Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities by eemevans

Geographies of

an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Geographies of Deep Time an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Emilie Evans

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Contents

Thesis Proposal

Elaboration of Thesis Proposal

Site Studies

Site Photos

Geographies of Time at Lower Stony Creek Dam

Undamming Lower Stony Creek Reservoir

Contour and Geology Map

Context Plan

Site Plan

Elevation

Site Vignettes, in Section

Site Narrative

Repository Objects

Design Precedents

Climate Imaginaries and Speculative Worlds

Interventions: Early Iteration

Journey Vignettes

Interventions: Final Iteration

Site and Materiality

Elevation

Characters

Intervention Locations

Site and Intervention Plan

Intervention Plans

Intervention Sections

Intervention Details

Long Site Section

101

102

119

126

Long Site Section: Future

Appendix

Literature Review

Notebook Sketches

Bibliography

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

architectural thesis

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

architectural thesis

Geographies of Deep Time & an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

(Note: All drawing scales in this book correspond to A2 size page unless stated otherwise)

1 Tsing, Anna, The Mushroom at the End of the World (Princeton University Press, 2015), 3. 2 Tsing, Anna, The Mushroom at the End of the World (Princeton University Press, 2015), 2. 3 Tronto, Joan, “An Ethic of Care,” Generations: Journal of the American Society on Aging 22, no. 3 (1998): 16. 4 Haraway, Donna, Staying with the Trouble (Duke University Press, 2016), 101. 7

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

This thesis explores the possibility of architecture in environmental ruins, through the examination and documentation of a contested post-industrial site: Lower Stony Creek Dam. In her text The Mushroom at the End of the World anthropologist Anna Tsing asks: ‘what kind of human disturbances can we live with?’1 As an extension of this, my thesis asks: through increasing our timeframes of observation, how can architecture exist in the conditions of indeterminacy in which we live today2, and what happens to and what will remain of architecture when we are no longer around to use, maintain and care for it?3 In responding to this, this thesis will propose the design of a series of archival interventions at Lower Stony Creek Dam and will speculate upon the transformation of these interventions over time. Considering deep geological time, inspired by feminist science and technology scholar Donna Haraway’s notion of the Chthulucene, this project explores architecture within the entangled temporalities of past, present and future4.

architectural thesis

Proposal

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Elaboration of Thesis Proposal

Geographies of Deep Time & an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities “Would the sound of stones, had we ears to hear it, be a cacophony of noise? Pounding raucous noises of a world long forgotten and ignored. Screaming at us to remember where we came from… Would we hear the plaintive cries of lifeforms long gone, revealing dimensions beyond our comprehension, mixed with the sonorous cry of deep time?”1 The lithic is often incorrectly ‘perceived as dead and passive’ when it is ‘alive and active’, as deep archives of human and nonhuman pasts.2 This thesis explores the possibility of architecture in environmental ruins, through the examination and documentation of a post-industrial site: Lower Stony Creek Dam. Located in Brisbane Ranges National Park, in a regional town called Anakie, Lower Stony Creek Dam is the oldest concrete dam in Australia, built in 1873. It is a site of previous significant industrial activity, the impacts of which have entered and will endure in deep geological time. The dam is retired now however the reservoir is still active as a reservoir as it still holds water, and the site today is popular with avid bush walkers. This project explores architecture within the entangled temporalities of past, present and future by thinking beyond human contemporary time and considering deep time. I am proposing on the site, the design of a series of interventions with archival qualities: an Observation Tower, a Repository, a Seed Bank, and a Navigation Marker. In her text The Mushroom at the End of the World anthropologist Anna Tsing asks: ‘what kind of human disturbances can we live with?’3 As an extension of this, I ask: through increasing our timeframes of observation, how can architecture exist in the conditions of indeterminacy in which we live today4, and what happens to and what will remain of architecture when we are no longer around to use, maintain and care for it?5 Thinking beyond contemporary time and considering deep time, inspired

1 Loewen, Caroline, “Red Sandstone,” Lost Rocks (2017), 9. 2 Loewen, Caroline, “Red Sandstone,” Lost Rocks (2017), 17. 3 Tsing, Anna, The Mushroom at the End of the World (Princeton University Press, 2015), 3. 4 Tsing, Anna, The Mushroom at the End of the World (Princeton University Press, 2015), 3. 5 Tronto, Joan, “An Ethic of Care,” Generations: Journal of the American Society on Aging 22, no. 3 (1998): 16. 8

Geographies of Deep Time & an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Thinking about architecture in deep timescales requires speculation and narratives which can provide answers to the site’s ‘unknowns’. This is a speculative project; it doesn’t propose architecture that which might be built. Multi-species ethnographer Deborah Bird Rose states that building narratives are about the arts of becomingwitness, “responding to others as we encounter them in the richness of their own stories”.8 In constructing a narrative, I’ve illustrated both human and landscape events which have occurred on and around the site, from the formation of the volcanic plains of the site 66 million years ago, the construction of the dam wall, and the reservoir today as a site for avid hikers, and home to an array of nonhuman site users who have had their ecosystems disrupted permanently by the dam wall. I have also speculated upon the future of the site, in timeframes of 50, 200 and 1 million years from now. I will be focusing largely on the 200-year timeframe which sees climate change-induced transformations cause a decline in human populations which begins to allow the Earth to regenerate, permitting the rejuvenation of a new thriving environment. I’ve drawn a section through the site, giving human-made infrastructure and ground strata equal attention, as I speculate upon objects embedded in the earth and at the

6 Haraway, Donna, Staying with the Trouble (Duke University Press, 2016), 101. 7 Miessen, Markus and Hans Ulrich Obrist, “Archiving in Information: A Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist,” Log, no. 21 (2011): 41. 8 Rose, Deborah Bird, Thom Van Dooren, “Lively Ethnography: Storying Animist Worlds,” Environmental Humanities 8 (2016): 90. 9

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

by Donna Haraway’s notion of the Chthulucene, this project explores architecture within the entangled temporalities of past, present and future6, speculating upon the transformation of these interventions over time, beyond human use, traversing multiple timescales. In designing interventions with archival qualities, art curator and historian of art Hans Ulrich Obrist posits that the impulse of archiving is nourished by the belief that there is a future7, thus the site and its interventions speak to us about broader environmental concerns and reflect upon the importance of paying attention and bearing witness to the conditions of ‘now’.

architectural thesis

Elaboration of Thesis Proposal

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Elaboration of Thesis Proposal

Geographies of Deep Time & an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities bottom of the reservoir. I have constructed a narrative through these speculations which imagines objects such as old construction tools and techno-fossils archived in the soil. To help inform my narrative, I’ve imagined some characters, both real and speculative, who will engage with these interventions, including those beyond our own human timescales. Visiting the site and its interventions today are the Ecologist, the Rambler and the Friend of Brisbane Ranges. Visiting or occupying the site some 200 years from now are the Archaeologist, the Powerful Owl, and the Lichen: humans and ‘others’ who will bear witness to the site and encounter its interventions as they are in the future. Each intervention reflects upon time in different ways. The Repository freezes time; it is designed with deep futures in mind, where parts of it are only accessible to a human or ‘other’ of the future. In the present, the Rambler encounters the Repository only as a shelter. Only after some 200 years have passed and the rammed earth wall barring its entrance deteriorates and gives access to the space below, will the Archaeologist of the future encounter the Repository. Its form is derived from abandoned mining chimneys scattered around the Anakie area and is composed of recycled bricks, sourced from the ruins of a former mining site 5km west of the dam. Housing objects from the time of the dam wall construction, tools and objects introduced through European settlement as well as deep time objects such as Indigenous lithic artefacts, this intervention renders visible the site’s deep histories, and only time holds the key to its access. The Seed Bank preserves time. Situated within dense eucalypt forest, this intervention stores collected seeds of endemic and native plant species in an underground vault. The Seed Bank is frequented by the Ecologist who makes use of its laboratory facilities. Storing seeds for up to 200 years, the Seed Bank is integral to the future rejuvenation of the site. Following these 200 years, as its architecture falls to ruination and its envelope becomes increasingly permeable, the Seed Bank distributes the collected seeds back into the soil for germination. The Observation Tower facilitates the visualisation of time through changes in the landscape. The Tower embeds itself both along the dam wall and against the rocky landscape surrounding it. Where currently site users need to scale precarious 10

Geographies of Deep Time & an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities rocky terrain to peer over the dam wall, the Tower provides safe visual access to the upstream face of the dam from the downstream face, which isn’t currently available. The lookout is designed with both the Rambler and the Ecologist in mind, who monitors and observes native bird species on site regularly. Forming the structure of the Tower is a plastiglomerate core; as the building erodes and deteriorates, 200 years from now the plastic- composite material remains almost unchanged, incredibly difficult to decompose, as plastics are.

9 Alonso, Cristina Parreño, “Deep-Time Architecture: Building as Material-Event,” Journal of Architectural Education, 75 (2021). 11

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Each of these interventions sit upon the site as ghosts which reflect upon its industrial histories and render visible its deep time stories, as a series of architectural meditations. “Considering architecture within deep timescales renders the building not as an isolated object-instance in a human timeline, but rather as a moment of convergence of material and energy that flow across deep temporal scales.”9

architectural thesis

Elaboration of Thesis Proposal

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Site Studies

architectural thesis

Lower Stony Creek Dam Constructed in 1873, Lower Stony Creek Dam is Australia’s oldest concrete dam. A curved mass concrete gravity dam, it demonstrated technical innovation for its time, pioneering the use of Portland cement concrete in its design principles.1 The Dam Wall supplied water to the Geelong area until its decommissioning in 2001. Today, the Dam Wall is deemed a retired water storage facility and sits upon the site as a post-industrial relic, rendering visible its human and nonhuman histories, and embracing its decay.

1 Smith, Tim, Assessment of Cultural Heritage Significance and Executive Director Recommendation to the Heritage Council (Heritage Victoria, 2017), 5. 2 Parks Victoria, Brisbane Ranges National Park: An excursion and fieldwork resource for schools, 4. 13

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Lower Stony Creek Dam, and its surrounding Brisbane Ranges, is situated on Wadawurrung Country. Wadawurrung Traditional Owners inhabited the land for over 25,000 years prior to European settlement of the Brisbane Ranges region in 1851. Wadawurrung communities made use of the abundance of plants and animals in the area and evidence of their inhabitation is visible in the earth mounds and scar trees throughout the Ranges.2 Wadawurrung Traditional Owners would also have created extensive and complex aquaculture systems, modified channels and diverted water, upon the old lava flows of the volcanic landscape on which Brisbane Ranges is situated. Following the discovery of gold in the town of Anakie and its subsequent gold rush in 1851, the Wadawurrung population steadily declined. During this time settlers deforested the area to provide mine props, timber and firewood and in 1873 reserved 3000 hectares of Wadawurrung land as a catchment area to supply water to Geelong: this became Lower Stony Creek Dam. The history of the Dam is one of environmental and colonial violence. The Brisbane Ranges rests upon layers of entangled deep time stories such as these, of First Nations histories, their stories of and connection to the land, and their displacement following colonial settlement. The Dam and its site also exhibit stories of earth movement, folding and buckling to

architectural thesis

Site Studies

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Site Studies

Lower Stony Creek Dam form the plains of the Ranges we see today. The Ranges are comprised of “sedimentary rock of early to mid-Ordovician age”3 (of the Paleozoic Era, a geological period beginning 485 million years ago and ending 443 million years ago when the Silurian Period began) formed by sediments (sand, silt and mud) deposited by underwater avalanches, in a time when Southern Victoria was submerged by the sea.4 4 million years ago (Cenozoic Era) the region now known as the Victorian Volcanic Plains was volcanically active as “lava flowed from Mt Anakie, covering the Werribee Plains and areas towards Geelong”.5 Since the extinction of the volcanoes, watercourses such as Little River and Stony Creek have carved valleys in the Brisbane Ranges, shaping the basalt plains upon which the Dam Wall rests. These deep time histories are already woven into the fabric of the Dam Wall: its concrete form, comprised of Portland cement, broken sandstone screenings and gravel, and rendered with Portland cement mortar3, holds within it all the stories of its past. Caroline Loewen writes in her fictionella ‘Red Sandstone’: “Even though we tend to separate stone as a geological entity and stone as a building material, these histories are inextricably linked. The stories that can be read in stone run throughout its history, from its geologic history in landforms and natural structures, to the violent process of quarrying stone, through to its architectural history as part of the built environment.”6

(Following pages: a photographic journey through the site–from the picnic ground and carpark to the upstream face of the Dam–combined with selected quotes from my research)

3 Parks Victoria, Brisbane Ranges National Park: An excursion and fieldwork resource for schools, 4. 4 Parks Victoria, Brisbane Ranges National Park: An excursion and fieldwork resource for schools, 4. 5 Parks Victoria, Brisbane Ranges National Park: An excursion and fieldwork resource for schools, 4. 6 Loewen, Caroline, “Red Sandstone,” Lost Rocks (2017), 21. 14

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Tsing, Anna, The Mushroom at the End of the World (Princeton University Press, 2015), 20.

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Barnett, Sylvia, “Landscape Is Not A Scene,” The Site Magazine, https://www.thesitemagazine.com/read/landscape-is-not-a-scene.

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Tsing, Anna, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan and Nils Bubandt, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, ed. Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan and Nils Bubandt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 3.

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Bubandt, Nils, “Haunted Geologies: Spirits, Stones, and the Necropolitics of the Anthropocene,” In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, ed. Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 135.

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Frichot, Helene, “Environments,” In Creative Ecologies: Theorizing the Practice of Architecture (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 21.

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Tsing, Anna, The Mushroom at the End of the World (Princeton University Press, 2015), 6.

architectural thesis

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Hutton, Jane. Reciprocal Landscapes (New York: Routledge, 2019), 7.

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Burtynsky, Edward, “The Anthropocene Project,” Kerb: Journal of Landscape Architecture 28 (2020): 26.

Geographies of Deep Time at Lower Stony Creek Dam

*Lichens are assemblages comprised of thousands of other species and are often considered “worlds unto themselves.”2 In thinking about timescales beyond our own, some species of lichen are ‘potentially immortal’ and can live for thousands of years: “filamentous fungi are immortal. Aging, or senescence, is defined as a decreased probability of reproduction, and an increased probability of death, with time. An immortal organism never ages, and the probabilities of reproduction or death may take unusual patterns.”3 Aboriginal Australian writer Bruce Pascoe writes in Dark Emu that botanists can use lichen growth to determine the age of a substrate: “lichen growth on the rock is claimed by some botanists to indicate that [the stone walls outlining the battues of Central Victoria] were constructed well before the period of contact with early European settlers.”4 Lichens are just one of many nonhuman entities whose timescales transcend that of our own human contemporary timescales, and prompts us to consider (deep) futures beyond our own.

1 Rose, Deborah Bird, Thom Van Dooren, “Lively Ethnography: Storying Animist Worlds,” Environmental Humanities 8 (2016): 85. 2 Pringle, Anne, “Establishing New Worlds: The Lichens of Petersham,” In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, ed. Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 157. 3 Pringle, Anne, “Establishing New Worlds: The Lichens of Petersham,” In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, ed. Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 161. 4 Pascoe, Bruce, Dark Emu (Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation, 2014), 52. 25

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

This thesis explores the importance of the temporality of the Dam, which is rich in its suggestion of former lives, where contemporary time and deep geological time flow in tandem. The Dam Wall itself provokes questions about its obsolescence: what are the circumstances which caused its obsolescence or rendered it useless? And what is its purpose now? This thesis is situated at the intersection of multiple times, and in doing so renders the life of industrial human-made objects, and my role as (human) architectural designer, insignificant and fleeting in the scheme of broader geological timescales: things have lived before us and things will exist after, and beyond us. In exploring multiple timescales, I have framed this thesis within my own journey through the site–from Lower Stony Creek Picnic Ground, along Burchell Trail, to the Dam Wall–and have disrupted this journey with my encounters of deep time; the Cenozoic basalt plains beneath my feet carved by ancient lava flows and rivers, the Dam Wall which irrevocably disrupted existing ecosystems and communities, and the lichen which grow on the face of the Dam Wall that may still be alive a thousand years from today*. These encounters with deep pasts and deep futures require an active attentiveness to the site. Multispecies ethnographer Deborah Bird Rose suggests we must ‘actively bear witness’ to others, including a “passionate immersion in the lives of nonhumans.”1

architectural thesis

Site Studies

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Site Studies

Undamming Lower Stony Creek Reservoir Lower Stony Creek Dam provided Geelong and its surrounding towns with its first reliable water supply, leading to significant industrial growth and improved public health in the region. However dams are contested sites. Damming always has adverse impacts on the environment and its people, leading to the displacement and fragmentation of local communities; this is especially devastating for First Nations communities, including the Wadawurrung people who once inhabited the Brisbane Ranges region. Damming also has detrimental impacts on the environment. Where a dam wall interrupts an existing watercourse, like Stony Creek, the natural flow of water and the ecosystems it previously nourished, are irrevocably disrupted: fish once inhabiting Stony Creek are no longer able to move upstream for migration and reproduction, and siltation and salinity are altered, irreversibly affecting water quality in the creek and beyond.1 Additionally, plants and animals often fail to adapt to lake conditions introduced through damming. Stony Creek some four million years ago once flowed with vitality, carving the basalt plains to form the Brisbane Ranges. Today, its creek bed is dry. It remains dry almost all year round and only temporarily or seasonally flows after sufficient rain. On top of the three inteventions proposed, as an extra intervention, I’ve proposed to puncture through the dam wall to promote restoration of the Stony Creek watercourse and the site’s ecosystems, and allow water to reclaim the landscape. The puncture allows water to travel through an opening in the Dam Wall once it reaches a certain level. The wall is punctured just above the East Valve Outlet house to direct water to the existing Stony Creek watercourse. In this intervention movement of water is curated, anticipating the incremental undamming of the reservoir as time progresses.

1 Meredith, Peter, “To Dam or ot to dam?” Australian Geographic (2011), https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/ topics/science-environment/2011/01/to-dam-or-not-to-dam/

PROPOSED PUNCTURE IN DAM WALL TO PROMOTE STONY CREEK WATERCOURSE & ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION, ANTICIPATING THE INCREMENTAL UN-DAMMING OF THE RESERVOIR AS TIME PASSES.

WEST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE

DOWNSTREAM FACE ELEVATION

EAST V

VALVE OUTLET WATERCOURSE

1:50

architectural thesis

Site Studies

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Image: [@_parlour]. “It was here on the west coast of Lutruwita one of the most significant moments in Australian environmental history took place, the successful protest against the damming of the Franklin river and the site’s initiation to UNESCO world heritage protection. Instead of a choice of two dam options, the iconic slogan NO DAMS was written on ballot papers at the 1981 referendum by a third of voters. Protestors occupied the proposed dam site on the Franklin in a blockade in 1982 and many were arrested and sent to nearby queenstown. I’ve made friends in town who were held that day and have described how the Tasmanian hydro plan divided the west coast community, between those who welcomed new work and those who wished to protect the river ecosystem and remains of aboriginal occupation 15,000 years prior. You can watch a short screening of this event at the paragon theatre in Queenstown. It is at this moment Bob Brown introduces the concept of ‘wilderness’ to politics.” Instagram, Eleanor Peres [@mone__studio], March 2021, https://www. instagram.com/p/CMd08GulBn9/.

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

architectural thesis

air space (tropospher 03

contemporary human time

geo-space (lithosphere) water space air space (troposphere) cainozoic volcanic time

fringe

29 01 Igneous rock 02 East valve outlet pipeline to Anakie Gorge 03 East valve outlet underground pipeline to Anakie Gorge visible through concrete pathway 04 Sedimentary rock north of dam wall 05 Stony Creek to Anakie Gorge landscape 06 Reservoir water body 07 Lower Stony Creek Dam wall 08 Stony creek bed retaining wall 09 Portland cement: the main source of air toxics emissions from a portland cement plant is the kiln. Emissions originate from the burning of fuels and heating of feed materials.

01 Igneous rock 02 East valve outlet pipeline to Anakie Gorge 03 East valve outlet underground pipeline to Anakie Gorge visible through concrete pathway 04 Sedimentary rock north of dam wall 05 Stony Creek to Anakie Gorge landscape 06 Reservoir water body 07 Lower Stony Creek Dam wall 08 Stony creek bed retaining wall 09 Portland cement: the main source of air toxics emissions from a portland cement plant is the kiln. Emissions originate from the burning of fuels and heating of feed materials. 10 Outlet valve connected to underground pipeline to Anakie 11 Altocumulus clouds over dam wall 12 Victorian Volcanic Plains 13 Igneous rock formations around dam wall 14 Crystallisation of accumulated reservoir matter 15 Dry Stony Creek bed 16 West valve outlet house watercourse to Stony Creek 17 Disused concrete pipes at Stony Creek bed 18 Basalt coping: dam wall 19 Outlet valves connected to underground pipeline to Anakie

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

contemporary human time

dam wall

cainozoic volcanic time

infrastructure

landscape

architectural thesis

lower stony creek dam

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Stern, Lesley, “A Garden or Grave?: The Canyonic Landscape of the Tijuana-San Diego Region,” In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, ed. Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 19. 30

architectural thesis

GEOLOGICAL ZONE 2 FLUVIAL: GRAVEL, SAND, SILT

GEOLOGICAL ZONE 2 MARINE BENDIGONIAN (PALEOZOIC ERA, MIDDLE ORDOVICIAN PERIOD): SANDSTONE, SILTSTONE, SHALE, CHERT

LOWER STONY CREEK RESERVOIR GEOLOGICAL ZONE 1 MARINE YAPEENIAN (PALEOZOIC ERA, LOWER ORDOVICIAN PERIOD): SANDSTONE, SILTSTONE, SHALE, CHERT GEOLOGICAL ZONE 2 FLUVIAL: GRAVEL, SAND, SILT LOWER STONY CREEK DAM WALL

CONTOUR & GEOLOGY MAP

100m

500m

1:12500

1km

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

GEOLOGICAL ZONE 2 FLUVIAL: GRAVEL, SAND, SILT

architectural thesis

r d e rg

o n al

P ark

te Park Melbourne

ge s N

ati

ban e

Lower Stony Creek Reservoir

R an

Staughton Vale

Bris

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Lerde

Anakie

You Yangs Regional Park

Port Phillip Bay

Geelong

CONTEXT PLAN

1:1750 WATER BODY

NATIONAL PARK

architectural thesis

WEST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE

EAST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE

EAST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE P LEADS TO ANAKIE GORGE PIP B EAST VALVE OUTLET H CARRIES WATER TO GEELONG

A F

WEST VALVE OUTLET H

UNDERGROUND

A D

Lower Stony Creek Dam

National Park

Brisbane Ranges National Park

Melbourne

Bay lip hil

D F

Geelong Brisbane Ranges National Park

Bay lip hil

Lower Stony Creek Dam

B D

IGNEOUS AND SEDIMENTARY ROCK, ELEVATED

EAST VALVE OUTLET E HOUSE

LOWER STONY CREEK RESERVOIR WATER BODY

EAST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE PIPE: LEADS TO ANAKIE GORGE PIPELINE, CARRIES WATER TO GEELONG UNDERGROUND

WEST VALVE OUTLET AND SCOUR PIPE WATERCOURSE, TO REGULATE WATER LEVELS IN RESERVOIR BY EMPTYING EXCESS WATER INTO STONY CREEK

CRACKS IN DAM WALL, LEAKING WATER

STONY CREEK

IGNEOUS AND SEDIMENTARY ROCK, ELEVATED 1:500

LOWER STONY CREEK RESERVOIR WATER BODY

WEST VALVE OUTLET AND SCOUR PIPE WATERCOURSE, TO REGULATE WATER LEVELS IN RESERVOIR BY EMPTYING EXCESS WATER INTO STONY CREEK

E G

Bay lip hil

Melbourne Geelong

RESERVOIR WATER BODY

STONY CREEK

GRASSED AREA

WEST VALVE OUTLET 50 WATERCOURSE

GRASSED 1:1000 AREA

H 1:500

1:1000

Port P Bay lip hil

UNDERGROUND CRACKS IN DAM WALL, LEAKING WATER

WEST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE

WEST VALVE OUTLET WATERCOURSE

EAST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE PIPE: LEADS TO ANAKIE GORGE PIPELINE, 1:500 CARRIES WATER TO GEELONG

Melbourne

Port RESERVOIR P WATER BODY

EAST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE

G E

Port P

WEST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE

Port P

Geelong

Melbourne

E Brisbane Ranges Dam Lower Stony Creek

C EAST VALVE OUTLET H CRACKS IN DAM LEAKIN LEADS TOWALL, ANAKIE GOR WATER CARRIES WATER TO GE UNDERGROUND IGNEOUS AND SEDIMENTARY ELEVATED D CRACKS IN DAM WALL, WATER LOWER STONY CREEK RESERV WATER BODY E IGNEOUS AND SEDIME ELEVATED WEST VALVE OUTLET AND SCO PIPE WATERCOURSE, TO REG F LOWER STONY CREEK WATER LEVELS IN RESERVOIR WATER BODY EMPTYING EXCESS WATER INT STONY CREEK G WEST VALVE OUTLET A WATERCOURSE, T STONY PIPE CREEK WATER LEVELS IN RESE EMPTYING EXCESS WA STONY CREEK

1:500

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

STONY CREEK

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

architectural thesis

BASALT COPING

A PORTLAND CEMENT RENDER UPSTREAM AND DOWNSTREAM FACES OF DAM WALL

DOWNSTREAM FACE ELEVATION A 1:250

B B

CRACKS IN DAM WALL, LEAKING RESERVOIR WATER

EAST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE

FALLEN BRANCHES AND DEBRIS

EAST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE PIPE: LEADS TO ANAKIE GORGE PIPELINE, CARRIES WATER TO GEELONG UNDERGROUND

WEST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE

DAM WALL SET IN SANDSTONE AND BASALT ROCK FOR STABILITY. FOUNDATIONS KEYED INTO BEDROCK FOR SLIDING RESISTANCE

STEPS DESCENDING TO WEST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE: BASALT ROCK

WEST VALVE OUTLET AND SCOUR PIPE WATERCOURSE, TO REGULATE WATER LEVELS IN RESERVOIR BY EMPTYING EXCESS WATER INTO STONY CREEK

VALVE OUTLET WATERCOURSE DOWNSTREAM FACE ELEVATION B 1:100

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

DISUSED PIPE 0

VOLCANIC DEPOSITS, VOLCANIC ASH, OLD LAVA FLOWS 1m

architectural thesis

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

“Would the sound of stones, had we ears to hear it, be a cacophony of noise? Pounding raucous noises of a world long forgotten and ignored. Screaming at us to remember where we came from... Would we hear the plaintive cries of lifeforms long gone, revealing dimensions beyond our comprehension, mixed with the sonorous cry of deep time?”1 1 Loewen, Caroline, “Red Sandstone,” Lost Rocks (2017), 9.

architectural thesis

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

architectural thesis

HESITATION

Mattern, Shannon, “The Big Data of Ice, Rocks. Soils, and Sediments,” Places Journal (2017).

