecture as an autonomous disclipine, thus circumnavigating the difficult areas of ideology and social construction.

1 2 3

Tschumi sought to define a “new lexicon in order to displace the core of the architectural discussion”2 The Manhattan Transcripts followed, articulating Tschumi’s redefinition of space in relation to architecture as; “the sum of the figure walking through a space and the space itself”.3 Tschumi interrogates traditional architectural dualities, confronting concept with experience and in the Manhattan Transcripts, space with event.

Throughout the Transcripts Tschumi explores a tripartite that organises the diagrams

and drawings which he produced; space, event and movement.

Through the Transcripts, Tschumi talks of the relationship between movement and architecture, claiming that architecture should in fact be considered as the dynamic interplay between the static space and the movement that creates an event within/ through it. It is from this notion of movement as the condition for architecture that Tschumi developed his definition of program, and his interest in the use/ misuse of spaces.

The diagrams of the Transcripts notate the movement vectors of “protagonists” who appear within the “stage set”4 of architecture.

Tschumi uses superimposition, movement vectors, and juxtapositions to explore a new way of representing architecture in contradiction to traditional forms; axonometric, plan, perspective.

This was to facilitate Tschumi’s 4

exploration of the event as a central part of the architectural project. Film studies were an important precedent for Tschumi’s transcripts- in trying to represent the interplay between architecture, impermanence and event, Tschumi structures his drawings through sequences, frames, and montage.

The Transcripts is an important precedent for my thesis, the way in which

Tschumi represents abstract notions such as movement and event can form a kind of conceptual tool for analysing and representing transient aspects of my own project.

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Bernard Tchumi Parc de la Villette

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The Parc, located on the edge of Paris was the site of an old abbatoire, Tschumi took the radical approach of making the Parc about culture rather than nature, engaging with the city as a meeting place for cultural exchanges, rather than

escape from its urbanity.

The program of Parc de la Villette was to integrate the main activities as well as the movement flows of people, and creating space for events.

Tschumi

utilises

three

systems in a palimpset over the site; points materialized, line, and surface, these systems correlate to the built interventions (follies), movement vectors, and green expanses.

Returning to his interest in the dislocation between

intended function and use function, Tschumi developed a system in which intersections demarcate points of engagement, inviting the user to alternate between events.

Tschumi’s points form a regular and orthogonal

grid distributed across the whole site, in his conversations with Enrique Walker diagrams that Tschumi produced during the sketch phase of the design illustrate the different organisational strategies from Rossi’s Ideal City, to Le Corb’s Plan

Voisin. When talking about the colour choice for the Follies, Tschumi points to the fact that there is no natural material that is red, it is always simply a veneer, and therefore free from any historic associations.

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THESIS ELABORATION

PART II : PROJECT RESEARCH | SITE ANALYSIS INITIAL ARTEFACT ANALYSIS

CONCEPT DESIGN PHYSICAL-ABSTRACT-PHYSICAL PARTI AND CONCEPT

SKETCH DESIGN PRECEDENTS OVERVIEW PART I : ANALYSIS PART I I: DESIGN RESPONSE SKETCH DESIGN REFLECTION

TESTS AND FAILURES DREAMLAND HOUSE FOR THE FUTURE SELF

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SITE ANALYSIS

There will be six sites of investigation across two suburbs; Bulleen and Hillside.

The sites I have chosen to direct my exploration of my thesis question differ in their economic, historical, cultural and physical histories.

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These sites enable an exploration of the quarter acre dream across the time frame of my exploration; 1950 to now.

I was interested in exploring the interface between the Australian environment and built dreams that we have inserted into it. The sites that i have chosen explore the habitat of the “urban fringe’, these spaces offer a blank canvas for imagined ideals to be placed on. Space for self-expression, the physical realisation of dreams and assumptions, cultural norms, history, symbolic of anthropocene dominance.

From the Melbourne Plan outlined by the state government in 2014, the grey border indicates the growth corridor of Melbourne’s urban area, I wanted both sites to

engage with several components; the fringe condition, “alien” space, historic suburbanisation, contemporary growth, mixed demographic profiles.

As traced in the history of Melbourne section, the city has grown historically in spurts, rapidly urbanising natural habitats, both these suburbs engage with that historical growth pattern.

Bulleen in the late 1950s and Hillside from 2000 to now.

As this thesis aims to engage with questions of experience as well as well as the quantifiable, it was also important for me to have a level of personal engagement with any suburb that I chose to explore further.

I have defined “personal engagement” as an active involvement; (time spent there for work, friends or family who live in that area) with the area or suburb over at least one year.

Hillside

Bulleen

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Hillside: The plan outlines the housing blocks, roads, waterways and parklands, three large farm-steads still exist at the very noth of the suburb. To the west is farmland and bush until Melton and the Macedon Ranges.

1

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2

3

HILLSIDE The Hillside area is located at the outer North-Western fringe of land stretching between Melton and Melbourne Airport. Hillside, Taylors Lakes and the surrounding suburbs had been productive farmland dating back to the colonies earliest settlements. The first housing estates were established around 2001 and as a consequence the population rapidly increased, going from less than 100 people (these were the farmers and their families who made up the area known as Hillside) to

more than 9,00 people. Its population has continued to expand rapidly due to the large amount of greenfield tract housing being built at its fringes, in 2006 the population had grown to 14,000 people, and in 2011 it had increased again to 16,000. Hillside lies within the growth corridor outlined in Plan Melbourne, indicating that its boarders will continue to expand, in order to accommodate new buildings.

Ironically the density in Hillside is actually lower than in Bulleen; a ‘middle

ring’ suburb, at over 2,000 people per km2. My personal engagement with Hillside stems from my high-school days, one of my friends lived there and I always remembered the experience of going out to visit her, and how different Melbourne felt from what I was used to having grown up in the inner city.

The 3 specific sites of investigation are drawn below; 17 Golden Way, 65 Aspire Boulevard, and 35 Sugar Gum Way.

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1. 17 Golden Way

2. 65 Aspire Boulevard

3. 35 Sugar Gum Way

BULLEEN

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2. 53 Balwyn Road

1. 12 Albany Place

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3. 42 Rocklea Road First surveyed in 1841 by Fred Unwin, the land was many agricultural as it was bordered by the Koonyung Creek to the south and the Yarra River on its Western and Northern edges. A lack of transport infrastructure and extensive flood planes resulted in a lack of suburban settlement until the late 1950s when Bulleen’s population dramatically increased, jumping from 1,560 in 1947 to over 7,000 by 1960.

Bulleen is 13km North east of the Melbourne CBD, the only direct public transport is the 905 Doncaster bus. The lack of transport infrastructure was a key limiting factor to population growth until personal cars became widespread.

MYTHOLOGIES | INITIAL ANALYSIS

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These were my initial attempts at articulating and identifying certain artefacts that contribute their image/form to the continuation of the suburban dream. In particular, the aspects that were difficult to identify, the ones that felt so ‘natural’ or obvious and blatant were nearly always the aspects that eventually were the most explicit

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12 Albany Place, Bulleen

1. THE PORTICO

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Whether walking, driving or riding through Bulleen what stands out about the home is the importance of the entrance. Some of these entrances are raised, a series of wide, sweeping and symmetrical steps leads the visitor (because friends and family know to use the side-door) up to the Portico. What is associated with a Portico, why are they being used to frame the entrance to a residential house in a residential street, within a (relatively) modern and highly residential suburb? The symbolic nature of a Portico is fairly obvious, they serve as a preface to the interior world of the building proper and they emphasise the domestic dialectic between inside and outside, public and private.

Arriving at 53 Balwyn Rd the bare, yet manicured front yard exaggerates the scale of the almost Doric columns and heavy, cream coloured Portico. The Portico itself is framed in elevation by an expanse of smooth stucco coated brick and juxtaposed with the red-brick work of the wings on either side of the entrance. The symbolic nature of a Portico lies in its link to buildings of cultural importance (most frequently Ancient Greek and Roman Temples) within the Western canon. In Australian architectural history there are many secular examples of these heavily symbolic architectural forms; Victorian Parliament and Melbourne Town Hall are two of these. In this sense a Portico can be seen as indicating both the importance of the entrance, and the importance of the individuals who own it. In Melbourne, there is a cultural link between secular power, legitimacy and neo-classical architecture. The plagiarism of this architectural history is utilized to allude to the power, status, and wealth of the individual who owns the Porticoprefaced house. In addition to the mis-use of proportions, orders and material, the scale and formal dominance of the Portico reduces the front door to nothing but a decorative device. The front door becomes so important and regal that it takes up ceremonial place within the functioning of the household- the garage, or the side door becomes the functioning entrance.

2. DOMESTICATED DORIC

Throughout Bulleen columns of various classical orders can be found attached to private balconies, verandahs, and framing grand entrances to a suburban dreamland. At 12 Albany Place, the Portico is framed by two Composite columns, the white washed ironwork contrasting with the warm timber and brick roofing.

In the garden there stands a single solitary column, where its entablature should be there stands instead a Victorian style streetlamp. The Domesticated column has been divorced from its structural functionality and the material language which was developed in accordance to the column as an architectural element.

The integral relationship between structure and form is doubly subverted; firstly by a colonizing power seeking to establish legitimacy and authority over an alien country, middle-class aesthetic, in which modern materiality....

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3. TEN to ONE

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One of the key tenants of the suburban ideal, is the notion of space, in the Method of urban settlement that Melbourne has adopted this notion of wide-open spaces and untouched greenfield sites are very achievable ones.

The desire for space is seen reflected in the sheer size of the urban lots spread throughout Bulleen and is repeated throughout suburban Melbourne making Melbourne one of the worlds least dense cities. This desire for space is echoed by the size and horizontal spread of the houses themselves, across the three sites of investigation the median floor area is 220m2 however the rigid wall layouts and intense segregation of common areas reduces the sensorial experience of space.

