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Murray: Breaking the Fifth Wall Boss: (Un) Fashion War-Fair: Arming the Catwalk Cohen: A Work of Life & Death Project: Tokyo Skeleton Plastics Review: Everythingness Interview: Stuart Harrison Samuel Torre: Objectify GAO: Madame X
In the holy hour, behind the holy door Some unholy power, some unholy war.
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Photograph and words by Jack Stirling
TFIHS magazine Page 06-07
Editorial
Page 10-15
War-Fair: Arming The Catwalk
Page 16-21
Cohen: A Work of Life & Death
Page 24-35
Project: Plastic Park
Page 38-39
Murray: Breaking The Fifth Wall
Jack Murray is a multitalented interdisciplinary Architecture student at RMIT; and extremely high achiever in both his architecture studies and the arts.
Page 42-53
Interview: Stuart Harrison - Is It A House
Stuart Harrison is the founder and director of multi-award winning architecture practice Harrison and White, as well as a well-known media personality.
Page 58-59 Sam Torre: Wealth Mapping Samuel Torre is a high achieving Architecture student at RMIT. His works are
known for their social and political commentaries, and often praised for their accurate and interesting speculatory nature.
Page 62-69 GAO: Madame Ex [Leanne Zilka - Floppy Logic] Yuchen Gao is somewhat of an enigma; an award winning Architecture student
and fashionnaire, his work dances playfully in the audatious and didactic.
Page 72-73 Everythingness: A Night Under Memu Sky.
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Editorial. Speaking entirely unexclusively, there is a crack in everything. There is a cut through culture, there is a fracture in age. There has been, and will always be a shattering of populism. A smattering of elitism. Forever there will be isms that out, under, over, above-ism every ism that has fallen to the chasm before it. There is a blurring of information, there is a haze swallowing fact. There is a fog that clouds the vision eye to eye, person to person, group to group, crowd to crowd, community to community, culture to culture, society to society, country to country, continent to continent.. world to.. world… to.. world to… the. How many of anything does there need to be? A number is a number for its lifetime. A tally becomes a memory. That’s if it is remembered. If a newspaper article isn’t scanned into 1s and 0s, translated into pixels was it ever written? If something that matters, a matter, say, no longer matters to say, a number of people; does it remain a matter? Does it remain? If I belong to thee, what does thee belong to? Play a game with me.. Sands shift. Gears shift. Tectonic plates shift. Opinions Shift. Matters shift. Responsabilities shift. Expectations shift. Notes shift. Feelings shift. Species shift. Cells shift. Bodies shift. Organisms shift. Organs shift. Winds shift. Seas shift. Thoughts shift. Decisions shift. Reasons shift. Taste shifts. Popularity shifts. Unpopularity shifts. Discussion shifts conversations shift. Arguments shift. Practices shift. Accidents shift. Deliberations shift. Tone shifts. pitch shifts. Healing shifts. Injury shifts… things shift. Everything.. shifts. The selection of works throughout this paper gallery attempts to highlight, digest, discuss and diffuse some of these shifts, while crossing boundaries of time, space and discipline. Each piece endeavours to show the ‘sides’ of a shift- the dimensions in which a matter becomes particle then rematerializing into a new entity- or as it is understood, a shifted entity. These are thoughts, these are opinions... which as previously stated, shift also.
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What could possibly precede an idea?
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Collage and words by Jack Stirling
What could possibly precede an idea? Perhaps every idea that came before it? Every idea that landed, once again to become clear for takeoff? Ideas delivered on a silver platter? A platter bright, a platter white, Shining to reflect a dilating pupil. Ideas are gold; mined from the heart with heavy machinery. Gold that is hunted, found, clawed, crushed, sized, bought, sold, refined, purified, sold again, melted, burned, hammered, cut, grinded, polished, exhausted to finally hold a precious stone. Praise? The same praise that is given to some divine holy power is given to some unholy war. Ideas are not owned and do not contain answers. questions contain answers, and are most helpful until answered. Are they?
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Ideas have half-lives Ideas are chained to the bed frame. Dreams grant ideas yard-time before returning to cell. Fashions and fascists both discuss ideas, many with one another. Technology paints ideas in new colours, a spit shine for the dwindling attention span. claim/acclaim exactify/extractify/defy/lie/denytillyoudie Replica/replicate love/hate Shifts. Shifts in popularity. Quality of company kept Accountability versus bank account(ability) In the holy hour, behind the holy door Some unholy power, some unholy war
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Image and words by Jack Stirling
Lorem
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m Ipsum
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Image and words by Jack Stirling
“Listen to the Hummingbird. Don’t listen to me.” Vale Leonard Cohen A Work of Life & Death By Jack Stirling
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Listen to the hummingbird Whose wings you cannot see Listen to the hummingbird Don’t listen to me
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n death
, as in life, there are many questions. There are figures, silhouetted against white silk. There are outlines and there is shading, shadows flicker and dance with the light. It could be suggested, that a common misjudgment occurs where life and death are considered in separation of one another. The same may be said for love, pain & sorrow. The same again for lust and for longing. Are the tragedies and triumphs found in these pools of emotion really all that different? The songs of Leonard Cohen can be read as scripture, bringing these phenomena into a common bathing light. Whether poet or prophet, the sentiments and emotive positions buried within his writings fold bedding beneath what is sold as songwriting, but traded as pansophism. In later years, these writings have manifested into a deeply interesting paradox between art, life... and death. It could be speculated that it is the artists job to capture, reflect and speculate on life. But what is the artists understanding and furthermore relationship and representation of death? Leonard Cohen released his final album within a month of his death. By looking deeper into what may lay within this lyrical scripture, we may be able to get a better understanding of our own relationship with mortality. You Want It Darker is the culmination of many meditations on Cohen’s own mortality. It is a hauntingly accusatory song to his own god. In the opening verses he compares the world to a shamefully rigged game, painting imagery of the continuous sacrifices made by the living for a god that continues to order it darker; in response to this, the living yet again, kill the flame.
