C/01

Hidden Scars

Athanasios Tsakonas

Ballot Video 

Studio Description

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”  -James Baldwin, “As much truth as one can bear” New York Times, 14 January, 1962, p.11.

This studio responds to the Australian War Memorial’s recent decision to address and chronicle the colonial frontier wars. It recognises that, historically, Aboriginal communities suffered untold trauma and violence while resisting settler colonialism and defending Country. Using the example of the heritage-listed national memorial site to the victims of the Myall Creek massacre in NSW, unveiled in 2000, the studio asks students to design an equivalent response for Victoria. Myall Creek is considered the first place of reconciliation, where perpetrators were brought to justice, offering important lessons on how reparations might be advanced. Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance, Victoria’s war memorial to overseas conflicts needs to integrate frontier wars into its exhibition strategy. These two intertwined lines of inquiry address different interpretations both of war and of Country. The studio’s specific focus thus covers the effects and consequences of the frontier wars on Aboriginal communities, the need to recognise conflicts internal to Australia as war memories, and of Aboriginal service in defence of Australia.

This studio asks you to: Explore the idea of Country both as relational and symbiotic extensions of a lived environment and a broader idea of national territory. Focusing on reconciliation as its central theme, to demonstrate how placemaking can engender social and cultural recovery. Using the southern gardens of Victoria’s Shrine of Remembrance between its south-west courtyard and the new Anzac railway station in Melbourne as the prospective site, to design a dedicated interpretive space for the frontier wars in Victoria - imagined as a medium scale facility and southern entry point to the Shrine via a reconciliation precinct.

Studio Outcomes

When developing a design strategy and material and spatial vocabulary for bringing ‘Hidden Scars’ to the surface, you are encouraged to seek inspiration from the histories and characteristics of the Myall Creek Massacre and Memorial Site, to explore its proposed interpretive centre by Sydney architect Tim Shellshear [Shellshear Young] and local artist Colin Isaacs, and to recognise how they address the site’s difficult history.

In proposing a parallel response in Victoria, the site is in the far south-west corner of the Shrine of Remembrance grounds, alongside the newly constructed Anzac Station. You are asked to design sympathetically, respecting the visual authority of the Shrine and its surrounding heritage-protected landscape. You are also asked to consider the complexity of the urban interface and this urban edge connection with the station, the programmatic pressures that accompany it (commuters, public, commemoration attendees), and the entrance to the Shrine through its south-western Terrace Courtyard.

Participation in a 4-day field trip [Sat 20/6 – Tues 23/6] to Myall Creek in Week 1, followed by an esquisse for a simple support facility there is compulsory. Through interrogating a material, spatial and/or formal approach, this facility will then inform your response at the Shrine. The fieldtrip will include travel to Dubbo, Gilgandra and Moree, following the path of the historic 1965 Freedom Ride. All travel and accommodation costs are included. Students to provide for their meals and drinks.

Studio Leader

Athanasios Tsakonas is a practising architect, builder, and writer with an extensive professional career spanning Australasia, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. He is a partner in the Singapore based consultancy Tan + Tsakonas Architects, also running a small design & build studio in Melbourne. He holds a Bachelor of Architectural Studies and Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Adelaide (majoring in Architectural History & Theory), along with a Master of Arts (Urban Design) from the National University of Singapore.

Athanasios’s research interests include investigating the spatial impact war cemeteries and memorials have upon commemoration and remembrance; and the architects of conflict. His book In Honour of War Heroes: Colin St Clair Oakes and the Design of Kranji War Memorial was published by Marshall Cavendish in 2020. https://aabookshop.net/?wpsc-product=in-honour-of-war-heroes-colin-st-clair-oakes-and-the-design-of-kranji-war-memorial-pre-order

Athanasios taught Master of Architecture Studio C in 2023 and 2024, and Design Thesis studio at the Melbourne School of Design.

Image with permission from Jo Miller, Friends of Myall Creek Memorial.

Readings & References

Clarke,  Ian.  1995. Scars in the Landscape, Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Report Series: http://nationalunitygovernment.org/pdf/2014/IanDClark-Scares_in_the_landscape.pdf.pdf

Friends of Myall Creek, Stage 3: educational & Cultural Centre, https://myallcreek.org/cultural-centre/

Reynolds, Henry. 2019. “Frontier Conflict and the War Memorial” Meanjin, Autumn, https://meanjin.com.au/essays/frontier-conflict-and-the-war-memorial/

---- [2013] 2022. Forgotten War, Sydney, New South Publishing.

----- 2022. “Recognising the warriors: Henry Reynolds on the war memorial’s surprising change of direction, The Conversation, 6 October, https://theconversation.com/recognising-the-warriors-henry-reynolds-on-the-war-memorials-surprising-change-of-direction-191861

Quilty, Ben. “Painting Myall Creek”, National Gallery of Australia, https://nga.gov.au/on-demand/ben-quilty-painting-myall-creek/

University of New Castle, Colonial Frontier Massacres, Australia, 1788-1930, https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php

ABPL90437 Design Studio C is an Early start subject. The Studio Ballot will be held online at the beginning of O-week, opening at 9am on Monday 15th July and closing at 9am on Tuesday 16th July. The outcome of Studio Allocation will be announced on Canvas before the end of Thursday 18th July. There will be preparatory online learning work to be completed during this period. Teaching begins with an all day, in person, compulsory Symposium Day in Laby Theatre (L108), David Caro Building at 9am on Friday 19th July.

Schedule:
Tuesday 9am-12pm in MSD 240
&
Tuesday 12:30pm-3:30pm in MSD 240

Off-Campus Activity:
Myall Creek, NSW

Contact Handbook