Under the Pavement:
The Beach

Leire Asensio-Villoria & David Syn Chee Mah

This is an Urban Design Studio. Students who ballot for, and undertake this subject will be withdrawn from Architecture Studio C, D or E and enrolled in ABPL90389 Urban Design Studio C. This studio will be considered equivalent to your core Architecture Studio for the purposes of prerequisites for Architecture Studio D or E or Design Thesis.

Studio Outline:

“Under the pavement lies the beach”; a rallying cry adopted by the protestors during the May ’68 Paris  riots, con-trasts the domesticated urban surface of the pavement with the indeterminacy of the beach.  The pavement, or the street is characterized as a highly prescribed urban space deployed to designate private property.  The beach is its antithesis; an unprescribed, natural and open public space.

Today, the beach as an important public space persists in the collective Australian public imagination.  Its capacity to serve as a commons for all is seen to resonate with the national self-image of an open and egalitarian culture.  However, the beach, like any vital public space, can often be a contested site.  Where conflicts can be made explicit and apparent.

In Australia, the role of the beach as a public space is largely presumed.  However, this is frequently challenged by its economic value as property.  More and more, tensions emerge between private ownership and public access over the right to these sites.  Where the pavement threatens to encroach over the beach.        
Conversely, these cultivated waterfront developments can also expect to see this contested area reclaimed again by the beach.  Frequent flooding and projected sea level rise already threaten many of Australia’s beachfront residen-tial areas including Melbourne’s bayside suburbs.

The studio will engage with the emblematic space of the beach.  Its persistent association as a valuable commons may be reconsidered in light of concerns that challenge these spaces.  The studio will be devoted to exploring ur-ban desing and architectural proposals that reinvest in the idea of the beach as an essential public site for the city.

ABPL90389 ST1/01 Monday 2:15pm - 5:15pm, MSD Room 448
ABPL90389 ST2/01 Thursday 2:15pm - 5:15pm, MSD Room 448

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