Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemSpace, time and representation(University of Melbourne, 2006)
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ItemMystic Media: A Historical Account of Technological Transcendentalism within the Immersive Multimedia Environments of the 1960-70s( 2019)Throughout history, there has been a recurring impulse for artists to create Immersive Multimedia Environments (IMEs), which through the combined force of multiple artistic and communicative mediums, surround and suffuse the entire sensory field of their audience with the aesthetic stimuli required to construct an alternate reality. The first declarations of this impulse were often found in religious architecture; however, echoes of this ideal are heard throughout the last two centuries, from Richard Wagner’s demands for the Gesamtkunstwerk to the rhetoric of cyberspace that occurred at the turn of the millennium. This dissertation argues that many of these total works of art are designed with the intentions of implicating embodied and environmental phenomena, as a means of generating transcendental experiences within their audiences. To elaborate upon this contention within a detailed context, this thesis focuses on the Expanded Cinema movement of the 1960s and 70s. The ambitions of this movement were to invent a new cinematic language by deconstructing and reconstructing media technologies (film, video, computer graphics), live performances (theatre, dance, music) and the architecture of their presentation, so that audiences may become an integral part of the art. However, according to Gene Youngblood’s influential account of the movement called Expanded Cinema (1970), this scene of aesthetic inquiry had quickly accrued the transcendentalist rhetoric of the era, such as that espoused by the counterculture and Marshall McLuhan. To these artists, Expanded Cinema used the combined power of the psychedelic and cybernetic as means of experimenting with the embodied and environmental methods of expanding consciousness. To highlight the architectural contribution to this movement, this research conducts a cross-sectional and comparative study on how three IMEs of the Expanded Cinema movement employed different spatial strategies to curate the phenomenological and epistemological conditions that can evoke transcendental experiences within their audiences. Specifically, it explores the Labyrinth (1967), Cerebrum (1968), and the works of Pulsa (1966-73), by interviewing the people involved with these projects and investigating archival materials. These accounts are measured against the technological-mysticism found within Marshall McLuhan’s influential media theory, and against the psychological, sociological and anthropological discourse that best explain transcendental phenomena.
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ItemA search for understanding: the architecture of R.J. Ferguson( 2018)This thesis is an historical study examining the work of Western Australian architect Ronald Jack (Gus) Ferguson (1931-). It argues that the regional practice of R.J Ferguson was one developed out of a global postwar “anxiety” over the role of architecture in a rapidly changing world, and is the result of a complex interplay of geo-political factors specific to Western Australia. Following an extensive tour of Africa, Europe and Asia between 1957 and 1960, Ferguson set out on what he termed a “search for architectural understanding”: seeking out lessons and principles drawn from a variety of traditional architectural practices as a way to mediate this anxiety. Motivated by Perth’s geographic isolation, Ferguson’s search involved extensive travel, research and application, resulting in a practice that relied on evolving relationships between regional and global traditions. Through an exploration of Ferguson’s work between 1960 and 1975, this study contributes to a better understanding of the conditions which directly affected his practice, including geography, harsh climatic conditions, an active local discourse, and the pragmatics of construction. The thesis explores three key campus projects: the Hale School Memorial Hall (1961); The University of Western Australia campus buildings, including the Law School (1967), the Sports Centre (1970), and the Student Guild (1972); and Murdoch University, Stage One (1975). These significant built works demonstrate the way in which Ferguson worked to construct a personal, locally responsive architectural language, through the careful study and application of lessons learnt during his extensive travels. The research focusses particularly on his interests in the vernacular traditions of the Mediterranean, Japan, and colonial Australia along with an interest in contemporary European modernism centred on the work of Le Corbusier. Underpinning Ferguson’s practice is the relationship between his search for architectural understanding, and his consistent and pioneering use of off-form concrete in Australia. Through a close examination of these projects, this thesis provides new insights into a major Western Australian practice, and adds to a broader understanding of the diverse nature of postwar modern Australian architecture.
