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PRACTICE ECOLOGY RESEARCH INTENSIVE OCTOBER 9TH & 10TH, 2019

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE

CONTENTS

Schedule

Keynote Speakers Fleur Watson and Jon Tarry

Final PhD Presentation Nick Flatman

Higher Design by Research Candidates

Cover Image: Pavilion portrait (Barcelona Pavilion, Mies van der Rohe, 1928-29) Peter Fisher, July 2019

SCHEDULE WEDNESDAY, 9th OCTOBER NewSpace x302 Time

Student

Page

Supervisor

External

Candidate

9am

Brendan Meney

SAW

9:45am

Andrew Donaldson

SAW

10:30am

Rowan Olsson

11:15am

Peter Fisher

12:00pm

Lunch

12:45pm

Stephen Batey

1:30pm

Vanessa Sooprayen

SAW

2:15pm 3:00pm

4-5pm

Mitch Wright

PEB

IPL

Dave Roberts

PEB

IPL

Drinks â€” Clarendon Hotel

5:30-7:00pm KEYNOTES Fleur Watson and Jon Tarry, NewSpace x202 THURSDAY, 10th OCTOBER NewSpace x302 Time

Student

Page

Supervisor

External

10am

Dalia Bukhamsim (confirmation)

11:00am

Derren Lowe

11:45am

Bernard Tuffour

12:00pm

Lunch

1:15pm

PEB

SAW

Grant Vercoe

2:00pm

Julie Squires

SAW

2:45pm

Drew Heath

3:30pm

Angus Rose

4:30pm 6:00pm

Nick Flatman Post-Phd Presentation. Watt Space WATT SPACE EXHIBITION OPENING

Key Beth George

Andrew Donaldson

Chris Tucker

Angus Rose

Fleur Watson

Amber Sauni

Irene Perez Lopez

IPL

Brendan Meney

Jon Tarry

Bernard Tuffour Atuahene

BTA

Michael Chapman

Dalia Bukhamsim

Nic Foulcher

Drew Heath

Pia Ednie-Brown

PEB

Drew Heath

Rebecca McLaughlan

Derren Lowe

SueAnne Ware

SAW

Julie Squires

Sarah Josefiak

Mitch Wright

Sam Spurr

Peter Fisher

Timothy Burke

Rowan Olsson

Warren Reilly

Stephen Batey

Vanessa Sooprayen

Candidate

KEYNOTE LECTURES PERI: PRACTICE ECOLOGY RESEARCH INTENSIVE

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT, UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE

ENCOUNTERS AND RESISTANCES: IMPACT AND CREATIVE PRACTICE RESEARCH FLEUR WATSON

JONATHAN TARRY

Dr Fleur Watson is a curator, author and editor. Fleur is currently curator at RMIT University’s Design Hub Gallery, Melbourne and a director of the collaborative curatorial practice Something Together. Through 2018/2019, Fleur was founding executive curator of the opening programme at the Lyon Housemuseum Galleries and co-curated the exhibition ENTER. She has held curatorial positions in Australia and internationally including as architecture curator for the National Gallery of Victoria’s survey exhibition Melbourne Now (2013/2014); program curator (architecture) for the European Capital of Culture (Maribor, Slovenia, 2012) and as an exhibitor for the Formations exhibition (Australian pavilion) at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale. Fleur was the senior curator for Unlimited: Designing for the Asia Pacific (2010) and curator for the State of Design Festival (2008/2009) and the editor of Australian architecture journal MONUMENT (2001–2007). She is currently completing a book on contemporary curatorial practice for architecture and design (Routledge, 2020).

Dr Jonathan Tarry has a history of practice and academic research spanning 35 years, with a PhD in Architecture from RMIT working in the University of Western Australia, New University of Hong Kong and the University of Arizona areas that cross disciplines of the arts, architecture and the sciences. Jon is interested in how the constructed environment facilitates learning and health through the creation new knowledge through experience of place. Jon’s art practice is diverse and extensive skill set of traditional sculpture and painting methodologies combines with the new technologies informed by critical thought. Many diverse projects ranging from ‘Waterlines’, Yagan Square, Release of Album with Mushroom records and to performance art on world art festival stages including MONA PIAF MOZG.

