Subject: Studio
Year/Semester: Fifth/First
Involvement: Individual Project
Year/Semester: Fifth/First
Involvement: Individual Project
My third studio at RMIT, and my final studio before thesis was centred around secular civic architecture. The studio was a practice based studio run through Ashton Raggatt McDougall (ARM), from their firm in Flinders St, Victoria. The brief consisted of the simultaneous design of a Museum of Local Government and a Public Housing Complex on adjacent sites.
The intention was to experiment with ornamentation in architecture following Robert Venturi’s polemic: the duck and decorated shed. Taking ornamentation from secular aspects of Melbournian society and re-imagining a society that praised these qualities.
The intention was to experiment with ornamentation in architecture following Robert Venturi’s polemic: the duck and decorated shed. Taking ornamentation from secular aspects of Melbournian society and re-imagining a society that praised these qualities.
The Museum brief was to follow “ornament through form” methodology, taking a literal approach to ornamentation, we experimented with bold forms, not necessarily appropriate or functional but nevertheless, symbolic. While the Public Housing was to follow “ornament as a cloaking device”, where patternation was to be the primary focus taking floor plans from João Álvaro Rocha’s 1999 Social Housing Project and only affecting the interior where the façade design necessitated.
To aid in the design process, I envisioned the project through the lens of post occupancy maintenance workers and cleaners, an aspect of architecture often overlooked and relegated to afterthought. The studio included weekly assignments of analysing aspects of pop culture including cinema, art and literature and attempting iterations of the brief’s outline to best understand the concepts and decisions that would benefit the final project. Some of the iterations can be found at the bottom of the page.
An Imminent Infatuation - Manifesto
The path of remnant obsession is a heterotopia littered with relics and artefacts. To the left of our site we see the old library and town hall. The repositories of knowledge and law. We see a community garden and childcare centre where children grow analogous to the food they consume.
Of the two which is the ideal?
Of the two, what do they have in common?
The journey in front of us plays out the dichotomy between obsessive cleaning and devotion to maintenance. The building to the south orbits the broom-closet, dictating the optimal outcome for cleaning. Square form for ease of preservation, robotic service for automated care and attention. Dust has nowhere to rest and nothing is out of place.
Of the two, what do they have in common?
The journey in front of us plays out the dichotomy between obsessive cleaning and devotion to maintenance. The building to the south orbits the broom-closet, dictating the optimal outcome for cleaning. Square form for ease of preservation, robotic service for automated care and attention. Dust has nowhere to rest and nothing is out of place.
The museum to the north represents a culture that worshipped the tool and praised the repair, designing entire cultural centres to navigate the exhibitions of maintenance.
Have we reached insanity?
Can we save ourselves?
Or is this the new ideal?