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ItemUrban narratives : museums + the city( 2013)Cities provide the backdrop for contemporary life, with more than half the population of the world now living in urban areas. Cities provide the armature for both the everyday and for ceremony and ritual, establishing routines of movement, spectacle and meaning that are inherent to the conception, perception and lived urban experience. This study investigates the relationships between individual buildings and the 'site' in which they are located, highlighting the experience of the city as a series of related spaces, rather than merely as a set of individual objects. Contemporary theoretical conceptions of 'site' as a constructed concept are central to the argument, which contests that the relationships between buildings and context can be established through the orchestration of traversable (physical), visual, or conceptual connections. Three case studies - the British Museum in London, the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh and the Jewish Museum Berlin, all recent extensions to existing institutions - provide an exploration of the experience, spectacle and meaning of the museum within the 'site' of the city. This study examines the institutional narratives of museums and cities, both the rhetorical narratives that underpin conceptual meaning and associations, and the spatial narratives that are derived from the. orchestration of movement, spectacle and the perception of meaning through experience. This study proposes that through physical paths or traversable spaces; vistas or visual connections; and conceptual associations or theoretical ideas, the relationship between buildings and sites cans be understood as a constructed 'terrain of engagement'. This provides ways to consider the agency of architecture to assist in orchestrating connections between the museum and the physical and conceptual context of the contemporary city.
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ItemArchitectural design studio and the real world out there : an investigation of content in Architectural Design Studio at three faculties of Architecture in Australia from years 1-5 (2003-2007)( 2011)In Anglophone countries, architects appear disengaged from the public realm despite professional bodies' policies. Critics frequently blame architectural education's core pedagogy, design studio. This research examined studio handouts from Australian universities against professional design brief criteria, and by discourse analysis, seeing how studios might contribute. Few studios aimed to solve problems, most focusing on form-making and aesthetics, under-stressing social, environmental and financial issues, sometimes unintentionally. But rare, conceptually 'thicker' proposals often targeted social housing and engagements with the 'real world.'
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ItemSAPE : some architectural publications and ethics which requires the positing of a meta-ethics of Architecture( 2008)The scholarly journals of architecture are a likely rich source to mine for matters of ethical concern pertinent to architecture. The thesis launches from this premise and develops a research tool, grounded in corpus linguistics and content analysis, to identify words in the essays of four important scholarly journals that are placeholders for matters of ethical concern. The result of this word-mining is the Ethical Universal Scholar of Architecture (Eusa). She is invited into the text of the thesis to make her own commentary on matters in general, and specifically on her four most important matters of ethical concern. Her commentary is interesting enough but if left here the thesis would leave itself open to the criticism that its findings are only constituted by the author's common sense, and Eusa's limited universe, which shows no knowledges of contemporary ethical discourse. For an informed discourse to continue an intellectual framework is required and this ought to be a Meta-ethics of architecture. From the literature it is readily apparent that this does not exist and, encouraged by a call from a few authors for such a construct, the thesis temporarily sets Eusa aside, and goes about to design and construct this Meta-ethics. The thesis, on sound historic grounds, defines the necessary and sufficient conditions for an entity to be named architecture to be that it must be both practical shelter and art. It now appropriates Rorty's propositions on liberal society and axiomatically names the Meta-ethics of architecture as the structure that, in the first place, separates practical shelter and art and deems them incommensurable. It names them the Creative Ethics and the Practical Ethics of architecture. Having done this it observes that architecture, because of its means of production, the material of its medium, and the immutability of the completed concrete artefact, is unlike other art forms and demands that decisions be made in the face of the self created incommensurables of the Practical and Creative Ethics. To effect this, the thesis turns to the affective valuing of Elizabeth Anderson, whilst not ignoring the limited usefulness of consequentualist ethics, makes the central claim that it is not irrational to make decisions and then act on them on the basis of the way we feel, provided we open them up for inter-subjective agreement. Eusa's is returned to, and her utterances, her fragments of texts, her four most important matters of ethical concern are re-interrogated to enable them to be located in the meta-ethics of architecture. This is done and the matrix is cross tabulated with the way she deploys, most probably in ignorance, affective valuing to adequately express her feelings towards the things that matter. The contents of the matrix are considered closely to identify where incommensurability, exists and then to deploy the affective reading of Eusa's utterances to ascertain if it does, or could, effect reconciliation. This is the test of the Meta-ethics in praxis, enabled by affective valuing.
