Field Lines

Catherine Duggan

Studio Outline:

“Place is rather, a conjectural foundation, a ritual of and in time, capable of fixing a point of particular intensity in the universal chaos of our metropolitan civilisation.” Ignasi de Sola-Morales

Field Lines is a studio concerned with the considered study of transactions and their consequence. This studio aims to explore notion of context and extend the idea of field study as an essential driver in architecture. Students will be required to adopt a theoretical investigation of contemporary contextual framings (phenomenological, atmospheric, material, structural, ecological, geological, geographical, climatic, technological, social, political, metaphysical, post bubble or otherwise) to interrogate the  construction of inhabitation on a site of their choosing in Melbourne’s CBD.

The studio will be structured as a laboratory for the detailed investigation of, and controlled experimentation within identified fields. Students will be expected to closely & carefully document each transaction, noting the consequences interventions have within complex interrelated conditions.

Learning Outcomes:

As the notion of context is intrinsically referential, the working techniques utilised for investigations will be considered with equal importance to the investigations themselves. It is expected that modes of working will be relevant to the thesis and embedded within each investigation, one informing the other. Focus will be on the rigour of experimentation and documentation undertaken through semester. Each student will be expected to research and build a bibliography to underpin their thesis proposal, which will be submitted along with 1000 words, in addition to final presentation material and process folio.

Studio Leaders:

CATHERINE DUGGAN is currently a Senior Associate with Peter Elliott Architecture + Urban design, a highly-awarded Melbourne practice which engages meaningfully with both architecture and urban fabric. She has previously practiced architecture in Tokyo, exhibition design at the NGV in Melbourne; and has both taught & been an invited examiner for architecture & interior architecture programs at MSD, UTAS , RMIT & MADA.

Reading and Reference:

Core text: Stan Allan, Practice: Architecture Technique & Representation, 2009.

References utilised as a departure point for discussion & debate within the studio, (include but are not be limited to) the following:
Cameron Robbins, Sea Shanties, 2008
Natalie Jeremijenko, Radical Design for Environmental Health, 2016
Olafur Eliasson, Sculptor of Light & Space, 2009
Neri Oxman, Material Ecology, 2015

ST1/02 Monday 6:15pm - 9:15pm, MSD Room 227
ST2/02 Thursday 9am - 12pm, MSD Room 216

Contact Handbook Key Dates