Studio 7


CONCRETE AND CLAY

Virginia Mannering

Studio Description

Key Themes: In this studio, students will explore the relationships that exist between architecture and its context. Here, our studies will extend beyond the usual readings of site (the current and the physical, for example) to also look at less tangible but equally present and potent forces and forces (historical, political, geological and cultural etc) as drivers for design. Idiosyncratic buildings and rich readings of place will be the fundamental outcomes.

Site: Your project will be situated in one of the following: Auckland, Brisbane, Perth, Seattle, or Vancouver. These are cities that might have once been considered the ‘unruly edges’1 of the British Empire, but are now regarded as ‘Beta Cities’ in the post-global order. The studio challenges established discourse around the generic nature of global cities, but also admits the difficulty of establishing identity in urban territories that have erased or obscured their own histories, and in cultural frames that resist immediate understanding.

Project: Students will produce a library/archive for their chosen city using scalar research methods and investigations. The ongoing spatial research conducted will include mapping, forensic reconstructions, cataloguing and material explorations. Students will be encouraged to incorporate material from outside canonical architectural resources and methods e.g. film, literature, landscape art, archaeology and language studies.

Studio Outcomes

The studio asks students to think of the cities in which we are working as a dynamic but fragile and contested spaces. We will analyse their identities, reflecting this through unique and imaginative architectural propositions. To do this we will engage in creative and critical thinking and careful and thorough research. Throughout semester there will be an emphasis on:

  • Scaled esquisses and projects, moving from the XL (urban scale) to the S (the architectural detail)
  • Form-making
  • Model-making
  • Mapping and ‘forensic’ constructions
  • Research and research methods
  • An interest in interdisciplinary approaches e.g exploring film, literature, landscape art, archaeology and language studies.

Studios will consist of a mixture of pin ups and desk crits, with some workshops at the MSD and elsewhere in Melbourne.

Studio Leader

Virginia Mannering is a designer, researcher and award-winning architectural writer. She works in small practice on residential, educational, and exhibition projects, while her design research focusses on historical urbanism, explorations of site and materiality, and feminist architecture. She has taught extensively across studio, construction, theory and art history units

Reading & Reference

ST1/03 Mondays 18:15-21:15 in MSD Room 237
ST2/03 Thursdays 15:15-18:15 in MSD Room 137

Contact Handbook Key Dates

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Stop 1 provides enrolment and other support to Bachelor of Design, Bachelor of Environments and Melbourne School of Design students.