DISTURBED DEPTH: SEDIMENT UNKNOWN

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

LOSS OF BALANCE

MUDDY BOOTS

WEST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE conditions: slippery, muddy, wet 0

100

200

“Soils are indicators of the nature and history of the physical and human landscape; they reflect the environment and record the passage of time... They are reservoirs for artifacts and other traces of human activity.”1

500mm

architectural thesis

CRACKS IN DAM WALL: LEAKAGES

FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN

1 Alonso, Cristina Parreño, “Deep-Time Architecture: Building as Material-Event,” Journal of Architectural Education, 75 (2021).

HESITATION, UNCERTAINTY

FALLEN DEBRIS

EAST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE conditions: dark, dusty 0

0.5

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

DUST

“A buillding in the present contains all its past within, carrying it as it continuously transforms itself into the future.”1

ED UR SC S S OB NE K N IO AR VIS Y D B

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

- 66 MILLION YEARS 1 THIS EVENT MARKED THE END OF THE CRETACEOUS PERIOD AND BEGINNING OF THE CAINOZOIC ERA, OUR CURRENT GEOLOGICAL ERA

CRETACEOUS–PALEOGENE EXTINCTION EVENT

MASSIVE ASTEROID DEVASTATED GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT

LOWER STONY CREEK DAM IS SITUATED ON THE VICTORIAN VOLCANIC PLAINS, DOMINATED BY VOLCANIC DEPOSITS, IGNEOUS ROCK, STONY RISES AND OLD LAVA FLOWS MOUNT ANAKIE

EXCTINCTION OF CRETACEOUS ERA FLORA & FAUNA

WADAWURRUNG TRADITIONAL OWNER POPULATION DECLINED DRASTICALLY FOLLOWING DISTRICT’S GOLD RUSH ERA IN 1855

ANAKIE & STEIGLITZ: GOLD MINING TOWNS

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

LOWER STONY CREEK DAM WALL CONSTRUCTED IN 1873, USING MASS CONCRETE CONSTRUCTION WITH PORTLAND CEMENT RENDER ON BOTH DOWNSTREAM AND UPSTREAM FACES OF DAM WALL

architectural thesis

- 150 YEARS

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

TODAY: 2021 3

FOUND OBJECTS ON SITE: DETRITUS OF HUMAN CONSUMPTION, PLASTIC AND ALUMINIUM WASTE PRODUCTS SUCH AS BOTTLES, CANS, DISPOSABLE MASKS, TISSUES AND BLISTER PACKS

SOME CRACKS/LEAKAGES IN DAM WALL

CURRENT USERS OF THE SITE: WALKING AND HIKING ENTHUSIASTS OF BRISBANE RANGES NATIONAL PARK

architectural thesis

+ 50 YEARS 4

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

CONTINUED PRESSURE OF UPSTREAM WATER FORCES LARGE LEAKAGES TO OCCUR IN DAM WALL, REQUIRES CONTINUAL MAINTENANCE

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

+ 200 YEARS 5 HUMAN POPULATION SEVERELY DECLINES: TRANSFORMATIONS CAUSED BY CLIMATE CHANGE SEVERELY DIMINISHED THE PLANET’S CARRYING CAPACITY EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS, EXTREME TEMPERATURES, HEAVILY POLLUTED AIR, MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO STEP OUTSIDE WITHOUT BODY ARMOUR AND PROTECTIVE WEAR

CONTINUED PRESSURE OF UPSTREAM WATER FORCES SIGNIFICANT LEAKAGES TO OCCUR IN DAM WALL. RESERVOIR CONTENTS EVENTUALLY EMPTY

architectural thesis

+ 1 MILLION YEARS 6

LOW HUMAN POPULATION NUMBERS ALLOW THE EARTH TO REGENERATE WHILE PERMITTING NEW SPECIES TO EVOLVE

DAM WALL REMNANTS, UNRECOGNISABLE

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

CLIMATE AND POLLUTION CRISIS AND ECOLOGICAL COLLAPSE THREATENS THE CONTINUING SURVIVAL OF HUMAN SOCIETIES

architectural thesis

repository objects Deep Past

nonhuman mammal bone

indigenous spearhead igneous rock nonhuman mammal bone

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

indigenous grinding stone indigenous stone artefact

ceramic ink pot old suitcase

explorer’s compass

crane leather shoe

paraffin lamp

camera machinery from valve outlet

cement mixer

mobile phone

fishing rod reel

roll of film half penny coin

disposable mask plastic water bottle coke can

blister pack

mobile phone

Present

A quick exploration of objects found on and around the site, both speculative and real, from objects of the deep past (bones, rocks and lithic artefacts) to objects of today (plastic bottles and electronic devices).

Design Precedents

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

architectural thesis

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

architectural thesis

design precedents

Climate Imaginaries & Speculative Worlds

Design practices like Design Earth have been an important precedent throughout my design process. Through their speculative geographic fictions, Design Earth posit that “the practice of making geographies involves the coupled undertakings of ‘writing about,’ projecting or representing the earth and also ‘writing on,’ marking, forming or presenting again a world.”1 Such creative practices challenge human exceptionalism through designing for more-than-human users and foregrounding nonhuman agency. Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities is a single experimental instance which speaks to broader environmental concerns; the project foregrounds nonhuman agency through its site users, which are not limited to humans, including the powerful owl and the lichen. This thesis also explores material agency and the agency of landscape processes and nonhuman bodies, like bodies of water. Responding to broader environmental concerns requires imaginative modes of ‘making visible’–which are critical in formulating new agencies in design–in addressing climate and environmental emergencies.2

1 Design Earth, https://design-earth.org/about/ 2 Hinkel, Rochus Urban and Peter Raisbeck, “Politics and Utopia in Architecture: Knowing the Anthropocene,” March 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGtFoJToMng/

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Thinking about architecture in deep timescales requires speculation and fictions which can provide answers to the site’s ‘unknowns’. This thesis oscillates and seeks a balance between the ‘poetic’ and the ‘pragmatic’: it responds and pays close attention to real-world site conditions through empirical specificity, rendering real the conditions of the present, however it is a speculative project first and foremost and does not propose architecture to be built. The project explores narratives, both past and present, and creates its own narratives through a series of imagined site-users or ‘characters’. Narratives and speculations allow for new meaning to be imbued in that which is unknown to me, as I acknowledge the limits of my knowledge as an architectural designer.

architectural thesis

Design Precedents

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

“Chthulucene is a simple word. It is a compound of two Greek roots (khthôn and kainos) that together name a kind of timeplace for learning to stay with the trouble of living and dying in response-ability on a damaged earth. Kainos means now, a time of beginnings, a time for ongoing, for freshness. Nothing in kainos must mean conventional pasts, presents, or futures. There is nothing in times of beginnings that insists on wiping out what has come before, or, indeed, wiping out what comes after. Kainos can be full of inheritances, of remembering, and full of comings, of nurturing what might still be. I hear kainos in the sense of thick, ongoing presence, with hyphae infusing all sorts of temporalities and materialities.”1

Haraway, Donna, Staying with the Trouble (Duke University Press, 2016), 2.

Interventions (early iterations)

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

architectural thesis

WEST VALVE OUTLET AND SCOUR PIPE WATERCOURSE, TO REGULATE WATER LEVELS IN RESERVOIR BY EMPTYING EXCESS WATER INTO STONY CREEK

CONCRETE DAM WALL TO IGENOUS ROCK JUNCTION

LOWER STONY CREEK RESERVOIR WATER BODY

architectural thesis

1 3

2 2

1:500

West Valve Outlet spillway: a rich intersection of wet and dry conditions, infrastructure and wild-ness, a place of visible entanglement

D A

CRACKS IN DAM WALL, PARTICULARLY IN OUTER PORTLAND CEMENT RENDER LAYER

FALLEN BRANCHES AND DEBRIS

UNEVEN LAYERS OF CONCRETE, CEMENT HAPHAZARDLY POURED IN LAYERS TO CONCEAL PIPELINE BENEATH

CONCRETE ERODED TO REVEAL PIPELINE BENEATH

RESPOSITORY LOCATIONS RESERVOIR WATER BODY

WEST VALVE OUTLET WATERCOURSE

GRASSED AREA

IGNEOUS AND SEDIMENTARY ROCK

1:1000

East Valve Outlet house: a strange condition where newer site works are peeling away to reveal original conditions

Reservoir bank: boundaries are muddy, swimming program introduced to the retired reservoir

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

found objects early 1900s rocks

Object

architectural thesis

lithic artefacts objects from time of dam wall construction

bones

plastic waste

abandoned mine shaft, Steiglitz

Formal Precedent

plastiglomerate stone quarry existing creek, pre-dam construction mining chimney

Material

recycled on-site metal stone, on-site + nearby quarry

recycled bricks

on-site rammed earth

Danly Quarry

Material Source

Lower Stony Creek Dam

10km

10km south-west of site

on-site waste (& concrete)

stone, on-site + nearby quarry

Lower Stony Creek Dam

10km

United Albion Mine Site

5km

10km south-west of site

5km west of site

Intervention

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

construction machinery

Lower Stony Creek Dam

architectural thesis

Journey Vignette One

Intervention number one is situated at the beginning of the site path. Housing rocks and lithic material, I’ve proposed to cut into the site, requiring visitors to descend into a kind of chamber, as if descending into the earth. Its materiality is of stone and earth, so the structure is an archive in itself, sourced from both on site or from one of the many nearby quarries. 1 JOURNEY VIGNETTE SECTION 1

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JOURNEY VIGNETTE SECTION 1

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Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

rocks

architectural thesis

Journey Vignette Two

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

bones

Intervention number two houses nonhuman bones. I’ve proposed to keep the bones close to or within the ground, as visitors ascend a set of stairs and peer down to view the artefacts.

JOURNEY VIGNETTE SECTION 2

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JOURNEY VIGNETTE SECTION 2

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architectural thesis

Journey Vignette Three

Downstream Face

Intervention number three houses indigenous lithic artefacts. Lower Stony Creek Dam and its surrounding area is situated on Wadda-Warrung country and the traditional owners of the land lived in the area for 40000 years prior to European settlement. Their complex aquaculture systems and tools were often created from organic materials, ephemeral in nature, and so only the lithic components have remained as tangible artefacts. These will be preserved in this intervention, built of rammed earth: using Wadda-Warrung country to build on Wadda-Warrung country. Ultimately, all of these interventions aspire to approach the site sensitively, in a contextually-responsive and adaptive way, designing for changes in the landscape.

JOURNEY VIGNETTE SECTION 3

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JOURNEY VIGNETTE SECTION 3

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Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

lithic artefacts

architectural thesis

site journey vignette four

Journey Vignette Four

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

objects from time of dam wall construction

Downstream Face

Intervention number four houses objects from the time of the dam wall construction, tools and objects introduced through European settlement. Its form is derived from the machinery used to construct the wall. Its materiality will repurpose disused steel outlets and valves on the site which can be melted down and recycled.

JOURNEY VIGNETTE SECTION 4

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JOURNEY VIGNETTE SECTION 4

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site journey vignette five

architectural thesis

Journey Vignette Five

found objects early 1900s

C A

Upstream Face

Downstream Face

Intervention number five houses found objects from the early to mid 20th century. By this time tourists visited the dam for recreation and brought with them cameras and fishing rods. Its form is inspired by mining chimneys scattered around the Anakie area. The intervention is composed of recycled bricks, sourced from the ruins of a former mining site 5km west of the dam.

