Studio 10

(Re)public (of) architecture

Jonathan Daly and Ammon Beyerle

Studio Description

The old Kangan Tafe site in Coburg is about to be sold. Situated in the heart of this diverse area of inner Melbourne, this 9,000m2 site comprises a mix of 2 to 3-storey buildings and open space. Strongly opposed to the loss of valuable public infrastructure and angry at the continuing political inertia on climate change, the community rally and seize the site. A proposal is drawn up by the community to develop the site as an adaptive reuse project, where solutions to the climate crisis can be explored and contested by the public, in public. A diverse, intersecting and overlapping public programme is proposed to engage with the everyday life of the community. In this new public space typology explorations of the self, the social, and relations with built form and ecology will be enabled and enhanced. The project attracts financing from major hedge funds shifting their investments to address climate change. You have been selected as the architect!

Studio Outcome

This studio will focus on the exploration of public space in the future. Students will design an adaptive reuse public architecture – a building inside and out – that engages with political, philosophical and technological concepts of environmental sustainability, power and empowerment in the public realm. Urban Design theory argues that this space must be truly accessible, open, passionate, adaptable, productive and reprogrammable space; we will explore tangible examples of the heterogenous, plural, and agonistic. Students will survey international architectural- and relational art precedents, as well as physical models of social and environmental sustainability systems, before inventing their own brief and program. In particular, the studio will be founded on deeply philosophical concepts of the self, the social and human-nonhuman relations with built form – all within the context of sustainability. Students will be challenged to investigate, develop and then explicate their own ecosophy, considering urban intensification, democratic confusion and climate crisis.

Studio Leaders

Ammon Beyerle is a registered architect and director of Here Studio, an architectural practice of community activists based in Melbourne. Here Studio is focused on Participatory Design of community-orientated projects, and Affordable Everyday Architecture, and have undertaken a number of challenging public projects. Ammon recently completed his PhD “Architecture and Participation: agonism in practice”, under Karen Burns and Kim Dovey – studying architecture and German at the University of Melbourne, (and Paris-Val-De-Seine, and T-U Berlin). Ammon has taught architecture, landscape architecture, construction technology and urban design since 2005, focussing on sustainability, adaptive reuse, and community design.

Jonathan Daly is an urbanist and environmental psychologist with 20 years of experience working across Europe, North America and Australasia delivering a range of projects in transport, architecture and urban design. Jonathan is a director of UB-Lab, a design research practice for the built environment, based in Melbourne. UB-Lab’s work combines ethnographic research and behavioural science in architecture, urban design and social change to resolve relationships between people and the environment. Jonathan recently submitted his PhD exploring public space and ethnic cultural difference, under Kim Dovey. Jonathan teaches in Urban Design.

Readings & References

• d’Anjou, (2007). “The Existential Self as Locus of Sustainability in Design.”
• Bateson, (2002). Mind and nature.
• Barthes, (2012). How to live together: novelistic simulations of some everyday spaces.
• Bishop, (2004). “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics.”; ed. (2006). Participation.
• Bourriaud, (2002). Relational Aesthetics.
• Guattari, (1992). Chaosmosis: An Ethico- Aesthetic Paradigm.; (1989). The Three Ecologies.
• Hinkel, ed. (2011). Urban Interior: Informal Explorations, Interventions and Occupations.
• Joye, (2007). “Architectural Lessons from Environmental Psychology: The Case of Biophilic Architecture.”
• Kingwell, and Turmel, (2009). Rites of way: the politics and poetics of public space.
• Latour, (2005). Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network-theory.
• Lefebvre, (1968). The Right to the City.
• Miessen, and Mouffe, (2008). “Violating Consensus”.; and Shumon Basar, eds. (2006). Did Someone Say Participate?: An Atlas of Spatial Practice.
• Sennett, (1970). The uses of disorder: personal identity & city life.; (2012). Together: the rituals, pleasures, and politics of cooperation.
• Soja, (1996). Thirdspace. Vezzoli, and Manzini. Design for Environmental Sustainability.
• (2008). https://www.spatialagency.net http://www.thestudioattheedgeoftheworld.com / Tony Fry https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/18/the-self-delusion-tom-oliver-review

Schedule Thursdays 15:15-21:15 in MSD Room 241

Travel Coburg | Week 4

Contact Handbook Key Dates