2022

86533_Spatial Agency

  • Studio Leader: Samantha Donnelly

    Members of the Moree Local Aboriginal Community Council have expressed their desire to design a keeping place for cultural artefacts responsive to the local landscape and community values. Underpinned by the fundamentals of sustainable architectural design, students are asked to respond to climatic variation, local materials, views, and local Indigenous sensibilities to land and Country, to design culturally responsive architecture suitable for diverse user groups. 

    The provisional design brief comprises of … 

    Keeping Place (a combined museum for local aboriginal artefacts, 

    An art gallery for local artists, and community centre for events) on their land. 

    Yarning place (an area for elders to share their stories with the community)

    Making place (a workshop for community to continue the art practice of the community) 

    Landscaped places (integrate indoor and outdoor spaces with landscaped connections) 

    Associated kitchen, toilets, storage, administration, information areas for visitors to the site. 

  • Studio Leaders: Dr Campbell Drake & Harriette Poiner

    Members of the Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community Council have expressed their desire to upgrade the existing camp site at Cave Beach. Building on existing infrastructure, you are asked to design a low impact, sustainable tourism destination that is responsive to the local landscape and community values. The provisional design brief comprises of 12 individual villas for accommodation, a communal area, a kitchen, reception, staff accommodation, car parking, storage and connective landscaping. 

    Engaging with Indigenous sensibilities to land and Country, your designs must respond to, seasonal variation, forms of approach and departure, external orientation, prevailing wind and weather, local materials, resource scarcity, privacy, durability, limited builders in area, climatic conditions, lifecycle costs and an emphasis on using conventional materials used in unconventional ways. 

  • Studio Leaders: Colette Hortle, Todd Solman &Matte McConnell

    Centred on the adaptive reuse of a former health facility/nursing home, the aim of this Design Studio is to identify potential uses of the existing build and surrounding land. Starting with Country, decolonisation, and Aboriginal experiences of place, students will challenge the social, political, cultural, and spatial frameworks of Community spaces.

  • Studio Leaders: Vesna Trobec & Samantha Rich 

    The old Camden Police Station has been unused since 2011.  An Aboriginal land claim for the site was lodged with the Aboriginal Rights Registrar by the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council in 2016.  In 2020 the Camden Police Station was transferred in freehold title to the Tharawal Local Aboriginal Land Council.  It is not known yet what the old Camden Police Station site will be used for.  One local resident, Greg Frawley, said that “The Tharawal Local Aboriginal Land Council may use the Old Police Station as an Indigenous Cultural and Arts Centre, operating independently and/or in collaboration with the Camden Civic Centre” and that it is “ideally placed to showcase indigenous art”. Not everybody will have the same feelings about the site.

    Students in this design studio will investigate potential uses for the site and will develop their own design briefs for the site that will be supported by research into the community, history, geology and other areas. Research will go beyond a colonial reading of the site. 

    Research will also form the basis for creative experimentation and the design of spaces. Students will be challenged to engage with the complexities of the design brief and client interests within the colonial police station site. 

  • Studio Leaders: Kevin Bradley & Ella Holmgren

    The Boom Gate Gallery exhibits and sells artwork by current and former inmates of NSW prisons. The gallery supports inmate rehabilitation through creative and professional development of the artists and their wellbeing whilst inside and transition to life outside of the prison.

    The project is a new ‘Art Centre’ at a prison located at Malabar near La Perouse in southeast Sydney. The new art facility will be located external to the prison walls. It will have the function of exhibiting art produced by current and released prisoners whilst connecting with and offering new social amenity for the La Perouse local community.

    The concept for this project is to relocate and expand the art gallery from its existing operation to a larger site adjacent to its current location to support an expanded operation. The new facility will include a main gallery space, studios for teaching art with community participants, and two artists residences with attached dedicated studios for the resident artists.

    The Arts Centre can be understood conceptually as a liminal space where ‘art’ is the catalyst for the coming together of many diverse life stories that otherwise would never come into contact. To this extent you will be expected to articulate the potential of this ‘liminal space’ through your research of the artists, the local community, response to local site conditions, and synthesis of precedent spatial analysis.

  • Studio Leader: Michael Ford