PADDINGTON SITE VISIT

Carpark entry - next to house 

Context 

Steep hilly site - CHALLENGE!

Paddington has little deco pieces like this everywhere...eclectic and intersting

Paddington Central - currently acts as a beacon.  Top structure (purpose? not sure) acts as a marker/wayfinder for the site - people can connect and has a sense of security about it. Always there, like a constellation in the sky. This is an element that I would like to carry into my project

Beacon again...

and again...

graff art

next few images are from Latrobe Tce - just to get a picture of the context

beacon again (behind the tree) ...

and again...

Eclectic...

Bikes have been considered, but act as parking areas as well. Where's the safety?

Beacon AGAIN!

I had a moment...

...today. I just wanted to be by myself. And the only possible way was to stay back at work. But yet...my phone was still there..the computer was still turned on and it reflected me back to one of our readings from week 3 (Zelfde, J. V., 2012. "The aspatial city." The continuous partial everywhere. http://juhavantzelfde.com/post/23506562343/the-aspatial-city.) 

The only way to escape would be through this little monster...

the Faraday Tent.

It was created by Sarah Faraday for her desire to 'a right to silence'.  I feel like we are so overexposed and overstimulated by technology at the present time, there comes a need to just shut it all off, (if only for a brief period, to get away from it all).  When technology becomes more and more integrated in our lives - yes, even more so than it is now! - will we all need a Faraday tent built into our dwellings to give us the chance to exercise our right for silence?

Individual Project One Statement

The approach that I think we took with our proposal was one that is self-sustaining (food, energy, economy, trade etc) and allows people to participate in and give back to their community.  It allows freedom as such, in that transport is both solely and publicly driven. Freedom is also echoed in the interconnectedness of society today through means like Facebook, Twitter and the internet at large, frees an individual up from physical being because of our multiple virtual beings.  With more and more development, people of the future will be somewhere without physically being at that somewhere.
A focus on the co...co-mmunity, co-existence, co-hesion, co-habitation, co-mmodity, co-mmunication...having flexibility in design and thinking about how that archetype will act in x amount of years and thinking about and designing for how that building will need to be modified to keep up with changing trends/advancements.

WEEK 5 | READING

Isozaki, A. (1999) Erasing architecture into the system

Cedric Price - his chief aim was to provoke and challenge the norm by injecting systemised ideas that break clean away from existing notions.  Price was very closely linked with Archigram who were well known for their images which conveyed both ideology and technical solution with particular emphasis on figurative breakdowns and diagrammatic drawings. Yet Price preferred focusing on raising issues and what the solutions would be to such issues over visual communication.  A lot of Price's work was composed of lightweight re-combinations of disposable components.  
If you look at Fun Palace (1960-65), it is a continuous but changing dialogue which varies dependent on time and the users etc..the mechanical system configuration is forever changing in response to circumstances in that it almost makes the architecture a living thing.
Price has in effect, designed a big park. He has given (if not misled) people with a sense of freedom. It has no entry, it is open...but the users are always on show as much as the audience is always watching. Theater as architecture. I don't think this was Price's intent.  The notion of being on show at all times at first is a terrifying idea for me, but it made me think that maybe being in the Fun Palace would be like something never experienced before, perhaps you would be able to learn from watching other people...perhaps you would socialize 
Whenever I revisit Price's work, it gives me a cold feeling.  There is this totalitarian quality to it...not only with his visual representation but with the underlying ideology present in his work - there seems to be a "big brother" like controlling entity (there was mention of George Orwell 1984 in this reading in regards to Price's ATOM project), and I feel like we have kind of touched on the same issue with some of our ideas involving the all-knowing computers.
So it begs me to ask the question, how much control are we willing to give up to computers?

Kazi, O. (2009) Architecture as a Dissident Practice: An Interview with Diller Scofidio + Renfro

theory is good? theory is bad? theory is food? ah i don't get it...but this is one of their projects that I had stumbled upon some time ago and I thought it rather fitting for this project. It is focused around collaborative consumption..the emphasis on service rather than ownership.

I feel like its rather appropriate to our project to since we have taken such a 'community' stance with our coming proposal.

WEEK 5 | TUTORIAL ACTIVITIES

WEEK 4 | TUTORIAL ACTIVITIES

WEEK 4 | READING

Winters, E. (2007) Politics and the Situationist International

The reading looked at how political and moral considerations infiltrate the concept of architecture. How is the pattern of life mapped onto and into buildings and artifacts even though they aren't something that one can actually see?
Many intellectual developments in humanity has been largely influenced by the French - Structuralism is a french product which was largely exported to the world.
Our essence is exists in our freedom and our freedom to choose: an animal behaves the way it does according to its dna, to an unwritten but understood language that was written in its most basic genetic material. Man however, is born free and he can exercise that freedom in choosing the life he leads. Animal and man both have their genetic material determined by nature, but man's life however, is on a different stature.  It is therefore a problem for man as to HOW he lives, but not for the animal.
Satre's disdain for the bourgeois is based on the assumption that its members haven't committed themselves to live in a certain way, they've just passively accepted to life of numbing servitude.  They collude in supporting a set of artificial values which remove from their own consciousness any obligation to think and act for themselves: basically an army of zombies meeting the 9-5 grind because that's what they've been told is normal and right and socially acceptable.
The Situationist International wanted to transform the everyday life. "Derive":instead of working, walk the streets in search of the unknown.  Engaging and being absorbed into. Social encounters with strangers is encouraged. Encountering the unfamiliar is key to this.
"Detournament":Designed to replace art.
VIRTUAL SELF - largely agrees with this idea, to make daily life exciting and stimulating, it helps people with the same interests or values interact, bringing people closer that may not have had that chance before.  Not only will people want to roam the streets again in search for these social interactions, it'll help create safer communities.

Manaugh, G. (2007) Architectural weaponry: an interview with Mark Wigley

New Babylon encouraged one to step out of the norm to create a new conversation/dialect not only with ideas, or with people but also with the built environment.
A playground is a space of free movement.  But its freedom is really only perceived - you are limited to what activities are done, and you are constantly monitored.
The concept of New Babylon - designed as a BIG playground for everyone, no body works, everyone is free to use this space however they feel.  What the architect designed as a place for exchange of love ala 60's peace love ecstacy paradise, he also envisioned not so many years later it being a place of bloodshed.  The human spirit is just drawn that way, we are dark miserable creatures. Without constraints and struggles, we would all just kill each other. There would be 'freedom' as such, but not freedom in its essence - which reflects alot back to the concept of man from the last reading. We, as man, are singled out from the rest of nature, by our ability to choose.
Mark wigley quoted:
George Bataille: "Architecture, no matter what it is, in any form, is a prison".
Gordon Matta-Clarke: an an example of Liberation with regards to the 'utopian' mobile home..."you're only free to go anywhere you want in so far as you never leace the US highway network"
Enrique Walker: "we as architects build constraints, we don't build freedoms: we build reductions of freedoms".

The aim of our project will be to try to give people the feeling of freedom at the very least. Like the above quotes, once you build something, you are building less freedom and more constraint, no matter what angle you look at it...so we have tried to propose a building that limits the number of constraints and maximises freedom.