Ratios between block to house, house to bedrooms, integral spaces to suplerfluous ones- number of bedrooms vs. number of lounge spaces What does it mean??---Interiority- spaces within spaces, atomizing individuals- focus on the inside world; dreamland, world of ideal; safety, domesticity, family values, wealth. More lounge rooms than bedrooms; space- to do what?

4. THE PLASTIC TILE

Boyd-veneers, history of veneers in Australian architecture- brick veneer building, Vinyl wood, plastic etc.

Grammar of traditional tile systems, Morris (Arts and Craftsexamples in Melbourne) .

Material investigation, questions of authenticity, honesty of materials-

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5. THE RUMPUS ROOM

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Aracade machines, tiles, the bar- a room designed for kids Empty, cold- far away from other common areas “Dungeon” normally separated from warm bedrooms, on ground floor or sunken area f house- near garage, limited access to natural light.

Strip fluorescent lighting generally.

Table tennis, pool room Absent parenting- “retreat” Inherently linked to the notion of the ‘nuclear family’, segregates and constricts families into heavily interiorised consumer blocks. Atomization of the family space, the central hearth moves over for ‘informal’ lounge areas dominated by visual technologies (TVs and computers).

Segregation of the family into individuals, number of lounge- or ‘rumpus’- spaces almost equal to the number of bedrooms.

6. THE SUNRISE WINDOW

External relationship between construction and symbol, fake brick lintels- the facade is brick veneer- serve no purpose- analyse this.

As symbol; Creates symmetry throughout the entire faรงade of the buildings, ties together the disparate pieces of architectural forms and styles to create distinctive moments that declare; sense of grandeur.

Look up, your place in the world?

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HILLSIDE

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7.

Plantation Shutter American ideal, “plantation” shutters, look at these styles of housesidyllic (if you were white) rural castles Environmental practicalities that are not common here, not sub-tropical.

Popularity of these shutters as opposed to curtain furnishing can be seen as reflective of the shift away from colonial English sensibility (aesthetic), or European aesthetic (very cold winters, hot summers- see Bulleen houses) towards an American aesthetic- wide, open, ‘pioneer’ taming alien landscapes etc.

Idyllic, purity of the crisp white shutters made possible by slavery; symbolic of the racism and intolerance; the deep suspicion and fear of the other and outsiders that the suburban castle can come to represent.

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Fear of the Fringe The houses in Hillside cower together against the vast harshness of the Australian continent. They teeter on the edge of the wide open land that stretches out towards the Macedon Ranges and Melton to the West, Bendigo and the beginning of the interior deserts. There are still remnants of the old agricultural houses and ways of life, visible from the air, identifiable by the generous lots, and older more rural style houses.

In plan the fear of the seemingly empty wasteland beyond the back fence is that demarcates the fragility of civilisation 9.

Pine v. Palm The garden- relationship as an interface between the Australian Bush; the vast expanse that lies beyond, and the realm of domesticity; control, order. Shift in colonial taste, to more modern- Americana and pop culture- the juxtaposition between the Cypress tree that flanks the entrance and the palm trees that line the fence 10.

Welcome to Aspire The language of the developer, what exactly is it one buys at Aspire?

Analysis of the plan layout of the spaces, touch on separation of spaces as seen in Bullen- what exactly is the ideal family and how does it compare to the reality of those families that live in those houses? What do the interiors say about the houses? Furnishes, decoration, is there a continuation of the language developed in Bulleen?

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Interiority of the Garden The idea of alien land- harsh, life exists at the fringes along the coast.

The garden is a colonial form of control- but also the human desire to control, give meaning to their spaces, demarcate their personal area; home.

Petit-bourgeois idea of cultivation, refinement.

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Symmetrical | Horizontal Look closer at the floor plans and the vertical/volumetric stacking of

the houses. Most are double storey, but the upper storey is smaller, generally the houses are wider than they are deep; except in the newer more economical estates where the plots are definitive rectangles and they are long and narrow. Which depletes their access to natural light as well as their access to proper backyards.

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REFLECTION AND PROGRESSION After talking with my supervisor, and doing more precedent analysis and readings, I determined that visual communication of my analysis of these myth-objects was missing from my thinking.

I started thinking about the ways in which I could visually communicate a process that Barthes outlines; the emptying of a sign, its dislocation from its historical context, and the subsequent signification of the myth.

In relation to my area of study, there are certain aspects that are manifested physically across our built urban form that specifically naturalise the quarter-acre dream. The key take away from my initial studies on these suburban artefacts (mythobjects) was the need to re-abstract these built forms. As my supervisor pointed to in our discussions, was that I was only analysing the physical artefact- which in itself is the process of makingphysical abstract desires such as; home, security, status and social class.

In response to my research and initial tests, I started trying to develop diagrams that explored the re-abstraction of the myth-objects. For example, one of the artefacts that I looked at was the Podium and Column usage in domestic suburban houses- I tried to trace the lineage of these architectural elements, then visually explode these designs into constituent parts that are subsequently scattered across the suburban field.

