Studio 07
...and then there was shopping
Hans van Rijnberk
Studio Description
"Buildings are narrators of life. They pass the life of the past on to the lives of the future, given they are more than mere shelter and borrowed form. A people without architecture passes on little of its culture.” Sibyl Moholy-Nagy (1957)
Walking down Chapel Street today, there is a sense of an ambiguous identity with majestic multi-storey, ornate and heritage listed buildings looking down on a mix of successful retail offerings and empty shopfronts, multi million dollar investments and run down buildings.
The acknowledgement and appreciation of the economic, architectural and social significance of this former retail Mecca could potentially help invigorate the street as a prime shopping destination. The Big Store is perfectly positioned to be the heart of this strategy.
With the recent opening of the Cato Square, the Big Store is suddenly in a position to connect the square with Chapel Street through introduction of a new (retail) program on the higher levels.
Studio Outcomes
The idea that 'modern architecture and urban design apply either mnemonic (memory-based) or rhetorical (eloquent) techniques to explain the condition of the contemporary city’ (Hilde Heynen, Architecture as Memory: Monumentality and Acceleration, 2001) will be challenged as the studio attempts to combine cultural and historic appreciation with shopping as a program. A new representation of the city based on a collective memory of the historical city (mnemonic strategy), will be enhanced by the rhetorical strategy that tries to start a discussion about the city, in which specific elements of the current city are being reinvented, reformulated and reshaped to keep up with the most subtle changes in society.
Studio Leader
Hans van Rijnberk is a Dutch architect with experience in architecture and urban design in Europe and Australia. He studied architecture at the Technical University of Eindhoven and tutored at Utrecht University College. He is currently based in Melbourne and working as an urban designer. He has been a studio leader at the University of Melbourne since 2016 and has taught undergraduate, graduate and thesis studios.
Readings & References
- Harvard Design School Guide to shopping - Rem Koolhaas, Chuihua Judy Chung, Jeffrey Inaba, Sze Tsung Leong - 2002
- Principles of Urban Retail Planning and Development - Robert Gibbs - 2012
- Architecture as Memory: Monumentality and Acceleration - Hilde Heynen - 2001
- YouTube: Design Disruption: Rethinking Retail + Restaurants
- YouTube: MSD talks: The Future of Retail and Hospitality
Schedule Thursdays 09:00-15:00