the Built Environment at the University of Newcastle, and includes projects from postgraduate students, staff and supervisors within the school who are engaged with creative practice research. The exhibition also includes Timothy Burke’s Exquisite Drawing Machines, which is the first creative practice PhD to be examined in the School of Architecture and the Built Environment.
The exhibition coincides with the opening of the Honeysuckle Placemaking projects funded through the Newcastle Port Community Contribution Fund and in so doing extends the exhibition into the public realm, along Honeysuckle Foreshore.
P E R I P H E R I E S
The Peripheries exhibition features work across a diverse array of domains in the School of Architecture and
p r a c t i c e . e c o l o g y. r e s e a r c h . i n t e n s i v e
Events
5:30pm - 7:30pm Peripheries Exhibtion Opening + Honeysuckle Placemaking Launch, Watt Space Gallery Opening address: Julie Baird, Director of Newcastle Musuem Keynote speaker: Richard Goodwin, Artist and Architect Wednesday 12 September 5:30pm Kester Rattenbury - Practice Matters Lecture, Newspace, Level three, room X321 Friday 14 September Practice Research Symposium 10:00am Timothy Burke Exquisite Drawing Machines PhD Examination 1:00pm Andrew Donaldson Watt Space Lecture 2:00pm - 4:00pm PhD in progress reviews Saturday 15 September Practice Research Symposium
P E R I P H E R I E S
Friday 7 September
Contents
Practice Ecology Research Intensive 10. Timothy Burke 16. Dalia Bukhamsin 17. Michael Chapman 18. Lindsay and Kerry Clare 19. Andrew Donaldson 20. Peter Fisher 21. Nick Flatman 22. Nick Foulcher 23. Drew Heath 24. Sarah Jozefiak 25. Derren Lowe 26. Kira Martin 27. Brendan Meney 28. Rowan Olsson 29. Tania Papasotiriou 30. Anthony Parsons 31. Warren Reilly 32. Amber Sauni 33. Gemma Savio 34. Vanessa Sooprayen 35. Peter Stutchbury 36. Julie Squires 37. Chris Tucker 38. Grant Vercoe 39. SueAnne Ware, Chris Johnston, Kalyna Sparks 40. Out(fit)
43. Chatterbox 44. Hidden Honeysuckle 45. Honeysuckle Hopscotch 46. Honeysuckle Lights 47. Movable Feast 48. Honeysuckle Placemaking Map
SABE Electives 51. Additive Manufacturing (Newcastle) 52. Advanced Construction Manufacturing (UK) 53.Density | Intensity | Immensity (Singapore) 54. Desing for Innovation (Newcastle) 55. Entry Room, Health + Wellbeing (Brazil) 56. Etiwanda (Cobar) 57. Pigeon Architecture Guidebook (Tokyo) 58. Promoting Sustainability (South Korea) 59. Rebuilding Communities (Mexico) 60. Tangentyere (Alice Springs) 61. trans - arkitektur (Denmark)
Practice Research Symposium Schedule
P E R I P H E R I E S
Honeysuckle Placemaking
Peripheries: SueAnne Ware
“She was a patron saint of the peripheral!” (Jane Howard, 1984 The Life of Margaret Mead; Ballantine Books, NY p.10)
A number of creative practitioners and design researchers describe their works as being on the periphery. I often describe my own practice as one that sits comfortably within the margins of my discipline, landscape architecture and this continues into the collaborations exhibited alongside and very humbly, amongst my talented colleagues and our gifted PhD candidates. So, what exactly is it about practicing in the liminal spaces of disciplines and in the peripheries of the centre, that inspires innovation and imagination? This exhibition seeks to extend our disciplines and the boundaries of research orthodoxies; to reclaim the role of our imaginations and emergent investigations which produce rigorous, unexpected and serendipitous creations. The Peripheries Exhibition is the second in the School of Architecture and Built Environment series of design research at UON, and it delivers the marked difference of more pronounced confidence. In some ways it celebrates a coming of age, because our first creative practice PhD candidate will be examined; in other ways it offers up a precise moment for reflection. We now have a robust and differentiated cohort of creative practice researchers who collectively and individually examine various interstices, peripheries, and fringes through their inquiries. Yet, I can’t help feeling that we remain at the edge, in a fragile state where careful and considered approaches will help further build, shift or raze our disparate ideologies. So, while we come up for air, it is our greatest hope that this exhibition assist us in uncovering our kindred spirits: those on the margins, yet critically engaged with key issues of our time and in relevant discourses.
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Timothy Burke PhD (Architecture) Supervisors: Michael Chapman, SueAnne Ware
Exquisite Drawing Machines : A Tinkerer’s Guide The Exquisite Drawing Machines is a project undertaken during the candidature of a practice-based PhD (Architecture) to explore irrationality within design processes by tinkering with and playing with experimental machines. This work explores how machines can generate critical inquiries into architecture by deliberately avoiding generating architecture and instead generating new processes of design. My practice is one of tinkering. Tinkering is an unusual process to find in architectural design. It is distinguished from other methods of making as a practice that deals with existing objects. Tinkering offers a way of exploring the transformative possibilities latent in objects. When tinkering I constantly measure the value of things. I am not looking to invent something new but rediscover the value of something existing when used in new ways. However, unlike the tinkerer who pulls apart a machine and puts it back together, I refunction the machine: I put it back together differently. Somewhat like an alchemist, this is a physical transmutation of something that is deemed of marginal value to that of greater value. There is something nostalgic about the lost craft of
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the tinkerer which has been subsumed by increasing rates of consumption, and the decreasing lifespan of objects. The tinkerer, surrounded by that which is broken or outmoded, has a different understanding of the value of the marginal. Tinkering is a casual and amateur practice. Therefore it is afforded a concession of aimless and indeterminate intent. It is neither a complex or predefined process, rather it’s a process of emergence. Nor is it predicated on actually achieving anything, its success is desirable but not essential. It has to do with discovery and accepts that this is sometimes inconclusive. Tinkering is not just a way of working, but a way of being in the world. It speaks of a broader mindset of the tinkerer. This opens up new ideas and approaches of thinking about architecture.
Discovering the Exquisite The Exquisite Drawing Machines get their name from their initial function of playing the drawing game known as the exquisite corpse (a.k.a. ‘rotating corpse’, or ’heads, body, and legs’). Originally created as a word game, it was one of the many parlour games developed by the surrealists to enable conditions of chance and disrupt normative processes of drawing.
These machines are unpredictable. At the very least, by relinquishing control of line making, uncertainty is brought to the drawing; at the very most the machines behave seemingly at will, and can suddenly change the direction of the drawing.
Much like the game itself, the Exquisite Drawing Machines are built to draw in a unique, autonomous and unpredictable manner. As this project has progressed I have tested their abilities across a greater array of drawing experiments and games such as carving forms, making site specific drawings and drawing on found surfaces. I now have seventeen machines from four different series.The drawing machines are assembled from found objects —a collection of ‘readymades’ of mechanical bits and pieces. At the core of each drawing machine is a spring wound toy. The movement of the machine is augmented by adding other found objects. Then a prosthetic drawing stylus is attached to the chassis to enable the machine to draw.
disruptive agents of drawing and instead produce a drawing that is imprecise, silly and unknowable. However, the windup mechanism undermines any illusion that the human hand is totally removed from the drawing procedure. For the drawing to come into being someone has to wind the machine, load it with ink and release it across the page. Although this person isn’t forming the line themselves, their proximity to the process allows them to be immersed in the drawing process. A different kind of drawing experience is formed through the spectacle of the machines in action.
The Exquisite Drawing Machines have led to discovering new visual languages of geometries and fields with lines, dots and dashes, but have also lead to methods of play that favour emergent, indeterminate, and irrational processes. As analogue machines, they cannot be coded to perform specific computations. They are instead tied to the physical conditions latent in the found objects they are made from.