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There is a radical nature to the speculation of life against death in this way, and Cohen hold no ghosts up to the light in order to covet this. “Hineni, Hineni. I am ready, my lord” Hineni is a Hebrew phrase meaning “here I am”. As featured in the Montreal Gazette, Gideon Zelermeyer, who provided the choir for Cohen’s You Want It Darker, discusses the meaning behind the Hebrew term portraited to the background of this song: “I think Hineni is more a reference to Leonard as someone trying to come to an understanding with god; someone reckoning with the final tallies in the book of life- “Here I am- I am ready”” Even though Cohen may appear to be ready, he will not go without question. Note the couplet “There’s a lullaby for suffering and a paradox to blame- but its written in the scriptures and its not some idol claim.” In this, Cohen addresses the paradox of belief in an almighty god- the fact that a god has supposedly the power to stop so much pain and suffering in the world, but chooses not to. He points out that the scripture tells us this, and reality reinforces it. Cohens contempt with this flawed unholy deal, surfaces with power in his second verse. “I didn’t know I had permission to murder and to maim. You want it darker, we kill the flame”. If a god allows so much pain and suffering in the world- why should our human morals dictate that we should act any different.
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In the final verse of the song, Cohen once again drives home the inevitability of death with a return of the first verse, ending on a final Hineni. Poetry in itself as a medium of work tends more often to ponder on items of optimism, or musings on life as it stands and is read by its onlooker. The sentiment of finality tends to incite fear, sadness and despair along with other feelings of negative connotation, however if we look to the works of Cohen (and the similarly and reliably referential David Bowie throughout the pages of his final ‘Dark Star’ album), we can discover new colours in our understandings of life, now painted in the picture of death.
Take, for instance, the shadow of unsurety, insecurity and fragility Cohen casts life itself in as written in the lyrics of ‘Anthem’; another ode to some holy power supposedly responsible for our mortality;
“Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in” Though there is an immediate sense of finality in what hope may remain, before a denial of what may be understood as a pious act of faith
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or creed based on some underlying fracture or ‘crack’ stating that every phenomena to have existed in all humankind may be corrupt; Cohen illuminates in his response to the call he assembles with an inspiriting and hopeful edict of positivity - “That’s how the light gets in”. To articulate such deep and spiritual ideologies of faith, life and death with seemingly trivial mannerism is incredibly profound and powerful, perhaps in itself a contribution to humankind’s ever-growing search for meaning in these phenomena. When faced with finality, we turn often to our family, friends and religious ideologies in search of answers- however perhaps sometimes the most powerful place to find understanding, is art. Perhaps also, in leaving it darker, Cohen’s writings can allow us to interpret life and death in all its baffling trivialities just a little lighter.
Photographs by Unknown Words by Jack Stirling
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Photograph and words by Jack Stirling
WELCOME TO
Project by Jack Stirling
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Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Plastic Park.
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Map Legend
Valley View
A mysterious and magical place to discover astonishing new possibilities, with deep dark crevices and mountainous highlands.
Map Legend
Mountain View
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Map Legend
Plan 01 50m
100m
Secreted away from civilisation on a forested archipelago of secluded remote islands. A place to wander and a place to wonder, a place to learn about all that is under. Be amazed, as if every day within this jungle was your school, your university research facility, your gym and your pool.
Ocean Aerial
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Map Legend
An archaeological burial ground of Tokyo’s skeleton plastics- fossilising beneath a wild unruly forest, How strange and yet fantastic.
50m
100m
Map Legend
Section 01
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Map Legend
The Journey
Arriving on the rickety Plastic Park steamboat ferry, through tangled vines you will trek. Past an elementary school propped atop the trees, across a timber deck.
Map Legend
100m
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200m
Map Legend
100m
200m
High above a rolling hill, the high school rears its head. When there is no wind, the bridge stops swinging, falling still across the river bed.
Map Legend
High School
The Bridge
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Map Legend
100m
200m
Where students roam, collecting samples, and dead wood to build a fire. They fashion rafts to cross the channel out of recycled plastic barrels, sticks and old electrical wire.
Map Legend
The River
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Map Legend
The Greenhouse
50m
100m
On your way to the greenhouse spot a golden eagle or wild Japanese macaque, then meander your way up to the botanical research facility, but never turning back. To discover that beneath one lies an underground labyrinth of hollows, for within the islands themselves has been dug out to form linking caves along the Plastic Park ‘river Congo’.
Map Legend
Research Facility
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100m
200m
Map Legend
Tunnel + Void
Islanded from a world that won’t quit burning its lamps, and racing to live on the moon, A dystopian future is not far away, in fact it will be here quite soon.
Map Legend
Electric Tokyo
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50m
100m
Map Legend
Section 02
Plastic Park is an adventure pontoon, a redeemer, it is a place to grow and learn, it is a place whose inhabitants burn only carbon dioxide, it is a place for which we yearn.
