SITE 02: URBAN FILLER - Team 7 Blanket Solution

SITE 02: URBAN FILLER Team 7 Blanket Solution Amiria Kiddle Ammon Beyerle Andrew Bellman Bryan Seng Caitlyn Parry Kamil Muhammad Michael Ryan Michelle Emma James Tara Cull Tim Derham with thanks to people around us @URTeam_7

who we are Some of us applied for this competition as a team - we have worked together on projects before. Others applied as individuals.

We were allocated into team 7 via email and started introducing each other through a long thread of group emails before finally meeting up for dinner and drinks one Sunday night.

We are a group made up of architects, a landscape architect, graduate architects, and landscape architecture students.

We are interested in understanding place through occupation and communication and at the core of our group is a principle of participation.

brief

our first team conversation at Rue Beb’s

We received our brief on Wednesday at 10:30am: URBAN FILLER Enhance or improve defects, material used to fill a cavity or increase bulk Your challenge is to fill the empty cavity and disguise any blemishes to create a quiet retreat You are required to use a limited number of materials and forms that are repeated to create a highly spatial outcome You must consider the dynamics of time: eg. night and day, site conditions, seasons, etc.

Bryan, Michelle and Amiria anticipating

Andrew with our brief + site details

site 2 Our site is along the Victoria Harbour pier near Merchant St. It was formerly the site of the Urban Reforestation garden which has been relocated recently. It has a plywood platform with a bright orange leaning balustrade. The larger area is covered in gravel. It is exposed to both the sun and strong winds. It has a good view of the Bolte Bridge, the adjacent docks and Waterfront City as well as New Quay, Etihad Stadium and Melbourne CBD.

what would you do here?

seed idea

When we first arrived on site, we noticed that someone had placed used beer bottle caps into the holes in the pier timber decking.

It was a leftover, a trace, a residue of a few people having a few beers down at the pier.

What were the conversations that they were having? Was this urban fill?

It’s just an everyday social happening - just like a bunch of guys eating mussels together and leaving their shells behind in a place.

iteration

Wednesday 12:30 pm

Wednesday 2:00 pm

Wednesday 8:00 pm

Thursday 8:00 pm

what we did for three days (+ 2 days) Our process has been about splitting then coming back together, different teams into different depths then messy conversations to connect us.

tuesday

wednesday - day 3 brief esquisse

photos twitter blog

thursday - day 4

friday - day 5

saturday final assembly

charette

plant installation

site occupation material exploration three teams

finish drawings group review budgeting structural check material exploration shopping list

deadline!

structure

bottle caps

meet & greet

blanket conversations invite people

symposium

conversations with characters that return

wombatting

conversations with new characters

member roles

poster & postcard making

event

the fill concept Conversation is talking about something with someone.

Because we are making, we have something to talk about.

Because we are talking, we have someone to make for.

someone

something

characters

craft

a real person narrative memory friend neighbour Mum/Dad Joe

conversation participation

fill

hammer tap shuffle knit thread twist twinkle shimmer

hammer tap shuffle knit thread twist twinkle shimmer

characters every day between 12 noon and 2pm we held a lunchtime event at our site we invited them through facebook, twitter, posters that we put up around neighbouring shops and cafes we also approached people as they walked by we introduced ourselves, we talked about the project, showed people where we were at with the design, listened we shared a moment under a blanket we called these urban encounters “blanket conversations” here is a thread of some of the many stories of the everyday characters we met: name: Mr. Ma Mr. Ma was walking around the pier on his lunch break. He didn’t speak English so Bryan & Michelle spoke to him in their broken Mandarin Chinese.

He was interested in where we were at with the design, so Kamil showed him a computer model. The blanket was useful in reducing the glare on the screen. We all smiled when Mr. Ma said, in English, just one word “beautiful” Mr. Ma visited us again on Friday. names: Sebastian + Martin Sebastian told us that he didn’t have many friends at work at NAB, but that he had the best idea for our design: lego. He also liked the idea of a pillow fort. He also said that there weren’t many places for sitting in the shade and he wanted a quiet place to have lunch. He’s set us some challenges and we look forward to him coming back to check in on our progress. Martin was a bit shy.

We are all friends on twitter now.

One of our trees is named after Sebastian.

name: Marty (we’re really sorry if we got your name wrong!)

Marty walks his two dogs near the site many times a day.

Sometimes he’d just wave, but one time he stopped and had a good chat with Michelle & Amiria. He was concerned about the garden that was previously on the site being re-located to a spot with no sun and little maintenance.

He also told us to check out the billboards for nearby developments such as the ‘cheese grater’. For our site, he wanted a place for his dogs and he really emphasised COLOUR. name: Joe Joe is a construction worker working on the new apartment building near our site. Sitting with a beer, reclining on the bright orange balustrade, Joe was eating his lunch and having a quiet moment to himself. Looking out to the harbour, hidden from view, he felt comfortable that no one would bother him. But we had to have a conversation with him to tell him that he inspired many of the ideas that have influenced our design and process. He gruffly replied to this by telling us: “I take my bottle caps with me, I don’t litter”. We saw Joe everyday after that, in the same spot, but we left him to enjoy his quiet. name: Sophie + Mika Sophie teaches landscape architecture and was interested in seeing what everyone was doing on each of the sites.

She was interested in our ideas and process.

Mika was interested in the parsley that we had re-potted into salad containers that we recycled from the first lunch we had. We were giving parsley for people to take back to their houses and office as a trace or memory of our conversation. Bryan thought it was so fantastic that Mika couldn’t stop eating the parsley that he gave Sophie a whole big pot!

craft our process led us to the bottle cap as our main repetitive material we prototyped with many different types of meshes + wires and gluing and sewing and knotting and threading and twisting we came to a three-step hand crafting process which was repetitive yet easy for all of us to sit around and do together if you just listened you could hear the rhythm of the hammering, the clinking of the bottle caps, excitement building for when the chains met the wind on-site we shared many “blanket conversations� just like grannies in a knitting circle as we tap tap, thread thread here is a sample of some of the many sounds/onomatopoeia of our craft:

thread thread tap tap

clink clink

twinkle twinkle

thread thread

glue glue

sway sway

shimmer shimmer

chat chat twinkle twinkle

click click

thread thread

sparkle sparkle

characters urban encounters blanket conversations

craft knitting circle blanket conversations

reflection As we write this now we are beginning to understand what the three day challenge was about for us.

In many ways, it’s easy to design and build in three days. 72 hours is enough time to make something.

The challenge is to socialise and get meaningful participation in a design process in such a short time.

We filled three days.

What will be the trace that we leave behind here?