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These devices that are the scale of the hand, replace the architect’s hand as the agent of drawing. The Exquisite Drawing Machines become
My hands are retasked to make architecture through tinkering instead of making architecture by drawing. Making the machines becomes the architectural act. These machines provide something that architecture cannot. They come to life, they are animated, comical, cute. They have a personality. These machines allow a plurality of irrationality, playfulness, fidelity, hybridity, scepticism, randomness, informality, nonsense, indulgence, marginality, instrumentality, alchemy, spatiality, materiality and the exquisite as viable and expansive attributes of architectural practice.
Exhibitionist Drawing Machines This exhibition is curated to document the chronology of the Exquisite Drawing Machines and to expose the process of tinkering and playing with them. The work generated within each of the four iterative series of machines is collected and arranged on respective display tables. The creative process can be unpacked through the fragments of drawings, photographs, guidebooks and videos on display. A timeline of the project connects these tables and orders the various experiments within them. At the centre of this exhibition is a work-in-progress drawing titled, “Large Brass.’’ This drawing will be completed over the course of the exhibition using all seventeen of the Exquisite Drawing Machines. Through live sessions of drawing, the function and behaviour of these machines can be observed. The surface of this drawing is made of hammered brass. Brass is used to heighten the spatial, material and experiential aspects of the drawing process as the machines clatter about. The imperfections of the drawing substrate creates a non uniform plane for the Exquisite Drawing Machines to interact with in unpredictable ways. The purpose of this is to demonstrate how the machines record latent spatial forces through the ways their environment affect their performance.
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My role in this drawing is to let this play out. Once a drawing machine is wound and released it is uninterrupted. Within the drawing process I am sensitive to conditions that enhance indeterminacy. I facilitate the dialogue between these invisible forces and the machine, in order to extract a gesture from the machine that renders these conditions visible through the ink they leave in their wake. The drawing out of indeterminacy, shifts the significance of this drawing away from the output and into the process. This is a generative drawing where the processes of the machine are the focus and, while the resulting drawing opens up interpretive readings and associations. The study of space more or less ends when the drawing ends. As architectural instruments, what the Exquisite Drawing Machines offer is processes of drawing things out. Therefore, the proximity of these instruments of production with what they produce and how they themselves are produced, is the focus of this exhibition. This exhibition lays bare processes of my creative practice research. These are exhibitionist drawing machines.
Dalia Bukhamsin Shaping the Future PhD (Architecture) - In progress Supervisors: Chris Tucker, Michael Chapman Since the movement’s first congress in 1993, New Urbanism has become a popular planning strategy for cities to become more compact. Within architecture, many urban projects have relied on its principles to develop social structures and urban meaning. While it has provided density around transport and working nodes, its success in creating places where people want to live is debatable. Isn’t it time to move forward from its generic spaces and begin to shape another future? The lack of identity and soul within these places is a sign for other ways that need to be found. The generic structures of New Urbanism have forgotten about play. Play, as an infrastructure, can develop the heart and soul we often associate with place. The project I have designed for this exhibition explores the contribution play might have within New Urbanist structures. It incorporates commercial, residential and green spaces, connected by an infrastructure of play. The pier becomes an active mediator between the context and our individual experiences, where play becomes an active facade communicator creating public space. The pier will also support and respect change in direct response to the desire of inhabitants, where a house could be transformed into an active space.
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Michael Chapman Other Michaels Staff (Architecture)
My name is Michael. I am an architect. My registration number is 9228, or IXCCXXVIII as it is written in the tattoo on my shoulder. My research explores the conditions of being named Michael, and how this effects the architecture I produce, and the architecture that other Michael’s produce. It also explores the world that is produced on our behalf. Michael was the most popular name of the 20th Century in America. In fact, it was the most popular name of the year for 44 years of the Twentieth Century in the US (from 1954 to 1998). It is estimated there are currently 4 133 699 Michaels going about their lives across America. In fact, the statistical system that ranks the popularity of names in America was developed by a Michael— Michael Shackleford—tired of the commonality of his first name and constantly being confused, forgotten or misrepresented. As of recently, 80.1% of Michael’s in America were white (compared to the national average of 63.9) and it is most dominant in the strongly middle class states of Wisconsin, New York, Minnesota, Vermont and Michigan. In the decade I was born, Michael was the most popular male name in Australia. In fact, Michael topped the list for popular male names in NSW from 1974 until 1981. A total of 1503 other Michaels where born in NSW the year I was born. In my immediate community of practice—registered architects in NSW named Michael—there are 96 other active practicing architects named Michael, out of a total of 4238. This represents 2.2% of the total population, or 3.2% of all male architects in the region1. Sadly, Michaels are also in decline. Our numbers are dwindling2 and the global population of Michaels is at its lowest historical level since the Second World War. My work explores the architecture of Michaels: both real and fictional. It explores the forgotten Michaels, the fabricated ones, the unconsulted ones, and the unnoticed.
1. I would like to thank the NSW Architects Registration Board, and its Registrar Tim Horton for generously participating in this study. 2. Zatat, “Michael Dying Out as a Baby Name”, Independent (15th May, 2017).
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Lindsay and Kerry Clare Quay Street Gallery: Rockhampton Fractional Professors School of Architecture and Built Environment Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment Rockhampton’s new Quay Street Gallery sits adjacent to the 1899 Customs House and its beautiful Fitzroy River-front setting. The Gallery will be the new centrepiece for creative and cultural events to reinvigorate the city’s heritage precinct. The Gallery diagram centres around an east-west ‘interior street’ that generates a new connection from the City’s main street through to the river. The new street is defined by two levels of generous gallery spaces on one side and open function areas on the other, that culminate in a three-storey glazed atrium and colonnade to engage directly with Customs House. Architecturally the materials and colour palette of the Gallery has been selected to complement the historic building context. The new Gallery expands RAG’s loan capacity for travelling blockbuster exhibitions and creates a befitting setting for its own internationally significant collection of works including those of the ‘greats’ of Australian modernism.
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SCALE 1: 1000@ A1
© CONRAD GARGETT DO NOT SCALE DRAWING & VERIFY ALL DIMENSIONS AND LEVELS ON SITE NOMINATED ARCHITECT : BRUCE WOLFE NSW Reg. 6969
REV 1
DESCRIPTION Preliminary Egress Diagrams
DATE 05/09/17
APPD
AWNING OVER
COLONADE
1:20
CAFE 116 m²
QUAY ST ENTRY FORECOURT
1:15
LIFT
KITCHEN 23 m²
AWNING OVER
FUNCTION 110 m²
MALE
ACCESSIBLE
AIRLOCK
AIRLOCK
LONG GALLERY 113 m²
ART LIFT
SERVICE WALL
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RECEPTION / CLOAK 15 m²
SHOP 42 m²
THRESHOLD
FEMALE 5900
ESCAPE
1 AR-4-3001
Ground Floor - Plan 1 : 100
GALLERY 569 m²
DOCK
PROJECT
Quay St Cultural Precinct Development
TRUCK
REGISTRATION 22 m²
PRELIMINARY
NAME AREA ACCESSIBLE 6 m² BABY 8 m² FEMALE 12 m² MALE 7 m² CAFE 116 m² AIRLOCK 58 m² CIRCULATION 61 m² ESCAPE 10 m² THRESHOLD 29 m² COLONADE 155 m² QUAY ST ENTRY FORECOURT 60 m² FUNCTION 110 m² GALLERY 569 m² LONG GALLERY 113 m² KITCHEN 23 m² ART LIFT 21 m² LIFT 4 m² PLANT 54 m² SERVICE WALL 30 m² RECEPTION / CLOAK 15 m² SHOP 42 m² DOCK 150 m² 22 m² REGISTRATION 1677 m²
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Rockhampton Regional Council
DRAWING
Ground Floor Plan
PROJECT No:
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17090
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AR-4-2101 1
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A1 SCALE
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Andrew Donaldson Zero Points PhD (Architecture) - Confirmation Supervisors: Sue Anne Ware, Michael Chapman 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 Angelino deconstruction. At this preliminary stage I map the recurring fascinations 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 research centers on the precise explication of my peculiar design methodology of multi-modal intersection with the ultimate aim of transforming and streamlining future projects.