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CONCEPT DESIGN PHYSICAL-ABSTRACT-PHYSICAL PARTI AND CONCEPT

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1. THE SHRINKING QUARTER ACRE

The Quarter Acre In its original form, the quarter acre block allowed for a large garden. In Australia both the colonial style cottage garden, and the picturesque were popular throughout the early 20th century. The front garden was generally decorative and used as a device to frame the house, the back garden was split into productive veggie patches and English lawns.

42 Rocklea Road

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The plot sizes in Bulleen are very generous compared to most suburbs in Melbourne, however even these don’t reach even half of the quarter acre size.

The shrinking lot sizes and the emphasis on decorative gardens has seen a decline in the area dedicated to productive gardens, the last bastion being the potted lemon tree.

17 Golden Way, Hillside

One of the key features of the decorative garden at the front of the quarter acre house and garden, was a feature- typically a fountain or bird bath- that tied the axial symmetry of the garden together. The plot at Golden Way still has its fountain, but its run dry- the grass is dying under the extreme summer sun, the picturesque Jacaranda makes way for the palm tree.

2. DOMESTICATED DORIC

EXPLOSIONS | EMPTY FORMS

THE SIGN | VILLA ROTONDA

MOTIVATED FORM |Sites

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3. INTERIOR VIEWS “The Utopia” 1965 This plan was one of three options residents chose from when buying in the new development of Nunawading in 1965. The so-called “Utopia” house is an example of a double fronted, double brick suburban home on a quarter acre block. The proliferation of this typology in suburban Australia can be traced to the growing sense of nationhood and the desire fro an Australian buuilding type.

The large central lounge room and hearth was the centre of the home, large, deep windows afforded by the double-brick construction create a condition of semi-permeability in the house, the views are all externalized; looking at the large garden block surrounding the plan.

76 Rocklea Road, Bulleen Almost double the size of “The Utopia” and yet with only one more bedroom, 42 Rocklea road is a built signification of the slowly vanishing suburban myth, where size equates to comfot.

The size of the house negates the development of both a working and a decorative garden, the view-lines articulated by windows and doors are of concrete patios and high wooden fences.

The connection to the outside is severly diminished compared to “The Utopia”, not only because of the lack of windows, but also the highly linear movement vectors through the house.

Aspire Boulevard, Hillside In the 2011 built Aspire home, the house is built hard against the boundary fences, reinterating the interior space, dislocating the house from its surrounds. The fear of the other and the outside is made physical by its spatialisation.

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Fragmentation|Dispersal | Hillside

Fragmentation|Dispersal | Bulleen

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PARTI

This Parti model was produced in direct reaction to the artefact analysis I was exploring throughout Part I of this project, especially the “Interior Views” drawings .

I am interested in re-constituting these mythobjects into forms that engage with their own displacement. Through a process that distorts the myth-object itself, I hope to achieve a level of spatial abstraction in which new forms of urban dreaming are possible.

This parti attempts to talk to the different rhythms and personal interpretations/use of the spaces that make up a “home”.

The next stage of this project could be to define a spatial lexicon that encompasses these different systems.

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SKETCH DESIGN PRECEDENTS OVERVIEW PART I : ANALYSIS PART I I: DESIGN RESPONSE SKETCH DESIGN REFLECTION

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PRECEDENTS

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83 Giorgio de Chirico The illogical perspectives and blank almost abstracted forms of de Chiricio’s paintings deeply interest me because of their ability to transform everyday objects, places, scenes into something ‘other’. The sense of disquiet that the works evoke seems to stem from the way in which normally readable signs have had their meanings distorted through visual abstraction and juxtaposition.

These are two visual techniques that I am wanting to explore through my own work; the juxtaposition of residential dialectics (inside v. outside | public v. private) and the distortion; exaggeration, elongation, abstraction of the physical element as well.

Great Metaphysical Interior, Ferrara, April-August 1917 The Enigma of a Day, Paris, early 1914 Sourced; MoMA Online (April 2020)

Zaha Hadid (Early work) Throughout the research that I have conducted this semester, one of the key questions that continues to be posed is the question of scale.

More specifically, how does one interact with the cityas a resident, and architect or a tourist; how do we

experience and understand “the city”. As it relates to my thesis question, the idea of scale is particularly important, we can only ever experience the city at the level of our physical body- however we can conceptualize and hold the idea of the city in our minds based on our past

experiences, maps, history, familial connections etc.

The reason why Hadid’s early work stoof out to me so much was the way in which she is able to knit together different urban scales, and a sense of moveing through not just the spaces but across

the scales of the city; the body, the house, the street, the suburb, the city.

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Nigel Coates

The use of narrative to ties together different spaces, experiences, scales and representative techniques in Coates work has helped me broaden what I have been conceptualising a design project (an architectural proposition) to be.

Throughout my sketch design I want to explore these more abstract methods of representing architectural concepts, without being tied to strictly down to the pragmatic reality of the built form. In a sense, I am hoping to utilise the language of architectural representation rather than construction pragmatism to explore the concepts of dwelling, homemyth, meaning and symbolism.

