AR-MA: Trifolium Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear: Poly by scci.org

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation

Fugitive Structures 2014

AR-MA Trifolium Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear Poly

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation

Fugitive Structures 2014

AR-MA: Trifolium

Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear: Poly

Fugitive Structures 2014

Contents

A competitive architectural pavilion series

7 Preface Gene Sherman 13

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation

in association with BVN Donovan Hill

AR-MA Trifolium 21 March â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 20 September 2014 SCAF Project 20

Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear Poly 21 March â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 3 May 2014 SCAF Project 21

Production and reproduction Anthony Burke

23 In conversation Robert Beson and James Grose 31 In conversation Tomek Archer, Toby Breakspear and Phillip Rossington

Trifolium

Poly

88 Biography Robert Beson 89 Biography Tomek Archer and Toby Breakspear

90 Contributors

93 Acknowledgements

Preface Gene Sherman Chairman and Executive Director Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation

Fugitive Structures, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation’s annual Zen garden pavilion competition, has quickly established itself as a key outdoor mini-structure event in Sydney and is developing a nationwide audience. Inspired by the internationally successful Serpentine Gallery Pavilion commission in London’s Kensington Gardens, the Fugitive Structures four-part series is underpinned by the Foundation’s longstanding and diverse Culture+Ideas programme. The focuses of the SCAF and Serpentine Gallery pavilions differ: while London showcases established architects, in Sydney, exceptional emerging Australian, Asia-Pacific and Middle Eastern architects are invited as Fugitive Structure project grantees. In addition, within the context of the Foundation’s Culture+Ideas series, philosophical ideas and current innovations relating to built structures worldwide are presented and explored via solo presentations, panel discussions, film screenings and workshops for adults and children. The thoughtfully prepared 2013 Fugitive Structures brief was extended in 2014 to include research into, and the use of, high-tech, breakthrough methodologies. Ten emerging Australian architects were again invited to submit proposals, with the new iteration to incorporate computer design, robotic shaping and high-speed installation. The BVN Donovan Hill multi award-winning team, led by National Director James Grose and Phillip Rossington, and SCAF’s tiny-by-comparison – albeit sophisticated – team combined forces once again to invite participants, assess submissions and ultimately commission a young, plugged-in, intelligent and forward-looking architect or architectural group.

AR-MA stood out as the firm most engaged with twenty-first century innovation and most capable of transforming its heady, futurist aesthetic into a visually compelling, functional pavilion. Having received the commission, Robert Beson and his team continued to explore state-of-theart technologies to produce a robotically-formed Corian exterior envelope with 250 laser-cut cylindrical interior panels made of black mirror-polished stainless steel. This impressive structure, Trifolium, has the flexibility to be a meeting place, an auditorium or a stage for SCAF’s many events. In 2013, Andrew Burns’ winning pavilion, Crescent House, was complemented in SCAF’s interior space by Olafur Eliasson’s hugely popular interactive construction installation, The cubic structural evolution project 2004, which comprised 130,000 white LEGO blocks. This year, the Fugitive Structures jury made the unusual decision to commission another of the ten invited architectural firms, Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear, to adapt its brilliantly conceived original idea for SCAF’s gallery space. As a result, SCAF Project 21 was born and promises to be an innovative initiative with potential commercial application. Poly consists of a collection of pods, each providing seating for an individual adult or two small children. Perched on wheels and easily organised and reorganised by gallery visitors to form variously sized conversation/communication circles, these small structures suggest collaboration, contemplation and flexibility. Playful, whimsical, protective and yet open to the world, fantasy-like in their ability to both conceal and connect, they also have huge potential as functional structures. I am delighted to see Fugitive Structures expand in unforeseen directions. Now that SCAF’S small structure series has been launched and warmly embraced by the architecture and design world, the etymology of the word pavilion bears scrutiny. Related to the French papillon (butterfly) and to earlier Latin origins for tent (papilonem), the SCAF-coined term, Fugitive Structures, feels linguistically rooted and endlessly suggestive; a temporary construct, playful perhaps, imaginative certainly, largely unconstrained by restrictive building codes and at its very best a site ripe for innovation and invention.

The history of the pavilion genre is fascinating. Largely conceived as intimate private retreats within the magisterially designed gardens of eighteenth and nineteenth century royal and aristocratic grand mansions, early pavilions were autonomous, removed from prevailing protocols and therefore open to innovation in design and function. Later – and continuing into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries – world trade fairs, international contemporary art fairs, biennales and various large-scale seasonal gatherings often commissioned pavilions.¹ Cultural one-upmanship, nation-building, and a desire to explore innovative methodologies – as well as the simple pleasure of trying out an idea at a relatively modest cost – are among the factors that account for ongoing interest in exceptional temporary structures. Pavilions can fail less conspicuously than medium-scale or mega projects. The price to pay in reputation and financial loss when an opera house, skyscraper or commercial complex fails to achieve stated goals is fearsome. An important question arises: Once our fugitive or temporary structures fulfil their initial brief, where do they generally go? London’s Serpentine pavilions are put up for sale and, although statistics are unavailable due to issues of privacy, the fact that most find a home in the estates of wealthy patrons or cashed-up museums is well known. With high profile international architects (who have never designed a major building in the United Kingdom) selected for London’s Hyde Park project, potential institutional and appropriate private buyers are inevitably attracted. Proudly, I can announce that SCAF’s inaugural pavilion by then little-known young Australian architect Andrew Burns has been transported to Melbourne’s much-loved Heide Museum of Modern Art, originally home to pre- and post-Second World War philanthropists John and Sunday Reed. Transportation and installation costs were covered by this governmentfunded modern and contemporary art institution and a small consideration was offered to Andrew Burns and to SCAF as commissioning body. Andrew has, as a direct result of his SCAF Fugitive Structures commission and the spotlight shone on his practice, received the 2013 NSW Emerging Architect

Prize and a commendation in the Small Projects category at the NSW Architecture Awards. Clearly his star has risen and we and our wonderful partners, BVN Donovan Hill, are both proud and thrilled. Words never feel quite enough to express how appreciative Brian Sherman and I are for the often unsolicited support we receive from a growing group of people. Andrew Cameron, via the Andrew Cameron Family Foundation, stands tall as one of Australia’s quiet but intensely active contemporary art philanthropists. His gifts to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where he now chairs the Foundation, to the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and to SCAF have been precious. Grace and intelligence characterise Andrew. Gifts are always carefully targeted and thoughtfully managed. As a trained architect and successful businessman, Andrew has been especially generous with regard to Fugitive Structures. We can’t thank him and his wife Cathy enough. Sam Meers and the Nelson Meers Foundation continue to play a major role in our intensive and intensely busy Culture+Ideas programme. We provide an appreciated and extremely well-attended suite of educational experiences for children, tertiary students and interested adults. Sam’s interest in education parallels mine and she is, as I am, often a participant as well as a highly valued supporter. Thank you so much Sam. We hope we always live up to your expectations. Finally to our newly formed (June 2013) Patrons’ Circle. Under our former long-serving Associate Director, Dolla Merrillees, and now the much-loved and admired Bambi Blumberg (herself a patron, with husband Derek), this group of ten people helps SCAF artists realise their dream projects. We intend to expand the group to a maximum of fifteen and look forward to an amazing journey with them, exploring dangerous ideas within the safe environment that the best contemporary art provides. 1. Just a few examples are the Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau (Pavilion of the New Era), designed by Le Corbusier, at the Paris Exposition des Arts Décoratifs of 1925; London’s Serpentine Sackler Gallery, a tent-like structure designed by Zaha Hadid, which opened in September 2013; the curved, light-filled Frieze New York 2013 tent, designed by New York firm SO-IL Architects; and the new Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, designed by Denton Corker Marshall, to be completed in 2015.