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Peter Fisher Decoding Architecture through the Photograph: The Act of Representation and Politicisation in the Architectural Image PhD (Architecture) - In progress Supervisors: Michael Chapman, Chris Tucker The Information Age has made us visual creatures more than ever before. Globally, each day, we share over two billion images on digital platforms. This includes images of architecture and the built environment that are captured, shared and consumed, influencing our understanding of buildings and their significance either in history, or as representations of the future. Originally, the practice of photography was utilised to document and record, to depict reality, but its recent applications are based in more complex political modes of representation. Technical innovations of the camera and equipment and the use of digital interfaces all play a role in the coercive nature of how architecture is represented. It could be argued that the classification of a canon of buildings from periods in architectural history, such as Modernism, are not only based on the appropriateness of the building to the principles of a style, but a coerciveness of the images framed to represent them. This conscious act of representation through publications and now digital media has a significant effect on the cultural construction of architectural production. Through my own creative practice of architectural photography and recording many seminal architectural monuments through history, is the way we see a piece of architecture formed around our consumption of images rather than its reality? What role does the architect play in forming a representational value of the image of their own buildings? What are the parameters of the hero shot? The research sets out to draw a relationship between this conscious act of representation through the evolution of the image and our understanding of architecture as a culturally constructed phenomenon through history.
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Nick Flatman Glitch: House Sunderland PhD (Architecture) - In progress Supervisors; Michael Chapman
This work set out to explore how pre-determined standards of living are influencing controls on residential development. The work is a derivative and devious reorganisation of the regulations and standards that govern such development. The research questions constructed perceptions of space through subversion. It proposes a glitch(ed) way of living. The glitch is a catalyst for changing perception, experience and opportunity through deliberate faults — without meaning — into a purposive exploration of spatial artefacts. The research focus’ on ones metamorphosis through exposure in understanding, reading, and making of space. Where contemporary conventional practice has helped to establish a commercially fulfilled and limited use of technology, this research argues a deliberate misuse. As such, this practice aims to reorganise the traditional notions of control, allowing designers to consequently explore processes that abhor an index to their means of formal creation and broaden the spectrum of design iterations.
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Nicholas Foulcher Sites of Disruption Staff (Architecture)
Architectural schools can be viewed as sites of disruption and conflict, manifested by the conscious and unconscious decisions made in this social space by participating agents. In any context ‘social space’ is a complicated construct, subject to both collective and individual influences in the field. As such, agents that enter spaces are often subjected to standing customs and norms. Each agent’s differing stock of resources, predispositions and accumulated capital form the mainstay of the enquiry into the rise of digital technology and its permeation through the architectural field. It is proposed that digital tools have created ‘periods of rupture’; a reproduction of new art, language and working methods that have unsettled the stability of established design paradigms. These established conventions—which are aligned to Bourdieu’s discussion on ‘classical periods’—have been ‘uprooted’ amidst the alteration and innovation of tools of artistic production. It is argued that digital technology has uprooted the competence of drawing in the architectural discipline, a movement away from the traditional design paradigms—a force of disruption against the established social code. Underpinning this discussion lays an observation that educators, who hold symbolic power within the field, are primarily responsible for the ‘enculturation’ of novice architects. These active agents in the field play a significant role in shaping students through the dissemination of a distinct taste in the design studio. The findings suggest that these individuals—who as educators attain a dominant position within the field—represent the field’s educational ethos.
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Drew Heath Spiral of Light and Air PhD (Architecture) - In progress Supervisors; SueAnne Ware, Chris Tucker, Michael Chapman
SPIRAL LIGHT AIR DETAIL1: OF
AND
Working through my backstory has spotlit various methods I use in Architectural Detailing. The influence of my growing up and education in Tasmania has linked me strongly to materials and landscapes in detail. Several projects in the first ten years of serious practice in architecture and building focus on creating architectural details from different starting points. • Details have been created without drawings and by verbal description • Buildings have been designed and built to a high level of detail from indicative details that cover a small percentage of the overall • I have been taught by others through building my architectural peers projects. This has taught me their details, process and material understanding. Overlaid on this is my love of fiction. The research to undetake is an exploration of my past works and then the production of new details in my current work. The starting point will be a fictional brief derived from outside the normal prosaic world of architectural detailing, documentation and construction.
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Sarah Jozefiak Islands of Control: Spatial and Psychoanalytical Constructs in Franz Kafka’s Fiction Staff (Architecture) The fictional stories of Czech author Franz Kafka are renowned throughout the world for capturing the sombre and anxious zeitgeist of the early twentieth century in Europe. Kafka’s fiction was produced in the years immediately before the First World War and against a backdrop of emerging modernity. The dissertation critically examines several recurring spatial constructs — involving interiors, furniture and possessions — in Franz Kafka’s short stories, The Trial (1925), and The Metamorphosis (1915). These spatial constructs are identified and interpreted using a combination of theories drawn from three areas: architecture, psychoanalysis and literature. The primary theories which are employed for this purpose are Anthony Vidler’s theory of the architectural uncanny and Sigmund Freud’s On the Uncanny (1919). The thesis then examines the spaces of Kafka’s life and dreams, including connections between the two. The final part examines spatial constructs in his fiction. Through this process, the dissertation uncovers a particular recurring spatial structure, an ‘island of control’. This structure is nested at multiple scales and functions as a type of fortification, providing moments of personal power for the main protagonist in Kafka’s fiction, which are inevitably breached. By understanding the role played by these ‘islands’ in Kafka’s fiction, a new insight is offered into how architecture is used to aid narrative and character development, and further our understanding of the uncanny in architectural theory.
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Derren Lowe Deep Cuts + Easter Eggs PhD (Architecture) - In progress Supervisor: SueAnne Ware
In attempting to frame my work, I have identified two such pathways that continuously intertwine with one another to produce both executed (built) and ongoing hypothetical and exploratory (unrealized) architectural work. My practice attempts to be both making and meaning through an exploration of both craft and material detailing (the tectonics) and the conceptual, thematic and narrative ideas (the storytelling) - utilising a largely marginalised methodology in contemporary practice – the hand drawing, specifically, the graphic novella or “comic” format… Can drawing be both a critique and device for the tectonic production of details from which an ensemble of fragments or memories be used to create an overall narrative or approach to architecture? Can moments of spatial detail create closure in an observer’s perception of overall space? Can it make “deep cuts” and provide “easter eggs”? Implicit in this approach is a personal critique of modern architectural production, it’s loss of meaning and the loss of recognition of its authors and makers.
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Kira Martin Untitled PhD (Architecture) - Prospective
My practice is situated in the space between architecture and art. My installation works consider the body’s movement and memory within built form. They take a multidisciplinary approach comprising theories and practices of architecture, art and dance and investigate ideas of the ‘latent’ and architecture’s power to modulate the body. Attempting to materialise that which is concealed so that forces within space can be articulated. These projects explore interventions within public spaces and are a reply to the omnipresent surveillance of the spaces we move in.
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Brendan Meney UNEARTHING: Discovering the knowledge implicit in designing remote Aboriginal living environments PhD (Architecture) - In progress Supervisors; SueAnne Ware, Michael Chapman, Matthew Parnell The traditional realities of remote desert Aboriginal people’s lifestyle is often unspoken in design process between architectural and cultural space interplay. As observed in the field and noted in the literature on Aboriginal housing the need for cultural adaption, occurs frequently as people negotiate aspects of their physical living environments to fulfil cultural and social obligations to ‘country’ and ‘kin’. The design conversation around domestic lifestyle needs is often challenging for many of these families and the designers who engage with them. As architects responding to cultural, architectural relationships within this context, grasping the physical implications of these unstated subtle overlays, within design decisions, is critical to realising longer-term workable housing outcomes. This PhD research seeks to gain a deeper understanding of the elusive balance between ‘shelter’ within imposed living environments, and sustainable desert livelihoods for remotely located Aboriginal people. Through researching projects from my 20 year practice in Central Australia, I am exploring the lived experience of occupation and considerations of remoteness and amenity. The research methods seek to improve techniques of mapping, evaluating, correlating and recording archival design data against Post Occupancy Evaluations of the built works. The knowledge gained by exposing disjunctions between the original design intent and the occupant’s adaptation of the built space, will contribute to the developing more culturally sensible and adaptive Aboriginal living environments across remote Australia.
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Rowan Olsson Odd Workshop PhD (Architecture) - In progress Supervisors; Michael Chapman, Chris Tucker This research explores a mode of creative practice situated between critical theory, making and design. Drawing from the work of my emerging practice, Odd Workshop, the research investigates critical theory as a means of framing an architectural approach which engages an integrated lifestyle through design, fabrication and inhabitation. It is the culmination of a hybrid of work spaning conventional construction and architecture to engineering fabrication and artisanal craft building. The research investigates the relationship of this mode of critical practice to existing theoretical frameworks emerging out of poststructuralist discourse. This research seeks a means by which we might escape the totalising forces of the hyper industrial global capitalist system outlined in Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional man. It sees lifestyle as the integral summation of all life activities and as such, positions lifestyle (culture) as critical to addressing other social and environmental issues which are commonly treated as separate unrelated symptoms. The work is essentially an interrogation of the notion of the ‘boundary’ at various scales and contexts – physical and mental. This extends particularly to challenging conventional modes of land: use, division and ownership but also segregation between design and construction, intellectual and labourer by taking on the means of construction, from within a critically informed and hybrid mode of making.
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Tania Papasotiriou Augumented Perceptions PhD (Architecture) - in progress Supervisors; The post-millennial environment introduced an increasing variety of sub-ecologies with emergent properties driven by multiple, interconnected types of complexity (social, economic, cultural etc.). Arguably, the 6th ecology is made up of a self-evolving, dense, interactive network, connecting human, non-human, and humanoid agents into a coherent whole. The side effect of this real-time communication, which allows translating everything we do to measureable data, is the shift from co-incidences to co-relations that reason about potential future events. In this new machine ecology, the classical notion of expertise moves from “finding the answer to known questions” to “learning how to ask good questions”. Architecture as future-oriented, solution-driven profession, by definition is built on promises of forthcoming expectations. Designers embracing complexity through circular relationships between cause and effect start seeking proof that design will meet these expectations. Following the identification of hidden principles of problem setting in past theories, this research’s intention is to explore the impact of machine intelligence to architectural practice, and to investigate relevant design processes. This will lead to developing a new approach towards augmenting the cognitive processes, and extend the limits of the Architect’s response to future challenges.
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Anthony Parsons She’ll be Right PhD (Architecture) - In progress Supervisors; Michael Chapman, SueAnne Ware
This PhD establishes the ideaologies of Architecture Practice Savio Parsons Architects, consisting of Anthony Parsons and Gemma Savio, whom identify as both the Worker and the Thinker. One that is neither Modernist nor Postmodernist, but is positioned between the boundaries of these two iconic idioms and is classified as brazenly metamodernist. This dissertation proposes, that our practice oscillates between the naïve optimism of Modernism and the ironic cynicism of Post-Modernism, never entirely reaching the extremity of either theoretical pole. A metamodernist architect strives for sincerity, hope, romanticism and the search for the grand narrative, while acknowledging and revelling in the ironic while keeping the cynical at bay…just. UNTITLED SUBJECT CAPTION [1] is part of a series named She’ll Be Right, which is an investigation into an alternative way of thinking that results in a divergent method of practice. She’ll Be Right, is an unashamed ‘modding’ of Guido Van Der Werve’s Nummer act (Everything is going to be alright). The film situates a person walking towards the camera in front a large icebreaking ship, with tension forming as the uncertainty of the ship crushing the person fails to come to fruition. In a post-modernist situation, the film would end with the ship hitting and killing the person with sensation and grime, whereas in this particular situation, the person continues to walk, seemingly unperturbed by the mammoth of a vessel behind. In spite of the knowledge of what’s behind, there is this motif that eventually you will arrive somewhere in front of the camera, giving the work a sincere expression of metamodernist sentiment. She’ll Be Right follows this search of sentiment. She’ll Be Right, allows both the viewer and author to seek this sincerity by placing one’s self in particular situations over varying mediums. UNTITLED SUBJECT CAPTION [1] is a sequence of stills taken from the Pruitt-Igoe social housing demolition, which has been widely regarded as the death of modernism and the birth of Post-modernism in architecture. By filming the author in front of a green screen – an instant teleporter into varying mediums, it allows the author to situate itself in the demolition, to calmly walk away but also look back to acknowledge the failed optimism. By placing the work onto a reflective clear film, the piece also allows of reflection of the view onto the image, allowing a self reflection through the image. This reflection, along with the superimposing of the author, puts the subject of the falling towers at the background of the composition, demarcating its importance and meaning.
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Warren Reilly Untitled Staff (SABE)
Expressions sacred and profane, emergents wheel and recede. Sigals by another name, borne as monograms of creed. Raised and blended, rune and cipher hallmarks formed, alive and dancing. Explicating hieroglyphs or retroductive geo-mancing? Arc and spline: stroked fragmento for cosmonauts of composition. Line and curve as formed mementos of cartographic exposition. Hidden voices call for meaning, ancient insights, offer sources. Sensors open, yet still screening, endless need to distill forces.
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Amber Sauni Tactical Urbanism PhD (Architecture) - In progress Supervisors; Warren Reilly, SueAnne Ware This research examines the possibilities of utilising a formal Industrial Design approach within the scope of Tactical Urbanism. Industrial Design removes the role of the bespoke maker in its appeal to mass produce products using industrialised tools, and methods that involve multiple roles and stages. Comparatively, Tactical Urbanism refers to a city’s inhabitants making informal, amateur modification upon spaces or ideological facets which practitioners have deemed neglected by official bodies. The primary function of this research is to provide a flexible approach to addressing design problems specific to the Tactical Urbanist ethic, which may then be adapted and used by other practitioners in diverse, scalable exercises. As a vehicle for exploration, this research focuses on the Newcastle region with regards to ‘food security’ (described as when individuals have appropriate access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food). Preliminary research has revealed that local food insecurity is exacerbated by a lack of adequate, accessible food preparation and storage facilities available to those most at risk of food insecurity. My own practice attempts to intervene in current food access processes by highlighting existing free food sources and providing alternate methods of food preparation, with the intent of expanding the obtainable range of nutritional sustenance. The learning from this practice will be applied to a flexible, adaptive design model that utilises knowledge sharing platforms, which may then be used by amateur practitioners. It should be replicable, and consider the accessibility of as many practitioners and users as is practically allowable.
