Unbounding Ground

Lucinda McLean

Studio Ballot Video

Studio Description

The government is encouraging schools and kindergartens to set up Bush + Beach Kinders where children can spend one day a week outside, interacting with flora and fauna, the ground, the weather, in unstructured play. Small grants are available to help set up Bush + Beach Kinders, but nothing that disturbs the ground is allowed.

This studio seeks an alignment of the first steps that children make into the world beyond home, and the first steps of a project. What is the joy of walking? What do we walk upon, what do we walk with? What is ground? How can children touch the ground and how can structures touch the ground? What sort of relationships can we be in with ground? How can structures curate relationships with ground?

Studio Outcomes

Students will develop skills to experience place, in order to work with. This requires observing and thinking across scales, cycles and networks -spatial and temporal. You will be encouraged to work across the temporal scales of the stepping, tides, the seasons, generations.

The aim of the studio is to consider the possibilities of the Bush + Beach Kinder, to attend to ground, place and Country. Deliverables will be prepared through both group work and individual work. The initial group work will be walking, experiencing and documenting site. Students will individually develop their responses, conscious of each step that they take, understanding that the making of the project is the project.

The learning outcomes are an understanding of ground, walking upon and with ground and the beginning of a deep understanding of the possible connections between the structures and ground. It can be a foundation of thinking about a project.

Studio Leader/s

Lucinda McLean is a founding director of N M B W Architecture Studio, established in Melbourne in 1997. The practice design methodology is place-based with a strong focus on materiality and cultural experience. The focus on the relationships between things allows us to strategically link large and small actions in each environment, focus on both buildings and landscapes and create holistic, inclusive and culturally deep design responses.

Design teaching and research with an ongoing focus on the Mornington Peninsula and Westernport is entwined with practice work, engaging students directly with firsthand research, the community, stakeholders and contemporary issues.

Readings & References

Briggs, Carolyn. The Journey Cycles of the Boonwurrung.

Presland, Garry. The Place for a Village: How Nature has Shaped the City of Melbourne.

Zumthor, Peter. Atmospheres: Architectural Environments, Surrounding Objects.

Solnit, Rebecca. Wanderlust: A History of Walking.

Ingold, Tim. The Appropriation of Nature: Essays on Human Ecology and Social Relations.

Carson, Rachel. The Sense Of Wonder

Schedule:
Monday 12pm-3pm, MSD 141
Thursday 12pm-3pm, MSD 141


Off-site Activities:
Westernport area

Contact Handbook