Production and reproduction: Technology and the staging of architecture¹ Professor Anthony Burke Head of the School of Architecture University of Technology, Sydney

If the word ‘fugitive’ implies a person on the run from the law – on the loose and escaping confinement – then the most critical question the annual Fugitive Structures programme at SCAF raises is, what are these structures escaping from? In the programme’s second year, the winning structure, Trifolium by AR-MA, has been built in the gallery’s Zen courtyard, while a complementary work by Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear, Poly, has been constructed inside the gallery. The context for their fugitive status may well be the relationship between architecture and technology. Both of these projects present critical material essays that escape comfortable notions of technology in architecture. The all-too-easy but hackneyed handwringing metaphysics of ‘truth to materials’ (a promise that Mies van der Rohe above all others embodied and then broke)2 is assiduously avoided. So, too, is the now expected digital manufacturing zeal for CNC (computer numerical control) machines, straight from the aerospace industry. Neither of these approaches can adequately explain the relationship to technology and architecture embodied here. To position these works, it is important to recognise that the relationship between technology and architecture underwent a series of radical reframings throughout the twentieth century. In his influential essay of 1935, ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’, German philosopher Walter Benjamin set out the theoretical foundations for these changes: technology, on the rise and central to the development of the industrial complex, became foregrounded at the expense of the

metaphysics of intrinsic meaning in art. The means of production, especially in photography and cinema but also in architecture, became a central focus. This shift in language caused by the evolving mechanisation of production is what Andrew Benjamin refers to as the ‘technological discontinuity’; a break in the relationship between a work and its meaning brought on by its means of reproduction: … from a conception of art work and the understanding of how such works were produced, where the works were explicable in terms of the critical vocabulary of ‘original’, ‘genius’, ‘eternal beauty’ etc., to one in which technical reproducibility and the art works that it occasioned became the locus of concern and thus the objects of criticism. What this necessitated recognizing was that the critical vocabulary that had pertained in the first instance, could no longer pertain.3 If we accept that this shift also pertains to the relationship between architecture and technology then there follows a flow into the staging of architecture in terms of what Andrew Benjamin refers to as the ‘material event’, or ‘work understood as a complex interarticulation of image creation, design and material possibility’.4 Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we are faced with another discontinuity of equal significance, again brought on by technology. The early influence of digital work in architecture set the stage for integrating into the design process information systems and opportunities that have begun to mature and engage with sophisticated material and manufacturing industries. One no longer equates digital architecture with screen-based, fluid, formal imagery;5 changes to the processes of design have moved beyond the screen to the workshop to create a new relationship with materiality itself. The most talented designers are as obsessive as they ever were, only now that obsession includes designing systems of production for materials (for example, slumping Corian), analysis software for checking performance (structural

and environmental analysis), interface design to allow access to the design space (open system design), and so on. While butter paper and sketchbooks still have a reverential role in this process, they no longer represent an adequate skill set for the design-focused architect. Yet behind the recent history and uptake of manufacturing technologies, which are usually used to explain the advance of digital production in architecture from the virtual to the material, a more radical change, embodied by these fugitive structures, is taking place. As the digital and material worlds have come closer, the material reconnection to the digital is only the subplot. After nearly twenty-five years of digital-related work, it is the communication technologies that have been more influential than the latest forms of advanced geometry control. The technologies of communication have allowed for a new socialisation of the space of design, a natural flow-on from the digitisation of the design process as well as a discontinuity requiring the rethinking of a politics of technology in architecture (absent for the last quarter century). Now that making involves the design not of objects but of actual processes of production, a new family of actors participate in the material event. The two structures selected for the second iteration of Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation‘s Fugitive Structures series inhabit this political space of production. While it is tempting to give a full account of their individual means of production, to make the case as it were for the seamless coming together of digital and material cultures (finally) and the virtuosity that this requires, the more interesting implications of the two works lie in the conflation of the material event and the social organisation of technology. It is this position that brings us back to Walter Benjamin’s essay, and to the issue of production and reproduction, or the central idea of reproducibility. In the early days of digital architecture, the question of reproducibility was bound to the virtuality of networks, information transmission and access to higher order geometry. The material event draws our attention to the processes of production, as well as the politics

of their organisation, which is central to their meaning. Perhaps the real changes in technology, then, are not technical (yet another software application, another machine to sit on the desk) but social. These two projects embody this type of technological change and embrace a clearly articulated ambition. The distinction between the two fugitive structures lies in the contrasting politics of production and reproduction. Poly employs an open source and contingent attitude to reproducibility; the technology of production â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;allowsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; the work, but the audience makes (and remakes) it. The project is available for reproduction (download and assembly) and ongoing participation is a constitutive element of its conception. Trifolium, on the other hand, insists on the complex singularity of its production. It requires nothing from the audience in its constitution, and demonstrates a conspicuous mastery of a broad range of digital production techniques. This pavilion, designed by Robert Besonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Chippendale-based practice AR-MA, is self-consciously complex and an essay on the finesse and expertise of production. The structure sits in contrast to most recent digital production rhetoric around form and geometry, marking its ground emphatically as not the product of a formfound process or an automated/optimised geometric inevitability tied to computational logic or natural analogs. There is nothing natural about it. This is not a prototype for something to come later. Trifolium exploits the pavilion as a type, organising the flow of spaces, views and air through the defined courtyard. It works to give presence to a moment or density of space. The pavilion takes up the courtyard, reorganising and restructuring its negative spaces in a firm and confident way. (If Poly operates on the expanded principles of furniture design and industrial production, Trifolium is firmly architectural.) The list of software employed, the range of bespoke processes, prototyping and testing procedures, the use of just about every contemporary computer-controlled manufacturing device (routers, cutters and so on) is the real statement behind this pavilion, this wolf in

