Studio 03

Unruly Edges

Virginia Mannering

This studio is available to students enrolled in ABPL90169 Design Thesis.

Studio Description

In this studio, students will explore the relationships that exist between architecture and its context. Here, our studies will extend beyond the usual readings of site (the current and the physical, for example) to also look at less tangible but equally present and potent forces (historical, political and cultural etc) as drivers for design. Idiosyncratic and rich readings of place will be the fundamental outcomes.

Projects will be situated in one of four locations: Auckland, Brisbane, Perth, Seattle or Vancouver. These are cities that might have once been considered the ‘unruly edges’ of the British Empire, but are now regarded as ‘Beta Cities’ in the post-global order. The studio challenges established discourse around the generic nature of global cities, but also admits the difficulty of establishing identity in urban territories that have erased or obscured their own histories, and in cultural frames that resist immediate understanding.

Students will produce an architectural response that is civic - and novel -  in nature (via a brief developed by the student or in consultation with the tutor), and a method for reading their chosen city through close scalar research methods and investigations. The semester will require both the development and refinement of the chosen typology as well as ongoing spatial research conducted through mapping, forensic reconstructions, cataloguing and narrative production. Students will be encouraged to incorporate material from outside canonical architectural resources and methods e.g. film, literature, landscape art, archaeology and language studies.

Studio Outcomes

The studio asks students to think of the cities in which we are working as a dynamic but fragile and contested spaces. To do this we will engage in creative and critical thinking and careful and thorough research.

Throughout semester there will be an emphasis on:

• Mapping and ‘forensic’ constructions
• Research and research methods
• Scaled equisses and stages, moving from the XL (urban scale) to the S (the architectural detail)
• Interdisciplinary approaches e.g exploring film, literature, landscape art, archaeology and language studies.

Studios will consist of a mixture of pin ups and desk crits, with some workshops at the MSD and site visits.

Studio Leader

Virginia Mannering is a designer, researcher and award-winning architectural writer. She works in small practice on residential, educational, and exhibition projects, while her design research focusses on historical urbanism, explorations of site and materiality, and feminist architecture. She has taught extensively across studio, construction, theory and art history units.

Readings & References

• Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1990).
• Penelope Edmonds, “Urbanizing Frontiers : Indigenous Peoples and Settlers in 19th-Century Pacific Rim Cities” (Vancouver : UBC Press, 2010)
• Lionel Edwin Frost, “The New Urban Frontier : Urbanisation and City-Building in Australasia and the American West” (Kensington, N.S.W. : New South Wales University Press, 1991).
• https://www.museumsassociation.org/campaigns/decolonising-museums/#
• Auckland Council Archives - http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/dbtw-wpd/CityArchives/searchkeyword.htm
• State Library of Queensland - http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/
• State Records Office of Western Australia - http://www.sro.wa.gov.au/archive-collection/collection/maps-online
• Vancouver City Archives - http://vancouver.ca/your-government/city-of-vancouver-archives.aspx
• https://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/

Schedule Mondays 15:15-18:15 and Thursdays 18:15-21:15
Off-campus Activities [TBC]

Contact Handbook