JOURNEY VIGNETTE SECTION 5

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JOURNEY VIGNETTE SECTION 5

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Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Downstream Face

architectural thesis

site journey vignette six

Journey Vignette Six

plastic waste

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Upstream Face

Downstream Face

Upstream Face B

Upstream Face

Intervention number six exhibits the plastic waste found in vast quantities on and around the site. Inspired by plastiglomerate, a real material conglomerate of rock fragments and plastic debris, the material is often considered a marker of the Anthropocene era itself. These towers loom over swimmers and boats in the reservoir urging visitors to see the coke cans, plastic bottles and selfie sticks as a part of the landscape around them. JOURNEY VIGNETTE SECTION 6

1:100

JOURNEY VIGNETTE SECTION 6

1:75

The Lost Intervention

The Navigation Marker registers time, exhibiting the plastic waste found in vast quantities on and around the site. An outer skin cloaks a plastiglomerate core; like the Observation Tower, the outer skin deteriorates over time, peeling away to reveal the plastiglomerate core, largely unchanged with its plastic materiality. Inspired by plastiglomerate, a real material conglomerate of rock fragments and plastic debris, this intervention registers time through the collecting and depositing of plastic waste; the Friend of Brisbane Ranges, in his regular acts of maintenance, actively collects waste around the site and deposits them into the Navigation Marker. The Navigation Marker ensures swimmers don’t swim too close to the dam wall and its submerged objects, but it is also a marker of the Anthropocene, looming over swimmers and boats in the reservoir urging them to see their own detritus as a part of the landscape around them.

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

In my early design process, this project included a fourth site intervention: the Navigation Marker [previous page]. A monolithic conical structure, the Navigation Marker, located in the reservoir, was designed to respond to the site’s existing swimming program; its function was to replace the existing plastic buoys in demarcating the reservoir’s ‘no-swim’ zone. Originally, it’s point of difference was its plastiglomerate core and its relationship to the site’s swimming program: as the only intervention proposed to be situated in the reservoir, it had an interesting relationship to the reservoir’s ever-fluctuating water levels. The Navigation Marker was the most monumental of the four interventions and perhaps the most speculative, registering time through its incremental accumulation of plastic waste. However, the decision to drop this intervention in the final iteration came from it having a weaker programmatic response; while the other interventions (The Repository, The Seed Bank, The Observation Tower) all had prominent functional qualities, The Navigation Marker had a mostly poetic response to the site. Although it didn’t make it to the final iteration, the intervention and its poetic qualities are an important part of my design and thinking process. Below is the original description for The Navigation Marker:

architectural thesis

Design Process

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

architectural thesis

Interventions (final iteration)

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Materiality

Site & Materiality This thesis endeavours to be mindful of processes of material resourcing, excavation and extraction; I have proposed that each intervention sources materials within a close range of the site, where possible. The Observation Tower houses a structural core made of ‘plastiglomerate’, a real material conglomerate of rock fragments and plastic debris [figure a]. The plastiglomerate material of the Observation Tower is comprised of plastic debris and fragments of objects found on and around the site, and glued together with cement, to form a concrete-plastic conglomerate. The plastiglomerate here speaks to broader environmental concerns: the plastiglomerate structure remains largely unchanged due to its embedded plastic content (plastic takes many hundreds of years to decompose) and after many hundreds earth block b rammed to form repository of years (I have predicted a 200-year timespan) the concrete will weather and deteriorate, crumbling away to reveal all the plastic within. Additionally, the metal support of the spiral staircase is made from recycled metal, sourced from the site itself: the disused Anakie pipeline and its metal outlet valves are proposed to be melted down and repurposed. The stairwell to the Repository [figure b] (the cylindrical tower which accompanies the conical shelter) is comprised of stone blocks, sourced from one of the many nearby quarries. The obstructed arched (future) entrance is made up of rammed earth blocks. The earth used to create these blocks is the earth a plastiglomerate which was excavated to form the underground space of the Repository. Additionally, the shelter building is built from recycled bricks, sourced from an abandoned mine site 5km west of Lower Stony Creek Dam.

rammed earth block

earth excavated from site

Site & Materiality

Material

Material Source

1 Hutton, Jane, Reciprocal Landscapes (New York: Routledge, 2019), 5. 69

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Landscape architect and researcher Jane Hutton’s Reciprocal Landscapes examines stories of material movement. Through tracing material journeys, from its site of origin or point of extraction, to its role as commodity, Hutton closes the distance between consumer and product (and human and landscape). “Reciprocal Landscapes stems from a desire to think of construction materials not as fixed commodities or inert products, but as continuous with the landscapes they come from, and with the people that shape them.”1 Bringing material journeys to light prompts an awareness of landscape as a process of ongoing relationships affected by human and nonhuman forces alike, and helps us to understand materials as fragments of much larger landscapes.

architectural thesis

Materiality

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

TOP OF DAM WALL, BASALT COPING

EAST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE

CRACKS IN DAM WALL, LEAKING RESERVOIR WATER

PROPOSED PUNCTURE IN DAM WALL TO PROMOTE STONY CREEK WATERCOURSE & ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION, ANTICIPATING THE INCREMENTAL UN-DAMMING OF THE RESERVOIR AS TIME PASSES.

WEST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE

FALLEN BRANCHES AND DEBRIS

EAST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE PIPE: LEADS TO ANAKIE GORGE PIPELINE, CARRIES WATER TO GEELONG UNDERGROUND DAM WALL SET IN SANDSTONE AND BASALT ROCK FOR STABILITY. FOUNDATIONS KEYED INTO BEDROCK FOR SLIDING RESISTANCE

STEPS DESCENDING TO WEST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE: BASALT ROCK

DOWNSTREAM FACE ELEVATION

WEST VALVE OUTLET AND SCOUR PIPE WATERCOURSE, TO REGULATE WATER LEVELS IN RESERVOIR BY EMPTYING EXCESS WATER INTO STONY CREEK

VALVE OUTLET WATERCOURSE

1:50

(Note: drawing scale corresponds to A1 size page)

THE ECOLOGIST

FUTURE THE EXPLORER

THE EXPLORER, OR RAMBLER, ENJOYS BUSHWALKING THROUGH THE LOWER STONY CREEK SITE FOR LEISURE, INDULGING IN THE SITE’S MOUNTAINOUT TERRAIN, ITS ROCKY GULLIES, AND ITS UNUSUAL GEOLOGY.

THE ARCHAEOLOGIST

THE ‘FRIEND OF BRISBANE RANGES’

‘FRIENDS OF BRISBANE RANGES’ IS AN ACTIVE COMMUNITY GROUP WHICH MEET TO DISCUSS, LEARN ABOUT AND PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT, ECOLOGY AND HISTORY OF BRISBANE RANGES NATIONAL PARK. A MEMBER OF ‘FRIENDS OF BRISBANE RANGES’ WOULD ASSIST IN PARK MAINTENANCE ON A SCHEDULED WORKING BEE DAY IN SMALL WAYS: SWEEPING LEAVES AND CLEANING UP RUBBISH.

THE ARCHAEOLOGIST ARRIVES ON THE SITE TO STUDY HUMAN AND NONHUMAN HISTORY THROUGH THE EXCAVATION AND ANALYSIS OF FOUND OBJECTS AND ARTEFACTS ON AND AROUND THE SITE. SHE UNCOVERS THESE OBJECTS THROUGH REMNANTS OF THE ARCHITECTURAL INTERVENTIONS.

THE POWERFUL OWL

THE POWERFUL OWL, A THREATENED SPECIES, RESIDES IN THE GRASSY WOODLANDS OF BRISBANE RANGES NATIONAL PARK. HISTORICAL LOSS OF HABITAT THROUGH LAND CLEARING (SUCH AS THAT OF THE DAM WALL CONSTRUCTION) THREATENS THE POWERFUL OWL. LOWER HUMAN POPULATION NUMBERS WOULD ALLOW THE OWL TO RECOVER AND RECLAIM ITS HABITAT.

I’ve imagined some characters who will engage with these interventions both existing and speculative, including those beyond our own human timescales, who I’ve described here: the Ecologist, the Hiker or Rambler, the Friend of Brisbane Ranges, the Archaeologist, the Powerful Owl, and the Lichen (which will reclaim the post-human landscape and the ruins of its interventions as substrates). These characters or site users are two-fold: the first three are those who already visit the site today; the second three characters are humans or an ‘other’ of the future who will bear witness to the site and encounter these repositories in the future.

THE LICHEN

LICHENS ARE PHOTOSYNTHETIC ALGAE, HOUSING THOUSANDS OF OTHER SPECIES OF FUNGI AND BACTERIA WITHIN ITS BODY. SOME LICHENS ARE POTENTIALLY IMMORTAL, I.E. THEY NEVER AGE AND DO NOT DIE FROM NATURAL CAUSES, MEANING THEY CAN LIVE FOR MANY THOUSANDS OF YEARS. THE OLDEST KNOWN FOSSIL LICHEN DATES BACK TO THE EARLY DEVONIAN PERIOD: A TRUE PROTAGONIST OF OUR DEEP TIME STORIES..

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

THE ECOLOGIST SURVEYS THE SITE’S RICH ECOSYSTEMS, CONDUCTING FIELDWORK TO COLLECT AND ANALYSE DATA ON ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS. SHE PARTICULARLY ANALYSES THE SITE’S ENDEMIC PLANT AND ANIMAL SPECIES, SUCH AS THE POWERFUL OWL.

architectural thesis

CHARACTERS TODAY

THE SEED BANK: SITUATED ON ELEVATED GROUND TO KEEP ITS SEED CONTENTS DRY AND UNCONTAMINATED. SITUATED AT A DISTANCE FROM THE SITE’S WET AND MARSHY CONDITIONS, ITS LOCATION ENSURES IT IS SURROUNDED BY GROUNDCOVER GRASS (SUCH AS KANGAROO GRASS AND TUSSOCK GRASS) AND UNDERSTOREY SHRUB SPECIES (SUCH AS PRICKLY GEEBUNG AND THE ENDEMIC STEIGLITZ GREVILLEA), THE SEEDS OF WHICH ARE STORED IN THE SEED BANK.

DAM WALL

LOWER STONY CREEK RESERVOIR

THE REPOSITORY: SITUATED ADJACENT TO THE STONY CREEK BANK WHERE THE SITE IS SUBJECT TO SEASONAL WET CONDITIONS. STONY CREEK IS DRY FOR MOST OF THE YEAR BUT IS SUBJECT TO OCCASIONAL SEASONAL FLOODING. UNLIKE THE SEED BANK, THE REPOSITORY EMBRACES SITE’S WET CONDITIONS WHICH HELP TO ACCELERATE THE DECAY OF ITS RAMMED EARTH ENTRANCE (WHICH REMAINS SEALED UNTIL ITS DETERIORATION 200 YEARS FROM TODAY).

OUND PIPELIN EO RGR DE UT UN LE

DAM WALL

INTERVENTION LOCATIONS

1 3

2 AN

BURCHELL TRAIL

PIP

BURCHELL TRAIL

BURCHELL TRAIL E

PIP

BURCHELL TRAIL

PIP

BURCHELL TRAIL

STONY CREEK

STONY CREEK PICNIC GROUND & CARPARK

STONY CREEK

STONY CREEK PICNIC GROUND & CARPARK

A B B LOCATION CONDITIONS

architectural thesis

THE OBSERVATION TOWER: SITUATED AT THE DAM WALL CLOSEST TO THE EAST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE TO PROVIDE ACCESS BETWEEN THE UPSTREAM AND DOWNSTREAM FACES OF THE DAM. THERE IS CURRENTLY NO SAFE ACCESS TO THE RESERVOIR FROM THE DAM’S DOWNSTREAM FACE; THE OBSERVATION TOWER RESPONDS LOWER RESERVOIR TO STONY THISCREEK REAL SITE NEED.