sheep’s clothing. The pavilion insists on its singularity through its means of production and the expertise required to develop such an obsessively detailed ensemble of unique elements and connections. This is not a structure designed by a computer, nor is it a structure created within the capabilities of a traditional architectural practice. The capacity to design manufacturing processes that link the digital, material, workshop and studio in such an intrinsic way sets this project apart. Trifolium is a quiet challenge to conventional practice, requiring the architect to extend far beyond the traditional design skills at the core of architecture as we know it. The conventional gap between the project and the architect is firmly, conspicuously and critically closed. The work requires the author’s presence at the screen and at the coalface simultaneously. To the casual observer, Trifolium will reveal some of its processes, focusing attention over time and bringing the observer back to wonder at the details. Design professionals will be challenged by the evident capacity of digital processes and their intrinsic material obsessions. The investment in obsessive detail and process produces a cacophony of connections that is brought into harmonic flow by the hand of the architect, not the determination of the machine. In this sense, the pavilion is not light, despite its airy geometry and open form. This aspect of the pavilion is most intriguing and central to its production. The engagement with complex manufacturing processes, the reliance on digital production, custom-designed scripting processes and fluid machines and material communications (for example, slumping and heating), and all the reproducibility that this implies, are thwarted by the insistence on the hands of the authors. They are hands that reach into the processes and adjust, reposition and make decisions that are aesthetic, personal and unreproducible, freely bending the formal rules of geometry and manufacturing established at its outset. Trifolium plays with (and obviously enjoys) the well-known aesthetic of science fiction; that is, the black box of unimaginable technologies behind the armour/interface of sanitised calm white that

consciously point towards its futurism. (Think stormtrooper uniforms from the original Star Wars movie, or the drones in the 2013 film Oblivion.) Trifolium plays knowingly with this trope; strategic gaps in a hard, white, calm Corian surface reveal the reflective play of mirrorpolished black stainless steel shell-form tiles on the interior, with illuminated traces in the flooring at night (possibly a homage to the 1982 science fiction film Tron).6 In this case the technology packed behind the white exterior becomes a lustrous visual dance of a thousand reflections, trimmed with light. While Trifolium is firmly architectural, Poly operates on the expanded principles of furniture design and industrial production. Designed by Tomek Archer and Toby Breakspear (Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear), Poly is invested in reproduction, revealing the technological systems of manufacture and tooling that are native to the practices. Poly is contingent and flexible, two of the most profound traits of the network society,7 which relies on both localised variation and a sophisticated embrace of adaptable, open design system thinking. Archer and Breakspear have created a deceptively simple design for a family of furniture that takes up residency in the gallery space and develops their fascination with digital manufacturing and contemporary mass production. Previous Tomahawk furniture designs by Tomek Archer – the Tesa table, the Campfire Table, and PegLeg tables for example – are elegant and elemental, and explore the range between self-assembly and continuous reassembly. The specifications and materials typically employed are familiar and uncomplicated, one might say ‘friendly’, their aesthetics creating a sense of approachability. Similarly, Poly engages user participation: Poly demonstrates the potential of digital prefabrication to efficiently produce many things from a single material stockpile using a single machine. Such designs can be simply downloaded from a digital library of open-source patterns, eliminating the need for expensive tooling.8

In a not-too-distant future where a three-dimensional rapid prototyper sits in every home like a desktop inkjet printer, the work of the designer lies in developing a flawless and elegant open system of production, and in removing the barriers to access. The expertise of Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear hides behind the universality of the design. In Poly, however, this element is taken a step further. The designers offer open access to making but in addition require audience participation. The structures are playfully activated through their continual reconfiguration. The audience is invited to imagine and energise the dance of elements that is this project’s raison d’être and delight. Perhaps best described as a material performance or a piece of continual theatre, the project continuously and actively transforms the space. The collection of furniture-scaled pieces are a family; all related but slightly different in their proportions. The hooded design is protective on the outside and welcoming on the inside, easily movable on pressure-sensitive wheels and designed with a clear front and back that allows for levels of openness or privacy based on their orientation to each family piece. The gallery itself is transformed simply through the laying of a cork floor, a stage for the performance, and the audience is enticed to return knowing the reconfiguration will be different next time. Importantly, the ambition of the project requires the designers to work with their material artefacts as well as instigate events that catalyze (social) change in engagement. Programming the gallery’s Culture+Ideas series becomes a constituent of the work, and the engagement of gallery curators and staff in this imaginarium adds another layer to the material event. Offering an almost mirrored approach to the themes of production and reproduction, together the two projects explore alternative positions. Both challenge conventional notions of materiality, from which they are evidently escaping, and confidently state their new terms of reference: an architecture that is not optimised for industry in 1200 millimetre modules, but is comprised of bespoke designs of its own making ‘all the way down’.

1. This term is taken from Andrew Benjamin’s text, ‘Architecture and technology: a discontinuous relation’, Foundations of Science, vol. 18, March 2013, pp. 201–204. 2. In Tugendhat House, built in Brno, Czech Republic, in 1930, German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe reportedly used steel beams to hold up the brick building, a ‘deception’ he then most unashamedly repeated on New York’s Seagram Building in 1958, with his sanctioning of the ‘ornamental’ bronze-dipped steel mullions that served no functional purpose. 3. Andrew Benjamin, op. cit., p. 201. 4. Andrew Benjamin, op. cit., p. 202. 5. Greg Lynn’s first works on the digital were collected into a group of essays and published as Animate Form, a reference to the animation software, such as Maya, that was being introduced to architecture studios and to the fascination with fluid geometries embedding notions of time flows. 6. Interestingly, the referents here are mostly from a suite of work by an architecturetrained film director and designer, Joseph Kosinski. Kosinski’s major films include Tron: Legacy, 2010 and Oblivion, 2013, both of which are easily identified in aesthetic aspects of AR-MA’s Trifolium. Kosinski graduated from the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where he learnt the computational skills that led to his move into the movie industry. 7. See Manuel Castell’s Rise of the Network Society, Wiley Blackwell, New York, US, 2009. For terms of redundancy and networks in design, see Anthony Burke, ‘Redefining network paradigms’ in Anthony Burke and Therese Tierney (eds), Network Practices: New Strategies in Architecture and Design, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, US, 2007. 8. Company profile literature supplied by Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear.

Robert Beson in conversation with James Grose Principal and National Director BVN Donovan Hill This edited conversation between Robert Beson and James Grose took place at Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation on 20 November 2013.

