Patkau Architects: Investigations into the Particular

Strawberry Vale School is currently under construction in the outskirts of Victoria.

Th is project deals with a subject that has been imp licit in our work from the very beginning: the relationship between the man-made and the natural. The distinction between the man -made and the natural, upon which much of our architectural heritage is based, is losing its significance. As surely as the forces of nature act upon our buildings, we work upon the natural world. Gravity, rain and snow, wind , changes in temperature, plant and animal life, all act to reduce buildings to their material constituents. At the same time , through the act of building, we work upon the natural world at both the relatively small scale of the building site as well as the relatively large scale of resource extraction, processing, manufacture and transportation. It is no longer clear whether anything is truly natural or truly man-made.

As a result of the increasing continu ity between the natural and the man-made, our cu ltura l traditions need to be re -examined . Both classicism and modernism are based upon the distinction between the natura l and the man-made - whether that be the humanist trad ition within classicism where architecture is understood to be a representation of 'man' as the measure of the world that is other or whether it be the abstract tradition with in modern ism where architecture is understood to be a manifestation of pure form juxtaposed to a world that is other.

If the distinction between the man-made and the natural is losing significance, these cultural traditions within which we work have to be, if not questioned, then enriched and expanded .

Clearly, while architecture is the product of human thought and work it also is affected by and increasingly affects the envi ronment within wh ich it exists.

In many ways what seems to be missing from both classicism and modernism, understood in th is manner, is evident in the subtle environmental adjustment characteristic of vernacular architecture.