Studio 13

Your Library

Hella Wigge

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

Studio Description

The advent of the internet and digital media did look like a death spell for libraries. Instead, we have seen a resurgence. Rem Koolhaas called the library the “last public institution”, it truly is “your” library. Libraries provide spaces and chances for individuals to connect with different media as well as, and maybe more importantly, reconnect to community.

In this studio you will use an interest of your own to drive the architecture of a “Community Library”. This might be around empowering a specific user group like: children, disadvantaged youth, autistic users, refugees or the elderly or it might hinge more around empowering community in general, it could be a subject specific library or you might explore the opportunities of digital realms.

Libraries offer a physical interface for knowledge and connection in the digital era. How could your architecture address and celebrate this? What will your future library look like?

Studio Outcome

The main foci that will drive the design process:

• Your personal research into your field of interest
• Exploring the elements that drive spatial experience
• Developing your library’s program and tectonic through precedent research

Architects throughout time have cultivated analog techniques of expression to help them generate and present ideas, hone their skills, train their eye, as well as provide some more instant gratification within the generally long-winded architectural process.

This studio will introduce students in studio skilling sessions to creative writing, a range of graphic media, physical model making and model photography as tools of expression, nurturing an iterative process of poetic, meaningful making.

Assessed components will be a carefully curated reflective journal documenting and evaluating your engagement, design explorations, research and poetic making throughout the semester. Presentations will be paper based with an extensive atmospheric component and physical models. Both components will be assessed at interim and final.

Studio Leader

Hella is an architect and artist, she has lived and practiced in Australia and Europe and has been teaching since 2006. Her primary design principles are based on phenomenology, focusing on materiality, spatial qualities and atmosphere. She is deeply passionate about the effect architecture has on the human body, mind and spirit, as well as upon the urban and greater environments. A practicing artist with an interest in up-cycled fashion, she has a love and keen eye for colour, composition and proportion. In her teaching she sets out to inspire her students to find their passion and voice in architecture.

Readings & References

• Detail magazine 3/2005, Concept: Library (available online through the architecture library).
• Bachelard, G 1994, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Massachusetts.
• Gruetter, J 2012, Architektur + Wahrnehmung, Architecture + Perception, Niggli, Sulgen.
• Hertzberger, H, 1991, Lessons for Students in Architecture, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam
• Hertzberger, H, 2000, Space and the Architect, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam
• Holl, S, 2006, Luminosity / Porosity, Toto, Tokyo
• Holl, S, Pallasma, J, Perez-Gomez, A, 2007, Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture, William Stout Publishers, San Francisco.
• Meerwein, G, Rodeck, B, Mahnke, F 2007, Color, Communication in architectural Space, Birkenhauser, Basel
• Pallasmaa, J 2005, The Eyes of the Skin, Wiley Academy, Chichester.
• Plummer, H 1995, Light in Japanese Architecture, Architecture and Urbanism, Tokyo.
• Plummer, H 2009, The Architecture of Natural Light, Thames & Hudson, London.
• Tanizaki, J 1967, In Praise of Shadows, Leete’s Island Books, Sedgwick.
• Zumthor, P 2006, Thinking Architecture, Birkhäuser, Basel.
• Zumthor, P 2006, Atmospheres, Birkhäuser, Basel.

Schedule Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays 16:00-20:00 in MSD Room 239

Travel CBD | Weeks 1-6

Contact Handbook Key Dates