Upside-Down Country

Upside-down Country RMIT University, Bachelor of Architectural Design Studio Semester 1, 2021 Richard Black Image credits Front cover, Claudia Ming Chyn Ho

We would like to acknowledge the Dja Dja Wurrung language group of the Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands this studio has been conducted. We would like to pay our respects to their Ancestors and Elders, past, present and emerging.

“As each year post-settlement in Australia grinds on, how should we conceive of our place in the land- scape, of the continent we have claimed as our own: are we custodians, masters, brokers, servants – and what is its place in our world of thought?”

— Nicolas Rothwell, ‘The Landscape Behind the Landscape’ Eric Rolls Memorial Lecture, National Library of Australia 22 October 2014

It is these questions and more that frame the agenda of this studio. As architects how should we conceive of our place in the landscape and of the landscape itself? How should we respond to it, represent it and ultimately, what should we make in it – do in the landscape?

Image credits Inside cover, Jherwyn Torres

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Upside-down Country

...This studio explored the reciprocity between architecture and landscape on a site between the embankments of Forest Creek and its urbanised flood- plain on Castlemaine’s periphery and in proximity to the nineteenth century goldrush sites of central Victoria. As a backdrop to this context is the campaign to win UNESCO recognition for Victoria’s goldfields: if successful this would see the regions landscapes gain world heritage significance. In response to these issues, the brief called for a collection of small buildings with larger landscape infrastructure components. Collectively, these are to function as both memorial, new public space, historical marker and visitor/orientation/ interpretation facilities to the regions proposed UNESCO listed heritage sites. Other similar projects dispersed across the state and forming a network (see Open Monument, Ballarat) would impact regional development by building the local economy and conservation, regeneration, tourism, civic pride, social capital, learning and education. Upside-down country – a term used by the local Dja Dja Wurrung people to describe the environmental degradation unleashed by the goldrush provides a counter reading – one that this studio will explore for its potential to consider broader issues around histories, modes of interpretation and heritage: and ways of acting in the present. A studio equally immersed in the real and the imaginary.

Students Eliza Innes Blake Hillebrand Kieran Merriman Claudia Ming Chyn Ho Jherwyn Hanne Torres Mackenzie Hume Christian Bucoy Shruti Ghosh Yaokun Tan Xander Reynoldson-Ross

Thank you, Anna Johnson Thomas Muratore Togg de Hogg Isabel Lasala Claudia Ming Chyn Ho (for the design and layout of this document.)

Image credits Inside cover, Kieran Merriman

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Image credits 3 Eliza Innes

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Image credits Kieran Merriman

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Image credits Blake Hillebrand

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Image credits Blake Hillebrand, Kieran Merriman and Eliza Innes

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Image credits Claudia Ming Chyn Ho

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Claudia Ming Chyn Ho

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Blake Hillebrand

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Eliza Innes

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Kieran Merriman

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Shruti Ghosh

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Christian Bucoy

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Jherwyn Torres

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Mackenzie Hume

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Xander Reynoldson-Ross

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Yaokun Tan

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Image credits Rear cover, Kieran Merriman