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CONCEPT STATEMENT | Method of Operating

Throughout my thesis elaboration, I have explored ideas from critical discourses, architectural theory, art practice, and architectural precedents that engage with the question of dwelling, and the relationship between our cultural expectations (habitus) and the architectural manifestations of these. In particular I have explored Barthes’ analysis and theoretical framework of myth-construction in order to interrogate the continuation of the Australian suburban dream in its contemporary form.

Barthes’ framework provides a conceptual scaffold for the development of this design thesis, both in the disruption of current suburban dreams and in the generation of future dreams. The design response of this thesis is broken into two parts; Part 1 aims at disrupting the domination of the detached suburban block as the

natural architecture of the suburban dream through a close analytical reading of specific myth-objects.

Part 2 explores alternative dreamscapes, possible futures and built visions that aim to disrupt the reification of suburban housing. The term dreamscape is very important to the progression of this project, it is within these imaginary visual fields that the myth-objects can be distorted and re-cast, an architectural rframing of suburban housing.

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PART I | DISRUPT The initial step that will formulate my design thesis is to disrupt the dominance of the detached McMansion over current suburban architecture. This disruption is framed by the confrontation between the myth (the quarter acre dream), with the myth-object (the detached suburban house), which it has produced. The diagrammatic tracing of the myth and mythobject, explores through these built examples certain trends or processes which have led to

the physical manifestation of this dream that we see today. The intention of this analysis is to lay bare how different forms of the quarter acre dream have been contrived and passed off as simply the way we build suburban homes; a “natural” expression of Australian built form.

PART I | PROCESS DIAGRAM

MYTH Quarter-Acre Dream

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Featurism

Internalized Gaze

Land Area

Column

Segmentation

House Growth

Portico

Rumpus Room

Garden Function

Brick Veneer

Window-View

Site Dislocation

Plastic Tile

Site Access

Fear of the Fringe

Sunrise Window

Movement

MYTH | OBJECT

12 Albany Pl 35 Balwyn Rd 42 Rocklea Rd

HILLSIDE

The Suburban Detached House BULLEEN

MYTH | ELEMENTS

MYTHOLOGIZING PROCESSES

19 Golden Way 17 SugarGum Dr 53 Aspire Blvd

PART II | GENERATE This process of tracing and disruption directly leads to Part 2 which aims to generate alternative suburban myths (dreams) through the re-casting of myth-elements and the inversion of the mythologizing processes; shrinkage, featurism and the interior gaze.

The goal; to explore through design different visions or dreamscapes of suburban built form. This begins by defining a program through the inversion of mythologizing processes. For example; the interior

orientation of the isolated house becomes an exterior focus, the veneer manifests the structure etc. The design project becomes based in a program that dislocates mythelements from their mythological purpose, this dislocation allows for the creation of different suburban dreams; surreal visions of the suburban ideal, the elements are familiar but not, inherently confronting cultural expectations of suburban housing.

PART II | PROCESS DIAGRAM

MYTH | OBJECT

MYTH | ELEMENTS

The Suburban Detached House

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Land Area

Column

Segmentation

House Growth

Portico

Rumpus Room

Garden Function

Brick Veneer

Window-View

Site Dislocation

Plastic Tile

Site Access

Fear of the Fringe

Sunrise Window

Movement

INVERTED PROCESSES Over-Flow

Dissection

ARCHITECTURAL | ELEMENTS Lexicon

DREAMSCAPE Alternative Suburban Dwelling

Non-Orientated

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PART 01 | DISRUPT

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PROCESS | 01

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SHRINKAGE I explored this trend or ‘mythologizing process’this is how I have referred to it earlier on in my concept elaborationthrough a process of visual analysis developed throughout this thesis.

I am visually trying to expose the dislocation of history, meaning and signification that enables these mythobjects to be consumed as suburban dreams.

Throughout Part | 01 of this project, I have utilised tripartite diagrams made up of scenes, signifying forms, and geometric abstractions in order to

trace the mythologizing process of land-shrinkage vs. house growth.

The images are to be read left to right, the initial sign that has been dislocated, and then the development of the mythobject from the second half of the 20th C to now.

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PART 02 | GENERATE

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EXPLORATORY SKETCHES

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SCENES

PLAN

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SECTION

DREAMSCAPE This was my initial design response to my analytical work, my research into the three processes of mythologization, and my attempt to re-cast architectural elements in order to subvert the trends towards; shrinkage, featurism and interior-focus.

I explored ideas to do with dissection, over-flow, and juxtaposition. I wanted to use architectural representation techniques to enable an inverted “reading� of the myth-objects.

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SUMMARY Stemming from the Week 07_ analysis that I had done, I wanted to explore further the three main processes or concepts that I had identified as contributing to the reification of the suburban house; Shrinkage, Featurism and Intervior Views.