Robert, you have a curious professional background. Would you like to talk about that? Robert Beson: I didn't come to architecture in the standard way. Architecture had always been my goal, and although I'd done work experience with different architects during high school, I left Australia to study Classics and English at university in the United States. Even though it in no way equipped me technically, it was a fantastic experience and invaluable preparation for architecture. After that I came back to architecture. JG: Why is a Classics background good for architecture? RB: There is an awareness that comes at some point when you become more fluent in a foreign language. It's almost like you've installed a new framework that allows you to think through problems differently, just as installing new software or hardware on a computer allows you to work differently. JG: I imagine it's not a linear way of thinking, but more three-dimensional or holistic. RB: Yes. A Classics education is really just a kind of rigorous training. You have to memorise vocabulary, syntax, structure, history. You're constantly reading hundreds of pages a night. We had four or five people in each class, which was run by a full professor, and we'd just sit in a room and talk. So you had to have read all these pages and be prepared to talk and argue about it. JG: A work like Trifolium clearly requires an intellectual framework. How do you think about architecture and what are you trying to explore in this structure? James Grose:

RB: On

the one hand I am looking very much to the past and on the other hand there is a desire to project and speculate about the future. Understanding that architecture is a discipline with autonomy, and with a history and a lineage that you can trace and respond to is very important to me. JG: That's a context, or a reference, but architecture also has meaning, resonance and tactility. What do you make of architecture in that respect? Because the way that you make architecture is very different from the way other people make architecture. RB: Architecture is a producer of cultural artefacts. It's engaged with cultural production. I would say that we are concerned with more contemporary modes of cultural production. JG: We all deal with cultural manifestations. How are you deviating from that generalisation? RB: When I came through architecture school, there were a few things we were critical of: one was that architecture and architects seemed to be less engaged in the process of building – the means and methods – and more engaged with digital images and the look and the feel of the building. I thought that architecture could do more; that we could take on more responsibility rather than divest ourselves of it. JG: There's a range of things there. First of all, you're talking about the tectonic: how you make it, how you screw things together, how you keep control of the act of making it. And, secondly, there’s the social issue of taking responsibility. RB: Yes. Architecture, especially public architecture, has to be responsible to more than just the client. JG: Of course, but focusing on tectonics, fabrication or components is just as alienating a practice of architecture as that which produces an image. At its richest architecture is about an experiential, existential world; how it’s made is less relevant. RB: Yes, but I would argue that one needs to be concerned with the actual detail in order to best produce that particular experience or effect. It’s not

so much one versus the other; it’s definitely an integrated practice. It is about having more control over our design tools. When I started I had to learn to draw with a pencil and construct perspectives by hand, which was fantastic. There are particular techniques that have been passed down over time and everyone understands them. By contrast, today we use computers and software all the time but often have little understanding of how they work. As a discipline, we’ve had very little input into how the software we use has been designed. You can sharpen a pencil with a knife and produce a particular edge that allows you to draw in such a way that you get exactly the effect you intend. However, as a discipline, in general, we don't have that same control over computers. Early on at AR-MA it became very important for us to spend a lot of time learning how computers work so that we would have more control over them and facilitate their use in the design. JG: What are you exploring in Trifolium? RB: This pavilion allows us to conduct a series of experiments on a small structure. In particular, we’re interested in constructing an affective relationship between the interior and the participants and between the exterior and the participants. We designed the interior first and foremost. It's not that everything else is an afterthought or a necessity, but the interior drives the whole project. JG: How does your choice of materials reflect the interior/ exterior relationship? RB: The inside is composed of a few hundred black, mirror-polished, stainless steel panels, which intersect with each other. We’re experimenting with a design system that gives us control over it. We can start to create particular effects with light and reflection. With the interior we’re not so much concerned with meaning as with creating an intense experience. If there is a meaning, it is not created through a narrative that we impose, but rather through force and intensity. JG: It seems to me that this pavilion is about stripping something back to its essence and making it able to be prefabricated or made into a very big object from a small object.

RB: Yes,

and again it's also about control. I'm not sure how we ended up with the fabrication and manufacturing side of things. It could have been because we had very little experience working with builders. We had to invent our own details and processes. JG: In the process of designing this object you've been down two different paths. You started with an idea about a three-dimensional diaphragm, if you like, that formed the structure. You now have two planes of material that are connected by another object. These are fundamentally different ideas about assembly. I think the first idea of a diaphragm structure is actually a more powerful one to explore. RB: I agree. I think the first iteration was raw: it was thicker and chunkier and more vibrant. For this project, however, it seemed to make a lot more sense to simplify it to an envelope construction, so rather than having individual units we have an envelope that is self-supporting and has an interior surface hanging off it. JG: Isn't that just another way of making a conventional structure? A structure has an outside and an inside, or a weather skin and a fabric skin inside. If you take a step back in history and look at Norman Foster’s Sainsbury Centre,¹ for example, which is probably the forerunner to all these ideas, it was a sandwich, or diaphragm panel, that clipped together, and its structure was implicit. When we talk about materiality and new processes and building techniques I think we always have to leap over a conventional method of assembly to find a new solution. RB: Yes, I can see the parallel to Foster’s building, but in this case the goal was to move past those ideas of mass-production and modularisation. In both, the material and assembly systems are important, but here every single component is unique. Every Corian panel is shaped and curved differently, every structural connection changes size, and every interior panel and pre-cast concrete paver is a one-off.

JG: What have you learnt about assembly from this exercise? RB: That building anything is always complicated. As soon as it becomes real, as soon as you’re forced off the computer, you realise materials have a lot of weight and flexibility, everything moves and expands, swells and shrinks. Nothing is static. JG: One of the key challenges when you're exploring new materials is ensuring they have integrity across the entire process, from conception, through to elaboration on a computer through to assembly. On this project you have to work out how to join the two Corian panels. With a piece of timber you can cut a tongue and groove and assemble a plane that doesn't need a substructure bond. You can build a Japanese timber house with no nails. RB: The jointing of the Corian panels was not a trivial task. The edge of each panel is rebated in such a way that it naturally sheds water over its surface. It was important for us to express this joint. We can then waterproof with silicone from the back where it won’t be seen. JG: The structure is effectively a shell. It's thick and selfsupporting. From that shell you will then hang stainless steel panels. Can you apply this process of construction to a bigger building? RB: Many self-supporting structures are form-found: you put the parameters into the computer and it finds a shape for you. We made a conscious decision not to do that. We drew it the way we wanted it to look and behave. It’s of particular importance that we have control over the shape. It’s based on an intuition for how the space will be used and how people will move around and interact with it. The system is scalable, it is possible to apply it to a larger building; however, the material will only scale to a certain degree before it will need to change. We have the steel spigots – at one end they are structural and then they thin out and become more spidery where they hang and suspend the interior lining.

