Assignment 3: Final Composition

Experiment with MAX Script to dissemble with pflow

Assignment 3: Narrative

The final video will take on a quality of an architectural design presentation. Embracing the 4-dimensions, it is a virtual journey that captures the main concept of conflating architecture with the landscape -in particular, a contemporary intervention that reconnects an European historic ruin to the Australian ancient natural history and Indigenous culture. It then moves on to a tour of the new intervention, then explains its construction techniques and design lifecycle.

 Vision opens up to an underwater world when the western plateau of Cockatoo Island was submerged below the ocean of the Triassic period. The unpolluted, deep blue marine universe is roofed by a shimmering veil that filters daylight from the sun beyond, creating shifting shafts of light that penetrates onto submerged land.

Time flies as the sea level lowers, finally revealing the plateau to the blue sky. Greeted by the sun and caressed by sunlight, trees, grass and flowers emerges from the fertile soils, creating the Australian bushland. The view beyond is divided by the tall, slender trucks of the eucalyptus trees, with its canopy filtering pillars of sunlight. This symbolised the time with Indigenous inhabitants lived harmoniously with the bushland, celebrating the natural environment with through their religious rituals.

The rapport was shattered as the Europeans arrived, slaughtering most of the Aboriginals and razing their bushlands for settlement. This is represented by the withering of green foliage and the dicing of tree trunks. The western plateau is now barren, ready for development. As the convicts were exiled from the mainland and quarantined at the island, sandstone were quarried and used to construct their prisons. Sandstone blocks were laid on the sterile plateau, forming a crucifix-shaped building, roofed by an iron sheets.

As time continues to sprint, the island became abandoned as the stone prison began to crumble, its roof torn off and its building blocks removed for construction elsewhere. The once proud and ominous looking building is now mutilated, standing in solitude, mourning for its past inhabitants as it cries with the merciless erosion of time.

“But fear not,” says the architect, giving solace to the desperate ruins. “From now, the people shall celebrate your past and commemorate your fathers with you.” The architect imagines the return of the native Indigenous bushland that grows inside the hallowed prison halls and transforming into a linear, abstract form defined by the silhouette of the eucalyptus leaves. The hollow, perforated bulk rests on a steel frame, sitting on top of the stone wall just as its original iron roof did decades ago.

Deconstructed parts of the buildings are re-amputated with glass boxes that allude to the original spatial volume, internally supported by a simple and clean steel post-and-beam system. The immaterial appearance is a ghost of its lost limbs. Harmony between man and nature, which characterised the native Indigenous culture are revived by the plantation of eucalyptus trees, native fuchsias and grass. The land is no longer barren, the shifting pattern of shadows projected by the native bushland of ancient times has once returned. This extends to the interior of the ruin. The same shadow pattern is emulated by the metallic box that hovers above. The crater of the metallic form admits a volume of light to a new bed of azaleas in the heart of the ruin that blossoms every spring, a homage to the convicts that

But alas, nothing is permanent. The artificial structures are eventually deconstructed but reborn elsewhere using all its original parts. The spirit of the ruin now continues to live elsewhere, not stranded in an island in solitude.

Assignment 3: Story Board Mapped out with Soundstrack

Assignment 3: Storyboard

Stimulus: Journal Article 2

Peter Latz’ Post-industrial Park in Duisburg-Nord is an example that sees an existing building as a landscape element as well as an already-painted canvas to which he adds. The ruins have been revived, not through the conventional way of making it into an enclosed space (eg. Office or housing flats); but by transforming it into a park – a series of semi-outdoor gardens and grounds for recreation and cultural activities. The concept of implanting ‘valuable’ objects into a ‘worthless’ environment makes a strong, interesting contrast while the injection of vegetation inspired Garden Art rejuvenates the decaying ruins. To me this can be considered an example where principles of landscape urbanism have been applied. The whole and the part have been considered carefully and it is integrated into the wider ecology by introducing new vegetation which, not only beautify the place, but they also help to biochemically clean up the contaminants. The landscape has also been understood as layers, where new functions add a new stratum to its cultural and natural history.

Source: Udo Weilacher, ‘Learning from Duisburg-Nord’, Topos vol. 69 (2009): 94-97.

Stimulus: Journal Article 1

Since 20th Century, Landscape architecture, architecture and urban design have been strictly divided into distinct disciplines, leading to a built environment today that generally lacks sensitivity and coherence between the land, building and urban forms. In reaction, 'landscape urbanism' has been increasingly adopted by practices and education institutions to marry up these three entities. 'Landscape urbanism', is essentially, an approach to the design of the built environment that considers both the whole and parts as integral to the wider ecology and natural metabolic systems; using landscape as the arena for generating urban and building forms; and to understand the landscape as an expression of  multiple layers of time (natural and cultural histories). Thus, what would it be like if we start to think about existing surrounds, which includes both built and natural objects, as the landscape on which we can start to build over? What kind of design will we generate if the landscape is the starting point of our building design? Can architecture and landscape be conflated? This way of thinking helps to interpret abandoned ruins and derelict, post-industrial sites (which, through time, have become part of the landscape) in a landscape/architectural/urbanistic way that enhances layering of meanings; engages built forms with landscape, and focuses on social and ecological concerns.

Source: Frits Palmboom, ‘Landscape urbanism: conflation or coalition?’, Topos vol. 71 (2010): 43-49.