Presented as part of the Craft Cubed Festival 2013 1st August–31st August 2013 Gallery 2, Craft Victoria
Machining Aesthetics examines architectural design as material and craft production. Through making procedures, the spatial and material prototypes presented in this exhibition explore the interface between material, effects and digital technology. The exhibition features models and drawings of 9 +1 projects; each project delivering a vision for a new home for Craft. Conducted as a design research studio at the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne, the studio explores new aesthetics in digital fabrication. The exhibition is curated by Joe Pascoe. Paul Loh and David Leggett (aka LLDS/Power to Make) are the studio directors. Graphic Design: Joel Collins Cover: Chunchen Zhang & Joel Collins www.powertomake.com.au
Machining Aesthetics positions craft at the forefront of architectural practice. Through this project Paul Loh and David Leggett take us on a journey with their students, through a series of creative steps, to develop a range of crafted buildings for Craft Victoria to possibly inhabit. The students’ brief as emerging architects was to come up with designs for a new building that was itself a crafted response to the formal requirements of the client. The approach was a mix of imagination and high technology; the students, working in small teams, had to develop a ‘touchstone’ which was rather like an abstracted interpretation of a building structure they admired. For instance, a study of Le Corbusier’s Chapel at Ronchamp resulted in clay tiles that explored the differing properties of refracted light, a feature of Ronchamp. Then, using Craft Victoria’s practical requirements of floorspace, services and site, a marriage of technologies and actual crafting occurred with the introduction of computer programs such as Grasshopper to morph the discoveries inherent in the touchstone with the client’s needs in order to construct the models you see in the exhibition. This description is much too simple of course, but it is a reliable guide in terms of an overview of the many elements used in this project; sight, feel, scale, imagination, location, knowledge, materials, technology and construction. To this list one should also add team work and the international perspectives present in the tutorials as the students themselves come from different parts of the world.
It has been observed that craft has a special role in Melbourne. With its close cousin design, it has been part of the city’s DNA ever since Hoddle laid out the grid of the central city. And our contemporary appreciation of the cobbled laneways and the voiced concern of many citizens continue to have a positive impact—it is a great city that has the beautiful pedestrian scale of ancient walled cities, without the walls! A city of artists perhaps. Machining Aesthetics opens up the opportunity, through direct example, of establishing another landmark statement — a new crafted building for Craft Victoria— which could be the equal in vision to that which foresaw the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Bruce Armstrong’s Eagle, and going back in time, J. J. Clark’s Treasury Building. Such structures often make us all feel complete as individuals as well as engendering a sense of shared destiny, a characteristic of Melbourne’s society that is worth encouraging into the future.
EXHIBITION PREFACE
MACHINING AESTHETICS 9 +1
I congratulate Paul Loh and David Leggett and all their students in bringing forth Machining Aesthetics. Their presentation within the beautiful form of a pod speaks eloquently of the potential and growth that lies ahead in contemporary architecture.
Joe Pascoe Former CEO & Artistic Director Craft VIctoria
Machining Aesthetics shows us the direction in which the modern world could go. It is an optimistic exhibition, demonstrating that technology is capable of human outcomes. It honours the time and space we are all in now in an exciting demonstration of the notion of moving from design to craft, a theme that returns the power to make to both sides of the digital divide.
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