Studio C/05
Expressions of Resilience
Magdalena Sliwinska & Yui Uchimura
Studio Description:
How can therapeutic arts practice values embed themselves into a creative and emotively nuanced site response, resulting from a sense of belonging, and a sensitive awareness of a site’s narrative plus the diverse range of humans + other creatures who inhabit it?
Being the leading chronic condition in Australia (National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing, 2021), an awareness of mental health and wellbeing programs are increasingly vital. How can we respond to the diverse needs of those of varying cultural and historical backgrounds seeking therapeutic practices, challenging clinical settings and top-down approaches that limit an individual's agency, and connection to place or community? As a counterpoint to sterile and restrictive environments which set unattainable expectations of perfection or eradicates diversity, how can we establish a series of reflective, explorative and sensorially rich spaces which provides scope for individual needs and variance, while fostering a stronger connection to one's own body, the community and to the land?
Through a deep attunement to the site and embracing enactive methods, the studio seeks to critically reflect on how we can respond to new modes of therapeutic arts practices with equally nuanced spatial outcomes; students will design a series of spaces dedicated to various forms of creative art therapy—including spaces for experiential and creative forms of expression, self-reflection, intimate conversations, communal gatherings, innovative or experiential exhibition spaces, as well as accompanying service amenities uniquely designed to complement the therapeutic response. Each student will explore a creative modality of choice, with the awareness cultivated on-site through embodied and multi-modal investigations of place. These explorations will guide the way students formalise their unique design response with a specific and sensitive focus on how people may engage, behave and interact in these spaces.
To enrich the students’ understanding of contemporary therapeutic arts practices, creative art therapist practitioners will be invited to share their experiences and insights into how they work therapeutically with individuals and groups, and the type of spaces they utilise in their practice.
Studio Outcomes:
In tandem with the studio’s explorations of therapeutic practices for both humans + other living beings through a trauma-informed lens, students will be asked to unravel the cultural and geological narratives of trauma that may be embedded in the land of colonised contexts, treating the land as one of the primary stakeholders. Each student’s design response should consider how the design, materiality and construction of the architectural outcome itself will facilitate therapeutic effects for both the land, its ecological habitat and community, akin to the transformational qualities of art.
Simultaneously, while dissecting the site’s historical narrative, students will be encouraged to examine the site through a multimodal lens, cultivating an awareness of how space can be understood through sensory perceptions, somatic experiences, material and art processes, and an ongoing process of knowing. The network of sites, all situated along the banks of the Maribyrnong River near the location of the existing Footscray Community Arts, holds a rich history of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people alongside its post-colonial industrial development. The design proposal will be considered as a series of satellite annexes that build upon the existing community centre, offering alternative spaces for new modes of therapeutic arts practice.
Students will gain insights by blending critical reflection and analyses of the site with phenomenological and emotive modes of representation and understanding—exploring an experiential and creative form of expression as relevant to their chosen modality—facilitating a deeper and embodied understanding of the modality through enactive methods while gaining insights into emotive responses to place.
Studio Leaders:
Magdalena Sliwinska is a creative and therapeutic arts practitioner (Masters in Therapeutic Arts, MIECAT) and sessional tutor with a degree in architecture and landscape architecture. Her primary interests revolve around methodologies and approaches grounded in sensitivities to the multifaceted human spirit. She continues to explore this through personal and creative reflections that range from embodied movement, model making, drawing and writing (‘The Spirit of Public Space: Embodied through Writing and Movement’ in JID, and 'Sensitive Belonging in a Public Space' in Kerb) as well as teaching. She has led design studios that focused on how autoethnographic embodied and multimodal site processes can inform the design of sensitively designed public spaces.
Yui Uchimura is a Melbourne-based architect, and one of her primary interests is how a dialogue between design and tangible craft processes can facilitate a more enduring architecture grounded in the local people and environments. Having spent time in Japan studying woodworking alongside other traditional crafts, such as washi papermaking and kintsugi, she continues to learn and engage with various modes of craft practice. She has delivered studio at MSD & MADA, which have explored various phenomenological and analogue themes with a focus on exploring architectural proposals through sensory and tactile mediums, culminating in physical outcomes that experiment with materiality and process.
Readings & References:
- Bêka, Ila, and Louise Lemoine. The Emotional Power of Space. Paris/Bordeaux: 2023.
- Cumpston, Zena et al. First Knowledges Plants. Melbourne: Thames & Hudson, 2022.
- Hübl, Thomas. Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds. St Martins Press, 2023.
- Girot, Christopher. ‘Four Trace Concepts in Landscape Architecture.’ In Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Theory. Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.
- Lewis, Paul, Marc Tsurumaki, and David J Lewis. Manual of Biogenic House Sections. Novato, California: ORO Editions, 2022.
- Malchiodi, Cathy A. Trauma and Expressive Arts Therapy: Brain, Body and Imagination in the Healing Process. The Guilford Press, 2021.
- Material Cultures. Material Reform: Building for a Post-Carbon Future. 2022.
- McGaw, Janet, and Alasdair Vance. ‘Dissonance, Disagreement, Difference: Challenging Thematic Consensus to Decolonise Grounded Theory.’ In International Journal of Qualitative Methods 22(2), December 2023.
- Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley, 2012.
- Pascoe, Bruce. ‘Considering Landscape.’ In Landscape as Protagonist, 80–86. Melbourne: Molonglo, 2020.
- Tufnell, Miranda, and Chris Crickmay. A Widening Field: Journeys in Body and Imagination. Triarchy Press, 2023.
- Zumthor, Peter. Thinking Architecture. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser, 2010.
A comprehensive reading list for further project-specific research will be provided in the first studio session.
Schedule:
Mondays 12pm-3pm & Thursdays 9am-12pm in MSD 141
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:
Footscray Community Arts & Surrounds; Workshop, MIECAT Institute Inc (Fitzroy)