Studio 07

UNRULY EDGES

Virginia Mannering

Studio Description

Students will explore the relationships that exist between architecture and its context. Studies will extend beyond the usual readings of site (e.g. the current and the physical) and look at less tangible but equally present and potent forces (historical, political, cultural etc) as drivers for design. An engagement with feminist practices and decolonisation strategies is key. Idiosyncratic buildings and rich readings of place will be the studio’s fundamental outcomes.

Projects will be situated in one of four locations: Auckland, Brisbane, Perth or Vancouver. These are cities that might have once been considered the ‘unruly edges’ 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.

Studio Outcome

The studio asks students to think of the cities in which we are working as a dynamic but fragile and contested spaces. To do this we will engage in creative and critical thinking and careful and thorough research. Throughout semester there will be an emphasis on:

• Mapping and ‘forensic’ reconstructions
• Research and research methods
• Scaled equisses and stages, moving from the XL (urban scale) to the S (the architectural detail)
• Interdisciplinary approaches e.g exploring film, literature, landscape art, archaeology, cultural and language studies.

Studios will consist of a mixture of pin ups and desk crits, at the MSD and occasional off campus workshops in Collingwood.

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.

Readings & References

• Annable, Rosemary and New South Wales. Attorney General's Department A setting for justice : building for the Supreme Court of New South Wales. University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2007.
• Auckland Council Archives - http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/dbtw-wpd/CityArchives/searchkeyword.htm
• State Library of Queensland - http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/
• State Records Office of Western Australia - http://www.sro.wa.gov.au/archive-collection/collection/maps-online
• Vancouver City Archives - http://vancouver.ca/your-government/city-of-vancouver-archives.aspx
• Briggs, Asa Victorian cities ([New ed.]). Harmondsworth Penguin, 1968.
• Bunbury, Alisa, Bunbury, Alisa, (editor.) and National Gallery of Victoria (host institution.) This wondrous land : colonial art on paper (1st ed). Melbourne National Gallery of Victoria, 2011.
• Cable, Carole The courthouse and the law court, their design and construction. Vance Bibliographies, Monticello, Ill, 1978.
• Desimini, Jil and Waldheim, Charles, (author.) Cartographic grounds : projecting the landscape imaginary. New York Princeton Architectural Press, 2016.
• Edmonds, Penelope and ProQuest (Firm) Urbanizing frontiers : Indigenous peoples and settlers in 19th-century Pacific Rim cities. UBC Press, Vancouver, 2010.
• Esau, Erika Images of the Pacific Rim : Australia and California, 1850-1935 (1st ed). Power Publications, [Sydney], 2010.
• Kirke, Philip James The shelter of law : designing with communities for a culture of natural justice (1st ed). Friend Books, Shelley, W.A, 2009.
• Raisz, Erwin Principles of cartography. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1962.
• Schrader, Ben The big smoke : New Zealand cities 1840-1920. Wellington, New Zealand Bridget Williams Books, 2016

Schedule Mondays 15:15-18:15 in Room 140; Thursdays 18:15-21:15 in Room 142
Travel Week 2

Contact Handbook Key Dates