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Gemma Savio It Takes Work to Get the Natural Look PhD (Architecture) - In Progress Collaborator: Chloé Roubert Supervisors; Michael Chapman, Michael Ostwald On the Walter Gropius-designed Bauhaus campus in Dessau, there sits 2115 square-meters of impeccably manicured lawn. More than most lawns, owing to its location on a UNESCO heritage site, human labour and engineered devices are constantly restraining this patch of organic life. Twice a day nine water sprinklers hydrate it via a network of subterranean wells, every third Thursday a team of four men on two vehicular lawnmowers spend 10 hours trimming it and, to ensure minimum disturbance to the finished product, a small fence permanently delineates boundary. Over the summer of 2015, this ballet of covert systems that upkeep the iconic “green space” became the inspiration, subject-matter and medium of a public landscape intervention. As an interdisciplinary team, architect Gemma Savio and artist Chloé Roubert, disrupted the lawn’s maintenance cycle for two-months and appropriated the mowing task by creating an uncanny spectacle as two, inconspicuously dressed women, manually mowing their statement “It Takes Work to Get the Natural Look” into vibrant unkempt vegetation. This project emerged out of rigorous archival, botanical and critical research and aimed to reveal the existence of the living – animal, vegetable, mineral and human – in and around the built environment, to challenge the anthropocentric convention of the modern condition. It Takes Work to Get the Natural Look uses playful delivery methods to open up a dialogue with its audience about their position in a complex network. It connects their actions and consumption habits directly to flora, fauna, water and climate and the living conditions of other less visible human beings. The work asks the audience to question the ivory tower of modernity from which they view the lawn and connect the consequences of achieving the natural look to their own demise. The work acts as a billboard from which to announce modernity as an affliction that occludes the powers and processes that shape our everyday. In 2017 the work was reinstalled on the lawn of the Communication, Culture and Technology building at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Here, the work sits in conversation with contemporary architectural edifices illustrating the the all encompassing and enduring nature of the “modern project”. 31
Vanessa Sooprayen Informal Public Space and Island Culture PhD (Architecture) - In progress Supervisors; SueAnne Ware, Warren Reilly, Graham Brewer My PhD investigates the potential to develop public space strategies for Rodrigues Island through temporal and spatial project explorations. Currently, Public Space on Rodrigues Island is easily challenged by an influx of unplanned development and an endeavour to become urbanised. Within the past ten years the local identity of ‘Informal Public Space’ in Rodrigues Island is vanishing, stripping the local community of its public space. Rodriguan culture embraces outdoor activities such as agriculture, markets and fishing. The occurrence of ‘Informal Public Space’ is essential for these activities to take place and is a barometer of the liveability on the island. Through the lens of my three cases: Case Study 01 Locate-Map- Design; Case Study 02 Engage-Observe/follow-Map and; Case Study 03 Engage-Act-Design; I wish to explore and test the relationship between ‘Informal Public Space’ and urban activation. By understanding the sense of place, temporal activation and local culture, I wish to develop a set of rules to map ‘Informal Public Space’ and to design the components that are favourable for the informality of local life to occur.
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Peter Stutchbury Joyton Ave Creative Centre Fractional Professor School of Architecture and Built Environment Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment The Joynton Avenue Creative Centre, formerly the nurses’ home at the Royal South Sydney Hospital, provides a prominent new community facility for the City of Sydney within the expanding suburb of Green Square. The boldly imposed architectural gestures are transformative for the culturally significant site. The new canopy on the north elevation is a metamorphic architectural element. It draws from, and celebrates, the original brick arches on the first floor, creating an inspiring and iconic urban room that bleeds into green space of the Matron Ruby Grant Park. The singular canopy is comprised of seven hardwood-lined vaults, separated by curved glass gutters that allow streams of light to pass into this majestic space. The creation of this room is a generous act for community – an inclusive space that embraces all within. The outer copper skin sits seamlessly beside the building’s brickwork and signifies the truly civic quality afforded this landmark. The vaulted ceilings continue internally, penetrating the façade through existing openings and across new internal voids, to extend the ‘room’ deep into the building. Both the form itself and the hardwood batten lining manage the acoustics of the larger internal spaces, in an otherwise hard-surfaced building. The largest incisions, made for group-orientated activities, are centrally positioned and linked to the outdoor room by their new, shared ceiling. Spaces for art, education, community gatherings, offices and exhibition are accommodated, with natural light and ventilation increased to all areas. Smaller offices and functional rooms peel off the central collaboration spaces on three sides. The filigree of the original floor plan is acknowledged, with each cut left exposed to reveal in section sawn brick, concrete and floor battens, whilst delicate timber skirtings and picture rails are capped and protected by brass plate. This is a building that provides for the user’s requirements in a manner that enriches their environment. The scale and beauty bring freedom and joy, and offer an inspiring space in which to be creative. The amplification of the arches will deposit additional layers of memory and identity to this building, as it takes to the stage in its new role for the community. 33
Julie Squires The Gathering Garden PhD (Architecture) Supervisor: SueAnne Ware
As an artist working in the genre of Public Art, my practice is based on creating site specific sculptures or installations that resonate with the story of a place. Researching the history of a location has often led me to Aboriginal stories of immense cultural significance to a site. I have Warlpiri family from the Northern Territory and Gumabayngirr family from New South Wales. This family connection has motivated my PHD research and its focus on exploring the nuances of cross-cultural creative collaborations in public spaces and the built environment. As part of my research I am using an environmental installation project, The Gathering Garden, as a case study. Located in Alice Springs, it was the original catalyst for my research. I formed a team including a landscape architect, cross-cultural consultants and local artists representing the language groups and communities of Yuendumu, Ti Tree, Santa Teresa, Amoonguna, Papunya, Titijikala, Hermannsburg and Alice Springs. The landscape design of The Gathering Garden is based on a painting by Arrernte artists. Central to this design is the knowledge that Arrernte land is the connection and on this land other influences such as the Afghan Cameleers, the Early European Settlers, Indigenous inhabitants from many communities and current Alice Springs residents have been united. The design uses the central water Coolamon to represent the water hole that enabled these communities to inhabit Alice Springs. The installation involved the transformation of nine paintings into sculptural bronze coolamons and the planting of local flora including trees for shade and plants used for bush medicine
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Chris Tucker hedonist4 Staff (Architecture)
Residential apartment buildings are increasingly becoming part of the social and cultural fabric of the city. Their generic contributions tending toward the illusion that commonality and equality are actually the same thing. For the narcissist though, commonality provides a reference, while equality is for others. Having to rely on your residential address to mark out territory within the city, be it with voluminous apartments and expansive views, only goes so far. Many of narcissism’s intrigue with the city remains undone. In a post-truth world, where the wealthy corrupt politics, and the science of climate change is a myth, the tolerance around gratuitous consumption has become a sharper and more usual tool to usurp lesser’s, and make the earth pay. In the past, houses within large estates were able to conspicuously flaunt dominion, but in cities, the apartment building is a different beast. Architecture already pampers the narcissist, but why are we so reluctant to follow its arrow? The residential apartment building project - explores this. Unnamed, its presence within the city is unprecedented. It is a place for the few. More weapon than a place to live. Private indulgences, to the smallest detail, are illustrated and woven into its very fabric. Rooms collect views of the outside as conquered lands, while the labour of a thousand tiny hands pressing handmade wallpaper softens sunlit surfaces, only for moonlight to reveal their names. Places for degustation and bathing abound, in rooms with renders limed from polar bears and the rarest of metals. The origins of all surfaces is as meticulously sourced as the rooms are organized, dissolving any insecurities the day has thrown up. remember; it’s not a sense of entitlement if your schooling has made it so, it’s not narcissism if you own it anyway, it’s not fascism if it’s just how you think, and it’s not hedonism if you’ve deserved it all along. 35
Grant Vercoe Carrington Coal Loader PhD (Architecture) - Prospective Supervisor; Michael Chapman This is my painting entitled, “Carrington Coal loader�. I completed this work as part of my Honours exhibition in 2010. I have developed a highly idiosyncratic style of paining over the years with a focus on architectural landscapes. My work is highly planned and not in the least, gestural. I started painting buildings around Newcastle, and when I had exhausted this I became interested in New York and architectural modernism. My Masters thesis centred around the birth of the skyscraper in Manhattan and the quirk of the 1916 zoning law that led to the architectural style of the set back skyscraper, of which the Chrysler and Empire State buildings are the best examples. My current work revolves around the continued survival of the curtain wall in contemporary architecture. I start planning my works using a light table to incorporate multiple images and perspectives into one coherent image. When this is completed I do a line drawing in black ink which is transferred to a inkjet friendly transparency. This transparency is projected onto a board using an overhead projector. The advantage of this is that there are no marks made on the surface of the board before painting. When I start executing the painting, I follow the plan exactly, everything has been thought out and resolved. I then use 2mm wide strips of painters blue masking tape (I use this kind of tape because it prevents bleeding and removes easily after long periods of time) to trace the line drawing projected on the board. Essentially, drawing with tape. I then paint in the individual spaces, then remove the tape for a sharp flawless result. This is a process that I have developed over may years of arts practice.
