Multiplicitous Readings of Federation Square
Tim Brooks Semester One, 2011 Architectural Violence and Creative Resistance RMIT University, Melbourne
The public square as an urban typology exists in an interesting juncture between issues of the individual and those of a wider collective. Confronted by others in a space that is by nature shared, the individual must consider their role within greater society. These spaces throughout history have been used to define, to include (and exclude), bring together and celebrate communities united in a singular space. But what is the Public constitutive of and how is this represented spatially in the urban environment? And is it possible for a society as diverse as Australia, with its colonial past and multicultural present, to have a space that is truly public? Melbourne’s Federation Square (Lab and Bates Smart, 2003) as its name suggests, was procured to celebrate Australia’s federation as a nation, and as such deals with the representation of the singular amongst the multiple. Using the plaza of Federation Square specifically, I will apply four overlapping theoretical readings to the space with the aim to stitch together the multiplicitous notion of the role of public squares in contemporary Australia and discuss whom this civic space serves. Spatial Typologies and their Effect With a long history in the agora, forum and courtyard, the public square was one of the first typologies in which individuals interacted with urban space. 1 Arranging residential units around a shared open space in the centre provided greater protection from the outside, and produced a new spatial type that was at once public and private. Whilst this arrangement proved to be successful on a domestic scale, it also became an ordering device for civic space, with a town square flanked by institutions of the church and state common practice in the Middle Ages, most famously seen at the Piazza san Marco in Venice, Italy. The varying spatial arrangements possible within this enduring typology have been classified by New Urbanist Rob Krier (the shape of the open space, the elevation of adjacent buildings and variations in access points), yet seem to be based on the ruling definition that a public square must be an open, communal space surrounded by buildings in an urban environment. 2
These spatial diagrams of the square do not take into account however the subtle relationships set up by Lab in Federation Square’s plaza (refer diagram). 1
Krier, Rob. (2003) “Typological and Morphological Elements of the Concept of Urban Space” in Cuthbert, A. Designing Cities, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 323 2 Ibid. Refer Appendix A for diagrams.
SWANSTO
N STREET
FLINDERS STREET
FEDERATION SQUARE, MELBOURNE
SITE BOUNDARY PUBLIC
PRIVATE
GARDEN BEDS
PIAZZA SAN MARCO, VENICE
ROAD/CANAL AXIS
Here, the main axial roads run parallel to the plaza and do not lead directly into the square, with smaller entrances leading into the space perpendicular to Flinders Street and the north bank of the Yarra River. Whilst the East boundary of the plaza is clearly defined and closed by the crossbar wing of the Ian Potter Centre, the Western boundary adjacent to Swanston Street is open and permeable. This spatial arrangement allows for a crowd to use the space that is a hybrid of Canetti’s categories of “open” and “closed”3, and can be compared spatially to the configuration at the Piazza san Marco, in the manner of “neo-medieval urbanism”4. The plaza’s forecourt and gradual steps leading up from Swanston Street are a permeable urban space punctuated by smaller shards of program and as such allow for gatherings of people to grow and disintegrate quite freely. A crowd in this space “exists so long as it grows; it disintegrates as soon as it stops growing”5. As one moves deeper into the space the built forms create strong boundaries, enclosing the space and thus influencing the type of gatherings possible. Here the architects have clearly delineated an edge to the public space, creating a closed container that has clear entrances and exits. This spatial arrangement means “The building is waiting for [the crowd]; it exists for their sake and, so long as it is there, they will be able to meet in the same manner. The space is theirs, even during the ebb, and in its emptiness it reminds them of the flood.”6
Beyond the Square: What is the Public? Canetti believes the crowd reduces a gathering of individuals to a single entity, with the belief that in the act of coming together, multiple entities release themselves to the whole, and as such designate the Other as equal.7 Public squares are often seen as the medium to allow for this communal equalisation, a utopian collective place where one is free to exercise all rights afforded to them by the State in the true democratic sense. However, undercurrents of the ruling power and their implicit politics over the space mean that whole sectors of society are actively discriminated against. Whilst the agora is seen as one of the first democratic spaces, it has been well noted that freedom
3
Canetti, Elias. (1962) Crowds and Power, Middlesex, England: Penguin. Jencks, Charles. (2003) “The Undulating Federation Square”, Architectural Record, June 2003, Vol. 191 Issue 6, p108. 5 Canetti, E. Op Cit. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 4
within this space did not extend to women, slaves and non-citizens.8 Foucault states that it was during the 18th century that a great interest developed in the role of architecture as a means of expression for the “government of societies”9. Architecture became a concern of the political, and the city (and its means of being controlled) “became the matrix for the regulations that apply to a whole state”10, rather than being the exception. The aim of those in power was to create a self-regulating system that was self-sustaining and did not require outside intervention. With this new awareness of the public came a ‘reality’ other than that of the governing body; society. Rather than concentrating on controlling the State’s territory and its ‘subjects’, the State now had to somehow engage with society, a “complex and independent reality that has its own laws and mechanisms of reaction, its regulations as well as its possibilities of disturbance”11. This marked a shift in power relations between the State and the public as power was now internalised through the body, “dispersed into and exercised through micro-practices of everyday life”12.