B A

D A

CRACKS IN DAM WALL, PARTICULARLY IN OUTER PORTLAND CEMENT RENDER LAYER

B C

CONCRETE ERODED TO REVEAL PIPELINE BENEATH

GROUNDCOVER GRASS (SUCH AS KANGAROO GRASS AND TUSSOCK GRASS) AND UNDERSTOREY SHRUB SPECIES (SUCH AS PRICKLY GEEBUNG AND THE ENDEMIC STEIGLITZ GREVILLEA)

FALLEN BRANCHES AND DEBRIS

UNEVEN LAYERS OF CONCRETE, CEMENT HAPHAZARDLY POURED IN LAYERS TO CONCEAL PIPELINE BENEATH

500MM HIGH RAISED STONE PLATFORM FORMING THE BURCHELL TRAIL WALKING TRACK. THE PLATFORM IS RAISED TO KEEP STONY CREEK FROM FLOODING THE WALKWAY AND ALSO TO PROTECT THE SITE’S FLORA (IT IS RECOMMENDED TO KEEP ON THE PATH)

RESERVOIR WATER BODY

East Valve Outlet house: a strange condition where newer site works are peeling away to reveal original conditions

WEST VALVE OUTLET WATERCOURSE

GRASSED AREA

IGNEOUS AND SEDIMENTARY ROCK

PIPELINE OUTLET FOR UNDERGROUND PIPELINE RUNNING UNDERGROUND TO ANAKIE GORGE, CURRENTLY DISUSED. THE METAL IS MELTED AND REPURPOSED TO CREATE PARTS OF THE INTERVENTIONS

FALLEN BRANCHES AND DEBRIS

STONY CREEK SUBJECT TO OCCASIONAL SEASONAL FLOODING AND WET CONDITIONS; CREEK BED IS OTHERWISE DRY

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

sh ed

lin

e in

ca tes

tent

Obs

erva tio

To wer

ab ov e

stairwell to Seed Bank

Lower Stony Creek Reservoir

da sh

e in

dica tes

un de

rgro

stairwell to Repository

Shelter

Air Vent

lin

FUTURE ACCESS, CREATED BY DETERIORATION OF RAMMED EARTH BLOCKS

line indicates ground floor below un

d pi

lin e to

Ana

kie G

West Valve Outlet House

line indicates ground floor below

or ge

East Valve Outlet House Air Vent

East Valve Outlet watercourse

SECTION, TODAY: OBSERVATION TOWER

SECTION, TODAY: SEED BANK

1:150

SECTION, TODAY: REPOSITORY

1:150

LOWER STONY CREEK RESERVOIR

DAM WALL

CRACKS IN DAM WALL, PARTICULARLY IN OUTER PORTLAND CEMENT RENDER LAYER

FALLEN BRANCHES AND DEBRIS

UNEVEN LAYERS OF CONCRETE, CEMENT HAPHAZARDLY POURED IN LAYERS TO CONCEAL PIPELINE BENEATH

CONCRETE ERODED TO REVEAL PIPELINE BENEATH

RESERVOIR WATER BODY

A A

GRASSED AREA

5 AN

BURCHELL TRAIL

PIP

IGNEOUS AND SEDIMENTARY ROCK

BURCHELL TRAIL

6 A

FOSSILISED DINOSAUR UNDERFOOT, BURIED BENEATH LAYERS OF STRATA (FOUND IN SEDIMENTARY ROCK LAYER, 1200M BELOW GROUND) A

STONY CREEK

WEST VALVE OUTLET WATERCOURSE

WEST VALVE OUTLET AND SCOUR PIPE WATERCOURSE, TO REGULATE WATER LEVELS IN RESERVOIR BY EMPTYING EXCESS WATER INTO STONY CREEK

EAST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE

CONCRETE DAM WALL TO IGENOUS ROCK JUNCTION

RESERVOIR BANK: BOUNDARIES ARE MUDDY, SWIMMING PROGRAM INTRODUCED TO THE RETIRED RESERVOIR

FOOT OF EAST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE: NEWER SITE WORKS PEEL AWAY TO REVEAL ORIGINAL CONDITIONS

WEST VALVE OUTLET SPILLWAY: AN INTERSECTION OF WET AND DRY CONDITIONS, INFRASTRUCTURE AND WILD-NESS, A PLACE OF VISIBLE ENTANGLEMENT

Brisbane Ranges National Park

Melbourne

Port P Geelong

DISUSED ANAKIE GORGE PIPELINE OUTLET PIPE (DISTRIBUTED ALONG BURCHELL TRAIL)

SITE PLAN

Lower Stony Creek Dam

Bay lip hil

STONY CREEK PICNIC GROUND & CARPARK

GRASSED AREA

1:500

TOPOGRAPHY

WATER BODY

THE OBSERVATION TOWER

THE SEED BANK

THE REPOSITORY

(Note: drawing scale corresponds to A1 size page)

architectural thesis

da s

d li ne

dic

ate

xte nt of O

erv ati on

To we r

ab ov

Lower Stony Creek Reservoir A

West Valve Outlet House

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

lin

East Valve Outlet House

East Valve Outlet watercourse

SECTION, TODAY: OBSERVATION TOWER

1:75

e in

dic ate

su nd

erg

rou nd

pip e

lin

e to

ak ie

Go rge

architectural thesis

Air Vent

SECTION, TODAY: SEED BANK

1:75

stairwell to Seed Bank

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

line indicates ground floor below

architectural thesis

future access, created by deterioration of rammed earth blocks

line indicates ground floor below

SECTION, TODAY: REPOSITORY

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

stairwell to Repository

Shelter

1:75

architectural thesis

AXONOMETRIC

rambler

rambler B

rambler

plastig lom era te se

al on cti

ollows west valve outlet house elevatio file f pro

archaeologist

rambler

ile

nal pro f

IGNEOUS AND SEDIMENTARY ROCK

SUBSOIL, DEPOSITED MINERALS: SANDSTONE, SILTSTONE, SHALE, CHERT

TOP SOIL, HUMUS, MINERALS

PARENT ROCK, PARTLY WEATHERED ROCK:

SECTION, TODAY: OBSERVATION TOWER

1:75 A

STAIR WELL

SOUTH LOOKOUT

EAST-WEST LOOKOUT

NORTH LOOKOUT

FUTURE RELIC, 2220

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

archaeologist

ecologist E

TOP SOIL, HUMUS, MINERALS

seed bank species

GEOLOGY: MARINE BENDIGONIAN (PALEOZOIC ERA, MIDDLE ORDOVICIAN PERIOD)

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

AXONOMETRIC

Acacia pycnantha Grevillea Steiglitziana

SUBSOIL, DEPOSITED MINERALS: SANDSTONE, SILTSTONE, SHALE, CHERT

PARENT ROCK, PARTLY WEATHERED ROCK:

ecologist

SECTION, TODAY: SEED BANK

ecologist

1:75 A

Banksia marginata

ENTRY/STAIRWELL

OFFICE

SEED STORAGE

SEED/GERMINATION LABORATORY

VENTS

FUTURE REMAINS, 2220

architectural thesis

AXONOMETRIC

stairwell to Repository

rambler E

rambler A D B

GEOLOGY: MARINE BENDIGONIAN (PALEOZOIC ERA, MIDDLE ORDOVICIAN PERIOD)

TOP SOIL, HUMUS, MINERALS

SUBSOIL, DEPOSITED MINERALS: SANDSTONE, SILTSTONE, SHALE, CHERT

PARENT ROCK, PARTLY WEATHERED ROCK:

Repository archaeologist C

SECTION, TODAY: REPOSITORY

1:75 A

REST AREA/SHELTER

APERTURE TO REPOSITORY BELOW

OBJECT STORAGE

STAIR WELL

FUTURE ENTRY, INACCESSIBLE TODAY

LITHIC ARTEFACT STORAGE

FUTURE ACCESS, 2220

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Shelter

architectural thesis

su rro un d

futur en on

aper ture to

RAMBLER

n inhabitants ma hu

r a te structural element, a material conglomerate of rock fragments and plastic debris

OBSERVATION TOWER, DETAIL SECTION 1

ape dsc lan the

e visualisation of ates th time cilit thr , fa ou ape gh dsc ch n a an gl ge n i

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lo t ig as pl

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

skylight opening

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Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

solar-powered generator solar-powered lighting system

2000mm 1000 500 0

1:25 SEED BANK, DETAIL SECTION 1

nt op en

ings a bove

architectural thesis

ECOLOGIST

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

plant species sample storage 09

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SEED BANK, DETAIL SECTION 2

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ECOLOGIST

architectural thesis

t ve n

ai r

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ventilat n

SEED BANK, DETAIL SECTION 3

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Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

h fres air in t a k e ECOLOGIST

architectural thesis

sunlight

recycled bricks

fil t e rs

thro

ning ab ope ov

United Albion Mine Site

RAMBLER

inte rv

enti on en

nte r, cu

rios

ity

stored lit hi

c atrefa

ct below

cou

aperture to

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

5km W of site

REPOSITORY, DETAIL SECTION 1

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RAMBLER

rture ab ape o ve

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

FUTURE ACTIVITY

stair well to Repository

rammed earth block wall deteriorates to form opening to repository below

thro

shifted landscape

fil t e rs

, det decom p o s i t i on d e c a y e ri o r a ti o n,

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2000mm 1000 500 0

ARCHAEOLOGIST

architectural thesis

sunlight

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Cabinet of Curiosities

stairwell to Repository ARCHAEOLOGIST

lithic artefact storage*

REPOSITORY, DETAIL SECTION 3

500

1000

*lithic artefact of the Wadawurrung People. Wadawurrung communities inhabited the Anakie and Brisbane Ranges area for 25,000 years prior to prior to European settlement in 1851.

1:25

2000mm

architectural thesis

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

THE OBSERVATION TOWER

Upstream Face

Downstream Face B

I A

H G

MARINE BENDIGONIAN (PALEOZOIC ERA, MIDDLE ORDOVICIAN PERIOD): SANDSTONE, SILTSTONE, SHALE, CHERT

WEST VALVE OUTLET SCOUR PIPE TO REGULATE WATER LEVELS IN RESERVOIR BY EMPTYING EXCESS WATER INTO STONY CREEK

MISSING PIECE; PART OF EAST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE MACHINERY, FOUND ON RESERVOIR BANK APPROX. 100M FURTHER UPSTREAM FROM DAM WALL

EAST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE PIPE: LEADS TO ANAKIE GORGE PIPELINE, CARRIES WATER TO GEELONG UNDERGROUND

ASSORTMENT OF SUBMERGED OBJECTS ALONG BOTTOM OF RESERVOIR FROM TIMES PAST

SANDSTONE AND BASALT ROCK PENETRATED BY DAM WALL TO A DEPTH OF 2M

EAST VALVE OUTLET HOUSE PIPE: LEADS TO ANAKIE GORGE PIPELINE, CARRIES WATER TO GEELONG UNDERGROUND

DAM WALL FOUNDATION KEYED INTO BEDROCK TO RESIST SLIDING FAILURE

OUTLET PIPES ENCASED IN CONCRETE OR PLASTIC TUBING, LOCATED AT APPROX. 100M INTERVALS ALONG WALKING TRACK

LINE OF BUOYS TO DELINEATE ‘NO SWIM’ ZONE

DISUSED/ERODING CONCRETE PIPES; DESTINATION UNKNOWN

ROW BOAT USED FOR RECREATIONAL PURPOSES; SPOTTED IN 1910 PHOTO OF UPSTREAM FACE OF DAM WALL

“WALKING TRACK SUBJECT TO SEASONAL FLOODING” WARNING SIGN

Objects housed in repository

(DRY) CREEK BED

PICNIC BENCH

RESTROOMS

PICNIC GROUND AND PARKING AREA

en Lich gro h wt

SECTION A-A

TRANSFORMATION OVER TIME

1:100 THE OBSERVATION TOWER

THE SEED BANK

THE REPOSITORY

Weathering

Erosion

seed bank species

found objects on site

Acacia pycnantha Grevillea Steiglitziana

Banksia marginata

THE REPOSITORY

THE SEED BANK

am Face

epository

I K M

today en Lich gro h wt 2

Objects return to the ground 4

DEEP FUTURE SPECULATIONS: THE OBSERVATION TOWER Weathering

Erosion

Subsidence

Ruination

found objects on site

THE REPOSITORY

Stony Creek Picnic Ground

K M

today

DEEP FUTURE SPECULATIONS: THE OBSERVATION TOWER

+ 200 years

+ 1 million years

architectural thesis

1 Haraway, Donna, Staying with the Trouble (Duke University Press, 2016), 1.

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

“Staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvific futures, but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings.”1

UNDISTURBED LICHEN SUBSTRATE

Upstream Face

Downstream Face

Line indicates Stony Creek Reservoir water level A

Line indicates Stony Creek watercourse

MARINE BENDIGONIAN (PALEOZOIC ERA, MIDDLE ORDOVICIAN PERIOD): SANDSTONE, SILTSTONE, SHALE, CHERT

SECTION A-A, +200 YEARS

1:100 THE OBSERVATION TOWER

THE SEED BANK

THE REPOSITORY

ACCESS POST-RUINATION

Line indicates Stony Creek watercourse

architectural thesis

en Lich gro

h wt

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Objects housed in repository

Weathering

Erosion

Subsidence

Ruination

Objects return to the ground

architectural thesis

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Appendix

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Literature Review

1. Alonso, Cristina Parreño. “Deep-Time Architecture: Building as Material-Event.” Journal of Architectural Education 75 (2021). “Despite our tendency to conceive, perceive, and represent buildings as static objects, buildings are… matter and energy in flux”. The article posits that “the deep, cyclical flows of architectural production demand a daunting shift in our perception toward deep time”1; “reorienting architecture toward the “material-event” renders the building not as an isolated object-instance in a human timeline, but rather as a moment of convergence of material and energy that flow across deep temporal scales. It situates building at the intersection between human timescales and Earth cycles, between geology and technology in their act of world making”.2

Bakke, Monika. “Art and Metabolic Force in Deep Time Environments.” Environmental Philosophy 14 (2017): 41-59.

This text examines contemporary artworks and practices which “draw attention to the role of metabolic forces in evolution, including inorganic activity… enquire into the geological past and future of the earth and beyond”3, using a speculative approach. “These works operate on various scales in respect to space and time, placing the human scale in relation with the cosmic scale of the celestial bodies, the molecular scale of life’s origins, the cellular level of microbes, and mega-scale coral reefs becoming and unbe-coming cities. In both deep time and in every passing moment, the mineral infiltrates all levels of life through metabolic processes”4.

