HTML:  Familial Atelier

Jane Caught

Studio Description

HTML: Familial Atelier proposes the adaptation of a substantial brick warehouse in Yalla-bir-ang | Collingwood - the site of wainwright industry in the late 1800s, and a productive and culturally significant river flat for millennia prior – into a series of spaces to house both a workshop and the co-operative of craftspeople who undertake the work (mixed use typology).

Yalla-bir-ang can be seen as a relational entity, an organism that continually produces an array of fabricated matter, gases, ideas and other by-products. What are the opportunities provided by the Anthropocene, specific to this place? How can they be collected / metabolised, to better replicate an ecological system?

How will your architecture evolve a future that can restore equilibrium to these systems? Fundamental to the act of evolving a future through an architectural proposal is an understanding of the past - the forces that have brought us to the present; and our likely and imagined futures.

Studio Outcomes

Through creative research and mappings of site, students will examine the resources that are typically consumed in Yalla-bir-ang and propose a method for amplifying or redirecting their trajectory, whilst proposing future models of both home and labour. Studies of the rapidly changing and inter-related physical, economic, political, social, cultural and environmental forces affecting the urban context will be undertaken; across scales of both time and distance.

Students will be asked to investigate the regenerative resources available to this part of the city specifically, test their chosen material through a series of prototyping exercises; and propose a family-based / co-operative atelier model that metabolises this resource into a product that is able to be integrated into the built environment (and their own project).

In parallel to their material testing, students will undertake a systematic depiction of time at different scales, from embedded mapping to detail drawing; from 1:1000 - 1:1.

Studio Leader/s

Jane Caught was born on Wurundjeri Country, in a Robin Boyd designed house on the edge of the Birrarung | Yarra — the river of mists; instilled with a deep love of and commitment to the natural environment. Having commenced her architectural studies at University of Melbourne and completing her degree at RMIT as part of the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL), Jane co-founded the collaborative architecture practice Sibling in 2012. After a period of nine years establishing the practice, Jane moved on to found Heliotope (and HTML)  in 2021, determined to find a more responsible way of practising architecture in this place.

Readings & References

* Childs, Holly; Confetti (Non-coding DNA: a Metaphan Continuum), published in Drowning in a Sea of Data, edited by João Laia, published by La Casa Encendida, Madrid 2019

* Space Caviar (ed.); Non-Extractive Architecture : On Designing without Depletion Vol. 1, V-A-C and Sternberg Press, 2021

* Laily, S. (guest editor); Energies – New Material Boundaries, Architectural Design (AD) May/June, Wiley 2009

* Bataille, G; The Accursed Share: An essay on General Economy Vol. 1 - Consumption, Zone Books New York 1988 (first published 1949, Paris).

* Joler, V; New Extractivism, from Degrowth and Progress, L’Internationale Online,edited by Boned, S.B. &Hirsenfelder, I; 2021, https://internationaleonline. org/

* Mostafavi, M. & Doherty, G; Ecological Urbanism, Lars Muller Publishers 2010

FILM

* Varda, A; The Gleaners & I, documentary film, 2000

* Eames, C & R; Powers of Ten, 1977

* Hromek, D & Lynn Rees, S; What is Designing with Country? Deadly Djurumin Yarns, Parlour Collective, 2022

Schedule:
Monday 3pm-6pm
Friday 3pm-6pm

Off-site Activities:
Site visit to Yalla-bir-ang | Collingwood

Contact Handbook