One of the strongest disciplinary tools identified by Foucault is the notion of the ‘gaze’ – an unbalanced viewing arrangement whereby the individual self-monitors and censors their actions in the belief that outside forces are monitoring them. Federation Square explicitly deals with notions of surveillance with the prominent placing of a giant audiovisual screen. This screen can broadcast live CCTV footage of the plaza, which is at once oppressive in its surveillance, ensuring the public are aware that they are being monitored, yet can also in fact be liberative. Projecting the individual onto the screen literally enlarges them to the scale of their urban surrounds, and the individual is suddenly included within the multiple of the city. This saturation of surveillance can allow for a truly public space, as it needs to be safe for all people to inhabit the space all of the time.13
8
Zucker, P. (1959) Town and Square: From the Agora to Village Green, New York: Columbia University Press. 9 Foucault, Michel (2000) ‘Space, Knowledge and Power’, Power, London: Penguin, pp. 349-364. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Dovey, Kim (2008) Framing Places: Mediating Power in built form, Second Edition, Oxon, USA: Routledge 13 Dovey, Kim (2011) Lecture: ‘On Politics and Public Space’, April 7 2011, Melbourne. Lecture recording can be found at http://urbantalks.blogspot.com/2011/03/on-politics-and-public-spacethursday-7.html
The giant audiovisual screen at Federation Square streaming live CCTV footage of the Plaza. Source:http://www.bugbitten.com/photos/Australia/Oceania/alex_matt/A_Weekend_in_Melbourne/123 325-20475-4277564.html
Rosalyn Deutsche argues that rather than pursuing an unattainable “unitary public sphere” we should instead opt for spaces that embrace pluralism and conflict, which in fact are necessary for democracy to exist.14 Deutsche casts the public as a product of society “where meaning continuously appears and continuously fades”15 and as such her theories of agoraphobia can be seen to correlate to ideas of community based on performance rather than event.16 Here, the public does not merely exist as a body, but must in fact re-image itself constantly. In this way public space is not representative of ‘the public’, but provides a space that allows for the public to come together, expressing itself in that moment. The screen in Federation Square helps facilitate this expression, bringing together and dissolving the changing public. This is not to say that public space is an “empty stage”, waiting for activation, but is rather a place where the numerous and diverse traces left by the paths of urban life are at their thickest.17 This view emphasises that beyond the physical characteristics of a public square, the space itself must be held collectively by a multifarious and diverse set of individuals within their (personal) image of their community.
The Three P’s: Program, Privatisation and the Public Federation Square operates as a curious hybrid of varying programs with diverse levels of public spaces. The various buildings lining the square are a mixture of commercial (restaurants and cafes), private (the SBS offices), and public institutions (Australian Centre for the Moving Image, The Ian Potter Centre: NGV) managed collectively by Federation Square Pty Ltd, a government owned organisation. Outdoor seating areas, staircases and changing levels blur public/private thresholds between these spaces and the plaza. Apart from the wide staircase leading to the plaza gradually from Swanston Street, the majority of seating is confined to commercial restaurants and cafes, where one must buy something to take a seat. Similarly, the bar on Swanston Street cordons off a section of the plaza at night time for use as an outdoor smoker’s space and crowd control area. Not only do these permanent commercial tenancies blur and encroach on the public plaza, the plaza itself can be hired by organisations for commercial purposes (although priority is given to non14
Deutsche, Rosalyn (1998) Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics, Cambridge, USA: MIT Press. Ibid. 16 Carter, Paul (2006) ‘Writing Public Space: Design, Philosophy, Art’, New Zealand Sociology, Vol. 21 No. 6, pp. 9-26. 17 De Quincey, Thomas, Essays (Ed. Whibley, C.) London as quoted in Carter, Paul (2006). 15
commercial arts and festival organisations “subject to reasonable notice being given”18). This privatisation of public space can be seen as the decline of true public space19 but it can also be argued that a city has always been based on transactions (of commodities, ideas and information) and commercial aspects have always been a part of public squares, such as markets, festivals and concerts.20
Whilst Federation Square is able to hover between the agora and shopping mall types,21 it is vital to note that the increased activation brought to the square by commercialised activities, both at night and during the day, helps ensure that the space remains a safe environment. As discussed earlier public space does need to remain a contested space and the continued renting of the main plaza to commercial organisations by management should be scrutinised. Whilst Australia may be a highcapitalist society, when the public is given the chance of “coming together… deciding to say ‘we, now’”22 it should not necessarily be inclusive of commercial corporations and their distinct interests.
