Easy-Oar Artefact Booklet
Toby Rawlings s3713234 This project is an exploration of the recorded memories and moments that form a place’s character. What wider narratives do they reveal? Can we flip these narratives and reorder these moments to establish architecture in its context? The location of this project is the lower Moonee Ponds Creek. The shadow of a canal cut in the late 19th century can be seen in the creek’s Broadwater. Its lowlying topography and lack of residents has proved a primely positioned conduit for the city’s services. What if this drain was made a canal once more? A residential canal system that forces a level of accountability in an area obscured by a patchwork of zoning and jurisdictional boundaries. Connecting the emerging growth precincts along its shores and negotiating consideration of the chaotic layering of infrastructural systems. I propose three typologies to establish this residential canal system: Boat, Home & Club. Their physical forms are derived from three stories emblematic of the pervasive narratives of the site. Their silhouettes acting as a container for moments I have recorded along the creek. Moments of weaving, intersection, and adjacency. Reordering their composition and purpose to ground these three foreign typologies in a site that needs their soft infrastructure effect.
Contents
Contents Melbourne as a Canal City Railway Coal Canal Blue Lake Dudley Flats Out of Sight, Out of Mind Jurisdictions & Accountability Highway Shaped Shadow Growth Precincts West Gate Tunnel Project The Desiccator Difficulty The Orbweaver’s Newer Volcanics Site Photos Stories Containers Intervention Occurrences Boat Home Club Rowing Club Mezzanine Foyer Gym Lap Pool Classroom & Balcony Chandlery
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13-14 15 16 17 18-20 21-24 25-28 29-30 31-32 33-34 35-36 37-38 39 40
01
Melbourne as a Canal City
160 years ago, these submissions were made to a royal commission into westward expansion. Drawing on these low-lying areas, they imagined Melbourne as a canal city. A series of utopian representations reflected society’s view of itself and the future of the city. Highlighting the colonial mythology of the ordered vision of progressive urban Melbourne. Prepossessed with their European roots there was a brief move to master the waterways. Cutting them straight, and directing them for purpose.
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
02
Railway Coal Canal
This led me to the lower Moonee Ponds Creek. The shadow of a canal cut in the late 19th century can be seen in the Broadwater stretching from the Bolte Bridge to Macaulay Train Station. The Railway Canal was born but lived a short life with the rise in freight and locomotives.
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
03
Blue Lake By David Sornig
Lauder Heinrich Rogge, with his sixty dogs and a stranded schooner
Jack Peacock, “The King of Dudley Flats”
David Sornig tells the stories of three characters from the “Flats”, in his book “Blue Lake”. Jack Peacock, Scrapper and dubbed King of the Dudley Flats. Lauder, a German living on his stranded boat with sixty dogs. And Elsie Williams, a Bendigo-born singer. The book reveals histories that are hidden from view that paint a more complex image of the rise and fall of people’s fortunes.
Elsie Williams, Bendigo-born singer Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
04
Dudley Flats Slums grew out of the adjacent industry and rubbish tip. The departed swampy Blue lake that once proved a barrier between the city’s East and West; became an embattled trench. It is in the location of this stranded vessel that a shanty village emerged on the banks of the Railway Canal, known as the Dudley Flats. This village was built from rubbish, atop a rubbish tip in which it was eventually buried. A lack of responsibility was shown by the city towards the people and environment this slum grew from.
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
05
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
The waterway is heavily shaped by the growth of the boom eras of Melbourne. Each booming cycle bore an antithesis to its vision, the burden of slums, drains and its requisite infrastructure. A hotbed for the things that the city wanted out of sight and out of mind. The Dudley Flats was dismantled, in part, because the residents represented a level of accountability in an area devoid of it. They cannot live there “for their own good�, because that is where the city sends all its bilge. As this area de-industrialises, this notion begins to break down. However, it is replaced with the insertion of highways. This is where the question comes in: Can architecture force accountability?
