Joelle Leong and Yanie Poon

‘The Beauty of Deception’

In 2016, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported approximately 24,826 homeless people on Census night, which is an 11% increase since 2011. This issue lead to the public being unsatisfied and unhappy with the state of the streets, claiming that the streets are unsafe and dirty. Thus a protest is instigated in Melbourne on this matter, to provide a solution and rid the streets of the homeless. This then sparked the authorities’ desire to eradicate and conceal all of the unsightly in Melbourne with a superficial solution rather than actually solve its underlying causes. Therefore, a beautification project is to be carried out where a large-scale edifice complex is to be erected: 3000 homeless people would be invited to be relocated into an initial experimental tower in order to appease the public.

This tower speculates on two questions:

- How the authorities use the lowest budgets to design a façade which boasts the state’s image & captures the essence of Melbourne and its architecture?
- How the authorities address the interior living conditions of the informal settlers & how the settlers adapt to this new way of life?

Our design proposal attempts to ironically criticise the authorities’ actions of concealment towards informality, standing as a form of protest, while making a political statement on their obsession with beauty and deceitfulness.