Yanxiang Yang

This thesis is to explore a design method to recover people’s emotions and memory from the old fabric store in Job Warehouse on Broke Street in Melbourne, as fabric has enriched the economic and cultural value of the site. People are encouraged to build a strong association with this kind of ‘soft’ material as they enter with architectural language expressed by fabric. In this way, the design project will focus on re-evoking a material to try to evoke different spatial conditions and draw people’s attention to certain aspects which are important to link to Job Warehouse, combining with old and new impression.

There are two questions being explored through the whole process of the project:

1. How can fabric restore the heritage’s value and improve it since fabric is quite important to Job Warehouse in history?
2. How can fabric link to space and make contribution to architectural meaning?

Through the research and design experiments, there are three concepts to guide this project: Suspension, Continuity and Liquid Structure. This project consists of two parts. The continuous prototypes form the overall framework, supported by concrete umbrella structure. The components can be prefabricated. The facade is covered by fluttered glass, which is a way to express the abstract fabric condition.

In central area, liquid structure forms the main public communal space, there are two columns supporting the whole system and two elevators. The circulation is designed to sprawl around the columns and glass lifts.