THE/06

Open: Anthropocene

Virginia Mannering and Hélène Frichot

Studio Description

This open studio asks students to construct their own brief, and from there produce an architectural proposal, using ‘The Anthropocene’ as a prompt.

The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch characterised by the significant and enduring influence human activities have exerted on the Earth's geologies, ecosystems, and climates, marking a new era in which people have become the dominant force shaping the planet's environments. With the construction industry identified as a primary actor in the reshaping of the earth’s environments, students in this class are asked to react in a way that resonates with their own practice and interests.

Studio Outcomes

Due to the nature of the studio theme it is expected that projects in this class will work across multiple scales, from regional mapping to detail drawings. The aim of this is to ensure your projects tackle problems - from the planetary to the hyperlocal - with architectural responses.

Projects should aim to resolve as novel, provocative, or ambitious manifestations of the student’s research.

Studio Leader

Virginia Mannering is an Education Fellow (Architectural Design) at the MSD. Her PhD examines the way the construction of the settler-colonial city has reshaped and remade environments. She has taught across architectural design studios and architectural/art history and situates her teaching methodologies across those disciplines. Projects and bio can be viewed at www.virginiamannering.com

Hélène Frichot completed her professional 5-year degree in architecture in 1993 (UWA), and worked throughout the 1990s as a graduate architect, winning a Homeswest Social Housing competition for the design firm she was employed by in 1994. In the mid-1990s she returned to study philosophy, literature, and cultural studies, and completed a PhD in Philosophy in 2004 (UniSyd). She has been teaching and developing design studio curricula since 1995, across Australia, Sweden, and Germany. Drawing on her transdisciplinary background, Hélène is Professor of Architecture & Philosophy at ABP/MSD UniMelb. She has been a guest professor at Staedelschule, Frankfurt and was Professor of Critical Studies and Gender Theory in Architecture at KTH Stockholm, and director of the Critical Studies in Architecture teaching and research division (2012-2019). She is widely published, and her work has been translated into French, German, and Italian. Recent publications include: Creative Ecologies (2018), Dirty Theory (2019), the co-edited books Infrastructural Love Systems (2022); Architectural Affects After Deleuze and Guattari (2021) and Writing Architectures (2020). She has most recently co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Architecture, Jennifer Bloomer: A Revisitation (2023).

Readings & References

Daniel A. Barber, “Drawing the Line,” Places Journal, January 2024. https://doi.org/10.22269/240130 https://placesjournal.org/article/drawing-the-line-architecture-in-the-anthropocene/#0

Kim Förster, ed., Environmental Histories of Architecture (Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2022),https://www.librarystack.org/environmental-histories-of-architecture/.

Danièle Hromek, “Start with Country.” Architecture Australia, July 3, 2023. https://architectureau.com/articles/start-with-country/.

Katrin Klingan, Textures of the Anthropocene : Grain, Vapor, Ray (Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, 2015).

Max Liboiron, Pollution Is Colonialism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021),

Hannah le Roux and Gabrielle Hecht, “Bad Earth Architecture,” e-flux architecture, August 2020, https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/accumulation/345106/bad-earth/.

Anna Tsing et al., Feral Atlas (Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2021),http://doi.org/10.21627/2020fa. https://feralatlas.org/

Schedule:
Tuesday 5:00pm-7:00pm in MSD 139
&
Friday 1:00pm-5:00pm in MSD 139

Contact Handbook