Studio 23

ALL-STAR

David Brand, Fooi-Ling Khoo & Jack Wilkinson

Studio Description

ALL-STAR Studio is set at the centre of a ‘dead zone’ that is eating the heart out of St Kilda...

Formerly one of the city’s liveliest inner urban cultural precincts, St Kilda’s Fitzroy Street has struggled under the weight of mass popularity and has drifted out of fashion. The street’s reputation, as the home of Melbourne’s richest, weirdest soup of sub-cultures and misfits has worn too thin. So thin that it now risks a slow death or being swamped by a tide of conventional development. The recent success of “The Block” in Fitzroy Street is a warning sign of this impending blandness - and the social and cultural costs required to achieve it.

This studio believes that this price is unacceptably high, that social division and cultural segregation are signs of failure not success. We believe that St Kilda’s traditional identity as a ‘culture of sub-cultures’ offers the social and cultural foundation on which Fitzroy Street's impending upcycle can be launched. This studio aims to demonstrate how urban vision and architectural design can take a leading role.

ALL-STAR: from the penniless to the fattest cats in town, there's a place for all sorts here.

Studio Outcome

This studio will take a real site right on Fitzroy St and re-conceive it as a flagship development for the re-generation of this (in)famous precinct. It will find immediate inspiration in the Victorian Pride Centre about to be built next door, the newly re-opened Esplanade Hotel around the corner, and deep-rooted institutions like the Prince of Wales.

The project brief will be for a multi-purpose ‘live/work/play’ urban development, embracing a high degree of social inclusion and sub-cultural diversity. It's ‘co-mingling’ ethos requires all strata of urban society – elite / high-end / middle-brow / marginal / underground – to be embraced and accommodated in the one place.

This is a highly realistic program, contributing directly to the City of Port Phillip’s major ‘placemaking’ project being rolled out in Fitzroy St in 2019. Students will explore the context and site opportunities together in groups; then produce their own architecturally resolved concept designs.

Studio Leader

DAVID BRAND

David is an architect and regular collaborator at OOF! architecture. He works outside the traditional confines of architectural practice and specialises in heritage + urban design advice and teaching. He is currently a Councillor on the Port Phillip City Council (representing the St Kilda area) and is passionate about the contribution architecture can make to the life of the city. St Kilda – its history, its culture, its politics, its architecture – is David’s patch.

David has taught architectural history and design at Melbourne University for many years and is a regularly invited critic and speaker at studios at MSD and other universities.

FOOI-LING KHOO

Fooi is an architect and the director of OOF! architecture, a small, award winning practice specialising in residential projects for demanding heritage contexts, weird sites + eccentric clients. She is also currently chair of the board of directors at ArchiTeam Co-Operative, representing over 650 architects in Australia, and an archi-film nerd who co-founded DADo, the film society of the Robin Boyd Foundation.

Fooi has taught numerous design studios for RMIT and the University of Melbourne at undergrad and postgrad levels and participated in many others as a guest critic and speaker.

JACK WILKINSON

Jack is an architectural graduate, OOF! architecture’s “apprentice” and a full time, full-fledged, SketchUp junkie. He is a graduate of the University of Tasmania’s School of Architecture. Before moving to Melbourne, Jack worked in Launceston based practices on projects varying from disabled care and schools to courthouse renovations and residential projects. His masters thesis explored the importance of cultural identity & innovation in regional centres and the densification of cities in Tasmania.

Jack doesn’t mind a bit of PoMo and loves a visit to IKEA. He is an occasional gig photographer, foodie (who can’t afford it) and total coffee snob.

Readings & References

• Robert Venturi, Denise Scott-Brown, Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas, 1977
• Jan Gehl, New City Life, 2006
• https://grist.org/urbanism/2011-07-21-jane-jacobs-on-neighborhoods-placemaking-and-active-living-video/

Schedule Mondays 15:15-18:15 in Room 139; Thursdays 18:15-21:15 in Room 139
Travel Week 11

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