Jon Tarry Artist

NEWSPACE x202 5.30pm, Wednesday October 9 4

FINAL PHD PRESENTATION NICHOLAS FLATMAN Glitch: practicing improper production in architecture Glitch is a process that disrupts the conventional production of information. Glitches are usually accidental variations of digital processes, creating unexpected, and often destructive outcomes. My creative practice explores the way that glitches can be deliberately and methodically integrated into a design process, in order to produce unexpected and unconventional outcomes, and to question the centrality of form and program in contemporary architecture. I have explored the use of glitches in my design process across a range of scales and complexities, from the personal, to the residential, to the urban, to the communal and the hypothetical. This body of research, as well as establishing a new process of architectural production, challenges the conventional

processes of architectural practice, which are increasingly complicit with regulating, and often software-driven, compliance. The primary contribution that this research makes, is in reframing the role of glitches as a deliberate, and reproducible architectural design process, with an endless array of possibilities that question the prevalent modes of architectural production and regulation. While the use of glitches has been an important creative process in adjacent fields like art and music, its systematic use in architecture is relatively new. The thesis explores this new terrain, through a combination of theoretical research, built projects and speculative design to build an integrated body of creative knowledge in this emerging field.

WATTSPACE GALLERY 4.30pm, Thursday October 10 5

Unearthing: discovering the knowledge implicit in designing remote Aboriginal living environments contemporary living conditions. Using ethnomethodological architectural inquiry it explores why adaption occurs, delivering an impression of my practice in the process. Archival mining techniques synthesise the historical context implied in the three case study projects. Backstory and imagined mentor design influences are interrogated, while unearthing uses post occupancy inquiries 20 years on, to extrapolate Aboriginal lived experiences. Through exposing disjunctions between the original design intent and adapted reality, a deeper understanding emerges about how my own design thinking impacts on people’s lives and the importance of co-designing with Aboriginal people. Engaging conversations with creative architects working in similar practice contexts, reveal interesting variants in approach and challenges my interpretations of existing disparate cultural relationships. The research seeks out a designer cultural awareness of what constitutes successful Aboriginal ‘shelter’ and how design driven interventions can improve the cultural comfort prospects for remote communities into the future.

Indigenous Australians living in the remote central desert are defined by a strong connection to ‘country’. The nuances of country take precedence in expressing their relationship with the land through traditional creation dreaming pathways that dictate embedded laws about language, customs and kinships. This lifestyle narrative with the landscape has played out over thousands of years through behaviour, relatedness, and the enduring protocols that constitute life. Aboriginal peoples’ use of space and obligations to kin and country relates directly to their physical living patterns. The imposed western style architecture now embedded disrupts these lifestyles, physically imperils remote bush families and causes enormous cultural stress. Remote communities are constantly challenged by the necessity to physically readapt their living environments. Years of complex research into Aboriginal housing programs identifies a critical need for design change in this space. This reflective practice PhD research focuses at the micro-level on design reasoning the physical cultural-spatial connections dictating

BRENDAN MENEY 9.00am, Wednesday October 9 NewSpace x302 6

Intersections: Site invention, Volume and the Art of Concealment The research centers on the precise explication of my peculiar design methodology of multimodal intersection with the ultimate aim of guiding other creative practitioners on their individual journeys and of transforming and streamlining all future projects towards their own inevitable Zero Points.

My spatial intelligence seems to be a mental space of intersections: Melbourne childhood to expansive natural NSW coast teenage years; the accidental architectural education at an artist / musician personal junction; then juxtaposition of University of Newcastle deference to site schooling with my secret predilection for complex drawings and Los Angeleno deconstruction. Since cataloging my recurring design threads of intersection, precision, threshold, finesse, the orthographic and the art of concealment against deep site respect, figuration and invention through drawing within past and current projects, the wider field has been compared and contrasted, resulting in a most idiosyncratic situational mapping.

