Crushing on ROOM11

In the spirit of sharing our recent architectural crushes, I recently come across The firm Room11 (or so I thought). As I looked through their folio I began to recognise several projects which had intrigued me whilst studying but never really found the time to investigate.

Now for the spill of thoughts as to what I think about their works and why I think I'm drawn to them;

- Many of their projects seem to be obsessed with using the pure form of the cube in interesting manner.

- The playfulness in which they deal with exposure (through permeability of the skin of the building), materiality as well as light. I find draws me into these projects.

- They have also dealt with a couple of my favourites: opening and stair in some very delightful ways.

- Their drawings and renders while sometimes clunky are still beautiful and convey their ideas in brashly.

- They deal with space I feel in both a poetic and tectonic manner which I guess might be why it excites me.

- And I see myself in their work. As their projects are defiantly brain buildings (i.e. very thought out rather than going with the gut, not sure how to explain this bit. But if you know me you know what I mean). However, I don't think my designs were ever as clear as their projects are.

http://room11.com.au/

Architecture Appeal

I was just reading an old but interesting article about the increase in graduate architects student numbers and graduate pay. The article is quite brief but whoa some of the comments below, watch out they make for some light entertainment.

Suburban Odyssey

Yesterday KvV and I visited the Shaun Tan exhibition, ‘Suburban Odyssey’ at the Fremantle Arts Centre (runs until July 15).  Having marveled at the illustrations of the picture books, ‘The Rabbits’ and ‘The Arrival’ in a coffee table sort of attention span, I really appreciated seeing the evolution of his works.  The major works are of suburban landscapes, from early pieces of realism and portraiture to suburbia as magic-realism and then the working sketches of his later work illustrations.

So our fascination with suburbia, have we seen it all before?  Not as Tan manages to capture suburbia.  I found this quote from a love-in, online review by The West Australian, "These are serious paintings of Australian suburbia, bringing to life that which is usually pictured as dull and monotonous.  Many Australian artists celebrate the boredom of the suburban landscape, but Tan is able to breathe magic into the streetscapes of Perth".

I would agree with the sentiment but I feel that the best descriptive word would be his ability to capture a ‘benign’ suburbia.  Is this suburbia in its best version? There are no seething, bleak undertones, think Tim Burton’s ‘Edward Scissor Hands’ or David Lynch’s ‘Blue Velvet’, just a perspective that some of it’s implied rules are strange (homogeneity, 9-5, crows).  Whilst BENIGN doesn’t have the charisma of AMAZING, the intellect of DELIGHTFUL or the nous of CLEVER, it is used in its ability to convey a kind, generous, gentle disposition.  The magic realism of his stick figure series of paintings (definitely worth the short trip) promote the idea that alien landscapes (or objects & creatures as seen in his later works) can be both strange and benign, which is surely if you took this idea further a message of tolerance?  Maybe I have run away with that thought, but to see these layered paintings and different techniques; pencil, gauche, acrylics, pastels and layered cardboard, wood, cloth & plaster, was a nice interlude for a Thursday.  

Teaser pictures below.

exhibition intro

working perspective

layered painting

PS12.01 Macro / Micro Cities - Liveblog

17:44 Perth Samplings 12.01 tonight, Richard Weller & Anthony Duckworth-Smith presenting 'Macro/Micro Cities'.

18:25 Gently rousing intro from Melinda Payne, Richard Weller off to a start at 6.20. 

18:27 Richard seems to be working on Boomtown on a global scale. He's just back from China - "in a way, apocalyptic".

18:30 New discipline: urban ecology. Cities as living breathing entities.

18:32 No, it's actually a Boomtown for the whole of Australia.

18:36 24 new Perths needed this century(ish), cities will get too big & too dense - do this to max, then find sites for new cities.

18:36 Polycentric - "you want to make a fruitcake, not a loaf of bread."

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Architecture and Timelessness

Tutoring in design today made me remember a conversation I had with SP regarding the role of architecture and the timelessness of a building. From memory (which is very shaky on the details so I hope I have the essence of his argument right) in his opinion it is to do with the ability of a space to capture a sense of greater being, or a person's core self. By doing so it neglected cultural background, ideological persuasion or fads as all occupants connect to space in through the use of our senses. He put forth a very convincing argument.

Now what made me think of this discussion is that the students are being asked to explore Leon van Schiak's three schools of thought: 'Civic Narrative', 'Technic' and 'Poetic' - for those of you have are not sure what these are, I have tried to give a synopsis of each school below. Be wary though: I have been very reductionist. When considering the timelessness of architecture ideas, I pose these questions to start some discussion:

Do you think that only buildings designed intentionally in a poetic manner will become timeless? 