50m
Map Legend
100m
South Elevation
East Elevation
A peculiar isle of an experiential nature quite unlike any other, though both daringly adventurous and yet still educational, who can ever know what one may uncover. 34
Map Legend
Discovery
Sited on the Umi No Mori Park in Tokyo Bay, Japan, this proposal considers the artificiality of the island in its current situation, and is set to the imagination of a more present or immediate future than that of a dystopian or distant one. Currently existing in situ resides a human-built island, constructed as a tool for Tokyo to deal with the ever-growing issues brought forward with waste management. The site is currently interacted with as an island, it is not inhabited by permanent residents, it is visited. Within the subways of Tokyo itself can be found a distinctly noticeable trend - a current sense of escapism advertised throughout built-up areas of Tokyo and its underground sub-cities- promising an oasis like return to nature, and how easily one may access areas of green sanctuary and relief from the looming silvergrey heights. Large elementary school groups are seen utilising public park green space in order to escape this hyper-dense urban condition they have grown to become so used to. Plastic Park is in a way its own theme park, responding to Tokyo’s densely urban built environment and this tense yearning for open natural spaces. Plastic Park is the building of worlds away from this. A real-life experiential escapism. 35
There is a fog that clouds the v
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vision, eye to eye
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Photograph and words by Jack Stirling
Breaking the Fifth Wall By Jack Murray
Jack Murray Digital Chaperone, 2019-2020 courtesy of the author
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You submerge yourself. Your bodies dirt turns the water as grey as the walls. As your head slips under the water and your eyelids shut, you remember. You remember bringing your ghost white hands to bear on it. Wrapping your fingers around the glass, soft edges, the seductive glare off its curves. Stroke your thumb on it. Down the street above you a heaviness with a bin bag blackness inside, you recognise its presence. Its cyborg edges clicking on the pavement. And then, before the key hits the lock, your hands all thumbs and with a click. The door falls away to black. The edges sharpen to nothingness. Knife edge beckoning, all geometries, no form. Turning to the street, windows fall away into the black, streetlights start emitting. Waves of garbled neo-babylonian jargon. The edges of the street a slipway to infinity. As the world around you distorts and shifts, the one certainty is the heaviness above, its rain-cloud curve and wires like a naturalists laboratory caress you. Holding you back from the threateningto-fall of it all. It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re inside your house anymore – you already are, and were, and won’t be. The world is an endless matrix of could’ve-beens and never-was’s, all looked over with a machinic glare. Neo-Babylon arrives from the future without a sound, louder than bells. Flicking an augmented switch to turn off one set of lights and turn on another. A different light that blows open the home. Blows open the self. Leaves us all floating like rain held in stasis. Walking home from the shops feels different now. The air is static and you don’t pass anyone. The lights are dimmer, you can’t hear the same background white noise as before. You feel the rain before you’re allowed to see it, and the icicle pin-pricks on your skin don’t bother you so much anymore. The haze on the glass is vaporized instantly as you walk forward. The coat is starting to stick to your skin now as you smell the first drops of second-hand water, dripped through the blackness. They smell like petrol and compressed air.
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Photograph by Jack Stirling
Stuart Harrison in Conversation with Jack Stirling
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television Stuart has had much of his work on architectural history publicised and has authored three books on contemporary housing.
One Friday
afternoon, Stuart invented a rather successful and engaging game with his 2-year-old son, simply called ‘Is That a House?’. The game is played by drawing, in crude blunt crayon, various capital letters and shapes, then placing recognizable conventions of a house on them, windows, a front/back door, chimney, until the shape or letter becomes identifiable to his son as a ‘house’ by definition- at which point the game begins again…and again.
This game provides an interesting prism through which further questions are prompted by the initial: ‘Is That A House’.. If the sheer definition of what we understand to constitute a house or home can be questioned, maybe too can our ability to decide exactly what that threshold of comfort, reliability and security is, and perhaps, it may be far more minimal than we have been conditioned to understand.
Stuart Harrison is the founder and director of multi-award winning architecture practice Harrison and White, as well as a well-known media personality having hosted Triple R’s ‘The Architects’ radio show for 10 years and more recently hosting ABC’s Restorations Australia seasons two and three. Stuart in an advocate for good design and the sustainable re-use of buildings and believes in a strong link between history and contemporary practice. Additionally, to his extensive contributions to public radio and 43
Jack Stirling [JS]:
So, it’s the most familiar of the dwelling types. And it is one that I think most of us would say is the closest thing to home. And I think that a lot of the anxieties about other form of dwelling not being homely enough, are because the idea of the house, is so potently linked to the idea of home.
I’m now recording.
Albert Harrison [AH]:
There’s a doggie.
Stuart Harrison [SH]:
There’s a doggie, yeah. I’ve sent you a-
JS:
JS:
SH:
All right. Following on directly from that, then what would you say are the components of a house that makes it recognizably a house?
Okay, I’ve had a quick read of that before. JS:
So, I’ll just fire into the questions. The home as we know it in the west, it can have a plethora of meanings, and scales, and financial and environmental costs, but to you SH, what is a house?
SH:
Well, this is where you get into questions of typology, even more so. So, what are the... No, I’m talking to Jack. So... I need to talk to Jack. You want to sit on my lap? So, Jack’s asked, what are the different things you have in a house? What do we see when we see a house? When we draw a house, what do we draw?
AH:
Doggie again. SH:
Well, it’s actually a profoundly simple, but profoundly difficult question. There’s a really interesting difference in English between house and home. So, I think for a lot of us, house is a form of dwelling. So, really a house, if you look at it technically, in terms of our discipline, then it’s a form of dwelling, one of a variety of different ways you can build a dwelling-
What sort of bits do we have though, what do we start with? AH:
A roof.
A rooftop, what else? AH:
Keys and doors. SH:
What else do we have? What do we have here, we have door, a window, we have a house shape, and sometimes we have a roof. Sometimes we have a chimney. What’s the most important thing? I think the most important thing is the window?
AH:
I saw a cricket.
SH:
You saw a cricket? But, I think beyond that a house is really-
The window, because that’s the thing that connects you to the street, so when I... Go on.
AH:
I found me a cricket.
SH:
JS:
SH:
I was going to ask Albert if he thinks that a house needs a door, or needs a window?
... I’m talking to Jack. Go catch that cricket, but don’t eat it. The house is a typology, but it’s one that’s also intrinsically linked with the comfort of home.
SH:
Does a house need a door? AH:
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Yes.
icon of the house sits in that idea of it, as a front elevation of certain proportions, and certain types.
SH:
Does it need a window?
AH:
Yes. Okay.
SH:
And that’s something that everything from the icons on software links to home, and everything between the two. So, it’s important to realize the power of the elevation, in terms of particularly the house, the home. And the home key on our computers, or software, is an elevation of a house.
JS: SH:
Okay, good. So, I think when we draw houses, we talk about what are those elements? It’s pretty simplistic, because it’s very elevational, right? It’s very, what do you see from the front? So, there’s nothing radical in the components when we draw these houses. We try to be radical in the form that they take.
