CHRIS BUCHHORN Artefact

SEE YOU IN THE IN-BETWEEN lio CHRIS BUCHHORN | S3106507

o f e h t

SUPERVISOR | DR EMMA JACKSON

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Contents

TRACK 1 - BEFORE WE START...

TRACK 2 - FINDING THE LINE

(teasing out an idea)

(early research and experimentations)

TRACK 3 - DEFINING A BOUNDARY

(major project proposition development and testing)

TRACK 4 - A BRIEF MANIFESTO + TAKING STOCK TRACK 5 - THE IN-BETWEEN

(transcripts and a brief manifesto)

(final project)

BONUS TRACK - RECLECTIONS

(a quick afterword)

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TRACK 1

a quick exercise in being honest you have 1 hour to design a major project panel, 1 hour to prepare its speech and then write your review.

(minor project - teasing out an idea)

Before we start...

I would like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation who are the traditional custodians of the land on which Melbourne campus stands For centuries, the ideologies of colonialist expansion that pervaded the globe. Practices and policies of control by one people or power over other people, environments and cultures, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. And today is no different. During the 2nd wave of the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, these uncomfortable realities became exposed and bare. Victorian social housing communities experienced the toughest lockdown imposed on any resident are the time, an experience described by many as traumatic and unjust. This was just a symptom of the systematic problems. Marginalised for being the victims of a state imposed order, these residents were denigrated by politicians and the media alike, labelled as “drug addicts” and “alcoholics” and narrated as being exposed to ‘they know what it is like to be in tough conditions’ so should just get over it. This was a stark admission that the current urban and architectural conditions of these locations are completely inadequate, and their existence has provided opportunities for the vulnerable and uncomfortable truths to be isolated away from society. These conditions exist outside

GO! the collective urban realm. They are not connected to the neighbourhoods and continue to follow an international modernist mode of universalism, disconnected to place and culture.

A sense of place is a fundamental value in any urban setting and there is no way of separating place from history and meaning but also establishes a sense of belonging.

Establishing a coded logic that addresses inequalities by negotiating pragmatic agendas and social tensions through strategies of disruptions to give agency to individual and collective tactics of civic affirmation.

It is important to address the uncomfortable realities of the city. The uncomfortable reality of the prison is that it does not exist as part of society, nor is it a participant. It is a separate social condition in itself, where its operating conditions are unencumbered by typical moral and ethical standards in conduct. where the public are housed like the unseen prisoners, encased in social or privately owned housing typologies, individually enclosed, fenced off or set back in an urban realm devoid of equally accessible amenity and annexation opportunities that reinforces a sense of separation and isolation.

Where moments of intersection become encourages free and collective driven through a looseness in form and program, encouraging a bottom up infill approach to architecture

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Thanks for that chris, Congratulations on finishing your major project I have to say you have progressed a long way since you completed my studio and I can see that some of the traits and qualities you employed in that studio have continued to find its way into you work so that’s an exciting revelation.

That those means of discovery in your work still play out, that in those unexpected collisions and allowing the project to become lost in translation allows you to surrender and suspend a level of authorship, and then dive in, head first and give definition to the taxonomy of artefacts you have collected and distributed.

Speaking to the ideas of vulnereability and social inequality. I think it would be good to let us, the panel, know how you want us to read your project at an earlier point in your presentation, although I think we were all able to recognise that you are looking at vulnerable systems and using social housing as a means of accessing bigger ideas. But I do think it runs the risks being read as just another social housing scheme, which I think you were able to recognise and thankfully avoided in this scheme.

The way you presented this scheme suggests it as a model of resistance to current modes of planning, and question current procurement methods. But do you think this idea is a really scalable? Can it be applied at the furniture scale, or is it only successful at the scale your project demonstrates. And how will it react over time?

I read your project as a growing organism, so I think that starts to answer that question, but considering density, and commercial need for it, I think it lays bare some potential short-comings if you are asking us to read it in this way.

But I do think this project steps away from the conspicuous and explores bigger ideas and suggests a broader scale of criticisms of urbanity, and the political motivations in policy making and by using architecture, lays bare those inequalities which is a commendable move.

And as it breaks down those border conditions around the site you have chosen, and outlines the needs and missing qualities found at those edge conditions, and in the wider urban system. A provocation on outdated way things are done.

Yeah I agree, and would also ask if this project is transferable? I think the project works best at the points of tension, and I think these qualities can be found when ever we use our x-ray vision as you suggest, but again, and I agree, is this an idea that is only applicable to the suburbs, or that scale and density. Can this process be reduced down to the furniture scale, can I apply it to a park bench, or the nature strip, or the murray river.

SO those are some thoughts I think would be good to think about into the future.

Yeah. I’d also ask, how did you judge the successful moments? When do you know if the provocation has jumped the shark, or does that matter?

When you speak about vulnerability and social inequalities, I am interested in the

common misconception that have latched onto those issues. I think you tackle these ideas in your proposal when you frame your project against a familiar experience of lockdowns, and that shared outcry following which highlights your position of being critical of those border conditions. But are you expecting everyone to share your opinion? I think it worth considering who you are asking to access these ideas into the future.

I think your project is exploring a lot of different ideas, and there is this noise through-out, which is also evident in your earlier studios. I know that you have struggled with finding the moments when to edit back your works, and recognise that not all ideas can be apart of the main ensemble of performers, and may not have apposition in the broader production, but the main ideas are maintained which is important.

But in this theatre of architecture, through the mess, the chaos and explosive network of parts, the collaged moments you spoke of come through, and there is relief through out the scheme, where I can imagine occupants moving through this proposal and having moments where they can pause and reflect. In that way, I think those kinds of experiences are made that much more poignant. I’m glad you recognised, ad that this project was not soley focused on the more pragmatic mode of establishing that coded logic of your process. and even though this project addresses inequalities, and negotiates various agendas and social tensions, your strategies of disruption can still give agency. But it does ask which idea is awarded the top step of the podium.

Yeah, and I think you recognising that helped deliver on the idea of collective tactics and shared civic affirmation, and the project the better for it. and its worth remembering that when tackling such weighted social issues, to keep things enjoyabel. Well done

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TRACK 2

FINDING THE LINE

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(URBAN LEFT OVERS AND CONTESTED TERRITORIES)

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Right to public space - claiming the unclaimed

EXPERIMENT ONE

The idea started with the advice ‘why don’t you look into hostile architecture.’ After re-reading a lecture by Mark Jaques discussed hostile architecture and urbanism in Politics of public space, where he discusses modes of power and control exerted by the few over the many, it made me think beyond the scale of the furniture, or the surface treatment and how planning has generated spaces that prevent public occupation. I expanded my research and observations to conditions that have become restricted, under utilised and only temporarily occupiable.

