Babylon

RMIT Bachelor of Architectural Design, Design Studio Semester 1, 2019

Supervisor: Dr Michael Spooner

Students:

Oscar Casper, Laura Zammit, Isabella Konig, Jane Weisi Li, Harrison Smart, Megan Voo, Elizabeth Battiston, Jessica Kease, Audrey Avianto, Stan Tianruo Li, Patrick Byrne, Charlotte Nheu, Akshaya Parameswaran.

LZ…there was a crisis, and this is the aftermath.

BALLOT PRESENTATION

This ballot picks up the broken thread of ambition first encountered in the studio Nabucco, named after the Opera that was loosely framed by the historical siege of Jerusalem, a narrative continued in the studio K for Ketamine born of the madness of the film Fitzcarraldo (1982), its director Werner Herzog, the actor Klaus Kinski and the protagonist Brian Fitzgerald’s love of opera, and then recently and finally in the mischievous affirmation of The Last Studio that remonstrated with the discordant promise of an Opera House indigenous to Australia.

These studios wrestled with my doubt, my sadness, my intense hesitation to continue, and my visceral hallucinations. This studio anticipates the fragile condition of loss that almost always follows the last of anything. It is not about death which is a very average concern. It is about an exchange with the sentimental. It was prompted by the historical role of Iron Jewellery when the citizens of Prussia were urged to give up their gold and silver jewellery to fund the uprising against Napolean during the War of Liberation. In exchange they were given imperfect copies made from iron.

Im not publicly known for my sentimentality. Im of course very public about almost everything else. I confess I lost my virginity to a man twice my age amongst the football fields of Hagley Park. The only distinguishing feature of this experience was the irony of his forearm tattoo that said ‘with love’. I hardly think this is an exceptionally personal confession. Its utterly unremarkable. Except every time I sign off ‘with love’ it prompts me to remember the metallic scent of freshly churned soil. The smell of iron.

I lost my grandfather when I was 9 years of age. But what is lost is not a person, but the sudden sense of your parents as you witness their fragility. I never really recovered my trust in authority again after this. My grandfather however was a remarkable character. He would attend with my grandmother at Christmas, crossing Cook Strait on the ferry and driving down the eastern coast of the south island pulling behind him an extended caravan AND a smallish jet boat. He would spend his time driving me and my twin brother around rural New Zealand in his enormous dirty gold coloured Holden with its red pleather interior, us in the back, no seatbelts of course, sucking on pink lollies that tasted of a grainy mixture made from aniseed and sunburn.

If we headed north to his place he would routinely send us, with a small bag of jellybeans, into the New Zealand bush that backed on to his house in the hills of Wellington, alone and with the instruction to return when we no longer had the energy to be curious. We would arrive back late – somehow we always managed to find our way following creeks or crevices or the decay that lies hidden in the bush, but perhaps my memory of this big world would almost certainly look small on google earth.

On return he would allow us a very brief look at his toy train set. By which I mean two full sized pool tables that could be winched down from the garage ceiling and which were a boschian stage for trains, Christmas lights, engineered mechano, plastic toys from the local budget toy store and fake grass. It was littered with model people going about their day in a grotesque petri dish of imagination, and this only added to the loss of sense. If lucky we were invited to turn or pull the levers embedded in the periphery of the pooltable, made from the parts of a washing machine, to reveal hidden in the thickness of the table and its fake mountains, smaller more engrossing worlds.

A foot high spinning carnival ride made from mecanno, its vertical stalk stuck with climbing plastic gorillas, their slightly smeared colouring communicating their opportunistic purchase in the local supermarket pivoted up from between a row of model shops and a zoo inhabited by plastic dinosaurs . When turned at high velocity by the drill motor at its base, crooked arms would jolt up and throw a set of plastic planes, of even lesser quality than the gorillas, almost horizontal in wild formation above a forest made from plastic christmas lights set to flash or stun mode. The completeness of this world has languished in its details over time. I only have glimpses of it and its wildness and casual but serious construction and a man whose face is turned away from the camera in the only picture I have of him.

I remember a moment sitting in the office working on an Opera, and as I continued to do so, he asked me who my grandfather was and I told him of the gorillas, and the aniseed and the bush. I told him of the meccano, and the tools that would line the surface of this world, and of the horizon that spread from this past to the present in this office, with him. And he remarked rather solemnly. “good”

A week before he passed I received a missed call from him – I was always hesitant to answer, not knowing if going in for a chat would turn out to be 3 weeks of unplanned labor. He left a message …I suspect it was just a huff and then the click of the phone, or maybe a more formal introduction with an uncertain remark about the possibility of my sleeping past 8.00am, or doing the ironing, or perhaps I was having dinner and he should be reproached for his intrusion…. I don’t know, Ive never listened to it, but I had the mobile provider secure it so that it will never disappear and so every 6 months I get a message telling me I have a call from Peter Corrigan. It sits unanswered, unlistened to, a call from Babylon.

A room for the viewing of the painting ‘The Madonna with the Elongated Legs’ after Parmigianino

Laura Zammit, Jane Weisi Li, Audrey Avianto,

Isabella Konig, Elizabeth Battiston

An oculus to view a raft that houses the left or the right leg from ‘The Madonna with the Elongated Legs’

Laura Zammit, Jane Weisi Li, Harrison Smart,

Oscar Casper, Audrey Avianto,

Patrick Byrne, Elizabeth Battiston,

Stan Tianruo Li, Isabella Konig,

A building container for the office of Edmond & Corrigan

Oscar Casper, Laura Zammit,

Megan Voo, Stan Tianruo Li,

Harrison Smart, Audrey Avianto,

A carpark for 100 cars

Oscar Casper, Isabella Konig,

Elizabeth Battiston, Harrison Smart

A swimming pool

Isabella Konig, Laura Zammi

MIDSEMESTER PRESENTATION

Revise my ballot presentation. 16 studios, all proclaiming to be Babylon, were presented in a forum at 46 Little La Trobe Street, alongside a new project.

FINAL PROJECT

Stan Tianruo Li “The M House”

Stan Tianruo Li

Patrick Byrne ” Pool Hostel”

Patrick Byrne

Isabella Konig ” The Six Chapels of Babylon”

Isabella Konig

Harrison Smart “Carpark”

Harrison Smart

Audrey Avianto “Thoughts on Labour”

Audrey Avianto

Elizabeth Battiston “The Gangrene Club”

Elizabeth Battiston

Oscar Casper “A hotel for my mother: an unfinished project”

Oscar Casper

Oscar Casper

EXHIBITION “100 WAYS OF MAKING SENSE”

An exhibition of student work completed during ‘Babylon’ in 46 Little La Trobe Street, the office formerly occupied by Edmond and Corrigan Architects.