Studio leader: Andre Bonnice
“Architecture is a strange mixture of obstinate persistence and constant flux... Some elements have barely changed in the last 3000-5000 years, others were re-invented last week but in architecture the appearance of a new element is rare; most inventions are re-inventions” (Elements of Architecture 2018, 193)
Through the investigative study of lost architectural elements, energy systems and their infrastructures; ‘Obstinate Persistence’ speculates on architecture's place within our current energy paradigm.
Projects explored discrete ‘reinvented’ architectural elements repurposed as distributed forms of energy production and waste management. Reclaiming domains surrendered by architects to other specialist disciplines, the studio challenges our reliance on the ubiquitous systems that service our buildings. Exploring the reciprocity between energy and built form seeing the history of architecture as one of energy use.
Three paradigms of energy capture define human history – foraging, agriculture, and carbon-intensive fossil fuels. To supplant the current energy paradigm the proposition becomes an ecology of production and utility. Exploring novel distributed forms of energy as an alternative to large scale centralised power generation.
Projects reconciled the relationship between these infrastructures and architecture, with consideration to their utility, context and the social and cultural systems that surround them. The architectural project becomes a complex collage of the archaic and the current, of the standard and the unique through the development of discrete re-invented elements conceived within a continuous energy system.
Students:
Barclay Tabone, Charles Deicke, Fonnie Chan, Haoyu Chen, Isabel Roden, Jiexin Wang, Shelley Mao, Thao Thanh Pham, Thomas Martiniello, Yaseera Moosa, Yi Wang
Studio Guests:
Anna Jankovic, Gab Olah, Nicholas Agius, Stephanie McNamara, Temitope Adesina