The Lakes Project

Beeac is a town in the Western District of Victoria. The town is located on the shore of the hypersaline Lake Beeac in the Colac Otway Shire local government area, 160 kilometers south of Melbourne. The studio aims to foster a relationship with the local community and draw upon local context past and present to develop a brief + funding strategy for a short stay residential artist retreat/research post.

Students will unpack and understand the history of the area through the lens of a specific material component (stone, concrete, brick etc.). This will then form an integral part of their small scale design response as they develop a tectonic agenda to their material, the site and the project brief. There is a field trip to Beeac in the first half of the semester where students will immerse themselves in the town, and gather first hand research through measured drawings, and site
observation.

Building technology and detailed tectonic resolution is an integral part of the studio. The final project is to have a resolved and integrated structural component and a rigorous development and analysis of the assigned material.