Design Thesis/04

The Great Repair

Helene Frichot and Virginia Mannering

Studio Description

The Great Repair offers a humble architectural response to Amitav Ghosh’s provocation in The Great Derangement (2016) that we humans have been unable to deal with the scale and scope of climate change and the environmental devastations it wreaks. The work we undertake in this studio operates on a spectrum between exhaustion and exuberance, seeking approaches to world-mending to challenge the hubris of world-destroying activities. The Great Repair is a collaboration between the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney dedicated to repair as a critical gesture of speculative design care. We situate our design investigation in the conceptual domain of the Innovation Distinct, a presumed site of urban potentiality in the 21st Century that establishes collaboration between institutions of higher education and industry. Together we ask: Does innovation lead to world mending or world destroying under the guise of progress and development? Rather than following the money, shouldn’t we be following the materials? Is innovation simply enervating? Our team fosters a space of design experimentation between constructive constraints and the independence you might want to express as a Masters of Architecture Design Thesis researcher. We invite a spectrum of responses from the pragmatic to the speculative, inviting ficto-critical forays into queer and non-normative future worlds.

Studio Outcomes

We spend the first 4 weeks following a sequence of curated instructional prompts, from longitudinal irrational sections cut along wandering urban lines, to dirty models and drawings, to the worm’s POV cast from the geological underground, typological mash-ups and cadavre exquis folded out of precedent studies. These instructional prompts will assist participants to arrive at a design pitch by the end of week 4. Your program might be: a repair and survival hub; poo repository, craspsule plant and urban organic farm; an AI incubator and fungi gleaning camp; a data centre and hactivism institute; an urban mine and medical jewellery school; or an inner city synthetic meat laboratory: we have a range of possibilities we are happy to discuss in our attempts to rewire what innovation might hope to achieve amid concatenating planetary crises. You’ll be asked to compose banners that combine all your design experimentation in one composite image and 3-5 minute videos that encapsulate your design propositions. Our plan is to conclude with a small film festival in Sydney at the Mori Lewisham space.

Studio Leader/s

Hélène Frichot is a professor of architecture and philosophy, and director of the bachelor of design, at the Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne.

Virginia Mannering is a PhD candidate at University of Melbourne. She has taught across architectural design studios and architectural/art history and situates her teaching methodologies across those disciplines. View a bio at www.virginiamannering.com

Readings & References

Supplied to students in Week 1 and across the semester.

Schedule Monday  12:00 pm - 3:00 pm  MSD Bldg Room 140 and Thursday  12.00 pm - 3:00 pm MSD Bldg Room 140

Contact Handbook