Through some random research, I stumbled across an article

by South Australia urban planning researcher Hulya Gilbert where she discusses a large factor impacting the right to the city. This is not to suggest this was not an obvious criticism, her statements seemed to resonate - that “despite the common view across the world that cars provide freedom and flexibility, increasingly we’re seeing the priority given to cars is infringing people’s ability — and right — to get around without one.”

Gilbert goes on to state that to reverse this trend, urban planners need to change the priorities. Again, not something that was earth shattering, but this idea of re-prioritising value base on infringements offered an interesting opportunity. What if these conditions that exist at the urban scale, where communities are bound by roads that demand obedience to automobile was interrupted, and these vulnerable spaces addressed and privileged and addressing the inequalities there in?

These initial tests were quick explorations into those conditions, and exploring the process of re-appropriating them. This was to start to establish a feedback loop for the work. In this way, reinforcing social claim over the public and discovering what

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qualities could be unpacked and using those observations in such conditions and exploring the process of re prioritising those conditions.

In selecting a site, the investigation looked at urban moments not currently claimed. This a gesture of asserting my process as a mode of decolonisation. The round-about was selected, using an existing site in South Melbourne.

The process commences by tracing the current modes of occupation, tracing the movements around the round-about, tracking each option from each direction.

The next step was to determine a way to re program this process and amplify it to instigate a change that still acknowledges place. I explored the relationship between the road and the footpath and nature strip. This zone is the only true public space off the road, but the footpath still largely acts as a thoroughfare, where our social contract stipulates that we fairly allow pedestrian safe passage, leaving the nature strip, itself subject to municipal policy, the most occupiable space. As a means to claim the round-about, the wedge of public realm is offset in reverse from these tracings, and new boundaries are established. The verandah, a common vernacular to this street as an urban gesture of meeting, is re-coded around this zone, demarcating a new shared experience, and privileging the green space (inclusive of native gum!) at its centre.

The roads still work – not intended but an interesting by-product – but in a way the makes way for the pedestrian and residents, the meet at the cross roads.

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EXPERIMENT TWO

... and a right to assemble Reflecting on experiment one, and the possibilities of concentrated city transformations for social, political and environmental opportunities. In this way, these moves were counter-colonial.

Experiment two set with the desire of reprogramming the typology as a means of esting and verifying these ideas.

By running a similar experiment, but varying the encoded of the artefacts, of commodity and retail rather than the tried and tested residential setting of the previous test (and earlier studio projects). This trying to answer what variation to the process does the semi-public have on the operation and results? Although this became a rather densely populated outcome, the manoeuvres, although similar to experiment one, suggested a more transitory, semi-permanent outcome upon reflection - perhaps this is due to the sense of movement the script developed, or perhaps this is due to the much more fragmented nature of the outcomes. I believe the latter.

This way, this project was a gesture in the right to assembly –

(interesting timing to find that one)

Fragmented forms were used to the same effect – remain familiar and so the ideas become accessible.

This process does not use a sign but attempts to speak to agendas beyond the programmable and purely formal – in a way, allowing the observer to formulate their own judgement as I am.

These experiments are broadly a way of starting to establish a feedback loop for the work at large. Discovering what qualities can be unpacked through observations through a process of suspended judgement. This being a pre-cursor to the larger project I believe.

“The right to peaceful assembly protects the right of individuals and groups to meet and to engage in peaceful protest. The right to freedom of association protects the right to form and join associations to pursue common goals.”

Attorney-General’s Department of Australia

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“What are the rules on nature strips?”

EXPERIMENT THREE

The front yard is a symbol of status and identity. A quick observation of the front yard establishes an interesting narrative of the Australia attitude that reveals ‘a curious cultural phenomenon decorate their hard-earned quarteracre blocks.’ Through this observation, the front yard can be considered as a shopfront window into the identity of the inhabitant, a glimpse into the individuals conquering of their territory. This is also generally misleading, and is better noted that this is more often then not a glimpse more into the landlord rather than the tenant, and the maintenance of the picturesque commodity on offer. This an extension of commodity consumption through the environment. This was not always the case, and is more a product of the rise in the middle class and tract style modernism through the suburbs the pervades today. Inner Melbourne’s workers cottages to terrace houses had setbacks that were nominal, and the front porch did not require traversing a picturesque country side (often transplanted) before reaching the verandah.

The front fence establishes the private border control to passers by and the real rulers of urbanity, the car. The street is the realm dedicated to the automobile, no longer the historical archetype of the democratised realm of social interaction on ancient cities. Streetlights favour this zone over the footpath, typically set behind, planted in the DMZ, the nature strip.

Adrian Marshall, lecturer at Melbourne University and contributor to the conversation pointedly remarks our streets “land abounds in nature strips.” Remarkably, in Melbourne,

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more than a third of all public green space is nature strips.

(That figure includes roundabouts, medians and other green bits of the street.)

The nature strip is a policy conundrum. It is public land that private citizens are required by law to maintain and have limited agency over. Councils manage the trees, but we residents mow the lawn. Lawns which are stipulated to maintain a ‘safe’ edge and stable plain for bin collection and other utility access. This responsibility phrased by Council’s as ‘residents are required to ‘ensure they remain a safe and attractive space.’

My provocation is what if this public-private grey area was exaggerated and privilege re-established towards the collective and the pedestrian - expanding the definition of nature strip, public space managed in large by private citizens, into the front yard, and reassigned value of the street. The idea stars with this reprograming of the front yard, no longer considered as the individual realm maintained by the individual, but a shared realm maintained by the collective. This is to blur the lines between public and private demarcation for a more socially inclusive street scape, engaging with the residents. The switch the streetlamp, now valuing the front yard, as a gesture of invitation and social cohesion, rather than individualism and economic status. Cars have their own lights anyway! Finally, recoding value of the streetscape facade and fences as public gestures, reversed and revealling, suggesting in these new spaces, the public is always welcome, because you’ve always stepping into your public realm, now belonging to everyone, and everyone belonging to it.

of the front The sentiment ing the is at iv fence pr sengaging di , al du vi indi ity and un mm co with the facade of e th g in in ta main rvable at se ob identity is - where the a larger scale ders of el wi obstructive the pubed ni de ve ha power peoples e th lic access to tended in s wa it house as

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EXPERIMENT FOUR

This experiment started an examination of contexted territories and the habitual rituals that are either annexed or enabled by there manifestations.