3. Barnett, Sylvia, “Landscape Is Not A Scene,” The Site Magazine, https://www.thesitemagazine.com/read/landscape-is- not-a-scene. “Landscape is not a scene: not a static and distinct entity or the passive backdrop to our living performance. We know that landscape is complex — scientifically, politically, socially, ecologically. It’s a systemic mess, so intricately connected to every facet of human existence that it can only be understood as a manifold web of interactions. Why, then, as designers, do we continue to objectify it, imposing frames that manipulate it into a palatable scene for human consumption, ridding it of its function and rationalizing its continual becoming? Humans have a profound effect on the operations of landscape, but landscape transgresses the embodied boundary of the human.”5

1 Alonso, Cristina Parreño, “Deep-Time Architecture: Building as Material-Event,” Journal of Architectural Education, 75 (2021). 2 Alonso, Cristina Parreño, “Deep-Time Architecture: Building as Material-Event,” Journal of Architectural Education, 75 (2021). 3 Bakke, Monika, “Art and Metabolic Force in Deep Time Environments,” Environmental Philosophy, 14 (2017): 41. 4 Bakke, Monika, “Art and Metabolic Force in Deep Time Environments,” Environmental Philosophy, 14 (2017): 43. 5 Barnett, Sylvia, “Landscape Is Not A Scene,” The Site Magazine, https://www.thesitemagazine.com/read/landscape-is-not-a-scene. 96

Bird Rose, Deborah. “Shimmer: When All You Love Is Being Trashed.” In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, edited by Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt, 51-65. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.

Bird Rose, Deborah, Thom Van Dooren. “Lively Ethnography: Storying Animist Worlds.” Environmental Humanities 8 (2016): 77-94.

This text proposes an approach to writing and thinking that is grounded in “an attentiveness to the evolving ways of life of diverse forms of human and nonhuman life in an effort to explore and perhaps restory the relationships that constitute and nourish them”2, that is ‘lively ethnography’. “Storytelling is one of the great arts of witness, and in these difficult times telling lively stories is a deeply committed project, one of engaging with the multitudes of others in their noisy, fleshy living and dying. It is the aim of lively ethnographies to seize our relational imagination. It is an engagement with the joys, passions, desires, and commitments of Earth others, celebrating their ethea in all their extravagant diversity”3.

Bisshop, Ally. “Marble,” Lost Rocks (2017).

One ‘fictionella’ in a series of 40, “Marble” is part of a slow-publishing event titled ‘Lost Rocks’. “This rock... is both the thing and the movement; a form whose beauty writes (and rewrites) itself through the patterns and marks of its gestures of becoming. It is a condensation of millennia of geological events, compressed and freckled together in the dark bowels of the earth through endless concatenations of calcium carbonate, pressure calefaction and time.”4

1 Bird Rose, Deborah, “Shimmer: When All You Love Is Being Trashed,” In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, ed. Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 51. 2 Bird Rose, Deborah, Thom Van Dooren, “Lively Ethnography: Storying Animist Worlds,” Environmental Humanities 8 (2016): 77. 3 Rose, Deborah Bird, Thom Van Dooren, “Lively Ethnography: Storying Animist Worlds,” Environmental Humanities 8 (2016): 91. 4 Bisshop, Ally, “Marble,” Lost Rocks (2017), 3. 97

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

This text explores the ‘shimmer of life’, a notion derived from Aboriginal people in the Victoria River region of Australia’s Northern Territory; the term is used to describe “a reciprocal capture”; this ‘shimmer’ is the brilliance which flowering plants use to lure and invite “others through their dazzling brilliance of colour, scent, and shape, and they rewards their visitors – birds, mammals, insects – with nutrients.”1

architectural thesis

Literature Review

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Literature Review

Brown, Kate. “Marie Curie’s Fingerprint: Nuclear Spelunking in the Chernobyl Zone.” In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, edited by Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt, 33-51. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.

This text traces the damaged landscape and environmental ruins of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, exploring the ways in which this site still displays signs of life in the wake of disaster and destruction. Brown follows the journeys of Aleksandr Kupny who studied “the mysterious and elusive power of radioactive decay”1. Kupny can sense decaying atoms and describes the invisible as having rich sensorial qualities: “if the levels (of radiation) are high enough, you can taste it on your tongue. It tastes metallic.”2

Bubandt, Nils. “Haunted Geologies: Spirits, Stones, and the Necropolitics of the Anthropocene.” In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, edited by Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt, 121-141 Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.

This text explores the effects of life and death in landscapes of ‘ruination and extinction’, and highlights the entanglement of human and nonhuman forces. Bubandt contemplates on the cause of the mudflows of a volcano on the north coast of Java, Indonesia: it cannot be distinguished whether they are caused by (human) oil drilling or an (nonhuman) earthquake. “Indeed, the inability to separate one from the other—nature from politics, geothermal activity from industrial activity, human corruption from spiritual revenge—is a constituent part of the volcano’s necropolitics”3.

Burtynsky, Edward. “The Anthropocene Project.” Kerb: Journal of Landscape Architecture 28 (2020): 26-27.

“Humans have become the single most defining force on the planet and the evidence for this is overwhelming. Terraforming the earth through mining, urbanization, industrialization and agriculture; the proliferation of dams and diverting waterways; CO2 and acidification of oceans due to climate change; the pervasive presence around the globe of plastics, concrete, and other technofossils; unprecedented rates of deforestation and extinction: these human incursions… are so massive in scope that they have already entered, and will endure in, geological time.”4 1 Brown, Kate, “Marie Curie’s Fingerprint: Nuclear Spelunking in the Chernobyl Zone,” In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, ed. Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 40. 2 Brown, Kate, “Marie Curie’s Fingerprint: Nuclear Spelunking in the Chernobyl Zone,” In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, ed. Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 40. 3 Bubandt, Nils, “Haunted Geologies: Spirits, Stones, and the Necropolitics of the Anthropocene,” In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, ed. Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 124. 4 Burtynsky, Edward, “The Anthropocene Project,” Kerb: Journal of Landscape Architecture 28 (2020): 26. 98

10. Crutzen, Paul J. and Christian Schwägerl. “Living in the Anthropocene: Toward a New Global Ethos.” Yale Environment 360, https://e360.yale.edu/features/living_in_the_anthropocene_toward_a_new_global_ethos/

11.

Dean, Tacita, Jeremy Millar. “Magic World.” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 1 (1999): 116-119.

This text is a report or account of “a future a visit to Shepperton”; it is a narrative which weaves multiple time scales together, entangling past, present and future. “They walk in that direction. The path has become a walkway at some unnoticed point, a platform from which they survey the area below them. They are caught there, caught in time, the grass below them like the weed of the Sargasso. People begin to arrive from elsewhere, farming people from northern Europe. These Saxons begin to co-exist with the locals, their settlements spreading, their names now familiar.”2

1 Crutzen, Paul J, “Living in the Anthropocene: Toward a New Global Ethos,” Yale Environment, https://e360.yale.edu/features/living_in_the_anthropocene_toward_a_new_global_ethos 2 Dean, Tacita, Jeremy Millar, “Magic World,” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 1 (1999): 117.

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

This text outlines the importance of shifting our perception of our role as humans within the Anthropocene epoch; the authors posit that adopting the term ‘Anthropocene’ could help this shift in perception. This text helped ground my decision to be specific about the future time frames within which this thesis is situated, i.e. 200 years into the future from today: “Imagine our descendants in the year 2200 or 2500. They might liken us to aliens who have treated the Earth as if it were a mere stopover for refueling, or even worse, characterize us as barbarians who would ransack their own home.”1

architectural thesis

Literature Review

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Literature Review

12.

Frichot, Helene. “Environments.” In Creative Ecologies: Theorizing the Practice of Architecture, 17-53. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.

Frichot’s chapter ‘Environments’ examines the practices that take place in ‘environment-worlds’ and the ways in which architecture contributes to the building of environments across many scales; “when it comes to architecture, the first environment we tend to acknowledge is the built one, where environments operate as designed technological infrastructures, facilitating the presumed exceptionalism of human life and too often forgetting the profound intermingling of diverse forms of life”1. This text posits the importance of infrastructural and environmental care; “environment, when taken for granted as a given and stable condition, is that which is mapped and analysed as a site prepared to support future construction and world-making projects, but the environment is never simply a given condition; it is far more lively than that and likely to surprise. The environment is neither stable nor passive. It is not simply a natural resource to be plundered, nor simply a cultural condition to be further organized via acts of rarefication and construction.”2

13.

Frichot, Helene. “Ecologies.” In Creative Ecologies: Theorizing the Practice of Architecture, 56-78. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.

Frichot’s chapter ‘Ecologies’ examines the entanglement of relationships, interconnectedness and ‘complex interconnections’ which occur within ecologies: networks which make up ecosystems, and the ways in which these are “always and necessarily open to transformation”3. Frichot asks “how do you situate yourself in the scene that is the Anthropocene as a creative practitioner?”4; she explores this question through the examination of an architectural project by Katla Maríudóttir, proposed to be situated on an active, ever-changing, volcanic terrain: “Katla’s attempts to survey her environment-world, landscape, narrative and architectural events can be said to raise ‘very complex questions about composition and decomposition, about speed and slowness, about latitude and longitude, about power and affect’. Between Katla, the events she witnesses and the material life of these Icelandic coastal plains, something is made to circulate, which beckons to another way of seeing things, to other visions and sonorities and other forms of assembly.”5

1 Frichot, Helene, “Environments,” In Creative Ecologies: Theorizing the Practice of Architecture (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 20. 2 Frichot, Helene, “Environments,” In Creative Ecologies: Theorizing the Practice of Architecture (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 21. 3 Frichot, Helene, “Ecologies,” In Creative Ecologies: Theorizing the Practice of Architecture (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 59. 4 Frichot, Helene, “Ecologies,” In Creative Ecologies: Theorizing the Practice of Architecture (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 63. 5 Frichot, Helene, “Ecologies,” In Creative Ecologies: Theorizing the Practice of Architecture (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 67. 100

14.

Frichot, Helene, Miriam von Schantz. “On the Irrational Section Cut.” In Architecture in Effect: Theories and Methodologies in Architectural Research, edited by Helene Frichot, Gunnar Sandin, Bettina Schwalm, 252-271. Actar Publishing, 2020.

15. Ghosn, Rania, El-Hadi Jazairy and Design Earth, “Elephant in the Room,” 2020, 06:00, https://vimeo. com/530486400/9d830a771c/ This short-film project by Design Earth’s Rania Ghosn and El-Hadi Jazairy is fantastical story of an elephant museum exhibit coming to life and urging its museum visitors to take urgent climate action. The film challenges ideas of hierarchy and human exceptionalism, told through the lens of a nonhuman protagonist: the elephant. The film is accompanied by a verbal narrative, narrated by Donna Haraway. “There is no bigger problem often ignored, then [sic] the climate change we all are marching toward. Familiar with the feeling of being dismissed, the elephant blows the trumpet declaring a crisis does exist.”3

1 Frichot, Helene, Miriam von Schantz, “On the Irrational Section Cut,” In Architecture in Effect: Theories and Methodologies in Architectural Research, ed. Helene Frichot, Gunnar Sandin, Bettina Schwalm (Actar Publishing, 2020), 253. 2 Frichot, Helene, Miriam von Schantz, “On the Irrational Section Cut,” In Architecture in Effect: Theories and Methodologies in Architectural Research, ed. Helene Frichot, Gunnar Sandin, Bettina Schwalm (Actar Publishing, 2020), 253. 3 Ghosn, Rania, El-Hadi Jazairy and Design Earth. “Elephant in the Room.” 2020, https://vimeo.com/530486400/9d830a771c/ 101

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

This text explores the ‘irrational section cut’ as an architectural representation technique to “reinvent notational practices beyond the normative habits of representation”1. This technique is a ‘cut’ through objects or spaces which one would not normally cut through in an architectural drawing; “An irrational section cut, the term we develop to reposition Deleuze’s irrational cut in relation to architecture, recomposes diverse visual forms, challenges the conventions of scale, addles temporal or durational registers, and generally disrupts the normative linkages between things. The action of the cut, as break, as frame, and as mode of momentary capture, in both cinema and architecture, creates interstitial zones that demand of us a critical and creative reinterrogation of our local environment-worlds.”2

architectural thesis

Literature Review

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Literature Review

16.

Grosz, Elizabeth. “Time Matters.” In Architecture in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Design, Deep Time, Science and Philosophy, edited by Etienne Turpin, 129-138. Open Humanities Press, 2013.

This text is an examination of the intersection of time and architecture, that is, the role of architecture in the Anthropocene; this text is a discussion between Elizabeth Grosz, Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin. “In an era where we see intense changes in weather, species, and geology at an unprecedented rate, the question of time is increasingly impinging on us. Indeed, the ways that architecture shifts, changes, transforms, degrades, breaks down, and evolves herald particular kinds of futures through its various territorializations and movements over time.“1

17.

