D'Or: spatial, material and programmatic thresholds

Tanja Beer and Kelum Palipane

Studio Outline:

In 1992 Jennifer Bloomer wrote a paper entitled “D’or” that considered what was ‘othered’ – the either/or – in architecture.  From her perspective ‘the other’ included the second term in the binary pairs visual/experiential, structure/ornament, and form/matter amongst others. Her essay was situated within a critical discourse informed by post-structuralism which was in turn shaped by the exigencies of its time and place. She opened the essay with a quote from artist Robert Smithson:

‘words and rocks contain a language that follows a syntax of splits and ruptures. Look at any word long enough and you will see it open into a series of faults, into a terrain of particles each containing its own void.’
- Jennifer Bloomer, “D’or” in Beatrice Colomina, (ed.), Sexuality and Space New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992, pp. 163-184. 

… and proceeded to mine the word ‘d’or’ for its possible meanings:

d’or: of gold, or of the now (French)
ore: a lacy network of (g)litter embedded in rock
or: the other, an inferior category
door: a way out
- Robert Smithson. “A sedimentation of Mind: Earth Projects” in The Writings of Robert Smithson, ed Nancy Holt (New York: New York University Press, 1979), pp. 87-88. 

Twenty-five years later we conceive of the world through conceptual multiplicities rather than binaries, and yet we still have exclusionary zones, both spatial and material.  Materials flow freely across spatial borders, capitalising on weak labour laws and low currency values in newly industrialised countries. Yet we are fearful of allowing people the same freedoms. Border patrols are becoming more stringent and digital surveillance is ever increasing. Global manufacturing grows apace powered by burning fossil fuels despite concerns about climate change. Architects enjoy the availability of many of these materials for the structural and decorative freedoms they afford at low monetary costs with little awareness of the hidden social and environmental implications. Nationalism, terrorism, materialism, global warming, are the catch-cries across the media. The either/or’s have become increasingly apocalyptic.

This studio asks you to reconsider ‘d’or’ to find possible spatial and material ways out of global dilemmas.  What are the inferior categories? Where are the fault lines in our urban terrains? What unexpected materials might become precious to us?

We will explore programmes for excluded citizens (refugee processing, resource centre, and venue for events around cultural exchange) on threshold sites (borderlands or indeterminate spaces that are currently unoccupied by architecture but latent with other emergent phenomena) using ‘vibrant’ matter (‘bio-actant’ materials that might be enlisted as co-creators of architectural form). These are both challenges and opportunities; seams of gold that we will mine for their architectural opportunities.  As Bloomer says, doors may be exits but also entries into new ways of thinking and practicing.

Studio Leaders

TANJA BEER is an award-winning scenographer and Academic Fellow in Performance Design and Sustainability at ABP. She has more than 15 years of professional experience including projects in New York, London, Cardiff, Glasgow, Vienna and Tokyo. Tanja has taught subjects across architecture, theatre and science and maintains a strong interest in transdisciplinary practices. Her research encompasses temporary architecture, public art, community theatre, ecological design, regenerative development, urban acupuncture and science communication. Tanja’s most prominent work is The Living Stage, a global project which combines theatre design with urban food growing to create edible performance spaces. Also see: www.tanjabeer.com

KELUM PALIPANE currently holds the position of Academic Fellow in Architectural Design at the ABP. She is a graduate architect with experience in several award winning Melbourne and overseas practices. She has a PhD by Creative Works developing a design framework that would help retain and foster the diverse place-making practices of multi-cultural communities in neighbourhood regeneration projects. Her research uses creative ethnographic methods to explore migrant experience and identity, examining how unprogrammed place-making practices can inform design. She has teaching experience in graduate and undergraduate design studios at the University of Melbourne.

Reading and Reference:

Creative Research – Hilary Collins
Agency of Mapping – James Corner
A Cyborg Manifesto – Donna J. Haraway
The Three Ecologies - Felix Guattari
Material Matters: Architecture and Material Practice – Katie Lloyd Thomas
Critical Architecture – Jane Rendell
The Matter of the Cutting Edge – Jennifer Bloomer
Vibrant Matter – Jane Bennett
Design Research – Peter Downton

ST1/05 Monday 12pm - 3pm, MSD Room 117
ST2/05 Thursday 10am - 1pm, MSD Room 215

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