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SueAnne Ware (Lead Investigator)
Chris Johnston (Project Manager)
Kalyna Sparks
(Research Assistant)
Power Plants at White Bay Power Station
The Power Station is envisioned to be a hub for knowledge intensive and advanced technological industries, making WBPS an anchor of innovation and technology district for The Bays Precinct. However, its previous operation as a coal-fired power station generated site contaminants that remain in-situ. This collaborative project utilises phytoremediation techniques for expressing rehabilitation and restoring balance to publicly owned contaminated sites. It combines both i nnovative science with a unique activation opportunity for WBPS. Phytoremediation is a low cost, plant (vegetative) and solar energy driven, soil remediation technique. The project is two-fold: cleansing or repairing contaminated lands, and utilising ecological processes in an artful, performative, playful and educative manner. The initial phytoremediation gardens remove toxins from contaminated soils, while plant materials become a visual litmus. Plants metabolize various pollutants into their tissues. After planting and harvesting up to three successive phyto-gardens, to ensure the contaminants are reduced to the required levels, resilient goat communities might be introduced to the site. Feral goats consume the final garden breaking down PH imbalances through bio-agents found within their bodies. The project celebrates phytoremediation techniques and possibly goat herds as productive ecologies, which rejuvenate, degraded land in a beautiful and expressive manner. While the actual physical site is the White Bay Power Station in Sydney, much of the project is accessed through the web and films. The milestones of this garden are planting and harvesting performances, however due to the toxins and other on-site safety hazards; access is limited. The project and its installation has a number of coordinated events which will result in films and a live website for open viewing. Power Plants quite simply is an intertwined ecological system of repair for a disused and toxic site. However perhaps more importantly it embodies radical hope.
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Out(fit)
Out(fit) is a group of volunteers drawn from the architecture and design professions. We undertake community specific projects in the Newcastle and Hunter Region. Originally founded by eight women, out(fit) is affiliated with the University of Newcastle and was formed to raise the profile of women working in the built environment and assist those who need our services the most, but don’t get access to our skills . Our aim is to showcase our skills through activities that directly benefit the people and places of this region. Activities include designing and building a playground for a crisis accommodation refuge, taking design awareness to regional areas with an outreach trailer and promoting the work of students who often struggle to get a start in their careers. Out(fit) aims to build strong bonds with the community and local industry partners and to add to our cohort of volunteers, so that we can deliver social, environmental, inclusive and recreational services and activities that enhance lives.
Committee, Staff + Alumni; SueAnne Ware, Emma Guthrey, Tanya Killen, Tania Papasitiriou, Lily Freeman, Vanessa Sooprayen, Candy Garraway, Nicholas Foulcher, Kalyna Sparks, Georgia Kissa, Amber Sauni, Jania Lemar, Bobbie Bayley, Jodie Duddington, Karolina Bartkowicz, Rebecca Evans, Cathy Smith, Raichel le Goff 38
Honeysuckle Placemaking ‘Honeysuckle Placemaking’ is a collection of five placemaking projects located within the honeysuckle precinct, Newcastle, Australia. The projects have been designed in collaboration with PHD students, Academics and Alumni of the University of Newcastle. The project is a multi-discipline collaboration between the School of Architecture and Built Environment, School of Humanities and Social Science and School of Creative Industries. The projects are an experimental investigation into activating underutilised spaces along the Honeysuckle foreshore. The temporary interventions provide facilities for the public to engage with, be entertained by and explore. The projects aim to attract local residents, tourists and visitors from greater Newcastle. These projects will be evaluated for their effectiveness using activity mapping; collecting data on interaction and behaviour usage. The successes and shortfalls of the project will be provided to the Hunter Development Corporation to inform future placemaking projects. The project is funded through the Newcastle Port Community Contribution Fund, by the New South Wales Government and administered by the Hunter Development Corporation.
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Chatterbox Michael Chapman
(Architect and Artistic Collaborator)
Kira Martin
(Architect and Artistic Collaborator) Chatterbox involves a standard 40 foot shipping container, which is modified in order to ask questions about subjectivity, the city and the urban environments that frame it. The container is cut a number of times to establish vistas and axes that are critical to the historical and future development of honeysuckle. The interior is lined with a series of plywood panels, that offer deliberately alternative and inclusive perspectives of the city and the way it is viewed. The interior also features panels, showing recent architecture student propositions for the city, and invites discussion and commentary on the projects that are currently shaping the city.
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Hidden Honeysuckle Emma Guthrey (Architect & Project Manager) Jarred Casley (App Development) Catharine Coleborne (Professor) Judith Conway (Researcher) Nancy Cushing (Professor) The Hidden Honeysuckle Project is a mobile app which allows the user to curate an understanding of the Honeysuckle precinct. It will encompass the multiple layers of human experience, curating and exposing the hidden stories of the honeysuckle precinct. The project will include historical data, oral history and modern understandings of a place, specifically the Honeysuckle area and adjacent harbour. The project aims to make historical and place specific impressions data easily accessible digitally to those who visit the area. It allows visitors to embark on a self led tour of the precinct where information is revealed through the app.
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Honeysuckle Hopscotch Nick Flatman
(Lead Designer, UON Architecture PhD Candidate)
SueAnne Ware
(Principal Investigator and Co-creator) Honeysuckle Hopscotch is a painted art installation on the post-industrial waterfront precinct of Honeysuckle. The project aims to transform an existing banality of a specific public space into an activated and attractive urban connection by means of a ‘painted ground’. The paint becomes a medium to renew use and appeal, and establish a connection between public and place. Research undertaken about the historic evolution by Nicholas Flatman (PhD candidate) and the School of Architecture and Built Environment (SABE) on the chosen site informs the project’s graphic language. The mural traces the changes in the edge of the water line over time, ghosted building footprints, and most importantly the Indigenous name for this area Meekarlba is inscribed in bright pink as a reassertion of country and an acknowledgement of aboriginal peoples dispossession. The painted ground addresses the issue of the albedo effect (light and heat reflected off surfaces). The overall effect of the painted area should be cooler than unpainted surfaces resulting in a more hospitable microclimate. Interacting with the artwork has elements of familiarity and indeterminacy to engage the public on different levels. The space now has the potential to be experienced at both a personal (immediate) and large scale (as seen from above). Introducing this activation and improving the amenity aims to renew use and appeal of an existing site, and establish a connection between public and place. The project also seeks to contribute to ongoing public debate with the way in which development occurs in Newcastle.
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Honeysuckle Lights Nicholas Foulcher (Co Designer, Architect)
Jane Shadbolt
(Co-designer, Animator, Lecturer) Illumination and projection provides both an up close and personal experience as well as overall dramatic effects on a city skyline, architectural features or bridges which are viewed from a distance. Illumination as a form of public engagement offers multiple opportunities for visual interaction and precinct activation. Depending upon what is projected and where the launch event is held, lighting can provide way-finding methods, cultural expressions and engagement. Illumination can cater to a broad audience and reach out to a large audience simultaneously. This strategy allows for visual engagement from a distance and at multiple sites at the same time, minimising requirements for space at particularly tight locations. In addition, minimal space is required for installing illumination equipment and it can be reused and transferred to an alternative destination if needed. Illuminating various buildings and monuments also highlights and showcases unique features of the city. Depending on the type of choreography, this festival can evolve to change with themes over a number of years. These types of activation strategies can be used during the night at any time of the year. Using a range of illumination and projection techniques, this activation strategy reveals Honeysuckle to a wide range of audiences and age groups during the night. It aims to highlight and showcase particular areas and buildings of interest. It is envisioned that this festival would be a collaboration between UON Creative Industry and architecture students, local artists, and interested property owners.