Shrinkage refers to the strange phenomenon of a dual process; the simultaneous shrinkage of the average area of suburban block, and the growth in size of the house itself. Australian houses have ballooned in size since the 1960s despite housing the same or even fewer permanent residents.

The shrinking block of land also intefers with the principal amenity of the suburb; your own backyard.

I use the term “featurism” in direct reference to Boyd’s theorising of it in the Australian Ugliness.

The process that Boyd so eloquently delineates of applique styles, veneer-ist aesthetics and plastic flowers is scattered throughout suburban Australia. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of these elements in and of

themselves, it is what they represent; the ideology of home ownership and the valuation of status and power, that perverts their function from architectural element to ideological tool.

The third process that I want to explore throughout Part I is the increasingly interior focus of these detached dwellings. I posit that this focus on the interior is in reality a focus on the individual, and at the crux of the issue with the suburban house; their propensity to isolate and dislocate their residents from their social, historical and physical contexts.

I did not properly finish all of the analysis work to a presentation standard, however throughout the weeks between Week 07 and Week 09, I executed multiple sketches in which I tried to test these ideas.

In Part II of the Sketch Design, I focused on applying the inverse of these three processes to a suburban house within one of my site suburbs; Hillside, the currently fringe suburb.

The outcome, although interesting was not a fully

conceptualised “space” as it were, rather a tapestry of vignettes, indiviual images and moments of imagined experience.

My goal moving forwards is to continue to develop the spatiality of these inverted processes.

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TESTS AND FAILURES DREAMLAND HOUSE FOR THE FUTURE SELF

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DREAMLAND I started working on a design that this series of images is taken from; I wanted to explore visual as well as spatial juxtapositions within residential spaces; I was still trying to explore inversion and subversion using elements within the space of

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the suburban house itself.

I wanted to produce a series of these moments that would culminate in a narrative of the experience that different people, animals etc. would have in a surreal landscape. I wanted

to explore a question around individual experiences and narrative through architectural space.

However, throgh started to design these spaces and draw these “moments� (vignettes), I realised that I

had veered away from the central propositio of my thesis; to re-cast mythelements, to re-coup the architectural expressions of suburban living.

that it was still limited to a singular house, a singular experience and couldn’t engage with anything outside of this,

The issue with “Dreamlands” was

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HOUSE FOR A FUTURE SELF In an effort to increase the tangibility of the design response, I started testing the application of these subverted processes on a real site and in a spatial way. I wanted to try and translate the dynamic movement and ambiguous spaces of Sketch Design plan into an actualized 3D model of a future house.

Again, this was an idea and a response that once I had tested by modeling and drawing, it became apparent that I was simply

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reproducing a more bespoke version of the detached suburban house, there was nothing in the design response that geuinely challenged the traditional functionality of these spaces.

I was not “re-casting� the myth-objects that I had identified in my analysis, I was just reproducing them in slightly different ways.

After reflecting on this work I felt that the element which had been missing from my approach was that I was too

stuck in the suburb itself.

Moving forwards, I started testing how the symbolic meaning of these mythobjects could be changed or challenged by taking them out of the suburb as we know and understand it and applying it somewhere else.

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A SUBURB IN THE SKY MYTH-OBJECT | ANALYSIS HORIZONTAL | VERTICAL| VOLUMETRIC TRANSLATIONS PSEUDO CODE & WALLACEI SOLUTIONS SOLUTION SPACE

STRUCTURAL FRAMEWORK AXONOMETRIC

LIVING MATRIX| UNITS DISPERSAL PROTO-TYPICAL UNITS ELEMENTS RECAST

DREAMSCAPE: FINAL MODEL DRAWINGS AND RENDER RENDER

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SITES OF INVESTIGATION I went back to the way I was approaching my site in order to re-think the direction of my design response.

Walking, riding and driving through (I work a casual job that takes me through Hillside frequently), I found that the I wanted to investigate the rhythm of the street-scape in order to identify the moments of isolation or dislocation, and the particular transitions through these spaces that created that sensation (both quantitatively- the time spent commuting, and

qualitatively- the experience of moving through spaces).

I found that there were three aspects which were consistent in the moments of isolation; a lack of direct access to through roads, a lack of amenable community spaces, and the lack of visual hierarchy and claustrophobic vastness that the dominance of horizontal forms created.

dislocation and reification that these elements or aspects went through.

I also reworked the initial analysis panels that I had started drawing in Week 09, I wanted to strongly articulate the process of

HILLSIDE

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I started exploring what a vertical translation of the suburban street would look like, was there a way to learn from the density of the city whilst maintaining the amenity of the suburban lot?

approach allow for more communal spaces, better integrated access systems and an alternative to the association between a home and a detached suburban block of land.

In order to avoid a simplistic tower, or apartment block, or skyscrape- which is the literal stacking of housing unit, I approached the question from a volumetric perspective.

