WK 08 :: ROUGH STORYBOARD

WK 08 :: THEME / VISUAL DIRECTION FOR FINAL VIDEO

The world has ignored its issues – overpopulation, overuse of energy resources, the natural environment…The city fabric reflects this. Territorial Architecture is parasitic architecture, but that of brutal hard forms. Post Post modernist architecture is dire.

The video will start with a study of the two prominent ‘60s housing commission buildings in Waterloo / Redfern. They are a prominent fixture in my skyline. They will take over the city fabric.

Filtered, colour-stripped aesthetic. “Parametric” unbenevolent facades everywhere.

Acknowledge the rich, colourful, vibrant city fabric to be suffocated by these territorial parasites.

A comment on the current state of architecture, a warning for the future.

WK 08 :: 200 WORDS

FIDDLING WHILE THE WORLD BURNS

Neil Spiller argues that capitalism and consumerism awards selfishness and shortsightedness, it also has created an overcrowded world. (He blames religion too). Spiller believes architects and architecture students run the risk of transferring the mistakes of formal architecture onto "parametric" architecture, by ignoring the opportunity to use architecture as a force for meaningful cultural and political change. That actually, the real parameters that influence the form of the city are politics, sociology, demographics, ecologies, procurement and dynamics of capital... "All of which benevolent patterned facades don't do." In a lecture given today, Richard Goodwin stated that the world is in a constant state of fear and uncertainty. Architects, and students of architecture must acknowledge and embrace this, and not "fiddle while the world burns", as Spiller puts it.

Goodwin also talked about the need to create parasites that grow and respond to the changing city, that it is too expensive to pull down every poor bit of urban design and architecture. Spiller too believes that there needs to be considerable thought put into retrofitting old buildings, "and start seeing the existing built environment not as blight but an opportunity to use cities as massive factories for environmental good."

Extending from these concepts of politically, environmentally and socially aware architecture, David Gissen writes about Territorial Architecture that "both investigates it world and infuses its immediate surroundings with particular concepts, patterns and sensations... Territorial Architecture suggest a role for architecture as a strategy of tinkering versus one of accommodation with, or refusal of, an external natural environment".

Spiller, N. (2010), Fiddling While the World Burns. Architectural Design, 80: 116–117. doi: 10.1002/ad.1087

Gissen, D. (2010), Territory: Architecture Beyond Environment. Architectural Design, 80: 8–13. doi: 10.1002/ad.1068

ASSIGNMENT 02 :: MENTAL BUG

Narrative:

The song I have chosen is Mental Universe by Free the Robots. I wanted a sound that would help accentuate robotic and mechanical movement. My animation draws on the role of the army played in terms of mechanisation:

"It was the military who attached the notion of efficiency to the machine through necessity, as a result of limited resources".

The building (Red Centre) is oblivious of its impending doom. It shifts and moves in its unnecessarily over-engineered way. Meanwhile, the mechanical bottle bug leads the march. As it reaches the shifting building, the bug extends out a limb and touches the building's facade, causing it to turn black and explode. Good riddance failed architectural machine, you have been terminated.

ASSIGNMENT 02 :: STORYBOARD

PEER REVIEW