Studio 02

PARIS 58

Rennie Liffen and Oskar Kazmanli-Liffen

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

Studio Description

He looks stern in that photograph but I remember him as cheeky. You can just make out initials embroidered on his butter cream shirt. When we walked he would lift me up to peer over the tall fences. Swimming pools and manicured grass. Made-up stories of lives we’d never know.

Later in life he got stuck in front of the television. It’s him that I make up stories about now. Though I didn’t think he was ever really looking, I wonder what these streets felt like for him in PARIS 1958?

This studio will reside in the suburbs of PARIS. Developing the studio 2 rhetoric, ‘PARIS 58’ continues to explore the architectural project as empowerment and this semester seeks to investigate the way in which experiences of architectural occupation have changed since Jacques Tati’s Paris of 1958. Through the vehicle of the design project, an empathetic understanding of the social and architectural experience of everyday life will be developed over the course of the semester. We will question how much we can ask of our built environment, our society, the buildings in which we exist and whether our contemporary phenomenological experiences equate to those of the past.

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 and writers. Narratives detailing our imaginary ‘context’ and ‘communities’ will be developed in conjunction with our collaborators where each student will form the functional and emotional brief for the architecture of a small building of unique typology addressing a contemporary socio-political issue within the context of an imagined suburban Parisian location.

Students will explore a truly iterative design process in conjunction with studio leaders and studio collaborators, where orthographic drawing, atmospheric 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 fourteenth Masters CDE studio and his third 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

• JACQUES TATI - Film, Satire
• OKO EBOMBO - Music, Video, Dance
• CHRISTINE AND THE QUEENS - Music, Video, Dance
• MICHAEL GONDRY - Chemical Brothers Music Video
• PIERRE CHAREAU - Architecture
• OLSON KUNDIG - Architecture
• LACATON & VASSAL - Architecture
• PETER ZUMTHOR - Architecture and Theory
• OFFICE KGDVS - Architecture and Theory
• DOGMA - Architecture and Theory
• JUHANI PALLASMAA - Writing and Theory
• TADAO ANDO - Design Process
• JACK SELF - Theory
• ATELIER BOW-BOW - Architecture + Graphics
• LAB-LAB FOR ARCHITECTURE - Theory + Graphics

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

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