Studio C/14
Beneath the Clouds
Peter Stasios
Studio Description
Beneath the Clouds is a studio interested in a particular region and a particular practice.
Exploring the history of the Latrobe Valley and more specifically Morwell, the studio is determined to critique the relationship between the fossil fuel industry and its destruction of vast territories and ruthless removal of First Nations Peoples.
Beneath the Clouds is a studio interested in reinvigorating a region and defining new practices
Morwell’s past can not be separated from the detrimental consequences of the fossil fuel industry. Its history runs lockstep with the history of colonisation and industrialisation, bringing with it all the untenable outcomes that Morwell has become all too acutely aware of.
Morwell is stuck in stasis.
Once the thriving company town of the State Electricity Commision (SEC) it currently sits on the brink of environmental and social disrepair. Each new decommissioning of the region's remaining power plants leads to further job losses and disenfranchisement.
This unfortunate situation provides a unique opportunity, that of redefining the ecological and social parameters of the region as well as helping heal Country.
Studio Outcomes
The studio brief responds to three issues facing Morwell: environmental distress, housing affordability and industrial decline. With the imminent decommissioning of the Yallourn Power Station (2028) the studio brief is to establish a new energy ‘microgrid’ and housing cooperative on the fringe of Morwell.
Designing with an established set of urban and environmental design principles the studio will provide a specific number of new dwellings and associated amenity to a collection of industrial lots sandwiched by a suburban condition on one side and pastoral farmland on the other.
The studio asks students to develop a sensibility, respond to theory and a specific set of architectural precedents and work through the complicated history of the region and site. To that end, Beneath the Clouds is seeking an architecture that displays a future focused critical intelligence as well as the development of a new regional character.
The culmination of this will be an architecture that is straight-forward and unsophisticated, the clever compositions of space using everyday or recycled materials and outcomes that are anchored within their context positively engaging with Country.
Studio Leader/s
Peter Stasios is an architect that works within practice and education. Peter has over six years teaching experience at MSD, having run masters studios since 2017. Somewhat of an architectural mongrel, Peter has gained experience working across a variety of typologies at different scales with the consistent through-line being the use of architecture as a vehicle to investigate and understand our world.
Readings & References
- The Biggest Estate on Earth - Bill Gammage
- Regional Bureaucracy - Guillermo Fernandez-Abascal and Urtzi Grau
- How Much Land Does a Man Need - Leo Tolstoy
- Looking Together - Michael Meredith
- Red Desert - Michelangelo Antonioni
- Living and Working - DOGMA
- Floor Plan Atlas - Birkhauser
Schedule:
Monday 6:15pm-9:15pm & Thursday 6:15pm-9:15pm in MSD 240
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.