An Archaeology of the Commons:
architecture on the periphery

Alessandro Zambelli

Studio Description

Twin themes of the commons as a place and a practice, and archaeology as a material method of storytelling, inform how architecture might critically mediate between contested histories, ecological imperatives, and community aspirations.

Geelong on Wadawurrung Country is Victoria’s second city. On the edges of the old Town Common, long built over and re-built over and all but forgotten, where city gives way to landscape, where industrial sheds give way to swamp and Country gives way to nothing, we will ask: how do we build on this periphery and others like it?

Studio Outcomes

This peri-urban palimpsest with all entangled layers always in play makes available a range of possible programmes related to: memory and heritage, community and cultural commons, ecological and environmental restoration, experimental practices in place-making, urban commons and public infrastructure.

We will explore how:

• The commons are able to creatively disrupt hierarchies of ownership and stewardship.
• Architecture, like archaeology, operates as a profoundly ‘situated’ practice.
• Interdisciplinary practice between architecture and archaeology reveals the porous and productive boundary between designing new environments and interpreting those already there.
• As architects we don’t (usually) make buildings, we make representations of buildings, and those representations are meaningful in their own right.

These explorations will be supported by input from an archaeologist and a modelmaker/artist, and during our field trip to Geelong we will be hosted by Deakin University.

Studio Leader/s

Alex Zambelli is a UK-qualified architect and an academic whose research specialism is ‘the commons’ – from common land to spatial justice: who ‘owns’ the land beneath our feet and the buildings around us, and is that ownership equitable.

He co-founded and ran a small architectural practice in London between 2000 and 2013. In 2016, he completed a PhD at The Bartlett, UCL, in architecture and archaeological interdisciplinarity, by which time he had become a full-time academic. He has taught and researched architecture and urbanism at a number of UK universities before finally moving to Australia and the University of Melbourne in 2023.

Alex lives in Geelong.

Readings & References

Buchli, Victor, and Gavin Lucas. Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past. London: Routledge, 2001.

Berlant, Lauren. "The Commons: Infrastructures for Troubling Times." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 34, no. 3 (2016/06/01 2016): 393-419.

Evans, Robin. Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays. London: Architectural Association, 1997.

Puig de la Bellacasa, María. Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. Posthumanities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.

Rendell, Jane. "Site-Writing [Online]." (2019-2015).

Stavrides, Stavros. Common Space: The City as Commons. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.

Zambelli, Alessandro. "‘Period Property in Sought-after Area’: 2,500 Years of Digging and Building at St George’s Hill." The Journal of Architecture 28, no. 1 (2023): 7-30.

Zambelli, Alessandro. Scandalous Space: Between Architecture and Archaeology. Baunach: AADR Spurbuchverlag, 2019.

Schedule:
Tuesday 1pm-5pm in MSD 141
Thursday 2pm-4pm in MSD 241 

Off-site Activities:
TBA

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