Issuu

matthew tibballs

rmit

major project

dr. emma jackson

sem 1. 2021

matthew tibballs

rmit

major project

dr. emma jackson

sem 1. 2021

matthew tibballs

rmit

major project

dr. emma jackson

sem 1. 2021

My major project

pretext

project description

Prologue: the Doncaster rail - a century-long assurance for a train-line to the city centre which never eventuated.

Enter the suburban rail loop, a “city-shaping” project promising to connect the periphery through an underground ring around the city. This project lays down the red carpet for a centreless city with the premise that the anticipation of a reality yet to come (if at all) is sufficient to get the ball rolling.

A definitive civic centre is not put forward, but rather a methodology for the unravelling of new centres which rise triumphant from the backdraft of what will inevitably be another failed promise.

Architecture is employed as a staging device for irritating in the ‘meanwhile’ through a combative marriage to the long-game; a slow-burn for the outer rings. From this, three strategies are proposed to contribute to a growing, incremental place.

pretext

folio

(1)

(2)

(3)

The Retrofit(s): a renegotiation of each future station’s adjacencies through a series of small-scale incisions within the existing suburban fabric, treating minor acts like tree planting and adaptive-reuse as weak but necessary signals in the vortex of anticipation.

The Placehold(s): a tentative taxonomy of ad-hoc temporary shelters deployed as a land-grab for the public realm. These are enabling works introduced under the pretence of temporary use but through duration and strategic placement become anchors, informal public spaces, and sporadic monuments for growing suburbs.

The Build(s): a speculation into the content and ‘rooms’ to be provided for the suburban civic life to thrive through the reinterpretation of the prior scenarios, becoming the shell for an evolving centre over time.

What we do in the waiting room directs this project. A state of play where cumulative acts of premature gratification and predictive squatting offer substance to a defiantly impatient architecture; one which preempts disappointment by turning the suburb inwards to celebrate their own centres in the nearby tomorrow and the distant after.

My process

Pretext

an introduction

The writing and imagery which make up this book form part of an indulgent and unaccountable storm which lasted fifteen weeks. The texts are an admission of rhetoric, hovering on the line between allegory and fantasy, while the ‘project’ deals with the hard reality of a very real infrastructural problem. The writing directs the narrative of the project; yearning for clarity while the architecture grounds it. It is difficult to pinpoint the precise moment when the thesis emerged but the writing remains nevertheless inextricable from the process. Both mediums formed part of a design interrogation into the search for vitality along the periphery. The end proposition is the culmination of these combined studies. Major project is about standing up and saying, for better or worse, this is me. I think if there is anything I have achieved this semester, it is at least that.

pretext

folio

WFH WTF - the non-return of workers 3

Dude, where’s my rail? 00

Writings Dear state government

For many decades now, you have been promising the eastern suburbs a railway to the city. Doncaster is part of the only municipality without a tram or train line and the bus system is at its limit. I am also personally sick to death of having those nufty shits spilling their morning spiced caramel latte on my work attire. You gave me hope of access to that misty city on the horizon and then ye taketh away. To make things worse, every time I drive along that traffic-choked freeway I am forced to look at that endless strip of inaccessible grass you call a median strip. I know this was the allocated space for the promised railway line. Now I hear that with the proposed North East Link road project, the median of the Eastern Freeway will be removed entirely to make way for a new busway. So the veil has been lifted and the illusion has vanished, there will be no rail line ahead in the future and you’ve made your broken promise official. Congratulations on scrapping our hopes and dreams. You have broken a promise that dates back to the 1929 Metropolitan Town Planning Commission which outlined the proposal for a Doncaster rail-line and the Glen Waverley Railway line which, unlike the Doncaster line was built. You condemned me to grow up in exile from the city centre, waiting for endless bus repairs and delays at the local park and ride. You took away my best years.

