Mengyan Yu

The Malleable Pavilion: A Support for the Metabolism of the SDA Union

The relationship between architecture and time is often simplified, this often institutes architecture as a dead, static, and absolute object. According to Catherine Malabou, time is plasticity. Similarly, but distinctly, Cornelius Castoriadis argues that society materialises time as part of the ever-forming process of instituting social time. As such, as a part of this ongoing materialisation, this thesis argues that architecture should further expand its malleability, interacting with and reflecting the changes of societies and time.

Japanese Metabolism of the 1960s attempted to address the malleability of society, but only in the sense of architecture growing or shrinking in a quantifiable sense—which was achieved through diverse strategies, such as the capsule, core and megastructure. In another sense, this thesis considers malleability as something more than growth. The three pavilions here are conceived of as ever-forming supports for the campaign activism of the Sda Union. They are malleable to the malleable needs—programmatic, site-based, and symbolic—of this non-craft worker union and beyond.

The three pavilions relate to three important moments in the SDA Union’s campaign: Moment 1, supporting ongoing demonstrations and meetings at the Victorian Trades Hall; Moment 2, ten years later, supporting a strike at Federation Square; and Moment 3, at the end of their campaign, supporting an exhibition back at the Victorian Trades Hall.