One benefit of a traditional construction process is that by the time a building gets to site there are so many people that have put their hand into it: the architect, the contractor, the subcontractors, and the fabricators. Then there is the shop-drawing process, and another level of intelligence is added in the way that it is fabricated, assembled and finished. So by the time that the building is finished you would hope that it has been improved by the number of people who have had some contact with it. The problem with this is that while our greatest input is design intent, we often have little control over the processes of making. In contrast, what we’re doing here is building a completely virtual construction model that includes fabrication and logistical processes. There are contributions to the model from consultants, fabricators and installers but it doesn’t happen in stages; all of these groups come together and integrate their knowledge and experience from the beginning into a single design model, which is continuously being informed. JG: How do you think people will react when they walk out into the courtyard? RB: For me, it’s simply important that people just feel strongly. I don’t mind if they really dislike it or really enjoy it. The goal is to design and engineer an emotional response. For example, when I read a book, I approach it with my personal and individual background and so my relationship with the text is always unique. It’s independent of what the author intended or wrote. Architecture is similar. As an architect you may have a particular user or public in mind, but the user’s actual experience is always unique and likely to be completely different from what any of us had intended. So in the end it’s not about imposing meaning, but about creating a sensory intensity within which users create their own meaning. The Australian artist and architect Richard Goodwin, a great mentor for me, says that the city is a place to meet your lover, to have a chance encounter. It’s a place that creates these types of moments, which, in effect, are our stories. For me, architecture is a way of facilitating these

stories; stories about the buildings themselves and about situations that happen in and around them. JG: Is Trifolium a piece of sculpture or is it a piece of architecture? What line would you draw between these two disciplines? RB: I think you can have architecture that is non-sculptural and sculpture that is quite architectural, and there is a spectrum in between that everyone works along. I’m interested in creating works of architecture that are sculptural. Form is important, not in and of itself, but because our agency as architects, the one thing that we actually have control over, is the shape and materiality of the building. JG: I don't disagree with that but I would argue that architecture is primarily about soul; the soul is more important than the shape. Buildings derived from an otherness, as opposed to a shape or a material, resonate more substantially with people. I would say that the challenge for you is to find buildings with so-called soul because materiality can be a major contributor to a sense of place. That's one of the things we're dealing with in this age. RB: It can't be purely form but whenever there is a particular soulful quality or presence that quality somehow transcends the form. The challenge is to know when you've done that. 1. The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, The University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, was designed by Foster + Partners and opened in 1978.

Tomek Archer and Toby Breakspear in conversation with Phillip Rossington Principal BVN Donovan Hill This edited conversation between Tomek Archer, Toby Breakspear and Phillip Rossington took place at Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation on 20 November 2013.

Your original submission did not win the Fugitive Structures competition but instead, for a number of reasons, it was chosen to create a complementary, internal structure to the outside pavilion by AR-MA. How has that change in location changed the design, or your approach to the design? Tomek Archer: The site of the Fugitive Structures project is a Japanese-inspired Zen garden filled with pebbles. We wanted to play off the themes of a Zen garden, so we were considering the pavilions as a series of rocks, as part of the microcosm of the landscape. In moving the project inside it becomes less site-specific and we are concentrating more on the other parts of the Fugitive Structures brief for this year: the potential of prefabrication and digital fabrication and the democratisation of design. Toby Breakspear: One practical way in which the design has evolved is that the ‘parts’ or ‘rocks’ are smaller now that they are inside; it’s an interior scale rather than an exterior scale. This means there’s less stress on the structure and there are fewer structural constraints. TA: An important part of our original proposal was the idea of using a really basic, accessible form of digital fabrication – a very simple machine – and a material so common that many architects would consider it banal; a metal composite material, which has two thin layers of aluminium that are bound with a polymer core. The idea is that you can print out these patterns and then fold them up. PR: I was one of the Fugitive Structures jurors who challenged whether your initial concept satisfied the brief, Phillip Rossington:

which was to create a pavilion to shelter ten or more people. In our discussions at the time I don’t think we resolved that question, but what was your reaction to that challenge? TA: We’re interested in spaces as much as objects. In this case, our proposal emphasised the spaces created in between the objects. Our idea was not to make it an interior space in a courtyard but to make more courtyards. So if the brief was to make a large interior enclosure, it didn’t satisfy the brief. PR: It’s interesting that it was SCAF that came up with the idea of having an architectural structure inside to respond to the Fugitive Structure outside. What was your reaction to that as architects having entered one competition with a sitespecific design and then being asked to do something else? TB: Extremely pleased because it meant the idea was interesting enough to make another project. In this case, maybe it wasn’t suitable for what SCAF was looking for in the courtyard but the idea is flexible enough to be appropriate for inside the gallery and it could be deployed again and again in different forms and developed further over time. TA: The great potential of art is to engage with people and begin a conversation. The key to that is to not make it too complicated. We really like the sound of making something simple, modest and straightforward so that lots of people can engage with it. There are many accessible ways to get into the project: it’s simple enough to make it fun for children to push around, to push together two parts so that you can have a conversation with your friend; people might appreciate the potential of the idea that you can print something out and assemble it in your backyard; or a curator might see potential for some other purpose. We like to make architecture that’s flexible, that’s not too prescriptive in the way that it’s going to be used. In the original proposal we were blurring the boundaries between industrial design and architecture. Architecture is typically seen as site-specific in that it responds to its context, but through its life a building might be several things. Furniture or industrial designs, on the other hand, are functional objects that flow through a space throughout its life and each time the function changes it is

often the furniture that is the agent for change. So in many ways you could say that this is more like an urban project. PR: At BVN Donovan Hill we describe a lot of our large workplaces as an urban design network; you have streets and squares and different neighbourhoods. TA: That’s interesting considering we were talking about the courtyard being like a microcosm of the landscape, and that idea still resonates within the gallery. It’s like a community of small buildings that can be reconfigured to create several urban conditions. PR: How many buildings are there inside, and how big are they? TA: Somewhere between seven and nine buildings, each about a 1400 millimetre equilateral triangle and up to 2.7 metres high. Outside they were a little bigger because we wanted people to be able to stand and walk through them. We have more flexibility in here. The idea is that they are small, flexible, basic structures that can be reconfigured for different functions, like little stage platforms: tall enough to stand in but intimate enough for people to sit and have a conversation. PR: Do you have a pre-planned arrangement for them? TA: When it was outside there was more of an intention to be a pavilion that offered shelter so the configuration was a big part of how it was explained. In the gallery the structures can be pushed very easily and it’s much less about prescribing a configuration. The idea is to put the parts of the whole artwork into the gallery and just see what people do with them. It’s an interesting experiment. Another idea would be to try to enforce an arrangement, to see how people behave in the space. If, for example, we set everything in a circle, would that create a different conversation to the one that would occur if it were set up like a classroom, with all but one building facing one direction and the lone building facing the others, with a speaker in it, talking to everyone? There’s certainly a tendency – for example, in some Japanese architecture – to create compositions that look accidental, or appear to have a looseness, and perhaps we’ve taken that to the next point where it is

