Studio leader: James Bowman Fletcher
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This studio provided a framework to explore the social, material, and environmental dimensions of ‘time’, through the design of a pavilion, across three locations and/or three stages of this pavilion’s life. ‘The Pavilion’ was considered as both including and more than what makes ‘contemporary’ pavilions what they are. Such as roll-out turf, institutions, land, disassembly, patrons, Surefoot footings, expositions, sunlight, brands, nations, bolts, transplanted trees, microphones, CAPI mineral water, reinstatement, and stackable stools. The aim was to re-propose a pavilion that is other to these conditions, starting its life within the proximity of the Victorian Trades Hall.
Early in the semester, seminars introduced the sociological argument of Cornelius Castoriadis, making ‘time’ less thinkable as universal, quantifiable, objective, and linear, and more thinkable as supported by material aspects, more-than-rational, and particular to each society and their history.
Underlying the studio’s framework is the claim that architectural works are not static, as neither are society and history; instead, they are ever forming and in the making. That is, as living/non-living and human/non-human beings and bodies, in relation to the material things, make their society what it is, and what it could be. In particular respects, the pavilion was posed as one suitable architectural type to explore these notions within the scope of the Design Thesis semester.