You’ve pulled out and now I’m going to have to deal with the mess. Sincerely,

An angry suburbanite and your worst nightmare. 8

pretext

folio

WFH WTF - the non-return of workers

The centre & the beast

Writings

an essay on vortexes, beasts and urbanism

The vortex is a recurring theme across numerous literary sources when referring to the qualities behind origins and centres, which is to suggest a mythical tie to the way in we structure human experiences. We never begin ex nihilo but are always caught within a vortex. The centre of Melbourne holds a particular idea of civic, one that is poorly translated to the perimeter as a beguiling repository for what remains. A pilgrimage through the periphery is indicative of this transition from the boulevards and public spaces of the city to spaces of corporate identities, car-parking and congestion which plague the suburbs. It is precisely for this reason that I am dismissing the genealogical definition behind ‘centre which circumscribes the city to seek out new terrains for suburban vitality. I take issue with centrism for it provokes an idealistic representation of Melbourne – the most liveable city – as somehow transcendent above the rest. The periphery should not be parts or fragments to the whole, but islands with their own local contingencies. Melbourne’s footprint is expansive, with lowdensity housing reaching 50-60km from the city with but a fraction of the population of many European cities, with cars being the only viable transit option. In the periphery, congestion, and poor access to services go together. A train-trip to the end of the line to suburbs like Cheltenham are greeted with immense shopping-centres which dominate the landscape because of decreased 10

pretext

folio

land-value. The land is cheap, and value is little because it is so far removed from the actual ‘centre’ that, well, nobody cares.

The poem written by William Butler Yeats in 1919 titled ‘The Second Coming’ describes a ‘widening gyre’ that is circled by a falcon. However, in this piece, the falcon circles wider and wider from the origin before eventually breaking the centre, eliciting the infamous line – The Centre cannot hold – which invokes a new age. This piece describes a second coming characterised by anarchy, fiction and freedom which would emerge after an age of necessity, abstraction, and mechanistic thinking. Interestingly, this was written after the 1918 influenza pandemic a century ago, today known as H1N1. In this poem, things fall apart, and the centre is prophetically unable to hold through a deepdive into mysticism to recover a kind of faith. The ‘gyre’ contains scaffolding of symbolism that has shaped the thinking within this project. At the conclusion of Yeats’ poem, a beast emerges from the cave and slouches towards a new Bethlehem raising the idea that there is indeed something provocational going to the edge of the vortex. For architecture, it is to take back civic from the current flow of discourse, which turns in on itself perpetually towards the origin of the current vortex. To break free from this vortex is to seek out another kind of civic through explorative urbanism, another beast entirely.

Waiting for Godot

Writings

a short piece on the waiting room

The play, Waiting for Godot, written by Samuel Beckett between 1949 and 1955 sees two characters have a vexing debate over when a mysterious Godot will arrive and whether they are waiting at the right tree. While perpetually waiting, the play asks what characters can do to pass the time. There is a profound uncertainty to this production as the characters sink into boredom waiting for something that never comes. The reveal is that it is a play where ‘nothing happens’ yet the audience is riveted to the seat in the spectacle of waiting. Caught in the thrill of anticipation, the audience only realises they have been duped once the curtains have been drawn. Like Godot, the recently announced suburban loop by the Andrew’s Government harbours a strange rhetoric not dissimilar to the play. The seemingly imminent suburban loop has been announced by a government whose modern-day bureaucracies encourage over-promising and underdelivering of infrastructure. It is the perpetual wait as a kind of unbearable slowness, a frustrating not quite happeningness which has become characteristic of Australian suburbia. This ‘waiting’ stems from my own lived experience growing up in the suburbs, waiting for a late or broken-down bus and for a train-line to the city centre which was promised but never delivered. I can still taste the anticipation and hope for infrastructure to be delivered, for promises to be kept, for things to get better.

pretext

folio

The suburbs as a project directs this major project. It considers the anticipation of a reality yet to come (if at all) as a project unto itself. That, to act project-ively and organise the available means towards an alternative future for the suburbs is an architecture. Should the infrastructure fail and the loop never be delivered, then the project is hypothesising on how the suburbs might exist independent of the city, finding their own centre along the way.

There are other ways of procuring a centre in the ‘burbs and I believe architecture has to be employed as an instrument for this, not as objects but as a process which elicits agency over time.In my eyes then, the project is about how an architecture comes to be through this methodology - to find some immunity to my sneaking suspicion that Godot is not coming.

pretext

folio

W10 review

Work in progress

transcript: dean Boythroyd (DB) mark Jaques (MJ) ian Nazareth (IN)

MJ: The images that you are showing in this document. Are they the before, the after, or the if not? How are we meant to see these images? Are these the placeholders waiting for the loop to be built or are they after? MT: I did this procession to see them as a kind of diagram of what could be. A goal or ideal of what could occur by shuffling the deck with what is currently there in the suburbs. I’m sort of saying this could be a benchmark, this could be something that we build up to. I see them as the goal, and the project is asking what does the project have to do to manifest this.