loose enough that you can literally move things around on an open ground plan. Now that we’re not constrained by the pebbles, for example, we can put wheels on the buildings and we’re hoping that a couple of kids will be able to push them around. PR: How many people can fit into one? TA: Two adults – there might be standing room in one or two of them but they’re not very big anymore. We’re hoping that even when the room’s empty you will be able to see the evidence of a really basic community or civilisation. PR: You referred to Poly as an artwork earlier. Is it art or architecture? TA: It’s really a staging platform on which things can happen. As an artefact, it’s an incomplete artwork. It’s only complete when it is being used, and that probably makes sense for all architecture. We’d all agree that to some extent people are meant to engage with architecture. PR: Tomek, I know you‘ve designed furniture before. Has that experience in any way informed this project? TA: Our thoughts about architecture, about designing furniture, designing buildings, designing for an urban condition, are all interrelated. Furniture and architecture feed off each other. Furniture has a complementary relationship to the building and allows it be many things. We don’t really like building furniture into our architecture; we consider architecture and furniture complementary but distinct. PR: So you create a space and then put something in it. In Europe, if you rent an apartment, it doesn’t come with a kitchen. They buy their kitchen and move it around when they move to a different apartment. That’s why they’ve got a much more advanced prefabricated kitchen market than we do. We’re not used to a kitchen being part of our furniture. TA: It certainly starts to open up a few interesting questions. You might stop calling a room a bathroom, a kitchen, a bedroom, and instead describe it as a small room, a medium-size room, a room that has nice light in it. What would happen if all of them had a floor waste so any room could be a wet area? What would that open up?

PR: Several years ago, one of our designs for an apartment building – it didn’t go ahead – had a false floor, like an office building. The space had a 350 millimetre void to run the airconditioning and services to any location. This meant that people could buy the apartment and plan it to suit themselves. I think it would give you that flexibility that you’re talking about. TA: That sounds like a really interesting building. There are architects who claim that they design hyperfunctional buildings but they are actually so specific and prescriptive in the way that they’re to be used that they only have one use. Maybe sometimes that’s appropriate but one of the ideas we’ve been exploring is that through moving things around you can make the same space do several different things. PR: How do you think Trifolium and Poly will interact? TA: I think they complement each other nicely because, in one sense, Trifolium is exploring extremely advanced ways of making and assembling things, and at the other end of the spectrum Poly is really accessible in the way that it’s fabricated and understood. We hope our work and ideas will not be overtly talking about the technology involved but creating something whereby no one component dominates another: the social idea, the technological idea, hopefully they’re all in there and balanced. Both Fugitive Structures projects are experimenting with digital fabrication and exploring its potential. Typically in architecture you have thousands of components and materials, and there’s a fairly complicated expertise set that goes into assembling the individual parts. In our project we’re taking a single material and a single machine and we’re making many different things. The potential democratisation aspect of the work may be that with one machine, a digital library of patterns that you download, one material and simple assembly we might be able to print out a specific structure or part of a structure very economically and at very short notice. In doing so we are testing the limits of this lightweight material. PR: What are your concerns about the material; that it buckles, that it won’t be able to stand up?

TB: We’re exploring its limits and opportunities. For example, folding weakens the material, but when you start coupling and wrapping the material around itself it becomes much more than twice as strong. We need to make one so that we can see in a simple, tangible way that it’s strong enough, for example, to be pushed around. We want to see how fine we can get it, what the tolerances are for folding around corners and how far out that will push one sheet to the next. PR: So is the material determining the shape? TA: There are a few limitations driving it as well, like the size of the material sheets. And there’s strength in a triangle, so the base is a triangle, but the triangle only has two walls. It’s always looking outward. There are no doors on them anymore. They don’t need doors when they’re inside. Outside, doors allowed you to group them and walk through. They can still be grouped but they’re much more directional now. You will be looking into them or you’ll be looking out. PR: I imagine your prototype will need to be the real thing in order to check its strength. TA: We’ll be doing a lot of testing when we make the first one so maybe in that process we’ll end up breaking the prototype. It should be a really handson process for us. But one of the really central ideas is that the final version shouldn’t require highly skilled labour to put together. One of our references for the Zen garden was this idea in Japanese culture of the shrine transcending the artefact. For example, every twenty years the Ise Grand Shrine is rebuilt: it’s a real celebration of passing on the skills of making it and growing the trees that are then chopped down. Every twenty years the master craftsmen teach the next generation. And they use the timber left over from the previous shrine to fix other shrines across Japan. So the actual making of it is in fact perpetual and it’s as important as the physical shrine itself. In the case of our project we love the idea that after the making of it, the installation and the engagement, it could be remade somewhere else. PR: How do you want people to view the installation and your company? TA: I hope people have an immediate reaction, that they enjoy it and find pleasure out of engaging with something that can move within the space.

PR: There was a lot of interest in last year’s Fugitive Structure and it’s now being installed in Melbourne in a permanent situation. I imagine there might be a similar level of interest this year’s structures. TA: We really hope that this won’t be the final destination for this project. It’s not so much about the artefact as the idea and we’d really love the idea to be deployed somewhere else. It’s less about making, for example, a whole landscape and an artefact. It’s much more about suggesting an event, and creating the perfect set of small structures for that event. PR: Gene Sherman’s aspirations for Fugitive Structures are to promote architecture through focusing on emerging architects and to have those architects talk about it, to make it accessible to the public. How has your practice approached this and what opportunities does a competition like this offer a young practice? TA: One of the best things about it is that the audience isn’t exclusively architects; there’s a broad appeal. PR: You’ve both got really strong thoughts about your practice. It sounds like this fits directly into your model of where you want to go. TB: Yes, and the types of projects that we have reflect our interests. Several involve reactivating cultural institutions through the deployment of new furniture and fit-out. The agenda is not to make it look pretty but to work better, or to extend the working hours of an institution, or to change the life of what happens in a building. They’re urban projects that expand into the architectural realm as well. PR: What do you think of SCAF’s Fugitive Structures programme in terms of architecture in Sydney and Australia? TA: The projects so far have already demonstrated value because they are all so different. The programme gives architects the opportunity to explore ideas that are not so normal in day-to-day practice. In architecture we often get a very prescriptive brief whereas in this case it’s quite open-ended and it allows us to really reflect on why we practice architecture.