JS:
Right, okay. So, in that way, in our automatic recognition of that icon, what do you think the minimum componentry, is required to call a house a house?
SH:
So, the familiarity in the components is then belied by the way in which you
SH:
Well, it’s interesting, because it’s a
arrange them together. So, you use familiarity of components, because people understand, and this is kids and real estate agents, and everybody, people understand components of buildings really clearly.
question that’s also based in law. The Building Code deals with this, what constitutes a dwelling. If we use house and dwelling interchangeably here, from a legal point of view there are certain things that constitute a house, and then from an architectural point of view, there are certain things that you could argue constitutes a house as well.
So, if you can talk through those elements, then maybe it gives you an opportunity to be a bit more interesting with how you ultimately arrange them, which is to say design them. Design them together into a building. So, using the familiarity of elements to do something more interesting with them together, is what the house gives us an opportunity. So, the house is an opportunity to reinvent how we think about these things. It’s a very simplistic view of housing, because it’s really about elevation, and façade, but that where the iconography of the house has rested. The
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And that’s probably less to do with elements, and more to do with the idea of comfort, protection, privacy, intimacy, connectivity, those sort of things. Warmth, those sort of things that you actually want when you... As an architect if you’re designing a house,
are things that you’re trying to bring to it. So, you’ve got a legal idea about what constitutes a house, and that’s habitable rooms, a laundry trough, a toilet, and all those sort of things.
“...because ultimately the big problem with housing in Australia is it’s measured and sold, and purchased, based on the list of rooms, by real estate agents.” SH:
And then there’s a elevational idea, an iconography idea about what a house might be, which is a front door, and windows, and a roof, and that’s the thing that we play around with drawings. And then there’s this maybe more interesting idea about, what does a good house actually have? A good form of living? It’s about views, it’s about connection to outside, it’s about intimacy, it’s about warmth. It’s about the place that you’re happy to hang out in. And that’s the thing that’s missing a lot in Australian housing, is the consideration of those intents.
JS:
Right, and so you mentioned that there’s a legal perspective, or point of view to understand what a house is, what constitutes a house. There’s an architectural perspective of what the componentry is that constitutes a house, but when we talk about maybe necessarily what is a good from of a house, what would your thoughts be on, maybe what a philosophical point of view might be, in terms of what really is the minimum needed to call a shelter a shelter? So examples such as yurts and igloos, mud brick caves, and tree houses exist, and they’re virtually entirely hand made, and most certainly would leave a far lighter carbon footprint than everything that is built in the west, nowadays. But, why are these not conventions that we in western society apply to our understandings of the modern house, in your meaning? SH:
I think what those kind of, let’s call them broadly indigenous understandings of housing point to, is this idea I mentioned before of comfort. So, they’re ultimately driven, those forms of housing, like igloos, yurts, they’re tending towards either being tents, or caves. And depending on the climatic condition. So, they’re about comfort, through understanding place and climate.
SH:
And then the other way, because ultimately the big problem with housing in Australia is it’s measured and sold, and purchased, based on the list of rooms, by real estate agents. So, what constitutes a house from a real estate agent’s point of view is car parks, living room, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms. And we often reduce our understanding of the value of housing, literally the value of housing, the value financially are boiling down to these things.
But, actually what we’re looking for in housing is quality of spaces, quality of experience, and a comfortableness, and an intimacy for us to live in, and do the things that we need to do. As well as the ability to change, and flexibility, and all those sort of things that people talk about as well.
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And I think we ultimately have lost that connection, because of the regulatory environment that’s standardizes houses, and
are, as humans, able to redefine what we now know or identify as a house, and if so, how might that look?
the real estate understanding, that transacts houses. So, those understandings are actually useful. So, those architectural qualities I was talking about before, are actually linked to those indigenous understandings of comfort, and housing, and dwelling, in the Heideggerian sense, of dwelling, of occupation. There’s this idea that you are at one with your surroundings, is a form of dwelling. So, if you’re building facilitates that understanding, or facilitates that stance, then you get close to it. When people tend to do analysis’s of housing, that’s been imported into a place, they normally conclude that it hasn’t learned enough from the indigenous understandings of how it would look. And you could probably apply that to countless scenarios around the world, where you go, “We actually knew this, and then we lost knowing it.” So, you could use that example in Australia with indigenous pre European housing, the forms of dwelling, forms of structures that were obviously quick to manufacture, ventilated, captured heat when needed. But you could also extend it to post settlement building types like the Queenslander, that were also connected to the environment, and breathed, and were also indigenous in a very different way. And what we tend to do, is we lose our understanding of that specific-ness all the time, as we standardize things generally.
SH:
We’re at a crux point in human history right now. So, it could go either way. So, the trajectory that we’ve been on, has been one of standardization, globalization, and solving problems either mechanically, or technologically. So, everything from air conditioning to C-Bus systems, to control your lighting, linked to your phone. They’re all part of a technological globalized view, that is not necessarily without its merits, in probably other building typologies. Maybe not so much in housing. So, do you continue on that track? Or do you try and do the other thing, which is relearn some of the local lessons about how you build in a particular place? Obviously there is no going back now, in the Australian experience, to an indigenous understanding, because we now have his extra layer, of settlement, I understand.
“...Or do you try and do the other thing, which is relearn some of the local lessons about how you build in a particular place?” But it doesn’t mean you can’t continue to learn from both of those things, as well as try to absorb what is good about housing today. So, the question of what the house is, is completely up for grabs. Because, what ultimately influences these things is technology, taste, fashion, trends. All these things are subject to cultural influences. So, if somebody, or some set of people were inclined enough, they could motivate change.
So, things like the Building Code of Australia, is useful as it is from a regulatory point of view, tend to move us away from specific ways of doing housing, in a particular place. At a certain point in Perth’s history, houses were probably a little bit different to how they were in the rest of the country. And you’ll probably argue that’s not the case these days.
In the same way MasterChef has changed the way we eat food. A well targeted media project around housing, can change the way in which we live, in our dwellings.