ANDREW DONALDSON 9.45am, Wednesday October 9 NewSpace x302 7

New Cooked Barbarians

My creative practice explores the design and fabrication of architectural objects which enable greater independence of lifestyle for myself and others. Taking control of the means of production in all aspects of life from production of goods to production of food is seen as a way to increase agency and pursue solutions to social and environmental problems through direct action rather than appealing to authorities. Physically fabricating the designs becomes a way to realise unusual projects precluded by the conventional construction process but also develops a lifestyle practice of making, continually acquiring new skills and diversifying daily/weekly activity. Thus, the modification of my lifestyle becomes both method and the subject of the research.

The research includes a number of built projects, including: Rover – a deployable vehicle prosthesis, Fly Shed – removable greenhouse-workshop hybrid, Fence Parasite – some boundary inhabiting furniture, Fence Portal – a direct action urban intervention (or hole in a fence), Chooked – a surveillance vehicle for chickens, Grow-op – an indoor garden and Hive 21 – architecture for bees.

ROWAN OLSSON 10.30am, Wednesday October 9 NewSpace x302 8

Wish You Were Here:

Decoding Architecture Through the Postcard Representation and Politicisation in the Architectural Image The research sets out to investigate the representation of architecture. The medium of representation being examined is that of the still image: the photograph.

architectural representation of place and experience. These will be curated alongside iconic and personal photographs to form an important method in the investigation of the simulacra of architecture and determining a criterion of coerciveness in the patterns of representation of postcards and comparable photographic images.

The ever-increasing proliferation and consumption of architecture as images, particularly with transformative advancements in production and distribution across the 20th and the 21st centuries, has a coercive effect on the meaning of architecture through these delineations.

The research will position this creative practice into a broader frame of enquiry relating to both the history of photography in architecture and the history of the postcard. The aim is to define aspects that contributed to this coerciveness in representation methods of the architectural image and place this in a broader theoretical context regarding the understanding of the photograph.

The thesis will focus on a specific method of architectural representation which has been largely unexamined in the context of photography and architecture: the postcard. The creative practice research component will examine the postcard as an idealised

PETER FISHER 11.15am, Wednesday October 9 NewSpace x302 9

The Architecture of Lend Lease Homes 1961-1976

Architect designed project homes were a significant phenomenon in Australia during the 1960s and 70s described admirably in Judith O’Callaghan’s 2012 publication ‘Designer Suburbs’.

seventy model designs, and built thousands of homes throughout the areas of availability. My project aims to document the different designs and catalogue as far as possible the original material and details of the homes.

In October 1961 Lend Lease Homes entered the Sydney new homes market offering homes which were Architect designed, detailed and sited. From contemporary conservative, to Palm Springs Modern, to Bauhaus Modernist designs by Architect Nino Sydney. Presentation of their product in the media was tailored to ensure that they could not be missed.

Why study Lend Lease Homes? They are Architectural. Lend Lease Homes brought modern (and modernist) architectural design into the suburban mainstream. They are Affordable. Through efficiency in manufacture and a quantified amount of materials they were able to make architect designed homes affordable to regular people. They are Historical. Lend Lease Homes were a major player in the architect project home market which fundamentally influenced the character of neighbourhoods of that period.

Lend Lease Homes expanded into markets in Canberra, the satellite areas around Sydney and then into Melbourne in a twelve month period. Eventually Lend Lease Homes produced over

Stephen Batey 12.45pm, Wednesday October 9 NewSpace x302 10

Living with Informality and Island Culture

These are my 4 research questions:

voyageur’. The third is a shifting character, and the hardest one to give a voice to: the woman designer.

1. How can ephemeral public space have a longer-term affect on marginalised communities by shifting development pressures to accommodate Rodriguan Culture? 2. How can I engage with local artisan knowledge to “make” public space? 3. How does island culture inform public space design and strategies? 4. What role does a designer play in shaping informal public space for Developing Countries?

‘Le voyageur’ spent her time being with the octopus fisherwomen, vendors and users of the space. The challenge was to communicate the project to them. Repeated visits were needed to built trust and understanding between ‘le voyageur’ and the case study participants. ‘Le voyeur’ spent her time on site mapping the activities of the octopus fisherwomen, vendors and users of the space. This provided an insight for the research on everyday life in the InPS.

For the past 2 ½ years, conducting this research work remotely - about 8,600 km from my chosen study area on Rodrigues Island - has been a real challenge. This has resulting a bird’s eye view understanding of my chosen case studies. Through the narration of the three characters experiencing my three case studies, I was able to immerse myself into, explore and investigate informal public space (InPS) on Rodrigues Island.

In the InPS, under the existing trees, movable rocks are used as informal seats. This is something not noticeable at first, however this behaviour was uncovered with the help of ‘le voyageur’ and ‘le voyeur’. This discovery allows the designer to think of design as a tool to make this behaviour visible. The designer’s challenge is to act without ruining the qualities of the InPS that nurtures this behaviour in the first place.

The first two characters are the strongest: the observer - ‘le voyeur’ and the traveller - ‘le

Vanessa Sooprayen 1.30pm, Wednesday October 9 NewSpace x302 11

Designing the home environment to increase occupant well-being One in five Australians (16-85) experience a mental illness in any year. As a practice-based researcher early in my architectural career, I aim to explore the potential for my practice to contribute to the awareness, advocacy and support of mental health issues, trauma and medical conditions.

Using literature reviews and engagement with those working in this community of practice, I aim to explore the relationships between the built environment and its potential to support vulnerable occupants through the design and construction of my own artefacts. Incorporating traditional research methods with speculative exploration through practice, the emergent designs will find rigor; in this way I aim to contribute to the field of architecture and person-centred care.

Several different areas of research will be explored to determine their commonalities. At this initial stage these disciplines include behavioural psychology, neuroscience, anthropology and architecture. I aim to use the knowledge of these fields to influence and inform my own architectural practice.

Mitch Wright 2.15pm, Wednesday October 9 NewSpace x302 12

A Future in Ruins

This research explores the potential for contemporary ruins to stimulate architectural production and question the idea of ‘dwelling’ in the world. It concerns ruins as a central preoccupation of modernity and an allegory for the estranged relations to nature and everyday life caused by capitalist production.

aspects of technological, socio-political and ecological change as they relate to ruins found in the Hunter region. Drawing from key theories of orthodox Marxism and new materialism, this thesis will unpack the complex material history of ruins, seeking alternative narratives with renewed relevance to contemporary practice.

The research considers the unstable dialectic of ruins — its spatio-temporal distribution, causal register and authenticity — as prepared ground upon which to explore the dominant ideologies that determine access to collective memory, possible futures, and sense of place.

This mode of exploration connects doubts latent in my past practice in ruin interventions to emerging issues surrounding ‘preservation’ in an age of political and ecological crisis. Treating ruins as the site for architectural, historical and theoretical investigation, the research aims to make a contribution to ‘radical preservation’ studies, as well as articulate new concerns for architectural speculation.

The creative component for this research is conceived as a series of chapters and accompanying architectural projects addressing

Dave Roberts 3.00pm, Wednesday October 9 NewSpace x302 13

Deep Cuts and Easter Eggs

My research is interested in tectonic material concerns and how my particular mode of drawing style can inform specific details as part of a broader spatial experience. How can these details then be “read” and interpreted or experienced?

Therefore using comics as a vehicle that provides a means for an audience - be they craftspersons, clients, colleagues or the wider public realm to “read” both the sequential and the overall composition simultaneously - the comic as expanding the role of fabrication documentation to include the transmission of narrative ideas and decisions.

The research aims to explore both the making and meaning through an exploration of the craft of detailing (the tectonics) and the conceptual, narrative ideas (the storytelling) – by examining practice that utilises an unusual method of documentation in contemporary architecture - the hand drawing and specifically, the hand drawn comic.

Architectural comics can be the device where a “reader” animates fragmentary sequential details to inform an ensemble of memories from which a meaningful whole emerges. Comics used to create an overarching narrative and tectonic approach to both creating and experiencing architecture – both as a perceiver and a maker.

The research argues that the narrative capability of the comic as an exemplar media form has rich potential to communicate ideas, emotion and instruction (the narrative) in addition to the realities of construction (the tectonic).

The ability to manifest “deep cuts” and “Easter eggs” - the details, images and experiences that last in one’s architectural memory.