Trifolium

Fugitive Structures 2014 / AR-MA: Trifolium Corian, stainless steel, acrylic, cast granite Concept models, concept sketches and production images Commissioned by Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney

EAST ELEVATION

WEST ELEVATION

NORTH ELEVATION

SITE PLAN

EAST ELEVATION

INNER LAYER

OUTER LAYER

Poly

Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear: Poly Aluminium composite panel and cork Concept models, concept sketches, production images and installation views Commissioned by Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney

CONCEPT SKETCHES

Robert Beson

Tomek Archer and Toby Breakspear

Robert Beson co-directs AR-MA with Gabriele Ulacco. Educated in the United States and Australia, Robert holds degrees in literature, Classics and architecture. Robert has worked in Europe, the United States and Australia with a number of internationally recognised practices and institutions. His work has been exhibited at Kaldor Public Art Projects Parlour, the Prague Quadrennial, the Gwangju Biennial, and the Venice Biennale. In 2010, Robert was awarded a Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship for research on digital fabrication and production of complex structures. Robert has taught at Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s level at a number of universities throughout Australia, acted as art director and curator for academic institutions, and lectured at The University of Technology, Sydney, The University of Sydney, The University of Newcastle and Bond University. He is a regular contributor to Architecture Australia magazine. AR-MA has developed expertise working through the techniques, strategies and logistics of designing and delivering complex public projects. AR-MA has worked with some of the leading artists and architects within Australia and internationally,

including ARUP, Grimshaw Architects, FrancisJones Morehen Thorp, CHROFI, Aspect Architecture, Richard Goodwin, Terroir, Neeson Murcutt Architects and DRAW. AR-MA is a Sydney based architectural office specialising in experimental and complex projects. AR-MA is comprised of Gabriele Ulacco, Tony Ho, Guido Maciocci and Robert Beson.

Tomek Archer and Toby Breakspear are directors of Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear. Tomahawk Studios is a design, research and production company, structured to operate in disciplines beyond the conventional boundaries of architecture to include research, technology, product design, curation, manufacturing and procurement. Archer Breakspear is the architectural practice within the studio. The practice is founded on the belief that architecture is fundamentally about shaping spaces that inspire many forms of occupation: buildings and public spaces accommodate diverse functions throughout their life. Current projects include a library, a gallery, a green grocer, a restaurant, a residence, a theatre and a cocktail bar. Tomek is a graduate of The University of New South Wales and The University of Sydney. Since establishing Tomahawk he has led a diversity of projects that range from festival masterplanning to furniture design. His designs are produced by manufacturers around the world and held in public art collections in Australia and Europe. Tomek previously worked with Johnson Pilton Walker on a range of cultural, public and commercial projects. He has been a tutor and invited critic to architecture and

landscape architecture courses at The University of Sydney, The University of Technology, Sydney and The University of New South Wales. Tomek is the recipient of the Noel Chettle Art Prize and the Architectural Science Prize from The University of Sydney, a Design Mark from the Australian International Design Awards, and was the inaugural QANTAS Spirit of Youth Award for Architecture and Interior Design in 2012. Toby graduated from The University of Sydney and was the recipient of the Graduate Award for Architecture History and Theory from the Royal Australian Institute of Architecture NSW Chapter and the Ethel M Chettle Prize in Architecture. Toby previously worked with CHROFI on a range of architectural projects including the Macquarie Street Tower, Sydney, and Lune de Sang, a sustainable harvested forest venture in Northern NSW. At The University of Sydney Toby has coordinated the final-year architectural design studio (with John Choi) and the second-year communications course (with Lucy Humphrey). In collaboration with Lucy Humphrey, he was a finalist in the 2G International Ideas Competition for Venice Lagoon Park and has been exhibited at the Venice Arsenale and the European Landscape Biennial in Barcelona.

Contributors

Dr Gene Sherman AM is Chairman and Executive Director of Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. She has a specialised knowledge of art, literary theory and French and English literature and spent seventeen years teaching, researching and lecturing at secondary and tertiary levels. As Director of Sherman Galleries (1986–2007) she organised up to twenty-two exhibitions annually, including regional, national and international touring exhibitions. Gene and Brian Sherman have sponsored a Master of Fine Arts Administration student at the College of Fine Arts, The University of New South Wales (1997–2007), a studio at Bundanon and a contemporary Australian art-research room at the Schaeffer Fine Arts Library, The University of Sydney. They have also funded The University of New South Wales postgraduate studio complex at the Gateway@COFA campus. Dr Sherman is currently Deputy Chair of the National Portrait Gallery Board, Canberra; a member of the Australian Institute of Art History Board at the University of Melbourne, the Art & Australia Advisory Board, the International Association of Art Critics and the Tate Asia-Pacific Acquisitions Committee; and serves as an Asialink Asia Literacy Ambassador. She regularly lectures

to a wide range of institutions on topics such as gallery management, the art of collecting, philanthropy, private foundations, Australian and Asian contemporary art, and contemporary Japanese fashion. Dr Sherman was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government (2003) and a Doctorate of Letters honoris causa by The University of Sydney (2008). She was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2010 for her cultural philanthropy and her support of emerging and established artists.

Anthony Burke is a Professor of Architecture and Head of the School of Architecture at the University of Technology, Sydney and director of Offshore Studio. A graduate of Columbia University and The University of New South Wales, Anthony is recognised internationally for his work in architectural design, curation and commentary. In 2012 he was co-creative director for the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, and was recently invited by the Danish Agency for Culture to curate an architecture and design symposium as part of the fortieth anniversary celebrations of the Sydney Opera House. A regular contributor to architectural media and public forums as an animated advocate for design and architecture, Anthony is also the Chair of the Australian Design Centre (ADC) Board and consults to industry and advisory groups on architecture, urbanism, and the emerging role of Australian design.

Acknowledgements

SCAF thanks all the invited Fugitive Structures competitors who responded to the brief with immense creativity and intelligence. Our exhibiting architects, Robert Beson and the team from AR-MA and Tomek Archer and Toby Breakspear from Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear, have been a pleasure to work with and we are thrilled with the final installations. James Grose has achieved a high level of accomplishment in the architectural profession through design innovation, built works, awards, professional leadership, conferences and publications. He started his own practice, Grose Bradley Architecture, in the late 1980s before becoming a principal of BVN Donovan Hill through a merger in 1998. James was appointed as National Director of the studio in 2006 and has led the BVN Donovan Hill project team in a number of benchmark projects, from the seminal Campus MLC in North Sydney through to the award-winning Brain and Mind Research Institute at The University of Sydney, and more recently, The Kinghorn Cancer Centre in Sydney, the ASB North Wharf in Auckland, New Zealand, and the Australian Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand.

Phillip Rossington is a principal of BVN Architecture and a registered architect with extensive experience in award-winning residential, educational and interior projects. Phillip also has experience in heritage/adaptation re-use and sustainable design projects. Graduating from The University of Newcastle in 1992 with honours and the NSW RAIA Design Medal, Phillip has since tutored at The University of Newcastle. Prior to joining BVN in 2010 Phillip was a principal of Tzannes Associates Architecture and Urban Design. He was the design principal for the 2010 Wilkinson Award-winning Bilgola Beach Residence and he received the 2011 NSW RAIA Public Architecture Award for his work on Sydney’s Ascham School.

Sincere thanks to our exhibition partner BVN Donovan Hill, and particularly James Grose, Phillip Rossington and Bill Dowzer, for their continuing dedication and contribution to the Fugitive Structures programme. SCAF greatly appreciates the Andrew Cameron Family Foundation’s generous support of the Fugitive Structures series.