These studies suggest the careful negotiation among the community, but did present the question of what are the mechanisms currently preventing a similar departure from convention in an urban setting? I wanted to test the ideal notion of the desired, and what a negotiation with the undesired and how that may translate.

Hawthorne East – PWC surveyed as the most desirable Melbourne suburb - I selected a typical post-war house on a fittingly named Pleasant road and tested a process that departed from convention. Using clause 54 and its parts of the housing scheme, the conditions noted as ‘satisfactory’ where distorted and value reassigned. I develop a process that enabled a means of generating gaps in the urban fabric to accommodate the displacement of those residents of the social housing rebuild - a place for the undesired.

Assessing the results, it is possible to start to dispel the conventions around statements about the ‘preferred neighbourhood character and make efficient use of the site,’ asking who is afforded this determination. Is character lost when we blur these expectations?

The recognisable formal characteristics are agitated, and programs reorganised to privilege the collective. Habitable rooms reprogrammed to press against the boundary, reaching towards the public realm; the corridors substituted by the carport; and the fireplace the campfire, all attempting to share in suggestive communal properties.

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And finally, a loose refit of the public housing walk ups through the spine of the site, assuming central hierarchy of place.

The results suggest an architecture that facilitates communal modes of living, combined with indeterminant collisions, and overlaps that suggest alternative, unspecified programmatic opportunities, currently not afforded to those recently evicted social housing tenants.

So David Harvey was right when he announced ‘the rights of private property and the profit rate trump all other notions.’

This experiment is response to the displacement of populations as it responds to social housing dilemma.

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Running Fence/ Christo and Jeanne-Claude

CONTESTED TERRITORIES: A place for the undesirable

Guards on this border dance off anually. In full uniform, dancers attempt to kick there feet as high as they possibly can, drawing crowds on both sides of the border to celebrate. This is in stark contrast to the traditiaonal, everyday tensions, where each side are in stark disagreement overborder disputes

KASHMIR BOARD

The US-Mexico border is another renound moment of international tension.

Daily immigration arrests are made as migrants flee violence from South American countries. Its border wall stretches into the sea but its occupation varies depending on which side of the wall you are on. A more relaxed attitude is adopted on the Mexican side, where the wall in urban locations, where the built environment abutts directly onto it, becomes a backdrop to the everday, where activies and murals are erected, demonstrating moments where civic annexation can transform an architecture and urban enviroment

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TRACK 3 DEFINING A BOUNDARY

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“The Grid above all, (is) a conceptual speculation...

In spite of its apparent neutrality, it implies an intellectual program for the island: in its indifference to topography, to what exists, it claims the superiority of mental construction over reality...

The Grid makes the history of architecture and all previous lessons of urbanism irrelevant.”

REM KOOLHASS, Delirious New York

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In Delerious New York, Rem Koolhass frames the Grid as, above all else, ‘a conceptual speculation.’ That despite its apparent neutrality, it implies and intellectual program of indifference that establishes superiority of mental construction over reality.

Rem argues that through its modes of subjugation, its true agenda is the control, if not obliteration, ‘of nature as its true ambition.’

by decolonising the systems that privileges the right angle above all else to re-establish value of place, histories and social affirmation.

So what does this look like? How can we tap into this untapped potential of these thresholds? How do we change the narrative of the city?

Governor Bourke Proclamation of Terra enabled the colonial condition of an “empty” territory that gave validity to those pen strokes on a blank page culminated into the Hoddle grid.

The cartesian logic of the expanded Grid maintains the underlying mechanism of the colonialist perspective, that establishes a dominance space. Establishing a hierarchy that elevates economic agendas and devalues the social and cultural locus.

Yet there are moments when the grid is unable to overcome the nature of place and it must come to terms with the conditions of place. What happens at the moments when conditions do not fit the exact, when the blank page must respond to the real.

There is no better example of this when discussing the Hoddle grid than of Elizabeth Street. When Hoddle drew his lines on his page, he ignored the physical terrain valuing instead a desire to expand and subdivide his field condition with economic efficiency, unfortunately, the natural waterway pathway that ran through his map flooded regularly.

The ambition for this project was to unpack this question of order, and explore and test the uncomfortable negotiations around urban thresholds. By challenging the validity of our current urban planning arrangements and decision making and the established hierarchies

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The current public housi ng renewal model focus es on a social mix model, where existing public housing sto ck is demolished and redeve loped with an integrated mi x private housing with public ho using. Argued by the Vic torian government of creating be tter connections within each site and with the wider commun ity, leveraged by the un derlying value of land to attrac t priva te sec tor investment to deliver of new public homes in well-loc ated suburbs.

But this rationale of so cial mix, where the ‘spuri ous claim that mixing the two res ults in a ‘vibrant’ comm unity ’ has been repeatedly dismantl ed, and that this is more a process of gentrification and dis lodgement. Rather, as no ted by Abdullahi Jama and Dr Kate Shaw from the AH URI, suggest that these programs sh ould more focus on ‘ho w public tenants can be better su ppor ted to thrive in the ir local communities, within and be yond their home and its im mediate surrounds.’

The reality is that this is a net reduc tion in publi c land and that these development amount to little more tha t privatised land grab that does no t offer a roadmap to a pe rm anent model beyond the limite d available land for fut ure housing and civic ser vices.

Seeking to challenge traditional planning modes, I am experimenting on one of these urban fringe conditions, the Brighton Social Housing estate and exploring the consideration of personal connection to place.

This is Ms Taylor, who represents the human scale of this project.

As a resident, she has recently ordered to leave under the Big Build social housing program.

That despite neglect from successive governments, her home is considered no longer fit-forpurpose as they attempt to fix a “broken model of public housing.”

But is this model changing anything?

demolition and sell off public territories, and the displacement of residents - is model doomed from the start but marketed as something better?

Architecture should rather look at ways of enhancing the existing, rather than complete the erasure when ‘dissatisfied.’

With current systems reducing this organisation with efficient rules, I sought to develop an architecture that could find better opportunities for connection in place where it is possible to observe new local routines being constructed. Where value can be reassigned and result in greater civic agency.

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In a precedent study into border conditions posed an interesting question regarding the line. Historian Meron Benvenisti famously asked “who owns the ‘width of the line’?” Referring to the 1949 cease-fire line between Israel and Jordan, Benvensisti noted that as the lines had been drawn on a map during negotiations, which eventually collapsed, the definition of where in actual space these points should be taken remained unresolved.