MJ: Well my advice would be to play up this sense of disappointment which I think you have framed very clearly in your polemic. I think that the idea that you got a sense of what could happen before, during, after and if not – I would be interested in you testing whether these things are tethered together. What placeholder can you put in place now that acts as an irritation to the future then what does that look like? You construct the placeholders and show how this might change over time across your three temporal frameworks. So you have to anticipate where the entry to the station will be, and then it is your job to put a placeholder there to help us understand what the benefit is over time. I think that would be a way of testing the rhetoric. I think what you want it to do is really a great – an architecture of pre-emptive disappointment but let’s see

pretext

folio

what it is in those three stages. Those three modes for every one of your views will tell you a lot about your project.

proposition is that the station benefits brings outside of slightly nostalgic weird language? I think the architectural formal tools are there, I just haven’t figured out what the project is.

MT: Definitely I think the time scale is super intrinsic to this project, I hadn’t considered MT: I had just done a bunch of follies. The real throwing all three but it would be useful to question in the project is how architecture can employ as a strategy. hijack development to produce greater spaces over time. The reality is I have seen how IN: With your process where you describe the gentrification and density through speculative dream-like procession, it does buy you some development erases any culture or potentially agency to not consider time in a linear fashion. rich spaces – so what do we put in place. How you think about it as a staging device – to consider things which would emerge DB: Well we don’t, developers do. They see the over time, a conglomeration of things which uptick in the value of the land, so if you tried are evolving irrespective… This continuous to play that same game then you would be cycles of many variables playing out at the finding ways of disrupting that logic. The shed same time could be interesting. Like a force won’t exist out in the suburbs, but the question of friction – a series of pre-emptive conditions is how the land around the station will become helping you to expand beyond the rhetoric to more valuable. The land will go gangbusters. catalyse change in this kind of development. To me it is almost like your project is a different way around, you’ve got your formal DB: I’m trying to understand what the project is stuff worked out now it is looking for how it right now. narrative component but is there a is grounded through a project. Waking up to building here? It seems like a bunch of follies the journey. I think that is a very interesting right now but this is a problem that emerged thing to talk about in terms of what it brings with Arden. Where we assumed that the you architecturally, but also what it addresses station would manifest greater density but this in terms of a way of designing or running a was total bullshit. The city did not consider proposition to the city. I think you need to bring the risk averse nature of the consortium this to the presentation. There isn’t going to – basically that they are not building heavy be any real answer – so just pick something. buildings over our rails because the risk is too There will be office buildings – you could go great. So you get at Arden the single story neutral, just space. Not specific functions. Just shed, with the development occurring around space, it could be medical spaces, teaching it. But I guess I am wondering what the 17

W10 imagery 00

Work in progress images from presentation

and learning facilities, religious and community spaces…. But it is about space and play that off against this nostalgia, this nostalgia for what might be but is also projective.

MT: So like focusing on the content of architectural space. DB: You could go visit the office parks, like Melbourne Nexus. Go and have a look at them. They are super ordinary, very poor. But with what you are coming at, you could redeem them. This is the problem with the suburbs because land is so cheap, they do not place value on design. MT: Well that is precisely why I created this dream. Because I needed to create a certain ‘ideal’ of what could be as something to measure up against. To create the image in my head as a guide or framework.

DB: Well I think you should go visit some very generic office buildings – saying this could be the future.

pretext

folio

W11 meeting

Pretext

a pivotal conversation

MT: I had forgotten how much I had enjoyed the work that mark and dean do. I really appreciate their type of architecture particularly as they look to the periphery. I had tailored my presentation to them, but then in doing so I really realized how much I am interested in this idea of time, infrastructure and squatting over time which is the real optimistic thing. I had the dream in a dumb way of imagining what could be, which gives form to these things. Then used the image of them to construct things around the site. EJ: This is going to set you up way better. Because I think the jump between the more allegorical method and the real world is massive.

MT: I think the allegorical elements like the narrative work to a point, in terms of directing a story for the project. EJ: The architecture of pre-emptive disappointment is a pretty good title.

MT: So, for the site, the road will inevitably be closed for the construction. So, I am thinking to create temporary infrastructure which could be co-opted for construction later, but also act as temporary waiting rooms/civic spaces for the suburbs – which could be taken over by the street itself. I found Dean’s comment about space itself which emerges over time. There is this empty plot of land adjacent to the station to ask what that would look like. It is about stage-devices. 20

pretext

folio

EJ: So, you have got the lead in with the train. MT: Yes to stop the inevitable poor developments The whole intro which is very clear. So the which will take place. So it is all about staging part that I am missing is I guess what happens and timing which I’m still trying to understand after that? That triggers an architecture of how this occurs. Perhaps in hijacking the pre-emptive disappointment – what is that? road and employing the construction hole as What is the operative procedure? Because a means of creating markings/decoration/ obviously it must be redeeming and joyful. movement/pathways which merges into What is architecture of disappointment? Do future development. you use artefacts which are not big beautiful, EJ: I think this is an interesting process for you to but daggy what is there? go through. You have almost synthesised all MT: So, like the leftover stuff that the invisible your design studios and understood what you person is using? Bringing them together value most out the other end even though it and giving something else which creates a was not smooth sailing. language. MT: I agree. Dean also thought I should talk about EJ: and who is doing this? these allegorical beginnings – where you put the ideal first, what the suburbs dream about, MT: In my eyes it was the community, who would and then describe a procurement method for hijack the space around it in preparation for getting spaces like these if this is to be a new the development. And if it does not happen centre. then the road has still been occupied. What were your thoughts on my presentation? EJ: And then how much does the dream figure into the design process? EJ: I thought that it was clear, and the panel understood it well. I thought Mark’s feedback MT: I think it informs the material language, the was really good and Dean’s too. forms themselves. MT: Dean’s feedback was interesting because EJ: The dreams are quite bound by what we know he thought the process was good – like – we dream of the situations which have been defining a dream/an ideal to work towards in in our life – a library of expectations bound terms of civic or material language which then by their experience of that area. And then becomes the taxonomy. what are you hoping to do? I am wondering whether there would be value in you doing EJ: So like the inside out. the final panel. There was huge value of you

doing the train ride. I feel like you could go in and design because it is clear.

So I believe this will be more of an urban design guide to give to the government of how to build the loop and the necessary corresponding infrastructure to go with that. Build temporary infrastructure around the site so that there is something for the suburbs to occupy over the alleged time cycle. The scaffolding can then affect development over time.

MT: For me it has to be staged. One thing after the next. That narrative has been on my mind. You know like the aboriginal tent embassy, of hijacking the site around parliament to make a statement. That is kind of what I imagined the hijacking of that road being. Constructing temporary scaffolding of infrastructure for the suburbs to get in on. Either to make sure it EJ: I feel like it is critical for you to figure out happens or to at least occupy the space what you are doing in W15. You need to around it until that space is ready for them. be building that and designing to that, not That would be the stages – dreaming of what creating a project and then figuring out what could be, the construction of waiting spaces, happens after. Design the presentation now if not constructed, then the office space then do the project to fit. around it will be affected by these things we MT: I’m going to create a pre-emptive have planted on the road. So it is one thing disappointment calendar based on the after the next after the next which affect its Doncaster Rail but for the suburban loop. immediate surroundings in a infrastructure in Mark also said that if it is an architecture time manner. A story of a dream, a protest, of pre-emptive disappoint then the project a construction, and a future. Irritation to the needs to be worked up in three stages. What future. happens during construction, what happens EJ: I think just where you are at, you could design after construction and what happens if not – and do a bit of post-rationalising. It is already and the ‘if not’ is where the project really lies. pretty tight. I think the way that you work is Asking what happens today, tomorrow and if that it is a bit back and forth and a bit back to it never happens that is where the project is front. I’m just trying to make sure I give you as a systematic approach to the whole thing, the right advice. something which applies across all three spectrums. MT: Well I think the way Chris works through it is not how I work through it. If the train has got EJ: I think that is great. I really think it is great. me this far then I think I can keep designing I think it is so optimistic, the sort of thing I incrementally. In terms of what the promise is. really believe in. Not the matter of the more My initial hunch is that I could visualise more ambitious, rhetorical or wanky major project that dream of all the pieces of the suburbs which is predicated on myth or the flaneur – then showing those pieces being used as or some bullshit. This is trying to create mini centres around the centre? something good out of something which will happen anyway. EJ: I’m trying to visualise how big the project is. I’m trying to see and imagine them. There’s a MT: Like the promise, the excitement of lot in the promise of what is to be delivered. something that is coming and is a force which we act upon. It is coming then let us build MT: Well I realised that I was struggling at the and start organising the available means to urban scale of the project when I thrive more that end. If the government has promised the at the scale of a building, of an architecture. suburb something, then what do we do in that 22

pretext

folio

waiting room. In that way the suburbs could become independent of the city.

which I love about it – and I feel like you should start with something underwhelming and then build up to it to leave the panel with surreal experience.

EJ: It is also like the disappointed child whose parents never hung out with them. They just wanted the simple things. It is the philosophy MT: I have been referencing Jeffrey Smart, of the as-is. This is what happens. This is Rick Amor and Edward Hopper paintings what the suburbs dream about, and what can for visualisation and they really speak to this we offer them who will be waiting awhile. How idea. They capture a quality which I really like. do you find the sublime in the waiting room? The texture, the idea of the underwhelming corners and edges which are captured. MT: I think it is a bit like a trojan horse. A kind of enabling works, of seeds which we plant EJ: It is almost like a dream-like De Chirico. around the site which over time transforms And it is also like the infrastructure of traffic communication. How the infrastructure everything. They then realize the promise has becomes part of the architecture. So how do consequences. you design it? Through views? Building up EJ: You would also want it to be something so perspectives? good that when the loop does not come the suburbs are not fussed. Because the promise created greater architecture than any utility the infrastructure would bring. MT: Great narrative, but I need to design. I am oddly calm because it is getting down to a scope I can work with. EJ: You are calm now, so I guess you need to anticipate.

MT: well yes but also while I am calm, I can make rational decisions about what emerges.

EJ: I also think it is a very nice project for you in terms of how ambitious you were and what you wanted for major project because you are not going to do the big hero building, it is more ok this is about more than me, it is about using my skills to solve a problem which is exactly what major project is supposed to be about. It is how I do I use my skills that I have learned at RMIT applied to the world. It is so good because it is such an ordinary problem, a low-brow problem and uninteresting and yet out of that you could find tinges of studio Ghibli, waiting for Godot and you do not have to mention any of that which would be the ideal. The project is almost under-whelming

Ritual commute(s)

Prologue

Dreaming

Ritual commute(s)

Dreaming

Ritual commute(s)

Dreaming

Ritual commute(s)

Dreaming

Ritual commute(s)

Dreaming

Ritual commute(s)

Dreaming

Ritual commute(s)

Dreaming

Ritual commute(s)

Dreaming

Ritual commute(s)

Dreaming

Ritual commute(s)

Dreaming

What do we do today?

What do we do tomorrow? What do we do if not?

Ritual commute(s)

Dreaming

Ritual commute(s)

Dreaming

Ritual commute(s) _cost of the rail-line increased to $73m. government reports that the line will be completed in 1980

_26 kilometre tunnels reach Box hill condluing the line for stage 1.

THE DONCASTER RAIL

A predictive calendar based on a disappointing history.

1 / retrofit(s)

2 / placehold(s)

3 / build(s)

Dreaming

_metropolitan town planning commision is drawn with the stage two rail-line into north-eastern

_victorian parliamentary committe endorses stage two starting doncaster to airport

_box hill station completed _stage one ready for public opening

_glen waverley station completed _monash station completed

_clayton station completed

_train stabling yard completed

_cheltenham station completed

_excavation and piling of sites for constructing stations for Clayton, Glen Waverley and Box Hill

report on the eastern freeway corridor presented to victorian transport minister peter spyker

statement by liberal transport minister that cain labor government has sold railway land to doncaster

doncaster rail removed from edition 14 melways street directory

edition 12 melways street directory includes the doncaster rail

_service relocation and protection works prior to digging _power uprades modifying and upgrading exist power network

_state liberal party pledges to build the line if elected but only to bulleen

_site establishment including tree removal and protection along with road modifications