And if buildings were to designed to other design intents ie. Civic Narrative or Technic, to become timeless do they need to have a poetic quality?

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Boral Blues

After a long session, the athletes are tired and drained. Many schemes for a small brick factory have been generated, designed and discarded. Eventually the ideas exhausted, the team collapsed on the sidelines.

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Affirmative Architecture: Resonations and Reservations from AJH, KvV & FJE

Notes, reflections and sketches from the Affirmative Architecture symposium. We haven't covered everything, just a few things that resonated with us, and a few more that didn't.

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Brook Andrew, The Cell

If anyone is interested but there is a fun exhibition on at PICA I think that people might be interested in visiting. It's just a little fun. I am attaching some photos from when my sister and I took my cousin there and you can find the bio from the PICA website copied below.

Brook Andrew
The Cell
9 July - 21 August 2011
Central Galleries

Commissioned by the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Brook Andrew's The Cell is an immersive installation, featuring a 12.5m x 6m inflatable rectangle that requires the viewer to wear a specially designed costume, before crawling via a tunnel into a striped cell. This is the first time The Cell has been shown in Western Australia.

Working with striking neon installations, powerful photographic studies, prints, sculpture and optical illusions, Andrew challenges cultural and historical perception using text and image to comment on local and global issues regarding race, consumerism and history. Language and traditional designs from Andrew's Wiradjuri heritage are combined with contemporary elements such as optical art patterns, pop art aesthetics, and the declarative strategies of advertising to create compelling and insightful pieces. The inflatable cell draws on such themes concerning cultural identity, colonial experience and consumerism.

In the artist's words "The original idea for The Cell is an extension of my wall pattern installations, where one is immersed in the pattern and experience. You are immediately transformed once you don a costume and enter The Cell. It's like you become an inmate, a cellular astronaut or asylum seeker. Experiences of loss, asylum and genocide, an 'outsider', is turned on its head. The Cell is a conundrum, a monument to such stories, a space for quiet contemplation, disorientation and spectacle."

Please note: during the Little Big Shots Children's Short Film Festival (20-23 July, 1pm), The Cell will operate from 11am to 6pm with a break from 1pm-2pm.

For the rest of the exhibition period the break will be from 2pm -3pm each day.

KvV: Thesis - Research Context

Hi all, please read the following if you have time. I am interested in your comments on anything that you feel has holes, etc.

ARCHITECTURE AS PEDAGOGY:

DESIGNING GOVERNMENT HIGH SCHOOLS IN THE PERTH METROPOLITAIN AREA

ABSTRACT:

Since settlement education has played an important role in the formation of Perth’s built fabric, whether it was through private tutoring, privately funded institutions or government institutions (Siew 2004 surmising Gregory and Smith’s Thematic History of Public Education in Western Australia, 1995). Enrolment statistics of full-time students from kindergarten though to senior college reveal the importance of the role of government schools in Western Australia society, 62% of the W.A.’s student population attending government schools and 83% are in Metropolitan schools in Western Australia and (DET 2011, www.det.wa.edu.au). These figures highlight why the design of Government schools is poignant.

The design of educational facilities is of great interest to me because of my background as both an architecture student and a qualified high school teacher. Consequently, I am interested in the relationship between pedagogy and educational facilities and their application to government high schools in the Perth Metropolitan Area (as defined by the DET 2011, www.det.wa.edu.au).

Whilst investigating the relationship between pedagogy and the design educational facilities I have found that there are three types of relationships which exist these include; independent, unidirectional and reciprocal relationships. I am interested in the application of the reciprocal relationship, when pedagogy influences an architecture educational facility and when the educational facilities become an active component of pedagogy. Torin Monahan defines it in Learning Spaces­ as ‘built pedagogy’ (van Note Chism 2006, 2.2) that is the embodiment of educational philosophies in architectural form. The importance of this relationship is the shift in the view of the role of the educational facility moving away from traditional view as container of learning to playing an active role in educating. The research conducted here explores, analyses, interprets and describes the reciprocal relationship between pedagogy and educational space based on a literature reviews of relevant documents and a within case study of educational facilities which deal with this reciprocal relationship. From this analysis some key features have been identified for a performative brief for government high schools in Western Australia.

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Experiments with Light

Did anyone recently attend this?

'Experiments with Light' is Tommy Wong's latest progress towards his creative practice Architecture PhD 'The Thingness of Light.' Tommy will touch on his recent fieldwork and studio experiments in this thought provoking and entertaining presentation. 11-12am Tuesday 19 April. Room 649.

Urban Compositions

I was doing some overdue procrastinating today and to anyone who reads ArchDaily you probably have already seen these but I thought these were amazing. I don't know if they are real or not but they are pretty damn kewl.