JS:
When you mentioned possibly that we have lost the information that came from the indigenous understanding of place, and the comfort, and the climatic knowledge that is inherently a part of that culture, and then with post settlement. Do you think that we
JS:
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If you were to discuss that post indigenous, the modern version of what we understand to be a house, and understanding that we
have obviously learnings to gain from the indigenous people that preceded us, in Australia, for instance-
But, Australians live in large houses in suburbs, or they live in small apartments essentially. I’ve made the comment before, that in terms of the new housing stock being created in Australia, the new growing stock, houses are too big, and apartments are too small, and what we actually need is something in between those two. And the market doesn’t tend to provide that as much. So, despite the idea that houses, and because people control housing directly, housing should respond to these things.
Looking at the modern version of what we understand housing to be, would you say that there’s an aspect of the construction of a house, or the collection of what we understand is our home, and all of our comforts, that could actually be rethought, or even removed, that might lighten the climatic footprint, of building a modern house? SH:
It actually doesn’t very well, because it’s a very conservative industry, particularly in the provision of new housing. Very standard ideas around what houses should have, what form they take, what they look like. The arrangement of rooms, and Shane Murray did some great research, probably 10 years ago now, or more, at Monash, looking at all this stuff. And the conclusion there was that Australian housing typologies are effectively unchanged since the late 50s.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think concerns around climate change have affected all aspects of culture, including construction, and design, and housing as well. And I think to a large extent, it’s a really powerful moment. Because people control their houses, people don’t control their office buildings as much, or their train stations. They have direct control, to a large extent, over their decisions around housing. So, in that sense it could be quite responsive to concerns around minimizing footprint, energy, carbon. And all those things should happen. And to some extent have started, with some regulatory stuff. Like six-star minimum for houses in Victoria these days. So, there is hope for new houses. So, things are moving in the right direction in that sense.
“Fundamentally one of the problems is that Australian houses are too big, and that has enormous flow-on effects .” There’s not been a lot of innovation in this area, so we tend to have some pretty ordinary models, particularly in new housing. And, that is linked to sustainability, because fundamentally, because they are big, and inefficient, and poorly designed from the environmental point of view. So, it doesn’t mean you can’t have big houses sometimes, and you can’t have... But, often these houses are the big, deep footprint buildings. Overall size is one problem, but width of buildings is a problem too.
Fundamentally one of the problems is that Australian houses are too big, and that has enormous flow-on effects. Not only just the immediate size of the dwelling, and the amount of carbon and energy involved in producing it. But then the amount of energy involved in maintaining it, but also then the amount of energy required to then service it. Because it can make the city bigger, so until recently it was generally accepted that living closer together, was part of the solution. And that the more dense form of urbanism was appropriate. It will be interesting to see how that idea holds up through the pandemic. But, it doesn’t mean that you give up on that idea, because fundamentally it’s still more sustainable to live in denser environments. 48
If you’ve got a house that’s 18 meters wide, by 24 meters, it’s going to be pretty hard to get light into the middle of it. And ventilation, so you are artificially lighting, and artificially ventilating all of that, whereas if you were able to discipline residential buildings to six meters wide, you radically reduce the amount of energy required. And energy for lighting,
energy for conditioning.
view. It’s good for keeping an eye on kids, and being the person in the kitchen, and being part of the rest of the house. But, ultimately you need rooms, and what we’ve lost in housing is flexibility through the use of the open plan.
So, taste in housing, and choices in housing, can be directly linked to energy use. And as the cost of energy goes up, which it should, then you might see some change in the way the housing market responds to it.
I live in a 1950s house, that still has... Because it’s very conservative, isn’t really open plan. And as a result, is a little bit flexible.
Or you might see people just generating their own power, which is probably fine also. JS:
Because if you want to close off a room, like our front room here, which used to be our living room, until recently, has acted as a guest room, recently when my mother come over. And now it is acting as our workplace. And you need to be able to close those things off, particularly if you’ve got AHren. And also for your own separation between work, and not work.
Right. When you mentioned the current climate, and obviously this pandemic, what do you think this current virus climate that we’re living in mean for our comfort in the home? SH:
Well, I think what’s interesting about houses is, people don’t use them in the way that they’re sold, and that they should use them. So, for example a lot of people have workstations in their rooms, keyboards, amplifiers, sofa beds, tables. But, people don’t actually live in the prescribed way, in which we are sold the picture of it. My house is full of Albert’s toys-
So, rooms with doors, important. JS:
Old computers. It’s now got a room dedicated entirely to working with two workstations in it. Our former living room has changed into workroom. So, we’ve completely changed the way our... And it’s not that hard really. It’s not that hard if the fundamentals are right in the house, and that fundamental is rooms. The problem with postwar housing is, it’s tended to move more and more towards open plan living. Open plan living is a con. It’s not flexible, and it is not good from a amenity, or flexibility point of view. It’s good from certain point of
house-
Rooms with doors important, of course, whether it has to be worked in or not. So, if we just jump back one step too, as we were talking about the componentry of the house, and maybe what the climatic footprint is of the modern SH:
I’m sorry Jack. Sorry, can I just go back to the pandemic, just before I forget? JS:
Yes, please.
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SH:
I didn’t really talk about it. That’s really our experience in the pandemic. The interesting question in the pandemic is obviously, do more
people work at home, and does this change residential design? If people have got flexible arrangements, then they’d probably already worked it out, they’ve moved furniture around. But, in terms of new dwellings, so where the design is most potent, or in retrofitting new existing dwellings, I should imagine, this is being a little bit projective, but you will probably see an increase in people going, “I need a decent space to work at home.”
understandings of rooms was far more... Victorian period, not the state, or colony. Victorian understandings of the rooms, was far more just a series of rooms. And then you could use them in a variety of different ways. JS:
Right. There seems to be so much we could discuss about the response, and also the projected possible changing of the landscape with the virus, and this pandemic, and working remotely, and that sort of thing. Obviously you’ve talked about the commute, and the traveling into the city, but also, and there’s a whole nother side of it, which is potentially the work itself, and how architectural practice is going to be run. Which I would love to chat with you about some time, but for the sake of not being here until next Wednesday.
