Studio 02

KYOTO

Rennie Liffen and Oskar Kazmanli-Liffen | Sense + Process Focus

This studio is available to students enrolled in ABPL90142 Studio C, ABPL90143 Studio D, and ABPL90115 Studio E.

Studio Description

Post bubble. Post place. Post internet. Post truth. It doesn’t really bother us, not here. Not now. Not here between your one thousand different greys each tone more perfect than the last.

Since we were young you looked after me. I watched your hands on the wheel as neon lights danced across the windshield. We’d go for long periods without taking at all. What a difference distance makes. Now all I remember is the golden sun coming up through the red arches. Macro-impressionism.

Whenever I feel alone I’d watch that crazy live television our parents loved, something about it being okay on their end made it okay on mine. They say that here, if you do anything with honour and tradition you’ll be alright. I don’t think I understand either. That was always the space between us. Sometimes I long for a place of our own amongst the million faces but maybe we’ll always be alone in Kyoto.

This studio will reside in KYOTO. Developing the studio 2 rhetoric, ‘KYOTO’ continues to explore an interest in the architectural project as empowerment. An empathetic understanding of the social experience of those on the edge of mainstream society will be developed over the course of the semester. We will question how much we can ask of our built environment, our society, the places in which we live and the places that remain forever in memory.

Studio Outcome

We will develop intimate and idiosyncratic works of architecture that truly explore and reveal the human dimensions of contemporary life. We will engage with the experiential and phenomenological implications of an architecture of both ‘individual’ and ‘community’ and will take inspiration from the work of selected musicians, artists, writers, and poets. Narratives detailing our imaginary ‘context’ and ‘communities’ will be developed in conjunction with our writer-collaborator where each student will form the functional and emotional brief for the architecture of a small building for a chosen minority, community or sub-culture within the context of an imagined Kyoto.

Students will explore a truly iterative design process in conjunction with studio leaders and studio collaborators, where orthographic drawing, descriptive writing and physical model-making are the central activities. A disciplined and methodical approach which uses drawing, writing and model-making incrementally and values and exhibits every ‘trace’ of the process as the ‘archaeology of the mind’. This will include the rigorous exploration of a single architectural composition including spatial experience, environment, landscape, technology and materiality. Final outcomes will be restricted to specific and consistent communication tools exploring digital techniques of drawing + making with a focus on the representation of ‘atmosphere’ and ‘construction’. Students will be expected to produce significant and sophisticated drawings and models throughout the semester, communicating their intentions with clarity and passion. Students will make self-directed visits to performance and exhibitions in Melbourne.

Studio Leaders

RENNIE LIFFEN is a British Architect from London who has practiced in Europe and Australia. Rennie was involved in design studio teaching for twenty years in the UK and has been living, working and teaching in Melbourne since 2005. This will be his thirteenth Masters CDE studio and his second in collaboration with Oskar Kazmanli-Liffen.

OSKAR KAZMANLI-LIFFEN is a graduate of architecture from RMIT University. Originally from London, Oskar has co-led studios across the masters and undergraduate degrees at RMIT. Through teaching and practice his interests lie in architecture with transformative social and experiential consequence.

Readings & References

• OKO EBOMBO - Music, Video, Dance
• JOJI MATSUOKA - TV - Midnight Diner:Tokyo Stories (Netflix)
• SOFIA COPPOLA - Film - Lost in Translation
• KORE-EDA HIROKAZU - Film - Shoplifters
• KANSAI YAMAMOTO - Fashion Design
• RYUCHI SAKAMOTO - Music, Experimental Music
• SOU FUJIMOTO - Architecture
• PETER ZUMTHOR – Architecture and Theory
• JUHANI PALLASMAA – Writing and Theory
• TADAO ANDO – Design Process
• ATELIER BOW-BOW – Architecture + Graphics
• LAB-LAB FOR ARCHITECTURE – Theory + Graphics

Schedule Mondays 15:15-18:15 in MSD Room 239; Thursdays 18:15-21:15 in MSD Room 238

Contact Handbook Key Dates