How could a volumetric ALBANY PLACE

SUGARGUM DRIVE

ASPIRE BOULEVARD

PART 01 | ANALYSIS | SUBURBAN MYTHOLOGY AND ITS OBJECTS DENSITY | ACCESS

ISOLATION

DISLOCATION

THE VEGGIE GARDEN

BACKYARD POOL

THE FENCE

THE BUSH

“CARTE BLANCHE”

THE FENCE II

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MYTH | FORM

MYTH| CONCEPT

MYTH | SIGNIFICATION

“THE UTOPIA” 1966

ALBANY PLACE 1980

ASPIRE BOULEVARD 2014

HORIZONTAL | VERTICAL| VOLUMETRIC In order to translate the horizontal suburb into a volumetric structure, I explored different ideas of stacking, and played with the different elements of the suburb itself; the function of through-roads as opposed to cul-de-sacs and laneways.

I also started to break up the “house� into activity zones, I aimed to enable flexible living spaces by eliminating the enclosing walls of the house as well as the perimeter boundary, instead there are self contained units that function as sleeping, living/kitchen and utility components.

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The segregation of the house into separate units allows for greater spatial functionalityfor the growth and shrinkage of oneself, ones family and fosters a community approach to the sharing of spaces.

The aim of this volumetric

process was to maintain the community feel of the culde-sac without the attached isolation of the suburban block.

STREETSCAPE

CUL-DE-SAC

LIVING UNITS

Rather than a single street stacked vertically (an apartment block), the volume is made up of open streetscapes which allow the ownership of a volume, not an area.

Each level or layer is its own community, with shared garden arreas, pools and immediate access to the “through� roads connecting to the city as a whole.

The suburban block with its detached house, is exploded into constituent parts. These areas are dispersed across the vertical street to enhance the amenity of all.

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EVOLUTIONARY SOLVERS To work with such a large number of variables effectively, I defined the problem in Grasshopper in order to run an evolutionary algorithm (Wallacei) that would enable to be test the

feasibility of the volume as a suburb in the sky.

I set up three key Fitness Objectives; 1. Total Sunlight Hours recieved by the geometry 2. the distance

from each bedroom unit to the Utility units, and 3. To maximise the area of each of the Kitchen/Lounge and Bedroom units.

CHOSEN SOLUTION: 98|0 SOLUTION SET ANALYSIS

EVOLUTIONARY SOLVER

SUNLIGHT VOLUME DISTANCE

Utility

Lounge/Kitchen

PARAMETERS

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FITNESS OBJECTIVES

Bedroom Unit

VOLUME ROTATION PLACEMENT DISTANCE

FO {01} SUNLIGHT

FO {01} SUNLIGHT

Generation 98 | Solution 30 Outcome : 1/1999

Generation 70 | Solution 4 Outcome : 1999/1999

FO {02} UTILITY DISTANCE

FO {02} UTILITY DISTANCE

Generation 99 | Solution 09 Outcome : 1/1999

Generation 6 | Solution 17 Outcome : 1999/1999

BEST SOLUTION

BEST SOLUTION

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FO {03} MAXIMISE AREA

FO {03} MAXIMISE AREA

Generation 87 | Solution 22 Outcome : 1/1999

Generation 1 | Solution 06 Outcome : 1999/1999

BEST SOLUTION

CHOSEN SOLUTION GENERATION 98, ITERATION 0

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EXPLODED STRUCTURAL SYSTEM In order to avoid the interior nature of the apartment or skyscraper; in which the artificiality of our environment is unavoidable and equally as isolating as the suburban house.

The structural challenge within this speculaative dreamscape lies in freeing vertical soace from the confines of the contained form.

VERTICAL TRASNPORT RAILS

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RADIAL I-BEAMS

PRIMARY TRUSS SYSTEM

SERVICES

PRIMARY COLUMNS

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RECAST ELEMENTS | LIVING UNITS Throughout the analysis of the detached suburban house, there were certain architectural elements which had become imbued with particular symbolic meaning, the premise of this thesis is to explore and test different ways in which the lements could be reclaimed from the ‘quarter acre dream’ and re-cast in an alternative dream.

After I found the most optimised form for the volumetric suburb, I went about re-constituting these architectural elements within the volumetric suburban streetscape.

I continued the language of juxtaposition, and distortion through these living units by playing with materiality, and subverting spatial expectations of enclosure, internal or external views and the place of the garden.

new possibilities, different dreamscapes of what suburban living could be, what a community street could look like, and what a future of increasing density could be like.

I wanted to question the correlation between certain use functions and their architectural forms, as well as their attached symbolic meaning. For example, the brick veneer in the volumetric suburb is celebrated in its bareness and decorative nature, the elements have been recast in order to offer

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Site Plan of the Volumetric Suburb

PLANS | DETAILS

0

HOUSING UNIT(S) PLAN

10 m

HOME | FRONT VIEW 0

BEDROOM SECTION

BRICK VENEER TO ROOF DETAIL

5m

0

0

ENTRANCE & ROOF GARDEN

5m

TRANSPORT POD TO HOUSE

0

500mm

0

HOME | BACK VIEW

This series of units; 3 Bedroom spaces and 1 Lounge/Kitchen, illustrates the way that the catalogue elements have been re-cast to explore the desirable aspects of suburban architecture within a volumetric setting.