Today this still remains as a lawless zone that has resulted surprisingly led to the preservation of artefacts along this zone, notably, a villa within the village of Bettir was saved from demolition due to its legal ambiguity and straddling of this zone.

This then raises the question, what social and civic values are being obeyed by leaving the line without thickness – can we establish a new urban hierarchy by affording this line a tangibility?

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Precident images : A COMMON ASSEMBLY Nicola Perugini ‘Architecture after Revolution’

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demolition and sell off public territories, and the displacement of residents - is model doomed from the start but marketed as something better?

Architecture should rather look at ways of enhancing the existing, rather than complete the erasure when ‘dissatisfied.’

With current systems reducing this organisation with efficient rules, I sought to develop an architecture that could find better opportunities for connection in place where it is possible to observe new local routines being constructed. Where value can be reassigned and result in greater civic agency.

A W NE AX IS ?

Seeking to challenge traditional planning modes, I am experimenting on one of these urban fringe conditions, the Brighton Social Housing estate and exploring the consideration of personal connection to place.

This is Ms Taylor, who represents the human scale of this project.

As a resident, she has recently ordered to leave under the Big Build social housing program.

That despite neglect from successive governments, her home is considered no longer fit-forpurpose as they attempt to fix a “broken model of public housing.”

But is this model changing anything?

...or more of the same?

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The grid that established this urban condition was drawn on a page, and the continued subdivision of land continues this ritual.

The boundary line and fence form the common boundary between adjoining lands. Legally and mathematically, this line has no thickness, it is a one-dimensional trajectory between abstract points on a plane however, the resulting three-dimensional condition is normally divided by a fence, with a real thickness.

With boundary disputes also representing the most dealt with at the Dispute Settlement Centre of Victoria, this line is specifically protected by the Fences Act, however; it is notable that this contains no specific definition of what the physical properties for a ‘fence’ are.

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‘our cities might, then, point our fingers at the apparently benign straight street and right angled corners of the grids we live in, and ask: Who benefits from this order?

Dr Nadia Rhook

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rather than acting as the hand, the ink from the pen is permitted to respond to its place, and follow the unseen paths across the landscape, establishing a new hierarchy across the landscape, dripping along the landscape until it must negotiate with place. Reacting to the existing dwellings as it rubs against them but does not break them apart, as to assume the value assigned to the line and the lessons it can’t forget.

When it reacts to the social housing, the ink breaks through, suggesting new possibilities. An action that goes beyond the role of urban delineation but suggests itself up as a possible laboratory to re-engage with

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environment and civic affirmation.

These new border conditions are then afforded thickness, and the definition of the fence – of a common boundary – is exaggerated.

The communal line now becomes the fertile grounds for occupation and intervention for new social engagement and public transformation.

Results suggesting an architecture that It is about the relationship of architecture within community, history and place, of loose-fitting architecture that must be navigated to acknowledge place, that allows for chance interaction, and now stretches into the once private backyards, so rituals there now communal.

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Thi proposal suggsets an alternative model to the traditional orthodoxies that adhere to a cartesian logic, An architecture that can correct disparities in occupation and disconnection with place and reassert a condition of the now + when to avoid displacement by establishing a new hierarchy around its thresholds.

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As the definition of the common boundary is exaggerated, a new relationship between the public and private conditions is generated.

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its architecture spills into this new territory and reach out to the public housing, breaking down boundaries between. In this ritual of disorder, there is the possibility for rebirth for the once considered condemned 81

Under this collective new shelter, new fragments can be organised along this blurred line using simulated processes, like grasshopper, to spatially organise new densities and moments of negotiated spaces.

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Where new journeys can be established and overlooked spatial conditions of the suburbs can be elevated, and better communal interactions can be established.

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This process encourages a continuous analytical folding back on results.

Where outcomes can be broken up to reveal unexpected opportunities, a shifting from traditional architectural modes of intervention.

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An architecture established from the interrogation of the condition of place through the disorientation of the familiar

where new urban narratives can be written 88

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TRACK 4

A BRIEF MANIFESTO AND TAKING STOCK (transcripts and thoughts)

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Week 5 Transcript

RS: well, I guess that’s the great part of Major project, you choose how you want us to critique your work. TO pick up on your comment about the grid as

SK It’s a great project so far. You’ve made a really fantastic start so far. I love the sort of complexity you are building into the project so far. There are so

the organisation device and the imposition of order from a top-down universal way, and then you’re starting to look at other ordering devices, and maybe

many threads you can go back and take up on and develop more. It’s not linear. You’re replicating your project in within your working method which I think is amazing, so the idea of the project is contained in the way you are doing it as well. I think – as you sort of develop it you should continually fold back and finish the sentence of earlier. You do that a little but by week 10 week 15 make sure that you are coming around and, in this case, go back to the effect on the city – the actual city. You start with that critique but and you end up in a place but I’m wondering what the affect is, what’s the bigger effect on the city. Does this have any effect on the CBD and if not many drop that all together? It’ sort of wonderful that there are so many that one leads to the next

its something about emergent behaviour about this ink, system to generate order. If your project is fundamentally about interrogating, or proposing what it is that your

I don’t know if you generated that or if you drew it, but using some other process of about questioning modes of organisation and order, I think you need to be serious new organising system is, and I think that this organising system by chance is

a little bit loose, and I think it needs a little bit of, not only in terms of where it fits into a larger lineage of discourse

a robust interrogation on a procedural level, but also on a conceptual level of architecture, because, and this sort of goes back to the similar question of the

that leads to the next and just be aware that there is a lot that you leave behind. The only other comment I’ll make, I’m kind of having a go at you, it’s really

aesthetic or the vocabulary of whar you’re generating, and it seems like a deliberate attempt to try and make miss-order, or disorder, rather than proposing

quite sweet; You said that Alice Springs was abroad.

another form of order, because I think there are lots of forms of order that are not about forms cartesian, top-down organisational control, there are a lot of

CB Haha - I know, when I wrote that – I was wondering how that would go and at the time couldn’t think of a better word.

SK: Abroad if you will, across the great dividing water. That’s excellent

bottom up systems of order that you can consider, and a lot of those are actually, have much richer forms of order and organisation, so I guess the question is are you abandoning order? Are you deliberately choosing to make something that is disordered, and is that where the vocabulary is coming from

TK: Just picking up from what Simone was saying, I’m thinking maybe leave Hoddle out of this one. I suppose, it’s the question about the Western tenden-

because as soon as I read it sorta has a strange, pseudo deconstructivism?

cy to organise space particularly through cartesian methods. Yeah, Hoddle did his thing and he kind of misaligned it, and he actually kinda aligned it, but

CB: Yeah, it is essentially testing the value of the established order of the cartesian logic

the rest of the Victoria is divided on a 10 mile grid, and I think can play on the different subdivisions and the different ways o working with eh grid that is

RS: But replacing it with disorder as opposed to another…

being plugged in, and you can see in Brighton that here you can see here that there are different roads that go on different axes’, And – So I think you are

CB: Yeah its sort of dialling it up as far as it can to analyse that…

critiquing the grid there is plenty to critique in the place you’re working as well. Like, why is the housing commission of that sort of cartesian orientation

RS: You need to think about where that fits into architecture as it was tested in the late 80’s and eary 90’s in a rather serious way but since then there has

shifted 45 degrees off from the grid.

been a whole lot of other modes of questioning the type of control that you’re talking about which are much more aligned with contemporary theory, so are

Aside from that, I think the critique of the organising systems and space, and even sort of where Rem takes it as a bit of a fait accompli is good, but my

you choosing to deliberately reject those and go back to something between venturi and his idea of complexity and contradiction and complexity that oper-

question is, you have particular and aesthetic formal outcomes with what you’ve done, and you haven’t mentioned where that’s come from. I trust you’re

ates within the complex sciences and pick that little moment of time of deconstruction which I say not in any way a higher form of order but a deliberate

going to do that, but I guess the question is, everything you’ve talked about with the critique of the grid, of clause 54 of the housing code and planning code, do you need a formal language yet when you’re trying to set up the intellectual surmise of your project?

CB: Absolutely, yeah, I think the process has been almost entirely focused on organisation methods and it’s only been in the last week that I have started

choice of disorder. Is that what you are going for?

CB: Um, I think at this point its probably too early to say, the project is still essentially finding its feet, so it might find itself somewhere in between. Yeah, the feedback loop that the project is developed on, between research and experimentation hasn’t necessarily landed on a definitive direction for how I want

to think of a way of applying it to the immediate architecture from that that speaks to the same kind of disorientation but is a lot more intelligent.

TK: Well then I suppose that if you follow a process base method, you might need to fill in the gap a little bit like with the

to sort of wrap everything up RS: So I think you need to be careful about how you pick your enemy and your battle there, carefully, but that aside, I don’t want to sound negative about

round-about, yep I get it, you go in the round-about, you follow it around and the yep disorganise but then there’s this thing occupying it, and you talk

the project, I really enjoyed watching you present the project and I one thing I really enjoyed about the project is the amount of design you’ve done. You’ve

about verandah’s and that’s sort of a conceptual jump and same with clause 54 so maybe there is a layer of diagramming in between that explains the

sort of designed the hell out of this thing, you’ve designed the hell out of several things, and its really fantastic and its really good to see that much concert-

given condition and the given rules, your critique of it and the steps of manipulation for how you arrived at your outcome.

SK: I guess its just establishing the means by which we review your work rather than just presenting it.

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ed work going into designing the physicality and materiality of these things. Keep doing that for the rest of semester and you will have an amazing project

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where-ever you situate your ideology.

CB: Thank you

Week 10 Transcript

you talk about are a lot weaker then others.

DB - So. A couple of things, just in terms of further explanation to the project. The disruption of the private housing stock, have you taken over that

There’s another aspect, which you should keep in mind, and this goes for everybody. If you’re going to talk about inclusivity, and I see steps and ramps

stock to be apart of a communal housing.

that people in wheel chairs can not get through, then you’re not talking about inclusivity. Architects have to get a whole lot better at this. They have been

CB - Yes. The project is something in between, its suggesting an alternative to the public housing model.

very poor at this in the past, and its now time that things are fully accessible, universal design, across culture, physical and so forth. There are a series of

DB - OK, so it wasn’t clear, you’ve got to got to obviously, yeah. And then you;ve got tract of private housing. So these houses have been

things in your project ath are apart of the formal aspect, you know you are trying to mark territory, like a slab is used to express something because it is

bought by the state and they are a fully public housing model.

sort of offset there, but it’s a problem. And the school is going to have to start addressing this, as with sustainability, in a serious, agency sort of way as a

CB – Um, not necessarily, the model is not something I have resolve, but the idea is that it is something in between, that doesn’t need to

driver for design. So um, youre not going to have me for final thing, but this is for everybody, but you’ve got to start looking at this seriously, that a formal

displace either as an idea of accessing the land so that its something more fair, if that makes sense

move sort of outranks those sorts of things is not on anymore.

DB – apart from the fact that it’s a massive disturbance for the private home owner, so there needs to be a negotiation.

But good, you’re well placed for the last couple of weeks I would have thought.

CB – Yeah,

CB -thanks

DB – for me that’s where the rhetoric falls down, which is that there is this massive imposition at no fault of their own. To make one persons condi-

IN – I think for me it was a really clear presentation. I think for me, and I think Dean has raised this, its about how you frame the contextual argument for

tion better, you propose this new order which is probably more drastic, or as drastic as the people being forced to move out. So therefore there s a

in which you are placing the project.

problem that you need to address.

CB – yeah

So then, it would be good to go back to the process. So you have the grid, grid on angle, get rid of the grid, cultural lines, abstract. And then, there is

IN – And I think there is then maybe a way of exploring maybe a mechanism perhaps that acts as sort of an enabler that enables this sort of project to

this paint splatter, what is that?

happen. So I think you have a good sort of grasp of the social qualities that you want in this project and you are addressing that and using this as a device,

CB - OK, so the idea was looking at the ink on a page, and the colonized landscape, and the idea of the pen drawing on a plane

or an artifice to which you deliver that idea so I think that comes through really well, but I guess its about how you deal with the brutality of the insertion.

DB - Yep

Even though ut has all the right intentions, it is a significant intervention.

CB – so the idea was rather than drawing on a page, that the ink would react to the landscape so the boundaries and the thresholds a generated from

But I think the other thing to think about is around the intelligence of the line, and maybe there is a bit of an exploration and nuances in that condition.

that simulation

I think it was a couple of years biennale’s ago but the (inaudible) pavilion was looking at the work of Cedric Price, and there was this really interesting

DB – alright (rubs face). OK so that’s coming back to onto… that’s actually not something to do with the city, that’s something to do with invention

discussion about nothing that he drew was a full line, it was always a dotted line, because it was going to come out at some point but I guess what mean

through the hand, through the personal. So I think you’re going to have to work harder, from my point of view, so if you start from Rossi, and Rossi’s

is that you don’t need to put a dotted line in it, but what are the variations, because that’ what architects do right, and the lines on the drawings are not

point of view, and the collective of the city, and the embedded memory of monuments, you are using it, but undermining it at the same time, because

what the client understands but thinking about those conditions… what are the different… how do you draw your plan based on that idea now, its more

the gesture you’re using is singular. Its not about typology, its about this new formal language, and I know you’ve grown it out of a language of the

than just the idea, or the comment you are making about the lines on a sheet, it’s a lot more directive, it’s a lot more finessed, and I think that would be

existing, but I think, to me, you’re going to have to work harder at that because you’re sort of having the best of a particular world but not following

really interesting and then sort of looking at how you get friction from what you are doing. You know? Because I sort of noticed that in some points you’ve

through on it. SO either you reorder your rhetoric, or you reshape the project. Obviously you’re nor going to reshape the project, and I’m not saying it’s post rationalization, what I’m saying is that there is a reordering of the things that are going on here. Not all things are equal, so some of the things

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already considered that, with this thing going into those buildings and maybe there is a clean edge, but I think there may be an opportunity in that and

A QUICK RESPONSE

it will really help unravel some of those conditions, because they have a certain opportunity to get into, so I think it will be very interesting to think about, because I think there is obviously one of the drivers in the imagery, and how do we get away the from the existing ways of form making as

Is it possible for me to answer these questions with an ideological position in the broad field of architectural discourse? I can only offer alternative model in this project that I position against those contemporary and historical architects that I resonate with. I say resonate because I do not always fully agree with everything that they propose, but I can find common grounds in their works and philosophies on architecture that I find validity in and chose to accept. I used to think it was not important to recognise the lineages of influences and traineeships of architects, I guess this was an ignorant way of dismissing my own insecurities and unassured understanding of where I sit in the discourse of architecture. Who should I put my chair next to in the hall?

Or should I just stand away in the corner. Perhaps this is me being self-conscious of my own design ability and the tendency through anxiety to self-deprecate. So maybe it is best to present a manifesto on my design principles. The volcano (the explosion of emotion) and the Tablet (the laws and theory).

many of it is driven by efficiencies and the way you talk about the city as an economic distraction, and your trying t get away from that so I think maybe being a bit more explicit about how those mechanisms play out.

EJ – we probably need to move onto Mark if we are to keep to time.

MJ – I’ll just be super quick, can you hear me?

CB – yes I can hear you (maybe too loudly?)

MJ – OK great – bt I think this is pretty interesting territory and I have 3 things that I think will be helpful in the next 5 weeks.

The first is about metrics around the big build and around the first wave of projects, and particularly around Heidelberg where essentially the estate was evacuated and then new buildings were planned on top of them. The estate gave itself the metric of replicating exactly the public housing plus 10% and then basically going hell for leather on the remainder of the site, or market housing, so if you’re going to take on that model, and if you have a problem with the big build, you’re going to have to take on those metrics as well, and I wonder whether you take the Heidelberg example of 110% public housing and then… which you probably have… it’s a question of what happens on the bulk of the remainder of the site and if you look at a generic or business as usual approach, it would be a really interesting project to rub up against. So you’re basically saying it’s a big build and I’m going to put market housing on and it might not be much, it might just be envelopes, and it moight stay generic. So that’s the metrics.

The second thing is you’ve gone hard on the domestic artefacts as a piece of architecture, there is another interesting aspect and that’s the landscape and they are super important on public housing estates, and whether that’s the hillshoist or, you know, the communal garden, or the park bench, all these sorts of things that hold the (inaudible) … I think that this sort of territory is something you need to pursue. You’ve got an architecture that is familiar and strange, but a landscape that is just strange. So maybe it is taking those sorts of artefacts and get them in there.

The next this is about occupation, and when you go through these moments and it might be worth looking at market housing, and how you occupy these sorts of edges, and how you occupy them like the balconies and all the stuff used, like pot plants and the small interventions. Like, there was a moment in the presentation when you were talking about a dank little corridor and you were talking about social exchange and communal interaction but I think you might need to put yourself in an empathetic imagination of someone using that space and think about ho you would occupy these spaces because some of the images aren’t carrying that idea of occupation and exchange so they might need a little love and empathy. So yeah, metric, finding a landscape and a register for memory and see how you can make these spaces more occupiable. But yeah, looking good.

CB – Great. Thanks. Thanks everyone.

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discordant objects rn ris buchho h c y b o t s a manif e

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As I seek to determine where I put my chair in the hall of architectural discourse, I present this project as a manifesto. This work in progress seeks to build on a hunch; to establish an alternative logic that develops strategies of disruptions to give agency to of civic affirmation in our cities.

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what / why?

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Architecture is personal. It requires we put our stake in the ground.

I am interested in the architecture of place. For architecture should not be ignorant of its condition. Architecture should be seeking to question the established urban hierarchies and for the ‘better’.

My critique stems from a dissatisfaction with the system that maintains the status quo, for that which is still cannot become without change. My work suggests that from what is broken offers new opportunity. Asking ‘what if?’ as a way of questioning the accepted conditions of now. Architecture should then seek to challenge the validity of established order and arrangements and in those moments of vulnerability, in a process that can involve, the aesthetic and vocabulary reveals suggests a deeper truth for change. That all manoeuvres should have meaning and validity.

That each intervention is accompanied by a careful consideration of why.

‘Architecture is highly political’ – where architects are largely sustained by big business, industry, the state or the affluent – sustained by a class of society considered historically as the powerful, but beyond this, its ‘audience is the public.’ Not all architecture is required to address a higher idea of social injustice (that should be a given to some extent), but architecture should have the aspiration to improve the quality of the city, environment,

or experience. In each procedure of design, or act of critique, there is a political dimension - that we must engage with the community in which we operate, regardless of scale of locality and thus must debate, dispute, agree or compromise in our design. That architecture needs to undertake, or make possible, opportunities for making better urban places through strategies enabling tactics of inclusion in our cities - that architecture should navigate those uncomfortable negotiations of context and ritual to avoid displacement and afford a right to place.

I want an architecture that considers both the what and why, not voiceless aesthetic gestures, inconsiderate form-making, and unintelligible architectural gymnastics.

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Fragments are the collections of artefacts and identities that make up place. They are afforded order by the architectural and urban systems, the elements of the city. In a cartesian method, these fragments are compartmentalised and zoned. Rather, our cities should be read as a habitat of diversity with ‘opposed relationships and conflicting interests.’ In any organised object, extreme compartmentalisation and dissociation of its elements are the inequality and dehumanisation. In a society, dissociation is anarchy. I am interested in decolonising the systems that privileges the right angle above all else.

fragments

Communication is necessary between fragments as this speaks to the nature of human relationships. Architecture should be a complex system of negotiated frameworks, encouraging gaps for tactics of self-affirmation and civic annexation with the ability to reset and restore indeterminacy following occupation.

This does not suggest generic assortment, rather flexibility and acknowledgement of need and difference.

Architecture should take the system to the edge of stability before determining a new point of departure. To encourage uncomfortable negotiations around architectural and urban thresholds. Its procedure should allow its fragments to establish unexpected hybrids of diversity, of continued discovery and reasoning.

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Distance is a scalar quantity that refers to “how much ground an object has covered” during its motion. (space) Displacement is a vector quantity that refers to “how far out of place an object is”; it is the object’s overall change in position. (place) Vectors are quantities that are fully described by both a magnitude and a direction. (relationship)

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dis(place)ment

In this same treatment that displacement = distance x direction OR place = space x relationship/occasion.

Place attains spatial meaning, meaning that is afforded to it by interaction and identity. And a Sense of Place usually is defined as an overarching impression encompassing the general ways in which people feel about places, senses it, and assign concepts and values to it. But who is affording that identity? Planning regulations regularly quote this ‘sense of place’ or a ‘sense of character.’ I am interested in the unlikeable character, the overlooked that goes beyond the façade, skin deep streetscape condition.

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If we agree that the current condition is a transplanted simulation of a western order, a cartesian logic, then displacing this condition, even to just realign its vectors, can generate an architecture that can correct disparities in occupation ad disconnection with place.

In my own words, what if we displaced the condition of now, to reassert a condition of the now + then/when.

The fragmentation and displacement of place encourages an alternative reading to place, a reset, a new translation for the urban and architectural conditions there in. Architecture that engages with fragmentation is not a method of pure destabilisation, or the dissolution for the sake of disorder. No, I am referring to the magnitude to the change and the direction driving such intervention. For change without meaning is unsatisfactory.

Although it may be read as dropping the architecture from some great height, it is a process of suspending judgement and reading the tea leaves. It is about the capacity and potential of local experience that are often ignored or denied but may otherwise be unseen. It’s important to stick your head in and see what comes back. TO act on hunches. A forensic investigation into context (place) and context (meaning), at times, requiring a leap of faith.

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TRACK 5 FINDING THE IN-BETWEEN (AND A PROJECT RESET)

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To be read in three parts, this project seeks to questions what limitations we are placing on ourselves, and the agency afforded to societal behaviours and abilities to change by adhering to this cartesian logic of absolute boundaries.

What if Architecture extended these narrow borderlines and was persuaded to loop into an articulated in-between realm, and challenges this accepted condition of now?

It seeks to challenge these established urban hierarchies and explore the uncomfortable negotiations of urban thresholds and challenge the current models in this framework. It aims to walk the lines of boundary and enclosure, inside and outside, for an Architecture that is not absolute and respond its contextual conditions of now and when.

This project is a reset and an embodiment of the combined research throughout this semester.

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a divide

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own.’ (Leon Van through the places we have kn s ace sp e eiv nc co d an ce lens en ‘We perceive experi titutes a threshold through a ns co at wh on ion ect refl a h perception of Schaik) This project begins wit ter suburb of Epping. As the ou the in e, us ho ad Ro n in do of nostalgia. This is Fin individual, I took an interest the of ce en eri exp the by ed defin experience is subjective, and carport to this subdivision. the the overlooked qualities of

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As a mapping exercise that drew out the lines of my lived experienc exercise that referenc e and occupational ha es Sarah Wiggleswor bits over time. An th’s ‘The Meal’, where the rituals of ever yday the rituals of dining be . Where scribbles an co me an analogy to d spills of ever yday lif e become occupationa l evidence.

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Leveraging the sites artefacts, and using this observatio nal tracing as a strategy, this intervention exaggerates that temporal moment, and reimagines this threshold.Its architecture responds to this occupational intervention and is disoriented to establish a new architecture. The shared driveway and carport becoming an indeterminant communal territory, yielding opportunity for a neighbourly overlaps.

Where it is possible to start to materialise and assess what re-coded urban values may look like.

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between enclosure

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Skewed and off axis, so out as u cial hou rban frin sing wa ge cond isolatio lk ups itions, w n. Arch around itecture ith well Melbou that bre docume rne stan aks inste nted his d ad of gr tories o f social afting o n.

With limited am enity, social inte ractions are lar where its configu gely concentrate rations means its d around its tra stair wells and clo Acting as counte nsitional spaces theslines becom , r points to a syst e informal meetin em of delineatio architecture that g territories. n, can we depowe undoes architect r th ese lines and en ure? An architect courage an ure that breaks instead of graftin g on.

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this propositio n uses this as an axis for n ew spatial organisational strategy, where Hillshois ts trace along these lines and ascend the stairwell, pausi ng at each landing as if to pause for discussion, leav ing behind an outline that mat erialises as a new commun al encounter encouraging a meshwork of occupation, in formal overlap s are formulated as a new multilinear soci al ensemble

on positi o r p is a ne, th space as o t r a d een of p ideas an in-betw tion affecte t e h t n a di of ding o ess th deas n con Expan explored i ng a huma on a proc ctories g i r je furthe of address d expandin human tra n f s mean itecture, a rlapping o h e c v by ar aged an o r encou

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the stair is elevated into urban furniture, a loun ge, allowing residents actualise themselves with a sense of renewed place , and landings becoming extensions to residential balconies, form ally agitated yet playful, affording neighbours a renewed sense of belonging under its converging lines.

Folding back with an analysis of these projects, and the projects from across this major project, helped me establish the qualities of interest underscore the values in developing an architect ural dialog around the threshold

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the in-between

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While the suburbs provide desirable qualities like privacy, space and individuality, they congruently present a sheltered, dewy-eyed view of the world, developing an isolated “suburban sensibility” through common experience that has been developed on a ruthless attitude towards context and landscape as to establish new borders of segregated territories, often in a blurred mass of uniform buildings. With policy conventions like ‘preferred neighbourhood character’ and making ‘efficient use of the site’, Our cities have become obsessed with ideas compartmentalisation, defined by ideology and lines. This project questions what limitations we are

placing on ourselves and the agency afforded to societal behaviours and abilities to change .by adhering to this cartesian logic of absolute boundaries - so David Harvey was right when he announced ‘the rights of private property and the profit rate trump all other notions.’ Urban planner ‘Foteini Nevrokopl’ suggests that our cities should be read as a habitat of diversity with ‘opposed relationships and conflicting interests.’ So what if we designed with this in mind? As lines operate to include or exclude things, they are also the basic element of a network, the agent of connectivity. So perhaps we should view these boundaries as something more agile and elastic, rather than static.