Because we had to do it in the pandemic, and there’s a good chance we’ll have to do it again. And we don’t mind doing it. Probably not full time. I think a lot of people will come out of this going, “I will work at home more than I used to, if I’ve got the right setup, and the right conditions to it.” And from an urban design point of view, that’s also efficient, because it reduces loading on our transport infrastructure.
SH:
So, it’s linked to sustainability as well. So, for example, if you are halving the amount of commutes that you have, say nationally, I don’t know what the carbon effects of that are, but it would be considerable, as well as the congestion. So, it would reduce all that stuff that people complain about, traffic, congestion, overcrowding on trains and trams. So, I could imagine we will come out of this with a renewed interest in permanent working from home, at least partially. And then the interesting question is, what does that do house design? I mean, all of the houses are designed with a study nook, and all that sort of stuff. But I think what you realize is the study nook is pretty shit. You need a decent work environment.
These are interesting areas. And obviously, as someone who runs an architectural practice, we’re working that out at the moment. And what’s been so essential to the idea of an architectural practice, is the idea of a studio. And I think that crosses music, and design, and architecture. So, this platform for experimentation and discussion, and ideas.
If you’re going to spend eight hours a day in a room, you want it to have good light. You don’t want it to be the worst room in the house. You need it to be one of the best rooms. And you need to be able to close it off. You know, this idea of room functions is a 20th century construct to some extent. Victorian
So, I went into this period with dread, to some extent, because the studio is such a central idea. And, because we’re doing a competition at the moment, what we’re doing a lot of the time is not particularly creative, it’s running building projects. But, at the moment we are doing something that’s collaborative, and team based,
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and creative. So, we’re doing it digitally, I accidentally sent some of it to you this morning Jack.
of things. And if we go back to housing for a minute, do you think that it is a question of the house and the building itself, and all of the weight, and expense, and environmental footprint that that is in itself. Or, do you believe that it’s maybe the things we put in it for our comfort, in terms of our belongings, and the car that goes along with the house?
So, we’re doing that on group chats, and most of those things actually lend themselves to this process quite well, because you’re sharing images. You’re sharing ideas and thoughts, and people can participate in it. The whole office is sort of chipping in a little bit on this process. So, it’s a bit of an experiment into how a more creatively focused project can occur, through these formats that we’re now dealing with. Group chats and video conference, on top of the cloud computing obviously, that you use to facilitate that.
And then obviously, we have to talk about the geolocation side of things, when you mentioned that it is more sustainable to live in a higher density, however as you say, we can now totally work entirely remotely, and across all platforms, and across all hierarchies, in a system that really successfully put together, obviously a great project that you’re working right now. But in that sense, is it the house itself, and where it is?
So, we’ll see how that goes. But, so far it hasn’t been terrible. The point is, once you’ve realized that you can do this, then it opens up
SH:
I think that first one, is a good one Jack, about the stuff inside the house. And if you’ve got a bigger house, you’ve got more stuff in it. I mean, houses, like any form of storage, you just fill them up. So, smaller houses again, mean there’s less stuff, and more value on the stuff that you have. So again, well designed housing is better, and well designed smaller housing is probably better still.
collaborations with people outside of your traditional understandings of proximity. So, let’s say you’ve got an ex employee in London, you might say to them, “Do you want to help out on this competition? Do you want to do a competition together?” Networks have been hierarchical traditionally, like the Ivy League professor, with Ivy League professor. We’re seeing a democratization of collaboration, I think, through these technologies. And I think that’s a good thing. JS:
Right. You talked about the proximity side
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And then, well designed smaller housing that’s well located is better still again. So, the amount of stuff that you have, I think everyone would argue that they probably have more stuff than they need, and the whole Marie Kondo, is a valuable lesson. It’s like, “Well, do you actually need a lot of this stuff?
reinforce the idea that we’re completely networked and interdependent. Because, unless we’re going to grow our own food, which is really brutally inefficient, the people that grow their own food, if you know the mass scale of industrial agriculture. And you’d need a form of city that was so remarkably inefficient, that it would be enormous. And Frank Lloyd Wright was obsessed with this idea.
And do you need it in the first place?” So, if you’ve got too many rooms, you tend to furnish them. But, it does raise some interesting questions around flexibility. The sofa bed is a very interesting piece of technology. And I think you’ll see, probably at some point we’ll design and build a sofa bed that’s good, that looks good, and works well. Because traditionally the sofa bed, in the design world, has been held up as the classic thing that is an example, that is neither good as a sofa, or a bed.
Broadacre City was really this idea. Frank Lloyd Wright was obsessed with the idea of nuclear Armageddon, and how Americans would survive it, and so, the forms of urbanism don’t work with this. We’re interconnected, you just can’t. So, stockpiling toilet paper, and food, is not going to get you through the next 10 years.
But in fact, the sofa bed is actually genius. Particularly if you’re interested in flexibility, and being able to quickly change one room’s function from one to another. Guests, all that sort of stuff. So if someone came up with a sofa bed, you could actually begin to take this flexibility seriously. Good tables that can be used equally as dining tables, and as work tables.
JS:
So fascinating. Finally, this last question is how long is a piece of string, I guess, and you’ve already touched on a lot of it, the topics of it. But, now that we’re talking about that, the Broadacre City idea, could the inner suburbs, and things like cities finally become, not necessarily a thing of the past, but possibly less prioritized, now that remote workability has been so properly tested, and proven to work?
All those sort of things, flexibilityYou know, one of the things that come out of a pandemic is the preppers now seems vindicated, and the hoarders seems vindicated. But, the reality is you can’t actually hoard the stuff that you need to survive a lockdown.
