Re:Collecting

Virginia Mannering

Studio Description

Many museums and galleries are attempting to decolonise their collections: this studio asks how these ambitions might translate into the architecture of public institutions. In this class, students will design a “storefront for art and architecture” in Naarm/Melbourne’s CBD, exploring ways of inverting and challenging the gallery/museum model: making collections highly public, more visible and accessible, expanding teaching spaces and spaces for dialogue (e.g. outdoor public space and amphitheatres), interrogating institutional spatial hierarchies.

With input from UoM Collections (Charlotte Day and Kyla McFarlane) we will examine the future of gallery and museum spaces, and the drive to de-colonise the institution. We will study a range of new and upcoming exhibitions and hear from First Nations curators. Students will use these talks as ways of positioning the museums amongst shifting notions of the public gallery and its future roles in Melbourne.

Re:Collecting means to “revise” the role of the collection

Re:Collecting means to remember - what did you see yesterday, and what was here decades and millennia ago?

Re:Collecting here regarding the role of the collecting institution

Studio Outcomes

Idiosyncratic projects developed via careful readings of ‘place’ and ‘site’ and imaginative proposals engaging with and questioning the nature of public and civic architecture will be the fundamental outcomes of the studio. Deliverables will include the translation of research into spatial diagramming, mapping, models and evidence of an interactive process. The semester will require both the development, refinement and questioning of the storefront/gallery typology as well as ongoing spatial research conducted through mapping, forensic reconstructions, cataloguing, collage and narrative production.

Students will produce individual projects, with outputs including maps, temporal plans and sections, and physical models.

Studio Leader/s

Virginia Mannering is a PhD candidate at University of Melbourne. She has taught across architectural design studios and architectural/art history and situates her teaching methodologies across those disciplines. Projects and bio can be viewed at www.virginiamannering.com

Readings & References

Precedent: Storefront for Art and Architecture https://storefrontnews.org/

Book: Grace Ndiritu: Healing the Museum

Exhibition: Collective Unease: https://art-museum.unimelb.edu.au/exhibitions/collective-unease/

Exhibition: Emu Sky https://emusky.culturalcommons.edu.au/

Exhibition The Place https://museumsandcollections.unimelb.edu.au/indigenous/the-place

Maps: Mapping Indigenous Melbourne https://aboriginal-map.melbourne.vic.gov.au/

Schedule:
Monday 9am-12pm in MSD 240
Thursday 6:15pm-9:15pm in  MSD 142

ABPL90437 Design Studio C is an Early start subject. The ballot is held online at the beginning of O-week, opening on Monday 19 February and closing the morning of Tuesday 20 February. There is some preparatory online work to be completed during the week. Teaching begins with an all day, in person, compulsory Symposium on Friday 23 February.


Off-site Activities:
A walk around Melbourne CBD

Contact Handbook