AR-MA thanks its exhibition supporters: Urbis: Ian Cady Infinity: Alan Yazbek, Andrew Yazbek ARUP: Tim Carr 360°: Daniel Baffsky AR-MA also thanks its material supporters: OX Engineering: Terry Tisdale CASF/DuPont Corian: Craig Smith RIMEX Metals Australia: Graham Britten, Dave Campbell Frilingos Commercial Interiors: Arthur Frilingos, Peter Frilingos Barossa Quarries: Stephen Falland, Rebecca Falland Sydney Precast: Richard Maisonneuve Xenian: Richard Cale Special thanks: Nono Martinez

Heartfelt thanks also to the Nelson Meers Foundation for its continuing support of SCAF’s Culture+Ideas programme. Thank you, as always, to Johnnie Walker, A.R.T., Tokyo, for his wise and sensitive advice. Thanks also to the following individuals for their assistance with this project: Andrew and Cathy Cameron Susanne Mayer, Melanie Mury and Stella de Vulder: BVN Donovan Hill Sam Meers: Nelson Meers Foundation Sophie O’Brien: Serpentine Gallery Barry Sechos: Sherman Group

Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear thanks its exhibition supporters: Urban Art Projects: Gordon Conn, Ben Tait, Giovanni Veronesi Plate Alloy: John Pontifex, Michael Postma Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear also thanks its material supporter: Neoz Lighting: Peter Ellis Special thanks: Lucas Macmillan

As always, we are eternally grateful to Brian Sherman for his focused, passionate and unwavering support of SCAF’s activities.

Previous Exhibitions

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation

2008

2012

Project 1

Ai Weiwei: Under Construction In partnership with Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney Project 2

Jonathan Jones: Untitled (The Tyranny of Distance) Project 3

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) was established in April 2008 as a not-forprofit organisation to champion research, education and exhibitions of significant and innovative contemporary art from Australia, the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East. SCAF works closely with creative practitioners in commissioning new work and developing exhibitions that energise and respond to the gallery’s four-part complex comprising a large exhibition area, mini ‘out-site’ space, versatile theatre annexe and Zen garden. Extensive projects are developed through partnerships with public art institutions at a regional, state and national level while broad public engagement with contemporary art is fostered through publishing and forum programmes. In addition, Sherman Visual Arts Residency (SVAR), located directly across the road from the gallery, offers a supportive environment and accommodation for visiting artists, filmmakers, architects, writers, curators and scholars. The experience of developing Sherman Galleries (1986–2007) as a respected commercial and educational enterprise within the international art world underpins the Foundation at both a conceptual and practical level. Dr Gene

Sherman AM, SCAF Chairman and Executive Director, drew on her extensive international networks to establish the Foundation, and initiates and guides its activities in collaboration with an advisory board of respected peers: Andrew Cameron, Doug Hall AM, John Kaldor AM, Sam Meers, Akira Nakayama, Tomoko Nakayama, Dr Claire Roberts and Michael Whitworth. SCAF is a member of CIMAM, the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art.

Jitish Kallat: Aquasaurus 2009 Project 4

The View from Elsewhere In partnership with Queensland Art Gallery/ Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane Project 5

Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA Project 6

Charwei Tsai: Water, Earth and Air

Janet Laurence: After Eden Project 14

Alfredo Juan Aquilizan and Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan In-Habit: Project Another Country Project 15

Go Figure! Contemporary Chinese Portraiture In partnership with National Portrait Gallery, Canberra 2013 Project 16

Fugitive Structures 2013 / Andrew Burns: Crescent House In association with BVN Donovan Hill Olafur Eliasson: The cubic structural evolution project, 2004 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery Project 17

2010 Project 7

Fiona Tan: Coming Home In association with National Art School, Sydney Project 8

Brook Andrew: The Cell In association with Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane Project 9

Contemporary Art for Contemporary Kids In partnership with Queensland Art Gallery/ Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane 2011 Project 10

Yang Fudong: No Snow on the Broken Bridge Project 11

Dinh Q. Lê: Erasure Project 12

Tokujin Yoshioka: Waterfall

Project 13

Collection+: Chiharu Shiota Curated by Doug Hall AM Project 18

Feel & Think: A New Era of Tokyo Fashion In association with National Art School, Sydney Project 19

Collection+: Sopheap Pich Curated by SCAF and Erin Gleeson For project details, visit sherman-scaf.org.au

Fugitive Structures 2014

AR-MA: Trifolium Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation 21 March – 20 September 2014 SCAF Project 20

The material in this publication is under copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission from Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. Where applicable, every effort has been made to contact copyright holders and acknowledge the source material. Errors or omissions are unintentional.

Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear: Poly Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation 21 March – 3 May 2014 SCAF Project 21 Published by Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation 16–20 Goodhope Street Paddington NSW 2021 ABN 25 122 280 200 www.sherman-scaf.org.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation Title: Fugitive Structures 2014: AR-MA: Trifolium | Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear: Poly / Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation; AR-MA; Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear. ISBN: 9780987490902 (pbk) Subjects: Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation – Exhibitions. Site-specific installations (Art) – Australia – Exhibitions. Installations (Art) – Australia – Exhibitions. Art and architecture – Exhibitions. Art, Modern – 21st century – Exhibitions. Art, Australian – 21st century – Exhibitions. Other Authors/Contributors: Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. AR-MA (Firm) Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear (Firm) Dewey Number: 709.2

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation Chairman, Executive Director Dr Gene Sherman AM Associate Director Dolla S. Merrillees (until December 2013) General Manager Danielle Devery (from December 2013) Exhibitions Manager Michael Moran Communications and Events Coordinator Sophie Holvast Collections Manager Aaron de Souza Assistant Curator Emily Rolfe Gallery Assistant Olivia Gubala Executive Assistant to Gene Sherman Hannah Brunskill Advisory Board Andrew Cameron, Doug Hall AM, John Kaldor AM, Sam Meers, Akira Nakayama, Tomoko Nakayama, Dr Claire Roberts, Michael Whitworth Media Consultant Michael Young Partnerships Consultant Bambi Blumberg Design Mark Gowing Design Editor Fiona Egan Proofreader Marni Williams Trifolium production photography AR-MA, Brett Boardman Poly production photography Tomahawk // Archer Breakspear, Kasia Werstak Poly installation photography Brett Boardman Printed in Australia by Ligare Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation providing a platform for innovative visual practitioners primarily from Asia, Australia and the Pacific Rim. All donations over $2 are tax deductible and will support our exhibition, educational, public and artist-in-residence programmes.

Trifolium Exhibition Supporters

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation 16–20 Goodhope Street, Paddington Sydney NSW 2021 Australia ABN 25 122 280 200 sherman-scaf.org.au

Material Supporters

Culture+Ideas proudly supported by

Exhibition Sponsor

Andrew Cameron Family Foundation

Exhibition Partner

Poly Exhibition Supporter