LIKE, LITERALLY WORDS ON BUILDINGS

Buildings have always had to carry text on and in their fabric, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes in a matter of fact way, sometimes gleefully and generatively. Text on and as buildings has served the promotion of divine personae (classical Rome); propagated transcendentalist cults (medieval Europe); agitated for political movements (early Soviet); and emerged from hyper-commercial competition (Las Vegas, Hong Kong). The first half of the studio will involve a series of charrettes to research and design from such historical perspectives in order to understand and leverage the longstanding practice of designing architecture as a form of direct public messaging.

How and what do buildings communicate? Who is their audience? Who is not their audience? What effect does the messaging of a building have on the culture and public discourses of a city? These are all questions that will culminate in a final project for a retail complex on the remaining balance of the CUB site next to RMIT. The final project brief will be for an inherently commercial space: a ‘shopping centre’ whose architecture takes a front seat in curating the consumerist narratives it induces in the city.

User Weight: >40 kg (88 lbs)

Chest Size: 76-132 cm (30-52 inc)

• Drowning hazard if not worn.

• Must be fastened and properly adjusted to float the wearer.

• SOUP 2 (2OUP) is concerned with specificity, ambiguity, interiority, fragmentation, between-ness, and ultimately, the public realm.

Lab Certification Mark

Certifying Lab Identification

This studio explores urban form & its impacts on public & private space. We will interfere with the established order of the city using tools of programme and type to reveal qualities that may (or may not) be desirable. The projects in this studio will develop the city not merely as a container of programme, but as an active participant in our lives.

We will do this at Fitzroy Pool. This site is not chosen out of a sense of beauty, but rather due to its tangled nature: it is torn between the Jansenist pursuit of sport and an acknowledged sensuality. People may go for laps and serious training, but it is equally acceptable to go simply to peacock, to sauna, or to read in the sun. Differing groups compete with eachother for space. Unspoken rules abound. This dense field provides rich material for the studio to mine.

DESIGN STUDIO: 2oup

STUDIO LEADERS: Dale Schlosser and Michael Strack