Haraway, Donna, Staying with the Trouble. London: Duke University Press, 2016.

Amid our current planetary crises, in “disturbing times, mixed-up times, troubling and turbid times”2, Haraway proposes ways in which we ‘stay with the trouble’, which entails “[making] kin in lines of inventive connection as a practice of learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present”3. “Staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvific futures, but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings”4. Haraway’s notion of the Chthulucene5 embodies entangled notions of past, present and yet to come, its name a “kind of timeplace for learning to stay with the trouble of living and dying in response-ability on a damaged earth”6.

1 Grosz, Elizabeth, “Time Matters,” In Architecture in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Design, Deep Time, Science and Philosophy, ed. Etienne Turpin (Open Humanities Press, 2013), 129. 2 Haraway, Donna, Staying with the Trouble (Duke University Press, 2016), 1. 3 Haraway, Donna, Staying with the Trouble (Duke University Press, 2016), 1. 4 Haraway, Donna, Staying with the Trouble (Duke University Press, 2016), 1. 5 Haraway, Donna, Staying with the Trouble (Duke University Press, 2016), 101. 6 Haraway, Donna, Staying with the Trouble (Duke University Press, 2016), 2. 102

18. Hecht, Gabrielle, Hannah le Roux. “Bad Earth.” E-flux (2020), https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/ accumulation/345106/bad-earth/

19.

Heringman, Noah. “Deep Time at the Dawn of the Anthropocene.” Representations 129 (2015): 56-85.

This text examines the connection between deep time and the ‘origins of geology’ in the time of the Anthropocene: “the convergence on this moment highlights the paradoxical entanglements of deep and human time, and the confusions of scale, that these origin stories entail. Both depend on a strong distinction – temporal as well as spatial – between the primitive and the modern. Deep time and the Anthropocene both attest to the human imprint on geological time”4.

20. Hinkel, Rochus Urban and Peter Raisbeck, “Politics and Utopia in Architecture: Indigenous Knowledge Systems,” filmed for Melbourne Design Week 2021, March 2021, 1:54:14, presented by MSD at HOME, featuring panellists Barbara Glowczewski, Uncle Leonard Clarke, Christine Phillips, Hannah Robertson, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=1TuhMCdH59g/ This seminar features discussions on decolonising architectural theory and practice, what architects and designers can learn from embodied Indigenous Knowledge Systems, and how we might instigate new theories and practices in architecture through Indigenous Knowledge Systems. Panellists discussed ideas around listening to First Nations voices, Indigenous community participation and collaboration, co-authorship, how to sensitively build and design on and for Country.

1 Hecht, Gabrielle, Hannah le Roux, “Bad Earth,” E-flux (2020), https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/accumulation/345106/badearth/ 2 Hecht, Gabrielle, Hannah le Roux, “Bad Earth,” E-flux (2020), https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/accumulation/345106/badearth/ 3 Hecht, Gabrielle, Hannah le Roux, “Bad Earth,” E-flux (2020), https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/accumulation/345106/badearth/ 4 Heringman, Noah, “Deep Time at the Dawn of the Anthropocene,” Representations 129 (2015): 57.

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

This text examines material origins and their journeys, and their socio-political and environmental impacts, specifically the materials of modernity and the ways in which the have become “instruments of slow violence.”1 “Every year, humans move more earth, and more rock. More than what rivers carry with them as they rush to oceans and lakes. More than what is eroded by wind, or rain, or seasonal frictions. More than what is hurled out as lava by volcanoes. More, in fact, than all planetary forces combined.”2 “In making concrete, grand projects extract selected grades of sand and aggregate, quarrying them from the sum total of earthly resources. The remnants—typically degraded soils—serve as both sites and building materials for housing the global poor.”3

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Literature Review

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Literature Review

21.

Hinkel, Rochus Urban and Peter Raisbeck, “Politics and Utopia in Architecture: Knowing the Anthropocene,” filmed for Melbourne Design Week 2021, March 2021, 1:56:59, presented by MSD at HOME, featuring panellists Anna Tsing, Alder Keleman Saxena, Hélène Frichot, Charity Edwards, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGtFoJToMng/

This seminar features discussions on how we might care for a damaged planet, through architecture, through the lens of a ‘More-ThanHuman Anthropocene’. Panellists discussed ideas around relinquishing assumptions of authority in architecture and design, the importance of interdisciplinary engagement and narrative as a means of ‘world-building’, as well as understanding modes of representation as modes of discovery and exploration, and not needing to be directed at a final built form. Discussions also argued for the importance of temporality and of listening and slowing down, as an integral approach to architectural design.

22.

Hutton, Jane. Reciprocal Landscapes. New York: Routledge, 2019.

This text prompts an awareness of the landscape as a process of ongoing relationships affected by human and nonhuman forces, and materials as fragments of other larger landscapes. Hutton traces material journeys, from its site of origin or point of extraction or excavation, to the commodity, closing the distance between consumer and product (human and landscape). “Reciprocal Landscapes stems from a desire to think of construction materials not as fixed commodities or inert products, but as continuous with the landscapes they come from, and with the people that shape them.”1

23. Hunchuck, Elise. “An Incomplete Atlas of Stones.” Elise Misao Hunchuck, 2016, https://elisehunchuck.com/2015- 2017-An-Incomplete-Atlas-of-Stones/ This project and its accompanying text is an investigation into the “intricate interplay” between human and geological forces, through a historical account of the six-month pilgrimage of Edo-period poet Matsuo Basho in 1689. There is a particular emphasis on stones and the messages inscribed in them, as a means of recording knowledge, and their relationship to past, present and future: “These tablets – ancient technologies of linear marks in stone – have a pressing current and future relevance that is too important to be dismissed as mere marker of a past event, or as memorial to human lives lost.”2

1 Hutton, Jane, Reciprocal Landscapes (New York: Routledge, 2019), 5. 2 Hunchuck, Elise. “An Incomplete Atlas of Stones.” Elise Misao Hunchuck (2016), https://elisehunchuck.com/2015-2017-An-Incomplete-Atlas-of-Stones/

104

24.

Keulemans, Guy, “The Problem with Reinforced Concrete,” The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/the-

problem-with-reinforced-concrete-56078/

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Literature Review

This text examines the lifespan and durability of concrete as a construction material, analysing its application in architectural buildings throughout history; Keulemans explains that concrete begins to deteriorate after around 10 years and is costly to repair.

Kronemyer, Loren. “Copper,” Lost Rocks (2017).

One ‘fictionella’ in a series of 40, “Copper” is part of a slow-publishing event titled ‘Lost Rocks’. “The word ‘Anthropocene’, the human-recent era, is understood to mean the age of mankind (sic) as a geological force. This name has been proposed as the label for Earth’s latest geological epoch… it will be the first time a layer of strata has been named in the midst of its deposition, by the very force responsible for depositing it.”1

26.

Loewen, Caroline. “Red Sandstone,” Lost Rocks (2017).

One ‘fictionella’ in a series of 40, “Red Sandstone” is part of a slow-publishing event titled ‘Lost Rocks’. “Would the sound of stones, had we ears to hear it, be a cacophony of noise? Pounding raucous noises of a world long forgotten and ignored. Screaming at us to remember where we came from... Would we hear the plaintive cries of lifeforms long gone, revealing dimensions beyond our comprehension, mixed with the sonorous cry of deep time?”2 “Much like a paper archive holds records of human history, stone can act as an archive of Earth’s ancient geologic history, a repository of the past. Stones, like archives, carry information about their history and identity. Both often incorrectly perceived as dead, inanimate, and passive, the lithic, like the archive, are anything but. Archives are alive and active.”3

1 Kronemyer, Loren, “Copper,” Lost Rocks (2017), 24. 2 Loewen, Caroline, “Red Sandstone,” Lost Rocks (2017), 9. 3 Loewen, Caroline, “Red Sandstone,” Lost Rocks (2017), 17. 105

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25.

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Literature Review

27.

Lloyd Thomas, Katie. “Introduction: Architecture and Material Practice.” In Material Matters, 1-12. Taylor & Francis Group, 2007.

“The practice of architecture and the discourses surrounding it are, as so many ways of understanding and constructing the world, structured around a distinction between form and matter where the formal (and conceptual) is valued over the material. On the one hand, historically, discourses and theories of architecture have tended to concern themselves with formal questions and to establish the architect as form giver. On the other, the very method we use to develop architectural proposals – orthographic drawing – describes only form, and relegates material to the empty spaces between the lines. The privileging of form is deeply embedded into our working practices, and material is rarely examined beyond its aesthetic or technological capacities to act as a servant to form.”1

28. Longrich, Nicholas R. “Will humans go extinct?: For all the existential threats, we’ll likely be here for a very long time.” The Conversation (2020), https://theconversation.com/will-humans-go-extinct-for-all-the-existential-threats-well-likely-be- here-for-a-very-long-time-135327/ This text speculates upon the future of humans and how particular environmental factors, such as climate change, might accelerate the path to human extinction. This text was helpful in determining possible and probable future projections of the planet and of my project site.

29.

Mattern, Shannon. “The Big Data of Ice, Rocks. Soils, and Sediments.” Places Journal (2017).

This text examines ‘climate archives’, that is, the terrestrial field (ice cores, lake and ocean sediments, tree rings) as archives which can helps us understand patterns across deep time. “Today, we have thousands of literal “earth archives” — collections of ice, rock, sediment, soil, and other geologic specimens useful for climate research. But they are not always managed by professional archivists.”2 On soil samples and rock cores, Mattern posits that soil repositories can project future environmental impacts; “soils are indicators of the nature and history of the physical and human landscape; they record the impact of human activity, they are a source of food and fuel, and they reflect the environment and record the passage of time. Soils also affect the nature of the cultural record left to archaeologists. They are reservoirs for artifacts and other traces of human activity.”3

1 Lloyd Thomas, Katie, “Introduction: Architecture and Material Practice,” In Material Matters (Taylor & Francis Group, 2007), 2. 2 Mattern, Shannon, “The Big Data of Ice, Rocks. Soils, and Sediments,” Places Journal (2017). 3 Mattern, Shannon, “The Big Data of Ice, Rocks. Soils, and Sediments,” Places Journal (2017). 106

30. Meredith, Peter. “To Dam or Not to Dam,” Australian Geographic (2011), https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/ topics/science-environment/2011/01/to-dam-or-not-to-dam/

architectural thesis

Literature Review

This text examines the contested nature of damming, that is, the concrete dam as an engineering feat, providing water and electricity, versus the concrete dam as disruption to ecosystems and cycles of water and landscape, and a disruption to families and communities.

This text speculates upon what the future of humans and the planet might look like should current environmental devastation trajectories continue; using narrative to illustrate future planetary conditions, the text focuses particularly on speculation on the year 2200. This text was helpful in determining possible and probable future projections of the planet and of my project site.

32.

Miessen, Markus and Hans Ulrich Obrist. “Archiving in Information: A Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist.” Log, no. 21 (2011): 39-46.

This text is an interview between art curator and historian of art Hans Ulrich Obrist and architect and writer Markus Miessen; discussions are framed around the building and curating of archives and how this might take an architectural form. “An archive is a truth surrounded by countless other truths worth looking into. So the archive is one truth; it does not tell us the truth, but it speaks of the truth”.1

1 Miessen, Markus and Hans Ulrich Obrist, “Archiving in Information: A Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist,” Log, no. 21 (2011): 43. 107

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

31. Marsa, Linda. “Scorched Earth, 2200AD.” Aeon Magazine (2017), https://aeon.co/essays/welcome-to-earth-2200-ad- pop-500-million-temp-180-f/

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Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

34.

33.

Morton, Timothy. Being Ecological. Penguin Press, 2018.

Morton’s book offers news ways to process and handle ecological knowledge in order to better equip ourselves in the face of impending planetary doom, and our current era of ‘mass extinction’. “Several thousand years from now, nothing about you as an individual will matter. But what you did will have huge consequences. This is the paradox of the ecological age. And it is why action to change global warming must be massive and collective.”1

Nicolacopoulos, Toula, George Vassilacopoulos. “The Cosmology Of A Disturbed Being: Implications For A Decentred European Whiteness As A Move Toward Co-Existence.” Kerb: Journal of Landscape Architecture 28 (2020): 18-21.

This text posits the designing of space as a gathering of coexistence and situates the position of designer as a ‘cosmologist of the gathering’; “the designing activity is itself informed by the being of the designer enacted in the cosmic terms of the co-existing of concern and indifference”2, i.e., as designers we cannot extrapolate ourselves from this position of designer and gatherer of coexistence.

35.

Nyembezi Makoni, Eric and Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni. “Redesigning The Modern World: A Decolonial View From Epistemologies Of The South.” Kerb: Journal of Landscape Architecture 28 (2020): 8-9.