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
06
Jurisdictions & Accountability
In the last decade there has been a push by successive governments to rezone public land to make way for Melbourne projected growth precincts. The creek presents the path of least resistance for governments to push the auxiliary of the city. Additionally, there is a deliberate ambiguity of accountability and representation on the creek coupled with zoning of this section of the creek as PUZ4 (transport). Does this act produce a constituency that seeks accountability from the authorities that cross govern their site? Forcing a conversation on the state of the creeks status as ‘the drain of Melbourne”. Commenting on the opportunity of E-gate that is being squandered by the city’s addiction to viaducting our problems.
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
07
Highway Shaped Shadow
The canal’s low-lying topography and lack of residents proved a primely placed conduit for the city’s services. This layering of constant infrastructural evolution reveals that “Many rivers cross the Moonee Ponds Creek”.
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
08
Growth Precincts
As industry moves further and further away from the CBD the aging PUZ4 (Public Use Zone - Transport) sites are the perfect candidates for growth precincts: Arden, Docklands, Macaulay Ect. E-gate, located between Docklands, North Melbourne and the creek was one such precinct. However, with the change of governments in 2014 it was put on the back burner to make way for the end of the West Gate Tunnel Project.
MACAULAY
ARDEN DYNON
The Image to the shows the location of this new highway passing over the creek and straight through E-gate. Here we go again.
E-GATE
DOCKLANDS
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
09
West Gate Tunnel Project
There is an argument to make that this section of the creek has received the most abuse over the years. When the city was squabbling over where to send their effluent in the 18th century they chose this location for the City Sanitary Works. However, Oddly this is one of the only areas where they decided not to run the highway over the creek... Until now.
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
10
The Desiccator Difficulty
Local politics of planning deeply impacted sanitary technology in nineteenth-century Melbourne. The population had skyrocketed and local corporations (councils) were squabbling over where to send their waste. ‘Desiccators’, large machines that used steam and beaters to reduce waste into a powder that could be sold as fertilizer, were one solution put forward. Locations were proposed all over the city but the affluent south-eastern suburbs would not accept them in their community. The only one built was on the banks of the Railway Coal canal, just south of Dynon Road. This fragmentation of accountable governance and council stand-offs heavily contributed to the city’s new nickname: Smellbourne. Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
11
The Orbweaver’s Newer Volcanics
There is beauty in the chaotic oddments of this layered system. Delightfully articulated by West Melbourne artists: The Orbweaver’s. Through their work called ‘Newer Volcanics’ they derive a limbic interpretation of landscape through a technique of psychogeographical wandering. They look past the topsoil to the ancient Newer Volcanic Plains that lie beneath their feet. Understanding the post-colonial layers added to this mantle, capturing the intense character of the creek through their art, poetry, and song.
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
12
Site Photos
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
13
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
14
Stories
BOAT Lauder Heinrich Rogge, with his sixty dogs and a stranded schooner
HOME Bent Street flood, residents row down the street as their homes survive the inundation
CLUB City Sanitary Works, the physical manifestation of the ‘Desiccator Difficulty’
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
15
Containers
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
16
Intervention Occurrences
1. Shores of the canal. 2. Moored at the Club. 3. Interfacing with the Home. *
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
Future or current reserves or restoration areas.
17
Boat
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
18
Boat
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
19
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
20
Home
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
21
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
22
Home
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
23
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
24
Club
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
25
Club Site Plan
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
26
1
4
2
3
Club Ground Floor Plan
14 12
15
13
16 19 17
Club First Floor Plan
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
18
s3713234
27
9
7 8
6
6 11
10
22
21
20
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
1 Chandlery 2 Dry Dock 3 Rowing Club 4 Foyer 5 Training Pool 6 Lap Pool 7 Lockerooms 8 Gym 9 Laundry 10 Marina 11 Boathouse 12 Chandlery 13 Bridge 14 Conference 15 Classroom 16 Toilets 17 Function 18 Balcony 19 Kitchen 20 Bar 21 Hall 22 Self-sstorage
28
Rowing Club
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
29
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
30
Mezzanine
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
31
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
32
Foyer
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
33
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
34
Gym
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
35
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
36
Lap Pool
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
37
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
38
Classroom & Balcony
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
39
Chandlery
Easy-Oar
Toby Rawlings
s3713234
40