Politics of Place Federation Square from its inception has been a politically charged site. Born out of the State Premier Jeff Kennett’s period of icon building, the project was to provide the setting for celebrations to mark the centenary of Federation, and as such, originated as a form of legitimisation by the State.23 From Barthes we see that those in power are able to construct meanings through signs which are combined into “codes of domination”, building “mythologies” which can be used to justify their existence.24 These ideas are closely tied to notions of legacy, where “myth has the task of giving an historical intention a natural justification, and making contingency seem eternal”25. These mythmaking signs can be strongly expressed through urban public space, especially when explicitly tied to stories already embedded within society, such as 18
“Federation Square: Civic and Cultural Charter”, Federation Square pty ltd. www.fedsquare.com, visited 09/06/2011. 19 Sorkin, M. (1999) Variations on a Theme Park, New York City: Hill & Wang. 20 Lees, L. H. (1994) ‘Urban public space and imagined communities in the 1980s and 90s’, Journal of Urban History, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 443–465. 21 Op Cit. Jencks, Charles (2003). 22 Nancy, Jean-Luc, quoted in Wurzer, Wilhelm (1997) On Jean-Luc Nancy: The Sense of Philosophy, London: Routledge, pp. 91-102. 23 Op. Cit. Dovey, Kim (1998) 24 Barthes, R. (1967) Elements of Sociology, London: Jonathon Cape. 25 Ibid.
Australia’s colonial narrative. Whilst, according to the architects, the project “was political in its very existence”26, this was further complicated when Kennett lost the election in 1999 and Steve Bracks became Premier. Seemingly keen to disrupt the narrative of the then deeply unpopular former leader, Bracks commissioned an independent report questioning Federation Square’s ‘western shard’ building and its effect on blocking views to the heritage listed St Paul’s cathedral adjacent to the site. Despite the project having already commenced construction the report, written by Professor Evan Walker, found that heritage vistas to St Paul’s cathedral “should be preserved and protected in perpetuity”, and as such “the western shard of the two freestanding cathedral shards should be deleted from the scheme”27. There was outcry from the architects and the design community, who protested that the western shard had been shown to minimally affect aspects to the cathedral, which never actually existed because of the multiple buildings on the site over the years.28 The State Government however accepted the review and its recommendations and the shard was redesigned and shortened. This abrupt lobotomy of the design had implications beyond the physical (the loss of shade and sense of enclosure to the plaza), and illustrates the importance of the project as an act of power legitimisation.
With the opening of Federation Square in 2003 there was concern that beyond the formal sophistication, the urban potentials of the square and its political space would be overlooked, and the possibilities suggested by the plaza would not be embraced by the wider community.29 However, crowds did gather – on February 14, two months after being handed over to the public, the square held one of the largest political demonstrations in Melbourne’s history.30 Federation Square has been embraced by protest movements, but rather than used as a place to gather, a space for the crowd to grow, it has become the endpoint to a demonstration’s procession through the city. It has become customary for a crowd to gather at Melbourne’s other great civic space, the forecourt of the State Library. The crowd grows until the space can no longer 26
Bates, Donald (2003) ‘The P’s and Q’s of a Major Project’, Architecture Australia, Jan/Feb 2003, Vol. 92, Issue 1, p. 14. 27 Walker, Evan (2000) As quoted by Office of the Premier and Treasurer, State Government of Victoria Press Release, Thursday February 17, 2000. 28 Goad, P. (2000) “Radar: Urbanity”, Architecture Australia; May/Jun2000, Vol. 89 Issue 3, p20. 29 Crist, G. (2003) “Urbanity and Federation”, Architecture Australia, Mar/Apr2003, Vol. 92 Issue 2, p48. 30 Birnbauer, William (2002) ‘The New Heart of Melbourne’, The Age, October 25, 2002.
contain it, and is discharged down Swanston Street in a march to Federation Square. The square in its urban-political context appears to act as the full stop, the dissipation point for the crowd to disperse. Whilst this may be in part due to the privatisation of this space as discussed earlier, resulting in a lack of public ownership over the space, it could also be that the plaza is embedded within the communities psyche as a safe space for all – that overt political action does not belong here. Indeed, it is not necessary to have the square to gather, to protest – in contemporary society there is more power in political demonstrations where they interrupt ‘flows of desire’ – of people, goods and most importantly capital.31 Recently we saw this when Melbourne taxi drivers chose to protest not inside Federation Square, but adjacent to it, blocking the busy Swanston/Flinders Street intersection. Canetti’s “closed” crowd no longer provides the possibility for spectacle, in the act of containing a crowd it negates opportunities to catch the “global gaze”32, and as such is not as powerful a tool for change.