Construction of stage 1 of loop begins, starting at Cheltenham reserve and digging with tunneels. _location of train stabling yard announced. construction commences.

site investigations across the affeced suburbs for stage 1: cheltenham to box hill

_site investigations across the south-eastern suburbs

_a leaked document from transport for victoria shows the SRL was not included in long-term plan _federal infrastructure minister alan tudge states funding will be witheld until more detail is provided

_tender process for the mebourne airport rail link launched

_premier dan andrews promises the suburban loop 3 months prior to victorian state election

_eastern railway construction act 1971 passed by state parliament setting route along eastern freeway _herald sun reports that hte outer section of line to be investigated by parliamentary public works committee _Route is decided and announced in the age but no completion date specified

_The heights of Doncaster announce construction of the Doncaster Rail

Timelines Playing the long game

THE SUBURBAN LOOP

47 state labour governemnt announces detailed plans for stage two

liberal state government releases findings of the final ‘doncaster rail study: phase one recommendations report’ studies show that a rail-line between city and doncaster is feasible

labor govt pledges to create doncaster area rapid transport (DART) system victorian liberal party commits $6.5b to complete another study to develop route for building railway line to doncaster. _public transport users association disputes that the doncaster rail can hold 6 trains per hour

campaigns against the construction of a proposed freway through manningham

Forum held to investigate doncaster rail-line with yarra, melbourne and manningham city councils

_councils start to host regular meets, discussions

_victorian liberal party does a costing of rail line and promises to extend underground line to doncaster. _public pressure mounts and local councils begin to fully support construction of the line

_northern central city corridor strategy provides costings for heavy rail, light ril and bus services for stage 2.

_report on the feasibility of suburban loop total presented to victorian transport minister.

_stage two suburban loop removed from edition 165 melways street directory

edition 159 melways street directory includes the whole suburban loop

_state liberal party pledges to build the line if elected but only to doncaster. _cost of the rail-line increased to $6b. government reports that the line will be completed by 2070

_councils start to host regular meets, discussions and forums ovver the doncaster rail

_independent analysis on costings for stage two reveal under-valuing by state government.

_Route is decided and announced in the age but no completion date specified

_victorian liberal party does a costing of rail line and promises to extend the number 48 tam to doncaster hill _public pressure mounts and local councils begin to fully support construction of the line

_northern central city corridor strategy provides costings for heavy rail, light ril and bus services for doncaster

suburbs

Site: Clayton

A series of shops are earmarked for demolition for stage 1 of the suburban loop which will go ahead. What happens here could provide lessons for other suburbs further down the line who will be perpetually waiting. Adjacent to the station is an empty lot which will be subject to property speculation and inevitable development.

Ritual commute(s)

Site

Dreaming

Existing (today)

Ritual commute(s)

Dreaming

Under construction (tomorrow)

The empty lot adjacent to the station faces onto the rear alleyway of the proposed station. To reference Corrigan, perhaps the civic can be found where the bins get taken out. We just have to know where to look. 52

Ritual commute(s)

Dreaming

Retrofit(s)

Placehold(s)

Build(s)

Ritual commute(s)

Dreaming

key words:

renegotiation, adjacency, small-scale, adaptive-reuse, tree-planting.

key words:

placeholder, temporary, dirty landgrab, construction follies.

key words:

space, public realm, civic, a suburban future.

Retrofit(s)

Chapter 1

anticipation

The retrofit(s)

Anticipation

01 Retrofit(s)

02 Placehold(s)

03 Build(s)

Potential to remove back fences to re-orient houses to the rear easement, creating potential pathways to the new station. Adaptive-reuse of local on-grade carpark with a shelter to accommodate mixed-use events outside of local church’s use.

Modification of planning restrictions to introduce business opportunities into backyard sheds.

Planting of trees to align with future development and stations. Planting to align with actual movement and use around the station, creating informal parks while registering circulation over time.

Temporary road closures on weekends through bollards to recognise the road as a place and generate movement around it. Key entry points to the future station becoming centring nodes for the suburb.

The retrofit(s)

Anticipation

entry

adaptivereuse

new pathways

tree planting

temporary road closure

node

existing public space

existing public institutions

Site plan of interventions for the Retrofit(s)

Weak signals in a vortex of anticipation

The retrofit(s)

Anticipation

planting ‘seeds’ for civic to grow

Pre-empting corners and junctions for the station to come. On-grade carpark becomes an event space.

