2nd Prize Winner
Buildner’s Architectural Visualization Award
(Edition #1)
Buildner’s Architectural Visualization Award
(Edition #1)
Jury comment
"An innovative collapsing of plans and sections into a spatial field."
Michael Meredith, Associate Dean and Professor at Princeton University and a principal of MOS
Michael Meredith, Associate Dean and Professor at Princeton University and a principal of MOS
About
Studio 44: Art, life and other things was a studio that explores spaces for the creative industry in Melbourne’s inner city. The studio acknowledged the dual and oppositional sides at play within the arts sector, one materialising from the unbridled expression of the artist and the other a commercial market that can seem at odds with community values and the creative process.
This project involved group work with Rebecca Andre.
Concept: Make Art Not War
The current war touched us in the Ukraine and the destruction that is being caused. Observing the damages in the built environments and how this was affecting people. Families displaced and children left without a safe home or routines...
Conflicts are happening all over the world, and we felt it was essential to address this in our project - through arts. We asked ourselves: What is wrong with the world? What can we do to make it better through arts?
Design Statement
Melbourne Protest Art Institute (MPAI) is a factory site for the production and distribution of protest artworks. Our aim is to function as a communication and information hub where local and refugee artists live and create, and the public visit for exhibitions and education. Set on the reconstituted site of the Fitzroy Cable Tram Engine House, the MPAI comprises a garden and post-industrial architecture with the mission of advocating for peace!
MPAI: A sustainable business model
As a business, the MPAI functions to support protests happening in various locations through the production of protest artwork and propaganda for peace. The MPAI generates income for this through subscriptions to the broadcast channel, advertisements, on site sales; for example, at the gift shop, gallery tickets, workshop sessions, the café, lectures etc.) and from protest groups who commission artworks.
Artistic output of the MPAI focus on limited media, mostly graphic art and 2d print media that can be used at protest sites for posters, banner, printed T-shirts etc. But also sculpture - as an important civic medium and “third character”; alongside people and their concerns and, of course, space.
Heritage X Art track
Throughout the architecture of the site, you can see other instances of our approach to heritage by reusing pieces of the old to form the new: For example, the façade of the new building reuses bricks from the heritage piers and walls and structural and ornamental elements such as these cast-iron columns and large steel beam are patchworked into the new architecture to support these canopies. Passing through the public realm, the art track also traverses areas of soft Landscape.
A core motivation of the project is to create a place of healing through landscape and art for people affected by the fallout of war. Throughout the site there are different qualities of landscape: transition edges, journey wayfinding, public space (both soft and hardscape), spaces for reflection, and vertical gardens. Immersion in the landscape is healing for the soul, and from a design perspective, softens the sharp, protest-y language of the built form. Once the art track reaches the boundary of the site, it continues, linking with the city’s tram network to carry its contents to the site of protest in the city. Art is carried from the MPAI to the site of protest, along with bold announcements of its immediate arrival from the broadcast centre. Once the artwork returns from its work in the field, it undergoes a restoration process in the conservation labs.
