CDE Studio 40
The Field

An utopian post-colonial future Victoria, Australia, 2027

Studio leader: Associate Professor Rochus Urban Hinkel

_

Studio 40 explores how we can develop creative and utopian proposals that address the numerous challenges we face, raging from the loss of biodiversity and extinction of indigenous species, to industrial food production and climate crisis. In Studio 40 we engage with and try to learn from indigenous knowledge systems, with students developing their own socio-political and architectural framework that they see fit to respond to these challenges. Proposals range from sanctuaries and nurseries for indigenous species to indigenous food production, from places for creative artistic expression to educational cultural exchange and learning, establishing a site for co-ownership and counterculture.

Architectures range from mere shelter for humans and non-humans to infrastructures for cultural production, gathering and exchange – changing over time, developing slowly and being constructed from local material, concerned with their environmental impact.

To inform and expose students to the complexity of questions a series of lectures and seminars were offered in addition to the tutorial times, guests included Rodney Carter, CEO Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation; Jefa Greenaway, Chair Indigenous Architecture + Design Victoria [IADV] and Co-Curator of the 2021 Australian Pavilion Exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale; Hélène Frichot, Professor of Architecture and Philosophy, MSD; Michael Fragstein, Digital Story Telling, Buro Achter April, Germany; Brett Leavy, Virtual Songlines, Brisbane; and Alex Felson, Elisabeth Murdoch Chair of Landscape Architecture, MSD.

Studio 40 exhibits at the global media festival Ars Electronica using Mozilla Hub and 360 videos to communicate early concepts through atmospheric stories of a utopian post-colonial future.

Studio 40 collaborates with Associate Professor Uwe Rieger and his students at the arc/sec Lab, The University of Auckland, New Zealand for the Ars Electronica exhibition.
https://ars.electronica.art/keplersgardens/en/utopia/

Studio 40 explores a utopian post-colonial future at the Melbourne Design Week in 2021.

We acknowledge and pay our respects to the traditional owners, the Dja Dja Wurrung people of the Kulin nation, on whose country we have been developing our designs on and we extend our respect to their Elders, both past and present.

Final reviews - Studio 40

Architecture Senses Process 2020_summer