THE/10
Camouflage
Athanasios Tsakonas
Studio Description
Counter cultures and protest movements operating in urban settings often assume strategies of camouflage to sustain their activities undetected and over long periods of time. They may appropriate vacant buildings, residual spaces or de-industrialised structures and remake these places to serve their varied aims. The Blue House in Wan Chai, a four-storey balcony-type tenement block that housed a martial arts school and clinic, now includes the Hong Kong House of Stories, a museum of the city’s society and culture that protests forms of urban renewal that erase community memory; Occupied Theatre Embros in the inner Athenian neighbourhood of Psiri emerged as an urban commons during the 2007-08 financial crisis; Chicago artist Theaster Gates revitalised an abandoned bank building as a gallery, media archive, library and community centre for an underserved African American community; Running counter to Japan’s conservative framework and strict social rules, Kyoto University’s Yoshida student dormitory remains a self-governed haven for progressive ideas and radical lifestyles; The Substation in Armenian Street, Singapore’s first independent contemporary arts centre housed within a former power sub-station and providing for experimental art forms in that nation-state.
Taking its cue from the recent exhibition ‘Protest Architecture’ organized by DAM – Deutsches Architekturmuseum and the MAK – Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna, students are asked to explore what is needed to sustain the architecture of activism after the protests have subsided through the prism of guest/host relations, spatial nesting, strategies of disguise, the tectonics of layering, and practices of camouflage.
Studio Outcomes
This studio asks you to develop a design strategy and material and spatial vocabulary for exploring the theme Camouflage interpreted in the many ways illustrated above. You are encouraged to seek inspiration from the physical, environmental, material, and social histories and characteristics of your locality. Our preference is for a design brief modelled after but not limited to the above approaches to public interest/socially-engaged design creation that is sensitised to local concerns. You may select a site of your choice within an established urban or suburban neighbourhood in Australia or overseas. Students who would prefer a more structured approach will be guided to develop a medium scale public facility responding to the state governments recently announced imminent destruction of the high-rise public housing towers in Atherton Gardens Estate in Fitzroy.
Studio Leaders
Athanasios Tsakonas is a practising architect, builder and writer with an extensive professional career spanning Australasia, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. He is a partner in the Singapore based consultancy Tan + Tsakonas Architects, and also runs a small design & build studio in Melbourne. He holds a Bachelor of Architectural Studies (Architectural History & Theory), and Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Adelaide along with a Master of Arts (Urban Design) from the National University of Singapore.
Athanasios’s research interests include investigating the spatial impact war cemeteries and memorials have upon commemoration and remembrance; and the architects of conflict. His book In Honour of War Heroes: Colin St Clair Oakes and the Design of Kranji War Memorial was published by Marshall Cavendish in 2020. https://aabookshop.net/?wpsc-product=in-honour-of-war-heroes-colin-st-clair-oakes-and-the-design-of-kranji-war-memorial-pre-order
He has also taught Master of Architecture Studio C, and previously Design Thesis studio the past three years at the Melbourne School of Design. A student from his 2022 studio was nominated for the Bates Smart Award.
Readings & References
Becker, Carol. 2015. Theaster Gates, Phaidon, UK.
Bolger, Colleen. 2023. The destruction of Victoria’s public housing. https://redflag.org.au/article/destruction-victorias-public-housing
Dewolf. Christopher. March 2018. “How the Blue House is Keeping Hong Kong Heritage Alive”, https://zolimacitymag.com/how-the-blue-house-is-keeping-hong-kongs-heritage-alive/
Dimitriou, Ursula. 2021. Occupied Theater Embros: Designing and Maintaining the Commons in Athens under Crisis. https://nomadikiarxitektoniki.net/en/texts-en/occupied-theater-embros-designing-and-maintaining-the-commons-in-athens-under-crisis/
Elias, Ann, Ross Harley and Nicholas Tsoutas. 2015. Camouflage cultures: beyond the art of disappearance, Sydney University Press, Sydney, N.S.W.
Guntram, Henrik Herb and David H. Kaplan eds.1999. Nested identities; Nationalism, Territory and Scale, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, New York.
Leach, Neil. 2006. Camouflage, MIT Press, Cambridge, MAss.
Lim, Kimberly. 2021. Singapore arts community mourns The Substation closure as fears rise that more independent venues will disappear. https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/3129178/singapore-arts-community-mourns-substation-closure-fears
Ng. Mee Kam. 2018.“Sustainable community building in the face of state-led gentrification: the story of the Blue House cluster in Hong Kong”, Town Planning Review. Sept-Oct, 2018, Vol. 89 Issue 5, 495-512. [MU -library-online]
Schedule:
Thursday 9am-3pm in MSD 227
Off-Site Activities: