Ephemeral Architecture

Ephemeral Architecture privileges the life of a work over its formal appearance. To invite time into a work is to also open it up to external forces acting beyond the scope of the site boundary. Landscape and ecological systems, and urban flows can provide a dynamic context for creative works. Within the everyday use of a building its spaces can also invite relationships with site phenomena, such as light, the weather and seasonal change. Here buildings are no longer conceived as static objects, instead becoming places to stage change over short and long spans of time – where the notions of the incomplete and the transitory hold more significance than permanence. How might architecture stage ongoing change? See https://xfieldexhibit.wordpress.com/introduction

“Saving Small Towns from Fading Away…. There are towns like Nyah West all over Australia, once bustling but now dying a slow death. Should they be saved or allowed to disappear?” (The Age, Tuesday 23 December, 2014, p12-13). The studio will explore design strategies for the regeneration of a small rural community: a handson-urbanism to plot a sustainable future; a regime of care; small scale actions to facilitate regeneration.

Fryerstown (a small township, population 300 people, 12kms south of Castlemaine, and 110kms north west of Melbourne). A town in danger of fading away. Fryerstown is a case study location to explore strategies for small town regeneration. Project: the design of new civic infrastructure (rather than a building) for Fryerstown to trigger a process of regeneration. It is to provide amenity for the local community, tourists and track users (Goldfields Walking Track connecting Bendigo to Ballarat). Your design response will be derived from a careful reading of the town and its landscape as well as the opportunities afforded by the: weekly visit of a mobile library / outdoor cinema (seasonal) / sports precinct / antiques fair – 12,000 people, over three days (annual) / town dinner (monthly) / anticipated passage of hikers and cyclists / and other uses as determined by you. The overlay of the ephemeral – is a siting strategy to forge common ground between the past, the present and future.

The town is to be examined from a range of different perspectives, to discover opportunities of long and short durations of change.