The juxtapositions between material systems and functional spaces open

VENEER DETAIL VENEER TO FIRST STORREY

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100mm

5m

possibilities of alternative ways of thinking about dwelling and living; and the spaces that we attach the our ontological security to.

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EXPLODED UNITS | RE-CASTING THE MYTH OBJECT()S This exploded view probably demonstrates the most effectively the way in which the myth-object (brick veneer, the metal awning, grand double

entrance, the domestic portico) have been re-cast through their displacement from the horizontality of the traditional suburb and their juxtaposition

with other suburban types.

CATALOGUE LEGEND 1. 2x3m Roof Garden-Bed

for Bedroom units.

2. Coated Metal Safety Rail

12. Mixture of Queen and Single beds to suit the owners needs.

3. Metal stairs to external requistites.

4. Thin composite concrete slab 130mm, to be cast in situ over metal decking and roof beams.

5. Composite timber and steel roof truss system.

6. Transport pod-railing, tracks at 500mm spacing.

7. Transport Pod, composite metal and glass system, tracks and rollers to manufacturers specification.

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8. Brick veneer wall with window detailing.

9. Single front door to upstairs entrance.

10. Weatherboard cladding 11. Timber stud frame

13. Traditional corrugated awnings at north facing windows.

14. Built-In-Robes in miniumum 2 out of 3 bedrooms.

15. Flexible LoungeBedroom space with Garage door opening for transport pod.

16. Super-Structure steel truss framing system, with Radial I-Beams shown.

17. Unit Frameing I-Beam 18. Steel I-Beams framing pool area, bottom to be structural glass to allow flitered light to the floors below.

19. Flooring-system consisting of:

-Pool structure -Steel Edge Beam -Metal decking -Concrete Slab -Floor purlins -Flooring (Concrete, Timber, Tiles etc.)

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A SUBURB IN THE SKY

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Throughout the semester this thesis has evolved as different design responses were tested and further research continued to generate nuances in my thinking and approach.

In my thesis statement I state; Six examples of suburban built form will be examined; isolating aspects, artefacts, patterns and moments which become objects of myth.

This thesis proposes a reinterpretation of these objects with the aim of engaging social, cultural,

and spatial imaginations, offering an alternative to current suburban mythologies.

This design response articulates one of many infinite ways in which architecture enables an egagament with our physical, social, and historic contexts.

This active engagement is what I attempted to foster through the subversion of the processes through which the myth of the quarter acre dream has

become associated with particular architectural forms.

By translating the suburb from its horizontal linearity, into a volumetric spatial arrangement, the problematic aspects of suburban life; the isolation, inward-focus and prescriptive spaces, can be separated out from the aspects which have captured our collective social imaginations for the past 80 years.

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CATALOGUE OF ELEMENTS

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Australia, Infrastructure. Future Cities: Planning for Our Growing Population. Australian Government (2018).

Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. London: Vintage, 2012.

Berke, Deborah, and Steven Harris. Architecture of the Everyday. Princeton Architectural Press, 1997.

Boyd, Robin, and Christos Tsiolkas. The Australian Ugliness. Text Classics. Text Publishing, 2012.

Cansdale, Dominic. “Nightingale Inner-City Development Proposed for Ballarat Amid Fears of Urban Sprawl ‘Social Disaster’.” ABC News. (2019). Accessed 16 March 2020.

Dovey, Kim. Framing Places : Mediating Power in Built Form. Architext Series. 2nd ed. ed.: Routledge, 2007.

Grenfell, Michael. Pierre Bourdieu : Key Concepts. Key Concepts. Second edition. ed.: Routledge, 2014.

Lees, Loretta, Hyun Bang Shin, and Ernesto López Morales. Planetary Gentrification. Urban Futures. Polity, 2016.

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McLoughlin, J. Brian, and Margo Huxley. Urban Planning in Australia : Critical Readings. Australian Studies. Longman Cheshire, 1986.

Mertins, Detlef. Modernity Unbound : Other Histories of Architectural Modernity. Architecture Words: 7. Architectural Association, 2011.

Nader El-Bizri, Phenomenology of Place and Space in our Epoch: Thinking along Heideggerian Pathways, in, The Phenomenology of Real and Virtual Places, ed. Erik Champion (London: Routledge, 2018), 123-143.

Rutherford, Jennifer, and Barbara Holloway. Halfway House : The Poetics of Australian Spaces.

UWA Publishing, 2010.

Udell, T, M Daley, B Johnson, and R Tolley. Does Density Matter. National Heart Foundation of Australia (Melbourne: 2014).

Van Schaik, Leon, and Nigel Bertram. Suburbia Reimagined : Ageing and Increasing Populations in the Low-Rise City. Routledge, 2019.

Yiftachel, Oren. The Power of Planning : Spaces of Control and Transformation. Geojournal Library: V. 67. Kluwer Academic, 2001.

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