5th Gate

Athanasios Tsakonas

“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.

Studio Description

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 south western corner of Victoria’s Shrine of Remembrance alongside 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 the ‘Gateway’ to the surface, you are encouraged to seek inspiration from the histories and characteristics of indigenous memorials such as the Myall Creek Massacre and Memorial Site in NSW, Standing by Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner in Melbourne, For our Country in Canberra, and to recognise how they address their site’s difficult histories.

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. Furthermore, as the site is now within the Anzac Station precinct and forms one end of the Victorian government’s Shrine to Sea boulevard connection project, you are also asked to consider a multiplicity of intersecting narratives and design intentions. Through the complexity of the urban interface and this urban edge connection with the station, along with the programmatic pressures that accompany it (commuters, public, commemoration attendees), the Gateway project marks an important statement for the future of reconciliation in this state.

Participation in a full-day field trip in Week 1 [Tues 4 March] to Tynong Quarry, the Cornucopia Museum and Koo Wee Rup in eastern Victoria, as part of the background historical, cultural, and social context of this project, is compulsory. All travel costs are included. Students to provide for their meals and drinks.

Studio Leader/s

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://www.dymocks.com.au/in-honour-of-war-heroes-by-athanasios-tsakonas-9789814893367

Athanasios taught Master of Architecture Studio C in 2023 and 2024, and Design Thesis studio at the Melbourne School of Design. He recently organised an exhibition titled Bringing Them Home of selected students works from previous Studio Cs (2023-24) at the Cardinia Cultural Centre in Pakenham, and is presently working on the Eucalypts of Hodogaya exhibition for the Shrine of Remembrance, opening August 2025.

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-Scars_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

Shrine to Sea: Creating a boulevard for Melbourne, connecting Domain Gardens to Port Phillip Bay along Albert and Kerferd roads https://www.environment.vic.gov.au/shrine-to-sea

Pascoe, Bruce. 2007. Convincing Ground: Learning to fall in love with your country, Aboriginal Studies Press.

Gardner, Peter. 1993. Gippsland Massacres: the Destruction of the Kurnai Tribes, 1800–1860, Ngarak Press

Birch, Tony. 1992. “Nothing Has Changed: The Making and Unmaking of Koori Culture”, Meanjin, Winter. https://meanjin.com.au/essays/nothing-has-changed-the-making-and-unmaking-of-koori-culture/

Tonkin, Daryl and Carolyn Landon, 2000. Jackson's Track: Memoir of a Dreamtime Place, Penguin Group Australia.

Schedule:
Tuesday 9am-3pm in MSD 140

Off-site Activities:
TBA

Contact Handbook