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Movable Feast Amber Sauni
(Lead Designer, UON Architecture PhD Candidate)
Warren Reilly
(Co-designer Senior Practitioner Fellow & Industrial Designer)
Moveable Feast is a temporary installation which invites the local community, visitors, and cooks/ chefs to occupy a key site in the public realm. Whether it is used for informal picnics, special events, or as a place which encourages sharing, the Moveable Feast is pushing the brief for site furniture beyond a singular use. It is envisioned that the table will allow for users to take advantage of fresh local ingredients within the vicinity of the Honeysuckle precinct, as well as serve as a model for future forms of Victory Gardens and public food preparation spaces within the precinct. The Moveable Feast provides comfortable seated table space for up to 32 adult-sized participants engaging in a cooking, dining or workshop experiences at any one time. The table will include: Planters & edible plants Sink & cold water tap Food preparation surface BBQ plate 2 stove hob burner
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HONEYSUCKLE PLACEMAKING PROJECT LOCATIONS
Movable Feast Location 1
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Chatterbox Location 1
Honeysuckle Hopscotch Location
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SABE Electives Since 2016, the School of Architecture and the Built Environment has engaged in a research-led elective program which establishes intensive design studios, workshops and live projects in local and international contexts, with the participation and engagement of our students. The electives are cross-disciplinary, and vertically integrated, with students of different levels of education, background and experience. So far, these electives have undertaken built and theoretical research projects in Newcastle, the Hunter Valley, Alice Springs, Cobar, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Denmark and London.
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Additive Manufacturing SABE Workshop Tutors / Coordination: Tania Papasitiriou and Priscilla Tan
Additive manufacturing (AM) was a 5-day workshop for students with no prior knowledge of 3d modelling or manufacturing. Through outlines of printing technologies and investigation into open source 3d printing communities and applications the participants develop a deeper understanding of the beneficial use of additive manufacturing. A complete workflow and a variety of methodologies from concept to completion was explored. Through parametric strategies, with the use of Rhinoceros 3D and grasshopper platform, complicated sets of geometries produced and tested under a simulation and optimization loop. Preparation of .stl and basic editing principles helped the student realize strengths and weaknesses of their models. The model creation was followed by presentation of the 3D printer Operational system and basic maintenance processes. The participants printed their own models and learned about post production techniques in order to improve the outcome’s quality. Using the skills the students gained from this workshop they will be able to produce almost everything. In parallel an advance class, that lasted two days introduced basic operation and maintenance principles to students with prior 3d modeling experience. For more visit AM Instagram hashtag: #AMatuon
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Advanced Construction Manufacturing SABE Elective Tutors / Coordination: Thayaparan Gajendran and John Smolders
The construction industry is changing rapidly to accommodate the advancements in the technologies including robotics, artificial intelligence, drowns and digital modelling technologies. These changes are impacting on the skill sets and practices of the current workforces and continue to shape the skill of the future workforce. The elective course aimed to expose students to some of the new advanced construction manufacturing technologies and practices in Europe. Students visited: Laing O’Rourke Explore Manufacturing Facility in Worksop UK: Process involved from the manufacturing plant to a construction site concerning multilevel residential construction and how ‘Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA)’ was conceptualised. TU Delft University, Delft, Netherlands: The University Edition Tour covered the facilities used for teaching and research in the areas of architecture, design and technology development with the history of the institution. TU Eindhoven 3D Concrete Printing Lab Tour, Eindhoven, Netherlands: The research program ‘3D Concrete Printing (3DCP)’ is developing a 3D Concrete Printer at the Department of the Built Environment. Voorbij Prefab Factory, Amsterdam, Netherlands: A modernised offsite prefabrication factory programme towards a fully automated production process. MX3D 3D Steel Bridge Printing Facility, Amsterdam, Netherlands: 3D printing of a fully functional, intricate steel bridge, that to be placed over water in the center of Amsterdam. 50
Density | Intensity | Immensity Singapore SABE Elective Tutors / Coordination: Michael Chapman and Wei Yap Ooi
Singapore is one of the most interesting and dynamic cities in the world. This student elective investigates issues surrounding density, diversity and resilience within Asian metropolises, with an emphasis on new approaches to housing and public space in expanding and developing regions of Singapore. The elective will be framed around the recently released masterplan for the Jurong Lake District and will explore the historical urban development of Singapore, the social and political economies of the city, and the typology of the integrated, mixed-use tower. Each of these frameworks will provide a platform for radical design propositions that situate architecture at the centre of the future development of both the city and the region. The elective will explore important aspects of HDB housing models, urban planning and the role of landscape and urbanism in shaping the urban spaces of the future. By exploring the urban condition of south east Asia, the elective sets out to further appreciate and expand the role Australian architects play within our region (Australasia) and the future, and also how cross-border knowledge exchange can influence global policies and spearhead innovation, resilience and progress for the built environment.
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Design for Innovation: Dementia SABE Elective Tutors / Coordination: Warren Reilly
Design for Innovation asked students to apply their critical thinking skills to Australia’s second largest cause of death – dementia. Thinking beyond the “normal” built environment to engage specifically in design responses for those effected by dementia; be it directly or indirectly. These designs responded to different elements of the struggles confronting those with dementia. The variation of patient responses to sensory stimuli; tailored virtual and augmented reality assistance systems; and personalize, wearable monitoring systems to improve recovery time from psychosis. All with the single aim of improving the quality of life for the patient and their loved ones.
SENSORY EXPOSURE LINKING SENSORY RESPONSES
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Entry Room. Health and Wellbeing Project 2, São Tomé de Paripe, Salvador, Bahia (Brazil) 2017. SABE Elective Local Community leader: Dona Meire. Tutors / Coordination: Fernanda Cabral, Peter Stutchbury. Local Community Health Liaison: Flávia Cabral. Collaborator: Michael Phillips, Ateliervivo.
A second visit to the Sao Tome de Paripe community located on the outskirts of Salvador, Brazil by the Peter Stutchbury Foundation and architecture students from the University of Newcastle. The objective of the week-long visit was to design and build structures which support children’s health at a community-run childcare centre. For the duration of the visit students stayed in the community, working and living side-by-side with local residents which provided a highly immersive experience and rich exchange of ideas. Following the request of childcare centre founder Dona Meire a roof was constructed over a play space at the entrance of the centre. The roof allows the space to be used in all weather conditions as well as increasing passive cooling to the existing centre. A twisting roof solution was developed for the covered space to reconcile the difference in roof angles of the two adjoining existing buildings. A suspended polycarbonate sheet was installed between the two buildings to cover the space between and serves as a gutter to capture rainwater. Doors and benches were installed in the ‘watershed’ project constructed the previous year, to enable it to function as an outdoor classroom. Additional elements created included a tooth brushing station, a rope swing, as well as benches and landscaping to the outdoor classroom entry.