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Dictated by a la nguage of grided lines, th is urban realm of compartmen talization has become the off er Australian dream ing of the , where you can write your own stories.

But this languag e of inclusivity is also a secret language of exclusivity. Eve ry line has the capacity to giv e comfort, spac e, time, to one gro up, and take it away from ano ther. So, what if we drew lines that welcomes without also ex cluding? Can we change the narrative of the suburbs?

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ds tally bir n e m g d non-ju s and Taking a rban evolution be ,u eye view over time can n io occupat ed. nt docume

a obser ve n a c e ies ere w yard wh ctional hierarch k c a b e in th h fun g of suc entions, where s and in n e t t a fl v n ning con mbinatio and plan s for spatial co nd unique and itie ,a ed. possibil are obser vable e record b n y a c it u ls ritua ambig habitual n o m m co

With plans representing the unambiguous hierarchy of rooms and functions, neatly organised and compartmentalised, objectified around a delusion of open-planned living with limit variation, denying true plurality of actual need.

tic, a rgely sta od la s in a et rem of ‘go The stre us convention s, where no homoge ning orthodoxie eriority n up taste’ pla r is afforded s a c only the lm ea in this r 144

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ndary line With the bou ng the most enti today repres , and an condition an disputed urb ifestation of n a m a e c n its fe n of le negotiatio b a rt fo m o c n u med at if we refra division, wh e moments this to becom log rather l dia of communa d , and afforde than tension ct a these abstr to s s e n k ic ts th set out poin e th g in s U . lines me ndaries beco u o b e h T , a as nd are free to untethered a ectors. follow new v

In this act of deauthorization, a territory, no longer inside or out, back or front, but between, is established.

Permitted to flow down its topography, that responds to forgotten condition of its landscape, undoing errors of a colonialist cartesian logic, and establishing a new zone of now + then

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As the definition of the common boundary is exagge rated, a new relationship be tween he public and priv ate conditions is gene rated.

Traditional rigid spatial arrangements of the suburban house, and the looseness of backyard culture are reorganised along this communal axis.

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d into fragmente as a d n a d te Agita es act e new lin s e . th , ts r pa l strategy a n o ti a iz an loose org g these new ing lon Blurred a as a means of find s t trajectorie from disorder, tha g r in e a new ord its context, provid st ted rubs again work for unexpec e m a new fra to be established. es v alternati

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Place is individually constructed, interpreted by individual interest and preference. As land holdings and ownership patterns are different, this model rather suggests an incremental change, like adding a verandah to a home

The result is an architecture with a formal and spatial gestures de veloped around a language of integrat ion and connectivity with its context, co-existing as a networked system.

A proposition scalable with var ious facilitation of cohesive living to the broader suburban condition as it grafts onto its context.

Allowing greater densification , and a variation housing oppo rtunities, whether individually compartmentalised, fully ser viced housing options at var yin g scales, or a desire to be apart community, with communal of a styled living, in communal mo del of ownership and amenity accessibility.

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With a strange familiarity that leverages off the character and is GRAFTED into place, this new streetspace, with its dissolved boundar y lines, encourage a new urban accessibility.

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Its pitched roofs and verandah’s bleed out to the nature strip, no longer an artificial object, but a urban environment of invitation and engagement, with communal gardens and landscaping of a truly local character.

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Embracing a liveliness and mess in a spatial arrangement that can be informally adopted to its population, With new spatial hierarchies of loose fitting outcomes ve occupational opportunities, encoura 166 ging alternati

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Where sub urban actu alities of ro obsession oms design for order a ed wit re recompose amenity aro d and afford h an und enclos ures of ad-h ed new oc cultural exchanges .

ing, and but overlapp d e n zo t o ated n shed are elev scape that is d k n c a la b d d re n a o il t .

In a ta e the hillshois ond its prescribed utility k li ts c fa e rt a r bey everyday unal encounte m m o c a e m o to bec 170

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And a s the co ystem the w ntinuu annex m of p orships the able f or new lace, for in car is subs de tit civic r ituals terminant o uted to bec o to occ ccupa tional me ur rituals ,

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( or )

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This process encouraging a continuous analytical folding back on results.

Where outcomes can be broken up to reveal unexpected opportunities, a shifting from traditional architectural modes of interventio n, decolonises a system that privileges the right angle above all else 182

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BONUS TRACK

reflections a quick afterword

From the out-set, Major Project has asked a lot of me as a student, father and working professional. With so many balls in the air at any given moment, this process if not anything else helped develop a means of critical reflection and time management.

Reflecting on its process, it required a definite leap of faith. the Matrix, Trinity’s first advice to Neo is “follow the white rabbit.”

But which rabbit? Neo had it easy – there was only one rabbit to follow – this project started I soon found myself chasing the rabbits all over this project. What was this project really about?

This Major project best exemplifies me at this point in time, and to borrow from Christos Tsiolkas remarks of The Australian Ugliness, when reflecting on Major project, envisage myself “This major project, and its argument, arose from a specifically Suburban Context (growing up in the outer suburbs, is a familiar and personal influence) but carries warning and admonishments and questions for anyone interested in built environments, in the histories of society and place. I recognise myself and I recognise my world in this project, all the ugliness and all the beauty.”

As a supervisor, Emma Jackson has been an truly phenomenal guiding star. Not afraid to tell it like it is, her feedback has been invaluable, and feedback in such a way that I felt I had true agency over my own ideas and support to develop this project. at a time so late in the semester where I faced a completed reset of the project, her encouragement helped me to push myself as hard as I could possibly go and get aross that line, to develop a project that I am very satisfied with.

As I found a clearer voice through-out this process, and having the ability to amplify it through my architecture, has been a truly amazing experience, one filled with self doubt but also internal affirmation, for moving forward, I need to trust my gut, and make sure that I and critical in my research and considered in my approach to architecture, even if that involves suspending judgement and allowing myself to draw through problems and reminding myself, that after all of this, the voice inside my head (!) is going to have to be the one trust into the future.

Major Project has allowed me focus the values in my architecture and the qualities I appreciate the most, and although this is the end of the road for tertiary education. I am optimistic stepping forward as I start to think ahead about what I want as an Architect.

Cheers, CB

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