Future Factory

Factory buildings anticipate and celebrate change. They have accommodated changes in technology from the earliest manner of making things – from medieval forges to industrial mills to vertical mass-assembly lines to mobile robotics. As the materials and techniques of making things change, so do architecture and the city around them. Meanwhile, the image of the factory building itself, as well as how it is depicted in popular media, reflects and reinvents our attitudes toward industry, production and consumption. Although not always at the same pace.

This studio will design a space for contemporary manufacturing in Melbourne. Various models of historical and contemporary production will be surveyed, including vertical manufacturing, heavy industry, fabrication, robotics and distributed maker-spaces. Projects will propose new production/consumption combinations, advancing a series of individual positions about the status and role of manufacturing for architecture, for the public, for the city, and for the future.