SH:
It’s a very interesting area of discussion. And I think to some extent it inevitably will get looked at. Like anything, when you
All the lockdown does is
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What’s happening currently in Harrison & White world, maybe that you’d like to chat about?
look at it, again you’ll go, “Why didn’t we do this initially?” And there was probably a good reason. You could argue that post the pandemic people don’t want to be that far from large hospitals.
SH:
We’ve got our schools on site, so we’re delivering some schools. And we’re doing this housing competition. So, we’re thinking about some of these issues at the moment. And like most people that lives in Australia, we’re trying to figure out whether we’ll see the year out. The next season of Restoration Australia is now airing in October, apparently.
Its right up there now, in people’s consciousness. But, it’s a trade off, and Broadacre City is an extreme example of suburban anxiety, really. About the idea that we want both to be in the city, and the countryside at the same time. It’s Ebenezer Howard, right?
That show’s also been affected by the pandemic.
So, suburbs turned out to be enormously popular, because they offered a good combination of those two things.
JS:
Thank you so much Stuart, and we’ll chat soon, and have a drink over Zoom this weekend sometime.
So, there is actual living regionally. So, if we all went and lived out regionally, and very inefficiently grew our own food. When we do need to interact with people, which we do as a species. We’re pack animals. We are going to then need to drive for three hours to what, go for a drink? Drive five hours to get to a hospital? I don’t think people ultimately are going to go for that.
SH:
Okay, thanks mate. All right, thank you.
“We’re pack animals. We are going to then need to drive for three hours to what, go for a drink? Drive five hours to get to a hospital? I don’t think people ultimately are going to go for that.” So, you could actually get an affirmation of the suburban, that comes out of this. And I’ve looked, and others have looked critically re-looked at the idea of the suburban, and that flies against the idea, to some extent of European, Barcelona style urbanism. It’s like, “Well, how do you do a good form of that?” And I think, if that question gets looked at really seriously, I think that’s a good thing. But, it’s still linked to smaller housing, and better housing. So, we’ll see what happens. But, this pandemic will get us rethinking about all those things, as it should do. And, it’s an opportunity to think about those things again. 53
JS:
The climate crisis we are facing could be seen as a direct result of capitalistic tendencies of the human race over the past century. The need for greed, to build bigger, buy more and barter cross-country for earth’s resources does not seem to be slowing despite great warnings and extensive scientific evidence that we are approaching the end for human civilisation at alarming speed. Our foundational understanding of the terms ‘House’, ‘Home’ and ‘Comfort’ may have advanced into a projected image of the future we are unlikely to survive. As described in Bruno Latour’s ‘Down To Earth – Politics in the New Climate Regime’, ‘Climate Quietists’ exist in the many who figure (or hope) that “it will all work out in the end”*, however unless some change occurs at a local scale, be that specific to our own industrial processes of construction and material specifications, it seems recovery will become impossible. Is there a way, rather than ‘greenwashing’ and ‘greenwalling’ that we are able to live within our means of natural resource by living closer to or within it? As highlighted in the Strelka Magazine articl ‘Black Natures_ Enframing the Natural as Technological-George Papamattheakis’; current climate crisis mitigation discussions position natural resources themselves as technological instruments:
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“There is a magic machine that sucks carbon out of the air, costs very little, and builds itself; it’s called: a tree.” They added that “mangroves, peat bogs, jungles, marshes, seabeds, kelp forests, swamps, coral reefs, they all take carbon out of the air and lock it away.”* In all its banality, the video statement that went viral detaches and abstracts a sole function of these natural entities, framing them as carbon absorption instruments. It is in this light that Thunberg and Monbiot conclude that “nature is a tool we can use to repair our broken climate,” We are in times of a multitude of crises with the virus taking over human lives and choices, and humans having acted much like a virus on the sustainability and well-being of our planet, which is also at critical point. In such times of change we look to our comfort and security in the ‘home’ The ‘home’ as we know it in the west can have a plethora of meanings, scales, financial and environmental costs. It is a question of comfort over stature, survival over indulgence, intelligence over ignorance.
Photograph and words by Jack Stirling
* ‘Down To Earth: Politics in the New Climate Regime’ Bruno Latour, Editions La Decouverte, Paris 2017
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virtual patio
augmented reality roof garden
skylight
flip-wall disassemble for mobile use
modular kitchen
flip-door
single desk workspace
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virtual patio
augmented reality roof garden
skylight
flip-wall disassemble for mobile use
modular kitchen
flip-door
single desk workspace
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Images by Samuel Torre
INFRASTRUCTURE
A MAP OF THE WORLD IN LAND MASSA COLLECTIVE
“PRIMITIVE”
WISDOM
CARETAKING
SYMBIOTIC
EXPERIENCE
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PRIVATE BENEFIT
MAP OF THE WORLD IN WEALTH MASS INDIVIDUAL
INFORMATION
“MODERN” VESTED INTEREST
EXTRACTIVE
ARROGANCE
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Map by Samuel Torre
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Photograph by Jack Stirling
The Portrait Of
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A project by Yuchen Gao
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SPOT THE DIFFERENCE
Madame X
When
we
think
of
Melbourne CBD we would often describe it as a space where different cultures intertwine and have the freedom their
to
celebrate
uniqueness.
We
pride ourselves on having a city that embraces all. However, there are some parts of the city that don’t seem to follow the same pluralist thoughts as the rest. They believe in the singular utopia and solution to all, which results in the heavy use of repetition. Artists like John Brack have captured moments of repetition and the loss of beauty in a metropolis. His painting Collins street, 5 pm explored the language of be
singularity translated
that
between
architecture and people.
