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RADAR
FEATURES
COMMENT
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| | RADAREDUCATION INTENSIVE STUDIOS
| What are the pedagogical advantages of the intensive studio? Sandra Kaji-O’Grady reflects on the issue via two recent events, Superstudio and Urban Islands. |
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Overview perspective from the Superstudio 06 winning scheme,
“Involuntary Prisoners of Paradise”, a polemical work by UWA’s
Julius Welke, Paul Empson and James Quinton.
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No architectural practice tackles just two
consecutive projects a year, each of around
thirteen weeks’ duration, with long breaks
between. Nor does any practice assume a
cumulative and gradual process from
conceptualization to a crescendo hovering
impotently at the edge of resolution. Yet
this is what the requirements of equitable
assessment in a semesterized timetable
establishes as a normative design process
in the universities. The consistency and
singularity of the university design project
does not mirror the irregularity of practice,
but this is not a problem of reality versus
inferior artificiality. With students working
increasing hours in practices, knowledge
of the “real world” is less an issue than is
intensity of engagement.
In pursuit of greater intensity many of the
schools offer condensed studio
programmes. These permit the engagement
of individuals unable to commit to a whole
semester – at UTS we have recently enjoyed
short studios led by Anthony Burke of the
University of California, Berkeley, and Peter
Davidson of Lab. There are also intensive
design programmes on offer outside the
universities, such as the annual Total
Immersion residential summer school led
by Sydney stalwarts Leplastrier, Stutchbury
and Johnston. All of these begin, as Tom
Rivard notes, with dissatisfaction about the
episodic nature of university programmes
and the torpor that ensues.
With Olivia Hyde and Joanne Jakovich,
Rivard put together an impressive ten-day
programme focused on Cockatoo Island in
Sydney Harbour that they called Urban
Islands. It was run through the University
of Sydney as an elective for forty. Their
approach to the condensed format was,
Rivard explains, “to put more into it
(ingredients, processes, events) instead of
less”. They were also interested in the
creation of the whole programme as a series
of events possessing life and energy beyond
the students and their work. There was a
lively symposium, public lectures by
international guests Jin Hidaka and Satoru
Yamashiro from Tokyo, Lisa Iwamoto and
Craig Scott from San Francisco and Jaime
Rouillon from Costa Rica, numerous parties
and visits to the island, and all of it
documented for a forthcoming book.
Consequently, its impact went far beyond
the students, who seemed overwhelmed by
the picturesque site and not to have fully
engaged with the rich political and social
content of the programme. That said, they
benefited enormously, but at some cost to
the organizers. Rivard reluctantly notes that
the preparation, organization and marketing
of the event were so extensive and timeconsuming
that it was a fairly unsustainable
model. Even so, the team are bravely
planning a more ambitious and residential
programme for Cockatoo Island next year.
The finale of the Urban Islands project on
12 August coincided with another intensive
design event, the student-initiated
Superstudio 06. In its third year in New
South Wales, it was hosted by UTS and
expanded with the support of SONA to a
national competition. The student
committee settled for a generic site of which
each state could find a local example – the
urban beach and the adjacent car park that
doubles as a promenade, skate park, illegal
drag track, changing room, camp site and
recently, in New South Wales, a
battleground for ethnic difference. Carried
out over a single weekend, the design
esquisse and competition provided students
with the opportunity to contribute to
critical issues of the built environment, to
work beyond their discipline and in
cross-university teams. Students were asked
to speculate and make proposals that
addressed the connections between people,
beach, cars and building infrastructure.
As with Urban Islands, Superstudio relies
on a great deal of goodwill. In NSW alone,
more than fifty architects and landscape
architects volunteered to tutor and their
input was supplemented by challenging
talks by Dominic Wy Kanak, Greens
member on the Waverley City Council;
Peter Poulet from the Government
Architect’s Office; Dale Jones-Evans and
artist Lisa Anderson. Student Andrew
Toland observed that “many people felt a
considerable sense of achievement at having
undertaken an intensive analysis and design
process in which the work they would
ordinarily do over the course of a whole
semester was distilled into a two-day
period”. In each of the states juries from the
profession selected teams of finalists to go
on to the national competition. Justine Clark
of Architecture Australia; UTS Adjunct
Professor of Architecture and director of
Terroir, Gerard Reinmuth; and former RAIA
National President Bob Nation then selected
a team from Western Australia as the
winners. Julius Welke, Paul Empson and
James Quinton are heading to Venice for
the Architecture Biennale.
There are comparable examples across
Australia and abroad. Intensive studio
programmes goad students to experience
something of the theatrical intensity of an
architectural practice the week before a
competition proposal is due. They also
engage with the wider community and
profession as flashpoints for optimistic
discussions about the learning and
practising of architecture that venture
beyond the familiar ground of graduate
competencies and external constraints.
DR SANDRA KAJI-O’GRADY IS ASSOCIATE
PROFESSOR AND HEAD OF ARCHITECTURE AT
THE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, SYDNEY.
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Copyright © 2010 Architecture Media Pty Ltd
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