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Etiwanda Cobar SABE Elective Tutors / Coordination: Drew Heath and Peter Stutchbury
The brief, create a usable habitable space off the old shearers kitchen, the result, quintessentially outback Australia, guided by Peter Stutchbury and Drew Heath. We begin with a half day design workshop exploring the possibilities of the site while using our limited palate of materials, two bundles of 2x4 cypress pine timber, a dozen sheets of ply, a roll of sarking, flat steel and whatever we can find within a 5km radius. With a few designs that come close but lack the refinement and understanding that experience brings, Pete and Drew guide us with a brief design discussion. The resulting decision of 10 minutes of solid discussion is that we need to start with a simple wall that sweeps from back to front to deal with some of the harshest conditions the place has on offer. After day one the design moves out of a pen and paper environment and into a worksite environment, design drawings and discussions happening wherever we can mark on something, from sheets of MDF to old internal doors. Organic design decisions, guided by Pete and executed with help from Drew result in an inside out panorama of a building, responding to a landscape that at first seems desolate and relentless but as you look a little closer reveals a dynamic and utterly amazing landscape full of life in a daily struggle to survive. The result of these organic decisions, a stoic tapered wall facing west two bunk rooms of 4.5m x 3m separated by a centre deck, all placed to protect the initial 1950’s shearers kitchen. Complete with a wood stove that doubles as a water heater and a view line from the kitchen and living spaces on the east of the additional bunk spaces, across the deck and low walled bathhouse, to the view extending down the spine of the property and across this ancient river valley. The new spaces are then capped with the equivalent of a broad brimmed hat, an eave line, extending from 1.2m to 1.8m off the face of the wall. Leaving the building effectively tipping its hat to the landscape it has become a subservient beacon within. (Reflection statement provided by UoN student Michael Iserief) 54
Pigeon Architecture Guide Book Tokyo SABE Elective Tutors / Coordination: Chris Tucker
This elective involves the mapping of the small scale, street based urban architecture of Tokyo as a guide book. When Atelier Bow-Wow documented architecture within Tokyo with ‘pet-like characteristics’, they similarly collected these individuals as a guide book of Pet Architecture. While they might appear as pets for locals, for travellers they are more the pigeon. Existing in pockets of the city, sometimes in large numbers, but seemingly camouflaged against the collected consciousness of urbanism. The Pigeon Architecture Guide Book needles these structures from their hiding places, explores their textural, formal and functional characteristics, and catalogues them as an architecture of public space. What opportunities exist within Australian urbanism for the architecture of the pigeon? Positioning a diverse and productive urbanism against the sometimes banal and generic surfaces of contemporary Australian urbanism, might yet crack them open.
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Promoting Understanding About Sustainable Development and Resilience in South Korea SABE Elective Tutors / Coordination: CIFAL
The immersive course brought together 19 students from the School of Architecture and Built Environment and other disciplines of the University of Newcastle, Australia. With the generous support from the Australian Governments New Colombo Plan, 15 of these students were granted mobility scholarships to enable their participation in this unique course and study visit. The course activities took place in Incheon and in Jeju, South Korea. While in Jeju, students had the opportunity to join over 50 students from around the world and participate in the “International Youth Workshop” to exchange ideas and innovative ways in which youth can contribute to advance sustainable development. In Incheon, students visited the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction for Northeast Asia (UNISDR – ONEA) to participate in an introductory session about the concepts of disaster risk reduction and resilience building, while learning to apply these principles in diverse contexts. As well as being exposed to Korean culture and language, by the end of this course students from the University of Newcastle were able to acquire a better understanding of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as other global frameworks such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, while identifying concrete examples on how to integrate disaster risk reduction principles in the built environment and work towards the achievement of the SDGs.
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Rebuilding Communities Mexico SABE Elective Tutors/Coordination: Lindsay and Kerry Clare
The 2018 Mexico elective introduced students to Maya, Aztec, Hispanic and contemporary architecture and cultures in Mexico City and the Yucatan Peninsula. Through participation and observation, the students built their skills in research and analysis of site, culture, traditional building methods and environment. Before embarking on their project - a community centre (and disaster relief centre) the students visited recent community and school buildings where it became evident that many new buildings left behind the principles embedded in traditional construction and environmental responses. This loss was clearly detrimental to occupant comfort and cultural connection. In Mexico City students toured the Anthropolgy Museum and historical downtown, the Convent and houses by Luis Barragan, the houses of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and the pyramids Teotihuacan outside the city borders. Buildings damaged in the 2017 earthquake were visited and discussed in relation to their significance and retention. Yucatan Peninsula tour included Campeche, Palenque, Merida, Chichen Itza, Uxmal and the Mayan Riviera: Playa del Carmen and finishing at Tulum. The community centre project was based on a site visited in Campeche and on return to the IBERO university the students worked in groups with Mexican architecture students to design their proposals in the light of their recent experience and research. The results demonstrated an outstanding advancement in their understanding of the interrelationships of culture, construction and climate. Returning from Mexico through Los Angeles a two day excursion was undertaken visiting seminal projects by Frank Gehry, Rafael Moneo and houses by Eames, Greene and Greene, Schindler, Lloyd Wright, Lautner and Neutra 57
Tangetyere Alice Springs SABE Elective Tutors / Coordination: Chris Tucker Collaborator: Tangetyere Design
This elective involves students being embedded within the Alice Springs architectural practice of Tangentyere Design. Students participate in the design of live projects within the town camps of Alice Springs, meeting residents, and being part of the landscape for a couple of weeks. The projects we contribute to are a modest effort to restore a measure of social equity and cultural agency within places Australia appears to have largely forgotten. For the residents, who have endured over many decades, an ever changing Indigenous policy landscape - restricting access to adequate housing, health, education and employment opportunities - the cycle of disadvantage and dispossession continues. As a form of urbanism, the town camp maintains itself as an edge between the peoples of the first nation and the process of colonisation. Spatially, the town camp exists as both a radical critique of a dominant white culture that obsesses with ownership and consumption, and a dominant white culture that appears to not care. The image shows a star picket hammered deeply into a communal open space, surrounded by a handful of houses, in a town camp. It’s there to prick the tyres of the pricks who drift their cars at high speed in the middle of the camp. It reminds us of the happenings that we bear no witness to, but are none the less real. Does this happen where you live? In one of the most wealthy countries in the world, why are we still talking about this?
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trans—arkitektur: exploring spatial experience and design through recording, digitalisation, and augmentation. Aarhaus SABE Elective Tutors / Coordination: Nicholas Foulcher and Nicholas Flatman As our relationship with smart devices, wearables, and computers evolves, so too does the ability to perceive and understand space as an extension of our physical capabilities. Using ‘everyday’ technology, this workshop explored the transient qualities of a public space that inadvertently shape our experience within that space. Through a three part process of recording, abstracting, and visualising the ephemeral qualities of a selected public space(s); this workshop aims to develop an architecture that is derivative of these momentary qualities. The focus will be on what defines these transient qualities and the means by which they can be communicated through technology. The architecture in-turn, aims to enhance, and or, define a spatial quality of its own. The workshop opens questions of technology assisted design in the evolution of reading, making and understanding space. In smalls groups, the students were required to complete a three part design process to develop a building facade at 1:1 in augmented reality. The focus will be on what defines the transient qualities and the means by which they can be communicated through technology. The architecture in turn, aims to enhance, and or, define a spatial quality of its own. The workshop opens questions of technology assisted design in the evolution of reading, making and understanding space.
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p r a c t i c e . e c o l o g y. r e s e a r c h . i n t e n s i v e
Friday 14 September 10:00am 1:00pm 2:00pm 3:00pm 4:00pm
Timothy Burke Andrew Donaldson Nick Flatman Anthony Parsons Vanessa Sooprayen
PhD Examination PhD confirmation PhD In progress review PhD in progress review PhD in progress review
Saturday 15 September 8:30am 9:00am 9:30am 10:00am 11:00am 11:30am 12:30pm 2:00pm 3:00pm 4:00pm 5:00pm
Grant Vercoe Kira Martin Dalia Buckhamsin Julie Squires Tania Papasitiriou Amber Sauni Peter Fisher Derren Lowe Brendan Meney Drew Heath Rowan Olsson
PhD Applicant PhD Applicant PhD in progress PhD in progress PhD in progress PhD in progress PhD in progress PhD in progress PhD in progress PhD in progress PhD in progress
P E R I P H E R I E S
Practice Research Symposium Schedule