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can
Collins street has one of the most
located on the corner Queens and Collins.
acknowledged business districts, it always
It recognises the existing structure and
had a trend of exclusivity and elitism,
glazing as an architectural framework,
which have resulted in the singularity of
then inflating within the tower creating
architecture, program and demographic
new spatial conditions that challenges
that traverse through the street. My
and manipulates the framework. The
proposition aims to curate spaces that
mesh drapes on the building, responding
infiltrate Collins street to break down the
to the relationship between the old and
faรงade of intimidation and offer programs
the new. It creates a third condition that
of pleasure as a dose of excitement.
exaggerates the emerging forms and offer
The proposed series of spaces act as an
opportunities of opening and enclosure.
extension of an existing commercial tower
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I looked into garment making and designers like Issey Miyake and Ann Demeulenmesster as precedents in parallel to my project. They understand that there needs to be a different strategy when they are treating the waist, arms and the neck. There is a consciousness and care navigating the body as the framework, even when they are curating elaborate forms. I want to utilise that philosophy in my project by creating architecture that responds to the different existing conditions but also to reject many surrounding buildings that shares the same aesthetics.
The extension celebrates desire and interjects with the seriousness of Collins Street. There’s a strong juxtaposition between the existing tower and the extension as they explore their relationship as the old and new, public and private, rigid and organic. The extension offers opportunity of pleasure and desire especially in the sense of voyeurism and exhibitionism. An office worker might be working at their desks and there might be a strip club in the other room. They could be completely oblivious until a single moment where the architecture reveals itself to them, giving them a taste of what happens beyond their office typology.
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The boxing ring elevates itself from the viewing platforms forcing the audiences to physically move around to navigate the constraints and boundaries. More viewing opportunities are hidden above the ceiling spaces where voids within walls are aligned to expose the activity below. A strip club and a gathering space overlaps with each other on a higher level. The poles of the strip club penetrate through the floor slab. it is used as the structural columns for the platform above in the gathering space, blurring the line between the two eradicating the shame that some people feel when attending either of them.
Other spatial conditions can be experienced in the views as they curate a narrative of one traversing through the building. The ramps wrap around the extension connecting the programs together. The mesh drapes and stretches on parts of the ramps, shifting its opaqueness offering tension and relief. It also offers new viewing opportunities of south bank and the CBD of some of the buildings like the cornered Gothic buildings that have been swallowed up by the skyscraper.
BOXING RING
STRIP CLUB 67
GATHERING SPACE
COLLIN STREET
OFFICE
POOL
MADAM X DECONSTRUCTS THE COLLINS STREET BUSINESS DISTRICT TO SIGNIFY THE IMPORTANCE OF A PLURALIST CITY. MADAME X challenges Collins Street’s typical office programs by offering a new typology of pleasure. The form as a civic gesture generates curiosity and attracts people across Melbourne to experience Collins Street in a new perspective. The extension of desire and pleasure emerges from an existing commercial tower creates a new dialogue of voyeurism and exhibitionism between the traditional office intervention and the extension, enabling opportunities of free expression. 68
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70
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Photograph by Jack Stirling
SECTION “bb” 1:100
hot bath and sleeping
SECTION “aa” 1:100
outside room and sleeping in garden room
I am in Memu, Taiki, Hokkaido. It is -8 degrees celcius, 10pm. I am taking part in an overnight rereading of the characteristics of place. I can feel my heart slowing, however that usually happens as I fall asleep.. unless I already am asleep. Am I cold? I should be able to answer that- no, I dont think I am.. cold that is..
D. A. 1.
2.
Photographs: Yu Morishita
c
b 4.
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3.
Am I alone, with the frosted grass and icy paddock fence? I certainly don’t feel alone. I dont need to collect wood to make a fire, to eat a fish that I did not catch. I do not need to snare a rabbit, to skin to sew some moccasins, to walk the fields collecting wood.. for the fire that I do not need to make.
a
Is this the massive outside? It felt massive today. It felt scary today.. how would I survive the evening? Maybe I would stay awake all night? Or maybe I should try to sleep as long as possible.. like a bear.. bears hibernate, dont they? Bears.. is ‘shoo’ the same in every language?
inside room
This great expanse, the sharp stillness. The frozen stars. the dry leaves. My senses are ever so slightly impaired. But whiskey can do that. It doesnt usually pace my dexterity in this manner though.. ok, maybe I am cold.
An Evening Under Memu Sky
Everythingness.
Is this a hotel? Am I asleep? I like this more than I remember enjoying staying at hotels. I can see my breath. Can bears undo zips?
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d
b
SECTION “dd” 1:100
cooking and outside room
Words by Jack Stirling
Photographs: Yu Morishita
Daylight.
c
inside room
Now it is running.. or more like.. jumping. Its not a gallop.. there is an ambient hum, a consisntent rustle, a crunching leaf, a cracking twig. It is a symphony. There is an orchestra. Somehow an entire symphonic orchestra in the middle of a field. A vast expanse of nothingness.. but of everythingness.
garden room and inside room
hot bath and sleeping outside room and sleeping in garden room
The sounds have changed. I cant put my finger exactly on what. Things have become louder.. or quieter. There are hoof steps, like a light horse, are there deers here? Breathing.
SECTION “cc” 1:100
SECTION “bb” 1:100 SECTION “aa” 1:100
I rouse however at around 1:30am with the energy of a child on Christmas morning, I am very aware there is movement across the field. I have left my arm outside of the sleeping bag, and now it definitely feels like im in the middle of a -8 degree icy field at 1:30am.. alone now.
The Oslo School of Architecture and Design
2/2
Come to think of it, the one thing that is up to me.. my one task.. to fall asleep, has even been aided by the slowing effects of japanese whiskey..The job has been done for me. Or maybe I misunderstood exactly what my job was.
An Evening Under Memu Sky
Everythingness.
The wood was prechopped.. the fire pit was predug. The fish had been precaught/ dragnetted. The foam mattress had been pressed, cut and prerolled out awaiting my horizontality. My boots have been precobbled..
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75
Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Sh
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hift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift Shift
Shift.
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Image by Jack Stirling
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C
R E OV
2 ON
I T OP S H I F T
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e
m
in z a g a
Murray: Breaking the Fifth Wall Boss: (Un) Fashion War-Fair: Arming the Catwalk Cohen: A Work of Life & Death Project: Tokyo Skeleton Plastics Review: Everythingness Interview: Stuart Harrison Samuel Torre: Objectify GAO: Madame Ex