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ItemThinking through the space of the body : a performance account of the body and architecture( 2008)In the last few decades, there has been a shift within the humanities: may from text, may from objects, away from monuments, and from this the process of reading cultural objects as representations of cultural production. What has been highlighted instead is the dynamic processes of culture - the performative. This shift in emphasis is also shaping the discipline of architecture. Central to this shift in perspective is the focus on the body as a site and medium for understanding processual relations, which augments representational thinking, where architecture is framed, contemplated and mastered by man-as-subject through distance and objectivity. The analysis in this thesis investigates the ways in which the body is thought about in the explicitly theoretical works of both Judith Butler and Deleuze and Guattari, which emphasise a performative understanding of the space of the body. In turn, this thesis then looks at how the 'spacing of the body' is physically and conceptually realised through the performative spatial practices of Arakawa and Gins, Bernard Tschumi and Grundei Kaindl Teckert. Chapter Seven integrates theoretical and practical investigations through Learning-by-Making as a representative case study. The crucial point of this project is to suggest that the constraints and the restrictions that are imposed on the body are not just symbolic and discursive but also impact on the 'lived body.' This thesis also focuses on how the spacing of the body, through a performative rhetoric, becomes a site of utopian possibilities and dissolution, where neither mind, body nor space is privileged. In this framework the agency of the material is understood as an affective force in the construction of meaning. Thus the 'spacing of the body' is explored in this thesis as a composition of the two terms performance and performativity as a way to understand how the spacing of the body is both constrained by normative relations and also produced through bodily experience which privileges the concept of affect.
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Iteminterpreting sustainability : examining the social approach to environmentally sustainable architecture in India( 2007)There is a need to rethink the way that sustainable architecture is produced in post liberalised India. Emerging green architecture in India is inspired by the global discourse on sustainable architecture with a predilection for active engagement with technology. Market driven environmentalism has failed to address vital social issues and has led to privileging technology-driven, quantitative solutions by the Indian government and architects alike. As a result, `sustainable' architecture produced in India in the last decade stresses on technology as a panacea for all environmental problems whether it is `green' or low cost `alternative' architecture. The main argument of this thesis is that the current approach tends to ignore culturally inscribed environmental practices and neglects crucial social issues that adversely impact the environment in India. Furthermore, sustainable architecture in India ought to reflect the changing social and environmental conditions in urban centres caused by rapid population growth, modernization and urbanization. Hence, this thesis argues that it is critical to have appropriate frameworks that take social, economic and ecological causes into account when producing a sustainable built environment. To broaden the understanding of the hypothesis, the research method in this thesis relied on three examples to expose various underlying social issues that impact the environmental sustainability of an architectural project. Case studies were chosen to investigate the relevance of social dimensions of sustainability. The selected examples demonstrated conditions where building practices intersected with the social aspects in very particular ways, uncovering very specific conditions influencing the production of sustainable architecture. Four social factors were identified as primarily impacting the sustainability of the built environment in India. They were - property ownership, optimal use of space, provision of infrastructure, and choice of construction materials and processes. Such issues are typically taken for granted in affluent societies where property ownership, taxation and individual rights are linked to one another and where use of space is fairly homogenous. In such industrialized societies infrastructure provision is an expectation of urban life and construction materials and processes are linked to an industrial past. The situation in India is far more ambiguous. Social inequities impact these issues in specific ways challenging received interpretations of sustainability. In conclusion the interpretation of environmental sustainability needs to incorporate social issues as its basis for it to be relevant to any locality undergoing rapid urban and economic transformation. The results of this research project are significant for developing countries such as India that are in the process of rapid industrialization but have yet to confront the high social costs of development. It is hoped that the questions raised in this particular study will contribute to more inclusive polices and therefore socially sustainable approaches to environmental sustainability in architecture specifically and to the built environment more generally.