Tree planting to register pathways as a result of adaptive re-use, triggering movement and use on the lot.

The retrofit(s)

Anticipation

Aligning to future station while offsetting future developments behind.

Placehold(s)

Chapter 2

a reaction

The placehold(s)

Reaction

01 Retrofits

02 Placehold(s)

03 Build(s)

Placehold(s)

Chapter 2

Reaction

The placehold(s)

Reaction

entry

adaptivereuse

new pathways

tree planting

temporary road closure

node

existing public space

existing public institutions

placeholders

Site plan of interventions for the Placehold(s)

Tentative taxonomy of public forms

Form: semi-enclosed shelter

Form: shed stage

Signifies: recreation

Form: tent membrane repurposed brick enclosure

Signifies: storage & performance

over

The placehold(s)

Form: mobile shelter

Signifies: temporary event spaces

Reaction

Form: lookout tower

Form: gantry with balcony

Form: tiered seating

Form: large linear volume

Signifies: viewscape & air rights

Signifies: informal activities

Signifies: walkways

Signifies: air rights, shelter and event space.

The placehold(s)

Reaction

Objects denote the politics of occupation of the land-grab.

The placehold(s)

Reaction

Placeholder as used by construction site - storage and worker spaces.

Objects denote the politics of occupation of the land-grab.

The placehold(s)

Reaction

Placeholder as used by community - creating informal stages, forums and mixed-use pavilions outside of construction use.

Objects denote the politics of the land-grab as a spatial occupation.

The placehold(s)

Reaction

The placeholders capture this notion of ‘waiting’, that something is better than nothing.

The occupation of the road is proposed as a weekend temporal activity. However, there is possibility for alternative driving routes to pop up as a result of the popularity of this space.

The placehold(s)

Reaction

Pre-empting corners and junctions for the station to come. On-grade carpark becomes an event space.

Tree planting to register pathways as a result of adaptive re-use, triggering movement and use on the lot.

The placehold(s)

Reaction

Aligning to future development while offsetting future developments.

Pre-empting corners and junctions for the station to come. On-grade carpark becomes an event space.

Tree planting to register pathways as a result of adaptive re-use, triggering movement and use on the lot.

The placehold(s)

Reaction

Aligning to future development while offsetting future developments.

Placeholders as staging devices for a slow occupation of the site.

This is to consider how architecture could nego

Pre-empting corners and junctions for the station to come. On-grade carpark becomes an event space.

Tree planting to register pathways as a result of adaptive re-use, triggering movement and use on the lot.

The placehold(s)

Reaction

otiate with the mechanisms put in place around the station

Aligning to future development while offsetting future developments.

mechanisms which affect future spaces.

Placeholders as staging devices for a slow occupation of the site.

‘The

centre

William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming, 1913.

The placehold(s)

cannot

hold’

Reaction

Vortexes

things

are

happening

Builds

Chapter 3

a centre

The build(s)

a centre

01 Retrofits

02 Placehold(s)

03 Build(s)

Axonometric of rear exit

The build(s)

a centre

How

can

architecture

redeem

the

inevitability

the

loop’s

failure?

Axonometric of entrance on corner, station opposite.

The build(s)

a centre

What

sub-urban

space?

Waiting

for

The build(s)

Godot

a centre

Axonometric of nearby bus stop seat

Ground Floor Plan

Planning determined through negotiation with the retrofit(s) and the placehold(s)

The build(s)

a centre

Somewhere

take

your

shoes

off?

Axonometric of atrium

The build(s)

a centre

The

provision

space

nostalgia

process

XX 100

01 C3

The build(s)

implicated

The tests a centre

time

First Floor Plan

101

Elevating

102

the

The build(s)

as-found

a centre

Placehold(s)

103

104

stage

The build(s)

for

the

larrikin

a centre

Axonometric of external fire-escape and theatre entrance

105

106

The build(s)

a centre

107

methodology

for

turning

inwards

station

108

coming

soon

The build(s)

(and

new

a centre

centre)

109

110

The build(s)

a centre

111

The

112

end:

The build(s)

a centre

113

114

The build(s)

a centre

E 115