Derren Lowe 10.00am, Thursday October 10 NewSpace x302 14

Improving construction process through the application of big data analysis Generation of data in the construction industry is increasing exponentially in size and variety due to the use of technological devices. This is driven by the need to automate the construction process. Getting valuable insights from such data has become one of the major trends in the fourth industrial revolution, through big data application. Though, other sectors – retail, tourism, health, banking etc. have reported about valuable insights mined from big data, however, the level of application in the construction process is yet to be known.

Middle to senior level professionals in Australia construction companies are being interviewed for the research. A preliminary overview of the collected data identified some data capturing technologies and rationale behind the generation of “big” data in the construction process. The study will developed a framework for big data application in improving the construction process.

Using a constructivist paradigm through phenomenology, this research is exploring answers to the question, “how big data is being used in improving the construction process?”

Bernard Tuffour Atuahene 11.45am, Thursday October 10 NewSpace x302 15

Chasing the Contemporary Sublime

My practice revolves around creating large drawings (installations) of modern architecture (predominantly the International Style) that the audience would enter, similar to a corridor or labyrinth.

time I experienced Midtown Manhattan in June 2011. I want to dig down into what constitutes “contemporary sublime”, what it means to me and my audience. This will be achieved by hanging large drawings (2500x1500mm) from a grid suspended from the ceiling of the gallery. The outcome of the research will be to recreate the feeling of contemporary sublime in the audience that views the work.

The drawings will explore transparency, reflection and perspective of curtain wall buildings. The aim of the project is to recreate (in a gallery setting) the awe-inspiring, transcendent feeling of being overwhelmed by the Metropolis. I experienced this moment of “contemporary sublime” watching manmade canyons fall off into the distance.

I am also interested in why elements of the modern aesthetic still survives and thrives in contemporary architecture when all other art forms including painting, sculpture and literature had succumbed to Post-Modernism in the 1960s and 70s.

I am not a spiritual person by any stretch of the imagination, but I did experience something transcendental and transformative the first

Grant Vercoe 1.15pm, Thursday October 10 NewSpace x302 16

Place Stories:

Exploring the Nuance of Cross-Cultural Creative Collaboration as a Response to Generating Place in Tendered Public Art Commissions. This research explores the central issues of creative collaboration between Indigenous Australian artists and non-Indigenous artists when competing for and creating sitespecific artwork for public spaces and the built environment. The focus is on creating objectbased artwork in the form of sculpture or environmental installation in the public domain. Can cross-cultural creative partnerships successfully combine Aboriginal traditional â€˜storyâ€™ of place with non - indigenous local heritage and / or the contemporary rendering of the built environment? Given the history of colonisation in Australia, can intercultural creative partnerships give rise to an affirmative sense of place and sense of identity for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous members of a local community?

Unless designated as an Indigenous Artist Public Art Commission, Aboriginal artist participation in competitive commissioned public art process within Australia is limited. Participating Indigenous artists are often those schooled within the University Fine Art tradition or proposed and supported by facilitating organizations such as Urban Art Projects. Given that Indigenous place is marked by hereditary right to story, how can the two premises of Brief - site specificity and indigenous/non indigenous shared space be more closely approximated? These research questions will be explored through a reflection of my cross-cultural collaborative practice including an in-depth investigation of three case studies as well as the review of cross-cultural collaborative artworks in public spaces within Australia.

Julie Squires 2.00pm, Thursday October 10 NewSpace x302 17

IN FULL DETAIL:

a new method of Architectural Documentation

Based on the traditional craft of botanical drawings that document a species and the ‘En plein air’ technique of the artist I am proposing an exploration in detailed drawings.

The technique presented is to sketch the initial idea centre page..…the first moment….and then use a practiced methodology of detailing through drawing to unravel the problem and propose a solution.

My current practice of concept model that becomes the immediate building requires the resolution of the detail to be undertaken on site…where I am. The verbal and sketch resolution of a moment in construction is the key for my practice to crack open the project and bring sensibility, expression, location, craftsmanship, humour, delight and importantly exploration.

As many questions as solutions are quickly opened up by the technique. The scale of A2 allows rapid intensification in detail. This presentation unveils the ‘sketchbox’ and its generation.

The art or process of sketching a solution within a larger scale architectural program is the topic of this presentation.

Drew Heath 2.45pm, Thursday October 10 NewSpace x302 18