The Broken Box

Guillermo Rojas-Alfaro

Studio Description

Essence is the fundamental concept of Western thinking (Han, 2019). Essence is what constitutes a thing. It is what endures change and perseveres. Essence is what makes a tree different from a bird and that bird different from a river. It is also what makes a building different from the street in front of it, from its furniture, the wind running through its windows or the people enjoying that wind.
Such definitive distinctions are not common in Indigenous Knowledge. According to Yunkaporta (2019), the relationship of Indigenous cultures with reality is not one of domain but of symbiosis. For him, this relationship is only possible if we realise the interconnectedness of things.

This studio challenges the common understanding of an architectural design as a discrete and finite piece, as a —metaphorical— box that delimits private from public, inner from outer, stable from unsettled, etc. Aiming to break that box, this studio encourages students to think of a design as a constellation, as a relational piece where environment, matter, space and people are in constant and fluid interconnection.

Students are asked to design a place for Indigenous performance arts next to the Abbotsford Convent. This unsteady space should accommodate a small audience for indoor performances, unfold for larger outdoor ones and become an open public space when the artists are not using it. Students will define the scale and boundaries of a design that seeks to incorporate and be incorporated into a rich context.

Studio Outcomes

Two conditions are critical to this studio.

First, it relies on an exhaustive and experiential comprehension of the project’s context. This is not an abstracted account of the site’s quantitative aspects —its form, dimensions, sizes, etc.— but of perceptual, and hence, relative and diffuse qualities that arise through deep and continuous in-site observation. Among these are the context’s spatiality and scale; its light, air and soundscape; its built and natural components and their materiality; the actions of people there and their rhythms, programs and uses; and the shifting interconnections between all these in unison.

Second, it relies on design methods, aims and techniques that delay the definition of projects. Students will engage with unproductive processes —from the Latin producere: to exhibit or make visible—to envision hybrid architectural designs that react to their context’s nuances rather than impose pure and abstract ideas and concepts into it. And, as these processes are oriented to explore rather than to delimit, designs will be entangled and difficult to define. They will not be beautiful in a platonic sense. They will not be consistent, unified or essential either.

The outcomes of this studio refuse the closedness of an essence. They cannot be objectified. The outcomes of this studio cannot be reduced to a diagram or icon. As they are one with their context, it is impossible to know what they are, nor where they start or end —if they do.

Studio Leader/s

Dr Guillermo Rojas-Alfaro is a designer trained at The Bartlett UCL, a researcher, and an educator with 15 years of academic experience in Australia, Belgium, Germany, the US, and Chile. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Melbourne and his research in architectural design explores atmosphere as a lens to investigate unproductivity, mystery, and uncertainty in architecture. He is also the director of NIEBLA (http://niebla.design) and his creative work has been published, awarded, and presented at various international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale.

Readings & References

Bolt, B. (2010). Art Beyond Representation: The Performative Power of the Image. London: I.B. Tauris & Co.

Han, B.-C. (2023). Absence (D. Steuer, Trans.). Oxford: Polity Press.

Kuma, K. (2008). Anti-object (H. Watanabe, Trans.). London, England: Architectural Association Publications.

Pérez-Gómez, A. (2016). Attunement: architectural meaning after the crisis of modern science. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Van Schaik, L. (2021). Doing, seeing; Seeing, doing. Melbourne: URO Publications.

Yunkaporta, T. (2019). Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. Melbourne: Text Publishing

Schedule:
Friday 9am-3pm in MSD 140

Off-site Activities:

Contact Handbook