Studio 4
Jack’s Magazine
Warwick Mihaly and Erica Slocombe
Studio Description
Jack’s Magazine is a decommissioned munitions storage facility on the Maribyrnong River in the northwest of Melbourne. It was built in the late 1800s and remains a fragment of Melbourne’s industrial and military past. The 12.2ha site is characterised by a series of earth blast walls wrapping around thirteen low bluestone buildings. Both the buildings and broader site have sat dormant for the last twenty years.
Working Heritage is the Victorian government body responsible for Jack’s Magazine, and launched an expression of interest process in late 2017 to secure community and commercial proposals for its development. We propose to piggyback on this EOI process and develop a rigorous conceptual framework that will lead to provocative, engaging and future-driven design proposals for the site.
Studio Outcomes
The studio has five primary agendas:
- Develop a contemporary design proposal within a heritage place
- Develop provocative, alternative and future-driven design proposals
- Develop a proposal that integrates urban and riverside characteristics
- Develop an architectural intervention that explores the craft of making
- Develop a proposal that engages with the social politics of architecture
Students are required to develop a masterplan proposal for all or part of Jack’s Magazine, including a mix of new programs driven by the riverside and suburban contexts. Proposals will adaptively reuse the heritage fabric of the site and incorporate new architectural interventions.
Students will develop all or part of their masterplan into resolved architectural forms that are anchored in the history of the site and explore the craft of making.
Studio Leaders
Warwick Mihaly and Erica Slocombe lead emerging architecture studio, Mihaly Slocombe. We will lead the Jack’s Magazine studio in collaboration with two other members of our studio, Eliza Tieman and Job Gabriels.
Our residential projects are small, but our aspirations are large. We believe that when architecture improves a single project, it improves a street, a suburb, a city. We’re excited by architecture that explores ideas of adaptive reuse and contemporary interventions within heritage fabrics.
In addition to practice, we have taught four previous Design Thesis studios at the University of Melbourne and are actively engaged in the architecture community.
Reading & Reference
Students are required to read the various histories and EOI documents provided by Working Heritage for the Jack’s Magazine site. They will have the opportunity to tour the site and interview key personnel within Working Heritage responsible for the EOI process.
Students are encouraged to read widely into the history of Melbourne, and explore alternative ideas of urbanism, architectural engagement and place making. Some starting points include:
- The Spontaneous City, Gert Urhahn
- Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander
- Fluid City: Transforming Melbourne’s Waterfont, Kim Dovey
- Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Jane Jacobs
- Future Practice: Conversations from the Edge of Architecture, Rory Hyde
ST1/03 Monday 6:15-9:15PM, MSD Room 227
ST2/03 Thursday 6:15-9:15PM, MSD Room 124