Melbourne taxi drivers protest adjacent to Federation Square, blocking the Swanston/Flinders Street intersection. Source: MrLob at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrlob/2453716299/in/photostream/
31 32
Op. Cit. Dovey, Kim (2011) ibid.
Representing Co-existing Identities Within the act of commissioning a public space to celebrate the Federation of Australia are questions about national identity and the way the community imagines itself. Posed with the challenge of representing all groups, Lab Architects through their design argue for pluralism and difference over an all-encompassing homogeneity. This is most clearly shown in the fractal geometry of the buildings, where the multiple variations of the triangle produce “coherence out of difference”33, but can equally be seen in the plaza itself, and most notably with the implementation of Paul Carter’s ground artwork Nearamnew. Designed in consultation with Lab, the work deals directly with the multiple narratives of Australia’s past, and present, by inscribing the ground plane with overlapping texts. These texts voice alternate histories of Australian society and in doing so, present a possible future, an idea Carter terms “remembering forward”34. Instead of celebrating the singular moment of federation and the pre-eminent colonial narratives, the work delves back deeper into Indigenous Australian stories along with those of more recent migrants, overlaying and overlapping each to create a multifarious whole. These texts are inscribed in the ground surface of the public square, with Barthes’ mythmaking being enacted quite literally. By suggesting the multiple over the singular, the square invites the overlaying of many stories into the collective whole – providing a space that allows for contradictions in the ‘official’ Australian narrative and as such begins to lend these varying voices power. One passage of the work reads: “THIS IS MY COUNTRY DO NOT FEAR THESE GHOSTS ARE TREES THEIR SHADOWS BREATH COME OVER DANCE WHICH WAY SHALL I WALK YOU MAKE IT UP”35
Visitors must literally walk over and interact with the space to view Nearamnew, and in doing so revive and reinterpret perspectives of the past that have been forgotten or discarded. Over time these myth fragments will be worn down and replaced by new narratives of those who tread on them. Through this action “the monumental, linear and singular vision of history collapses into multiples”36. By including this work in the very fabric of the square, Lab architects have designed a space that allows for the 33
Lab Architecture, as quoted in Jencks, Charles (2003). Op. Cit. Carter, Paul (2006) 35 Ibid. 36 Rutherford, (2005) ‘Writing the Square’, Portal, Vol. 2 No. 2, July 2005, pp. 2-14. 34
Other, and in doing so encourage the public of Melbourne to continually re-image their community’s identity.
Paul Carter’s Nearamnew Source: Photo courtesy of the artist, as printed in Rutherford, Jennifer (2005)
Piecing it Together Melbourne has struggled since its inception to create a central public space that the community has openly and wholeheartedly embraced. The preceding overlapping readings of Federation Square and its public plaza attempts to analyse – socially, culturally and typologically – the space and begins to define where, ten years after its public handover, it fits into the wider community of Melbourne. Like the design of the building, the public square allows for multiple frameworks of interpretation to be applied. Ultimately, the square has been designed to allow for individuals to gather and express themselves collectively in that moment, and it appears that the public, in its ever-changing form, uses the space in this manner. As society changes, new multiplicities will be added to the civic narrative, and if Federation Square is a truly public space it will continue to adapt in its usage and relevancy.
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Lynch, K. (1981) “Control”, from Good City Form, London: The MIT Press, pp. 205220. Macarthur, J. (2003) “The Aesthetics of Public Space”, Architecture Australia, Mar/Apr2003, Vol. 92 Issue 2, p46. Nancy, Jean-Luc, quoted in Wurzer, Wilhelm (1997) On Jean-Luc Nancy: The Sense of Philosophy, London: Routledge, pp. 91-102. Rice, C. (2005) “Experience and Criticality: Returning to Federation Square”, The Journal of Architecture, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp 323-333 Rutherford, Jennifer (2005) ‘Writing the Square’, Portal, Vol. 2 No. 2, July 2005, pp. 2-14. Sorkin, M. (1999) Variations on a Theme Park, New York City: Hill & Wang. Zucker, P. (1959) Town and Square: From the Agora to Village Green, New York: Columbia University Press.
APPENDIX A Krier, R. (2003) “Typological and Morphological Elements of the Concept of Urban Space” in Cuthbert, A. Designing Cities, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing