2004 Toowong
READYMADE TRAJECTORY Matthew Van Kooy
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The trajectory is a readymade (Duchamp): it describes an already existing urban condition and spatial sequence and adopts the inherent values of by proxy. The abstraction and solidification of the form represents the inversion of the readymade from void to solid and then void again. The readymade is a spatial remnant that is prevalent within the site. While not immediately recognisable to the unfamiliar observer the trajectory is an incidental path that provides a shortcut through undesirable spaces [the trajectory is almost that of the film study]. The urban proposition aims to rectify the situation through a pre-empted morphology describing the pattern of future development. The proposal aims to increase the overall density of the area to rationalise the urban centre as a node. Urban Strategy The building alone can not address the complexities of the site; this said the building can make a significant contribution to the fabric of the immediate context. The office building typology does not contribute to the street; the majority of interior activities are hermetic and disassociated from the everyday. The urban opportunity of the mixed use programme is far greater than the office typology alone. The programme of the hotel has been broken into two components; a hotel and a boutique hotel. The hotel is the first four levels of the building above the lobby spaces. The hotel is a twenty-four hour entity and provides continual activity to the edge of the urban trajectory. The centralisation of the immediate transport infrastructure facilitates the trajectory as a primary route, supporting the small strips of retail infill along its length. What Public Space? The building has no “public space”. It clearly delineates between public and private and avoids the complexities of a pseudo public privatised space. The form of the building is absolute and defines it environment in totality. The building form rejects the street, and favours the secondary route of the trajectory behind, while at the same time the building reinforces the spatial section of the street by reinforcing the edge condition.
1Circulation Process Diagram 2 Massing Strategy 3 Perspective View 2
topographic character, as in his archery range built for the Barcelona Olympics of 1992 and his Igualada Cemetery, realized in a disused quarry and dating from the same year. One may object that the megaform approach gives insufficient attention to the transport infrastructure or, conversely, that the physical form of the city is of little consequence in a telematic age. Alternatively, one may claim that urban culture in a classical sense can only be reconstituted typologically, or, conversely, that the traditional context of the historical city is no longer pertinent. Each of these polarized positions seems to be somewhat evasive to the extent that they fail to confront the responsibility of giving an identifiable shape or inflection to the late modern megalopolis. Given the ruthless forms of motopian development that are currently transforming vast tracts of the Asian continent, we are again reminded that cities can no longer be realized as coherent entities following the dictates of some master plan, nor can they always be developed in culturally significant ways on an incremental basis. While this last may have always been the case, what has changed dramatically in the last 50 years is the rate of technological change and the rapacity of development, occurring at a speed and scale that totally outstrips anything urbanized society had experienced in the past. In addition to this we may note that in many parts of the world the land is no longer significantly productive; that is to say it is no longer used as a site for either agricultural or industrial production. Instead there is a noticeable tendency to reduce the ground itself to a commodity through the interrelated processes of tourism, land speculation, and the global expansion of the service industry. Under these conditions, late capitalism seems reluctant to commit itself to any form of land settlement that would be consistent with the production of coherent civic form.
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PROPOSAL UQ 113
Thus we may conclude that architects can only intervene urbanistically in an increasingly remedial manner and that one effective instrument for this is the large building program that may be rendered as a megaform, an element that due to its size, content, and direction has the capacity to inflect the surrounding landscape and give it a particular orientation and identity. I believe that such forms are capable of returning us to a time when the prime object of architecture was not the proliferation of free-standing objects but rather the marking of ground. As Vittorio Gregotti remarked in 1983, the origin of architecture does not reside in the primitive hut but rather in the creation of a microcosmos. He puts it: “Before
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