This text posits that we must move toward ‘decentring the modern world’ and breaking down longstanding power relations that have framed the world as having a two zones: the centre and the preiphery; this involves “the removal of humans as the centre and master of all species on the planet, and the re-imagining of a ‘post-human’ world defined by a mutual and reciprocal relationship between the human and the non-human bodies”3. The writers posit that this “decentring aims at making it possible for a pluriverse to emerge; a world in which many worlds coexist”4.

1 Morton, Timothy, Being Ecological (Penguin Press, 2018), 35. 2 Nicolacopoulos, Toula, George Vassilacopoulos, “The Cosmology Of A Disturbed Being: Implications For A Decentred European Whiteness As A Move Toward Co-Existence,” Kerb: Journal of Landscape Architecture 28 (2020): 18-21. 3 Nyembezi Makoni, Eric and Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, “Redesigning The Modern World: A Decolonial View From Epistemologies Of The South,” Kerb: Journal of Landscape Architecture 28 (2020): 9. 4 Nyembezi Makoni, Eric and Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, “Redesigning The Modern World: A Decolonial View From Epistemologies Of The South,” Kerb: Journal of Landscape Architecture 28 (2020): 8. 108

36.

Pascoe, Bruce. Dark Emu. Western Australia: Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation, 2014.

“The Condah system of massive eel concourses in south-west Victoria must have taken centuries to refine. The stone was readily available, but there was so much of it that great viaducts had to be created among them and channels chiselled through rock and earth–a vast and daunting operation, even if it were replicated today using modern machinery.”1

Pringle, Anne. “Establishing New Worlds: The Lichens of Petersham.” In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, edited by Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt, 157-167. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.

This text explores the mysterious lives of lichen, some species of which are ‘potentially immortal’ and can live for thousands of years. “Lichens house hundreds, thousands, or perhaps tens of thousands of other species”.2 This study of particular ‘potentially immortal’ lichen species is important in speculating upon deep futures.

38.

Stern, Lesley. “A Garden or Grave?: The Canyonic Landscape of the Tijuana-San Diego Region.” In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, edited by Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt, 17-31. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.

This text explores the afterlives of discarded things, of Capitalist waste, and the carelessness in which they are discarded; the landscapes on which they are discarded remember the traces of past, present and future which these objects leave behind, and within which these they are intertwined. “Through small but incremental gestures, you begin to shape a way to see landscape differently. To see it as mutable: solids and liquids. Obstructions and flows. Steel edges and permeable borders.”3

1 Pascoe, Bruce, Dark Emu (Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation, 2014), 72. 2 Pringle, Anne, “Establishing New Worlds: The Lichens of Petersham,” In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, ed. Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 157. 3 Stern, Lesley, “A Garden or Grave?: The Canyonic Landscape of the Tijuana-San Diego Region,” In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, ed. Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 28. 109

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37.

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40.

39.

Tronto, Joan. “An Ethic of Care.” Generations: Journal of the American Society on Aging 22, no. 3 (1998): 15-20.

This text explores the nature and ethics of ‘care’, and the ways in which care requires “listening to articulated needs, recognizing unspoken needs”, and taking responsibility; this approach can be applied to caring for our planet. “Care is ‘species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web’”1.

Tsing, Anna. The Mushroom at the End of the World. Princeton University Press, 2015.

This text follows the commodity chain and fungal ecology of the Matsutake mushroom, and investigates its remarkable ability to grow in human-disturbed forests; it is “an examination of the relationship between capitalist destruction and collaborative survival within multispecies landscapes, the prerequisite for continuing life on earth.” Tsing posits through this examination that “there are still pleasures amidst the terrors of indeterminacy”2 and that in our current precarious times we must ask “what kinds of human disturbances can we live with?”3

41.

Turan, Neyran. Architecture as Measure. Actar Publishers, 2019.

“In light of the current political crisis around climate change, what can architecture possibly contribute towards a new planetary imaginary of our contemporary environment beyond environmentalism and technological determinism? Rather than limiting the role of climate change for design as a problem to solve, can we speculate on architecture as a measure through which the environment might be imagined”.4

1 Tronto, Joan, “An Ethic of Care,” Generations: Journal of the American Society on Aging 22, no. 3 (1998): 16. 2 Tsing, Anna, The Mushroom at the End of the World (Princeton University Press, 2015), 1. 3 Tsing, Anna, The Mushroom at the End of the World (Princeton University Press, 2015), 3. 4 Turan, Neyran, Architecture as Measure (Actar Publishers, 2019), 8. 110

42.

Turpin, Etienne. “Introduction: Who Does the Earth Think It Is, Now?” In Architecture in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Design, Deep Time, Science and Philosophy, edited by Etienne Turpin, 3-11. Open Humanities Press, 2013.

43. Vergès, Françoise. “Capitalocene, Waste, Race and Gender.” E-flux (2019), https://www.e-flux.com/ journal/100/269165/capitalocene-waste-race-and-gender/ This text examines material and environmental waste and its asymmetrical impact on black and brown women, reifying the ways in which Capitalism and waste is racialised. “Waste generated by Western imperialism or produced for the comfort and consumption of privileged white people ends up being dumped on racialized people, either at home in impoverished racialized neighborhoods, or in the countries of the Global South.”3

44. Villoria, Leire Asensio and David Mah, “The Climate Imaginary Roundtable,” filmed for Melbourne Design Week 2021, March 2021, 1:16:32, presented by MSD at HOME, featuring panellists Rania Ghosn & El-Hadi Jazairy, Belinda Tato, Johnathan Scelsa & Jennifer Birkeland, Fadi Masoud, Monique Woodward & Isobel Moy, Louise Wright, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJBggk03Ao8/ The Climate Imaginary Roundtable seminar is a series of lectures and discussions on the emerging body of design imaginary work, narrativedriven projects of a speculative and visionary nature, which speak to broader environmental and climate change-related concerns. The speculative ‘climate imaginary’ projects discussed, particularly that of Rania Ghosn and El-Hadi Jazairy (Design Earth), have been especially useful in helping to frame the speculative nature of, and providing precedents for, this thesis.

1 Turpin, Etienne. “Introduction: Who Does the Earth Think It Is, Now?” In Architecture in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Design, Deep Time, Science and Philosophy, ed. Etienne Turpin (Open Humanities Press, 2013), 4. 2 Turpin, Etienne. “Introduction: Who Does the Earth Think It Is, Now?” In Architecture in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Design, Deep Time, Science and Philosophy, ed. Etienne Turpin (Open Humanities Press, 2013), 4. 3 Vergès, Françoise. “Capitalocene, Waste, Race and Gender.” E-flux (2019), https://www.e-flux.com/journal/100/269165/capitalocene-waste-race-and-gender/ 111

Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

This text argues that architecture must challenge its normative ways of working and thinking and reorient its tradition regarding the organisation of spatial adjacencies (inside and outside), through the “help of historical, geographical, and speculative strategies”1. “The Anthropocene thesis offers contemporary architects, theorists, and historians an occasion to encounter the urgency of these modes of inquiry and unfold their consequences with the effort and attention required by struggles for greater social-environmental justice.”2

architectural thesis

Literature Review

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Literature Review

45.

Zhou, Feifei, Lili Carr and Anna Tsing. “Infrastructures In The More-Than-Human Anthropocene.” Kerb: Journal of Landscape Architecture 28 (2020): 92-99.

This text posits that “every event in human history has been a more-than-human event”1 and explains the many ways in which humans are entangled together in worlds with nonhumans. The writers propose that architects, landscape architects and designers must reconsider their approach to built form and infrastructure; “contemporary architectural interventions focus on the immediate achievement, rather than the longterm spatial effect on humans and nonhumans”2. The writers believe that experiential storytelling as well as critical mapping/spatial studies are crucial to expanding our “repertoire for knowing the Anthropocene.”3

1 Zhou, Feifei, Lili Carr and Anna Tsing, “Infrastructures In The More-Than-Human Anthropocene,” Kerb: Journal of Landscape Architecture 28 (2020): 92. 2 Zhou, Feifei, Lili Carr and Anna Tsing, “Infrastructures In The More-Than-Human Anthropocene,” Kerb: Journal of Landscape Architecture 28 (2020): 93. 3 Zhou, Feifei, Lili Carr and Anna Tsing, “Infrastructures In The More-Than-Human Anthropocene,” Kerb: Journal of Landscape Architecture 28 (2020): 93. 112

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1. Alonso, Cristina Parreño. “Deep-Time Architecture: Building as Material-Event.” Journal of Architectural Education 75 (2021). 2. Bakke, Monika. “Art and Metabolic Force in Deep Time Environments.” Environmental Philosophy 14 (2017): 41-59. 3. Barnett, Sylvia, “Landscape Is Not A Scene,” The Site Magazine, https://www.thesitemagazine.com/read/landscape-is- not-a-scene. 4. Bird Rose, Deborah. “Shimmer: When All You Love Is Being Trashed.” In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, edited by Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt, 51-65. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. 5. Bird Rose, Deborah, Thom Van Dooren. “Lively Ethnography: Storying Animist Worlds.” Environmental Humanities 8 (2016): 77-94. 6. Bisshop, Ally. “Marble,” Lost Rocks (2017). 7. Brown, Kate. “Marie Curie’s Fingerprint: Nuclear Spelunking in the Chernobyl Zone.” In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, edited by Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt, 33-51. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. 8. Bubandt, Nils. “Haunted Geologies: Spirits, Stones, and the Necropolitics of the Anthropocene.” In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts, edited by Anna Tsing, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt, 121-141 Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. 9. Burtynsky, Edward. “The Anthropocene Project.” Kerb: Journal of Landscape Architecture 28 (2020): 26-27. 10. Crutzen, Paul J. and Christian Schwägerl. “Living in the Anthropocene: Toward a New Global Ethos.” Yale Environment 360, https://e360.yale.edu/features/living_in_the_anthropocene_toward_a_new_global_ethos. 11. Dean, Tacita, Jeremy Millar. “Magic World.” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 1 (1999): 116-119. 12. Frichot, Helene. “Environments.” In Creative Ecologies: Theorizing the Practice of Architecture, 17-53. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. 13. Frichot, Helene. “Ecologies.” In Creative Ecologies: Theorizing the Practice of Architecture, 56-78. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. 14. Frichot, Helene, Miriam von Schantz. “On the Irrational Section Cut.” In Architecture in Effect: Theories and Methodologies in Architectural Research, edited by Helene Frichot, Gunnar Sandin, Bettina Schwalm, 252-271. Actar Publishing, 2020.

architectural thesis

Bibliography

architectural thesis Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

Bibliography

15. Ghosn, Rania, El-Hadi Jazairy and Design Earth, “Elephant in the Room,” 2020, 06:00, https://vimeo. com/530486400/9d830a771c/ 16. Grosz, Elizabeth. “Time Matters.” In Architecture in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Design, Deep Time, Science and Philosophy, edited by Etienne Turpin, 129-138. Open Humanities Press, 2013. 17. Haraway, Donna, Staying with the Trouble. London: Duke University Press, 2016. 18. Hecht, Gabrielle, Hannah le Roux. “Bad Earth.” E-flux (2020), https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/ accumulation/345106/bad-earth/ 19. Heringman, Noah. “Deep Time at the Dawn of the Anthropocene.” Representations 129 (2015): 56-85. 20. Hinkel, Rochus Urban and Peter Raisbeck, “Politics and Utopia in Architecture: Indigenous Knowledge Systems,” filmed for Melbourne Design Week 2021, March 2021, 1:54:14, presented by MSD at HOME, featuring panellists Barbara Glowczewski, Uncle Leonard Clarke, Christine Phillips, Hannah Robertson, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=1TuhMCdH59g/ 21. Hinkel, Rochus Urban and Peter Raisbeck, “Politics and Utopia in Architecture: Knowing the Anthropocene,” filmed for Melbourne Design Week 2021, March 2021, 1:56:59, presented by MSD at HOME, featuring panellists Anna Tsing, Alder Keleman Saxena, Hélène Frichot, Charity Edwards, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGtFoJToMng/ 22. Hutton, Jane. Reciprocal Landscapes. New York: Routledge, 2019. 23. Hunchuck, Elise. “An Incomplete Atlas of Stones.” Elise Misao Hunchuck, 2016, https://elisehunchuck.com/2015- 2017-An-Incomplete-Atlas-of-Stones/ 24. Keulemans, Guy, “The Problem with Reinforced Concrete,” The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/the- problem-with-reinforced-concrete-56078/ 25. Kronemyer, Loren. “Copper.” Lost Rocks (2017). 26. Loewen, Caroline. “Red Sandstone.” Lost Rocks (2017). 27. Lloyd Thomas, Katie. “Introduction: Architecture and Material Practice.” In Material Matters, 1-12. Taylor & Francis Group, 2007. 28. Longrich, Nicholas R. “Will humans go extinct?: For all the existential threats, we’ll likely be here for a very long time.” The Conversation (2020), https://theconversation.com/will-humans-go-extinct-for-all-the-existential-threats-well-likely-be- here-for-a-very-long-time-135327/ 29. Mattern, Shannon. “The Big Data of Ice, Rocks. Soils, and Sediments.” Places Journal (2017). 114

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Geographies of Deep Time: an Architecture of Entangled Temporalities

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