Studio 05

JOB

Yvonne Meng

Studio Description

How does one deal with a historically significant building? What does one do when the building is derelict shopfront? JOB will explore how we approach heritage beyond the physical fabric. The studio will explore tensions and opportunities between a site’s commercial value and the intangible cultural heritage which architecture facilitates or represents. From this, we aim to generate alternative approaches for developing historically significant sites to project into the future. The site is Job Warehouse on Bourke Street, recognised as being among the oldest surviving buildings in Melbourne. Accompanied by many stories throughout its life, the building has gained its own reputation in Melbourne’s urban narrative. The project will be a significant architectural intervention to Job Warehouse and projects are to vertically extend the existing building to suit the contemporary city context. The renewed programme will be a mixed-use building which will include new offices, gallery and retail, whilst retaining spaces for existing residents.

Studio Outcome

This studio is about the city, people, how spaces adapt, and how we relate and react to social and physical environments. Schemes are expected to acknowledge the street interface and civic needs of the site and engage with the social and cultural context in which the project is placed. Students are to demonstrate an understanding of wider urban issues as well as implications that design has on users. We will use an ethnographic approach for architectural analysis and we are interested in the ‘in between’ stages, and in the process where the concept begins to take a physical shape. We will be operating at the scale of both the civic and the tectonic, investigating the relationship and junctions between old and new.

The studio asks the following questions:

• What is the value of retaining urban fabric?
• When does it become limiting?
• Who determines architectural significance? …. does it even matter?

Studio Leader

Yvonne is a registered architect and director of Circle Studio Architects and has taught extensively across Melbourne’s architecture schools. Her practice focuses on human-centred design and works across a variety of projects such as bespoke residential and community spaces. Currently she is undertaking her PhD at Monash University. Her research investigates the value of overlooked urban spaces and understands them as important but contested public spaces in our cities and suburbs. Yvonne is active in Melbourne’s architecture culture and regularly contributes to public discourse through talks, articles, committees, and juries.

Readings & References

• Atelier Bow-Wow 2017. Architectural Ethnography : Atelier Bow-Wow. Atelier Bow-Wow. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Graduate School of Design : Sternberg Press.
• Borden, Iain. 2001. The Unknown City : Contesting Architecture and Social Space : A Strangely Familiar Project. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press
• Gehl, Jan. 1980. Life Between Buildings: Using Public Spaces. Melbourne: Van Nostrand
• Hayden, Dolores. 1995. The Power of Place : Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
• Jacobs, Jane. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American cities. New York: Random House
• Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Oxford, OX, UK: Oxford, OX, UK.
• Lippard, Lucy R. 1997. The Lure of the Local : Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society. New York: New Press.
• Stevens, Quentin. 2007. The Ludic City : Exploring the Potential of Public Spaces. London: Routledge
• Momoyo Kaijima, and Atorie Wan. 2007. Graphic Anatomy. Graphic Anatomy Atelier Bow-Wow. Shohan. Tokyo : TOTO Shuppan.
• Whyte, William Holly. 1988. City : Rediscovering the Centre. New York: Doubleday.
• Zukin, Sharon. 2010. Naked city: the death and life of authentic urban places. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Schedule 18:15-21:15 Mondays and Thursdays

Contact Handbook Key Dates