Suburban Civic Spaces - EQUELLA

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Suburban Civic Spaces
Anthony McInneny Art in Public Space School of Art
Simon Whibley Architecture Program,
School of Architecture and Design, RMIT University
Cumulus 38º South
18–19 November 2009
Suburban Civic Spaces is a spatial investigation through four interrelated
processes of design, cultural development and art making:
a series of public art projects jointly conceived and produced through an
industry partnership between Knox City Council and RMIT Public Art;
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a number of teaching studios combining the RMIT School of Art and
School of Architecture and Design and the University of Melbourne urban design program;
the site for medium density housing within a city centre.
4. Knox Central. Aerial photograph with Knox Central Urban Design
Framework boundaries 2005
5. Urban Collage. Antartica and Dianne Peacock. 2008
6. Art Decontransformature, Kevin Man, RMIT University, Master of Art,
Art in Public Space, proposal for skatepark in/through shopping centre
2005, and 7. Building toys 2005
8. Transcending the Shopping Spectacle, Daniel Pike,
University of Melbourne. School of Architecture, Medium density
housing proposal, 2005
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an embryonic research project through RMIT Design Research Institute
entitled Art in the Suburbs, and
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speculative engagements by individual architectural and artistic practices with Knox Central.
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The territory covered by Suburban Civic Spaces spans five years and
explores the role of cross-disciplinary practice, public art and the commissioning and procurement of works and ideas. It explores the transforming processes of place making through the engagement of artists,
architects and educational institutions with the idea of the suburbs.
The aspiration for a city centre for the municipality of Knox is the educational, creative and social context for this body of works and designs.
Knox is part of a Melbourne metropolitan area grappling with urban
change brought about by the need to create more sustainable and
interconnected city centres and municipalities. Knox, under the Victorian
State Government’s planning framework Melbourne 2030, was a principal activity centre, a previously unknown urban form, and a city where
a shopping centre currently stands at its heart. Under the reviewed
Melbourne 2030 called Melbourne@5 million, Knox is located at the
apex of a road transport dependent growth corridor heading southeast
for 20 kilometres.
At the base these works is a question about how the suburban can
become civic and what are the spaces and activities required to create a
city centre that is a viable public realm.
The designs, creations and proposals presented in Suburban Civic Spaces
are graphically presented in their geographic location across the area known
as Knox Central, the future city centre of Knox. Also presented are works
that have developed from this site during the same period and under the
same praxis but are located to the northeast and south.
1. Knox City Shopping Centre, Burwood Highway looking east. Knox
Central, Wantirna South 2003. Photograph by Geoff Inkster
2. Melbourne @ 5 million, Melbourne 2030: a planning update.
Victorian State Government 2009
3. Knox City. Relative distance and location from Melbourne, Eastlink,
Dandenong and Ringwood. Antarctica
Retarding Basin and Blind Creek
Of droughts and flooding plains Dorothea Mackellar
The retarding basin is designed to hold a one in one hundred year flood.
The Blind Creek has been placed underground and re-surfaces through
shear volume during a flood and through vertical drains that bubble and
belch storm water in less torrential downfalls. During such floods the
retarding basin has been recorded to form a temporal lake whose berm
shores are lapped within 30 cm of their lip. This water dissipates after a
couple of hours into the extensive river network of Dorothea Mackellar’s
wide brown land. This phenomenological feature poses a particular challenge. How might an active central park of a particular type be explored
or developed while maintaining its critical function?
New Public Spaces
Architecture and Public Art Studio
RMIT Architecture Program, School of Architecture and Design and
RMIT Art in Public Space School of Art, Studio leaders Simon Whibley,
Anthony McInneny and Fraser Paxton 2008
A curious element of Knox Central is the mirror and inversion of spaces
of consumption and production, leisure and work, inside and out, private
and public and car dependency driving under a green canopy. The enclosed shopping centre is an introverted form protected by a moat of car
parking space. The adjacent retarding basin is an extroverted, uninhabited, open public space with a perimeter of cycling and jogging leisure.
Jillian Allan’s interest in the intimate and tactile quality of printmaking and
pattern, formerly experience in daily life through object, costume and
domestic interiors is taken into the public realm.
Mark Hocking’s project starts from the proposition that Knox Cenrtal is
back-to-front. His project extends the tramline into Knox Central, creating a terminus at the current rear of the site, and radically re-works
the shopping centre’s rear carpark into a public space of gathering and
entertainment.
Nick Pratt’s project maintains the status quo, but inserts a new strip of
commercial and public function along the edge of the same carpark, extending it over the edge and into the retarding basin. The building is like
a spatial spaghetti junction: recreational, public and commercial circulation paths are scooped up, intertwined and reset.
Underpass
Robert Tickner, Placemakers, Knox City Council
In 2005 the Knox City Council adopted the Knox Central Urban Design
Framework as the guide for future development of a city centre the size
of Melbourne Central Business District (CBD). The key features of the site
are the Knox City Shopping Centre and outdoor dining area Ozone, a
Civic Cultural Precinct, restoration and resurface of a waterway named
Blind Creek in the existing retarding basin which includes recreational
facilities, Rembrandt’s triangle, Swinburne tafe and the National Centre
for Sustainability, road transport nodes, an industrial precinct and the six
lane Burwood highway.
Collages “allow ideas to be circulated without over-determining the results”.
Interview with Dianne Peacock. Dream It, Build It. The Age,
10–11 April 2009
This artistic engagement introduced the creative potential of association
and imagination to placemaking through the use of collage rather than
artist impressions or architectural models and plans. A shortcoming of
architectural drawings, plans and models, or artist impressions of these
representations of space, is that they are both self referential and selffulfilling. They do not communicate a lived experience of space. Through
the juxtaposition of complex and disparate forms and ideas, the collage
simulates the mental process of spatial recollection and imagination.
City, Street, Market, Square and Home
Transcending the Shopping Spectacle, Knox Central
Urban Design and Public Art studio, University of Melbourne School of
Architecture and RMIT School of Art
Studio Leader Beatriz Maturana
“The eye does not see things but images of things that mean other
things…” Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.
Medium density housing is still a controversial issue for suburban centres such as Knox, even in a green field site. The brief for this studio was
to develop proposals for medium density housing that were accessible
to a broad demographic and with a minimum ecological footprint and in
the context of the Knox Central Urban Design Framework. RMIT Public
art students engaged in this joint studio and contended with the notion
of public space in a place where private space is popularly embraced
and public space is a location of solitude.
Kevin Man is an artist who works with architectural sculpture, transforming well-known architectural icons into pliable toys. Kevin has bisected
the Knox City Shopping Centre and incised a multi-storey skate park
through this commercial heart to reconnect natural open space via an
artificially simulated one. This work led to the involvement of artists in the
design of a new skate park. (See Sk8park).
Daniel’s housing design addresses urban concerns and KCUDF objectives at a scale of 1:500 and amenity and living issues related cultural
diversity and minimising the impact on the environment at 1:100 by
considering the interface between the built and natural environment as
16. Party Pacifica, Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games opening
celebrations, Projection of Wally Tew’s portrait by Andrew Chapman
onto Commonwealth Community Choir.
17. Party Pacifica, Commonwealth Games Opening Celebrations,
Junction of Melbourne Street and Ozone, Knox City Shopping Centre,
March 2006. Photograph by Andrew Chapman
Burwood Highway
Burwood Highway is a six-lane carriageway that bisects the Knox
Central site. This permanent and essential piece of infrastructure presents a barrier to traversing the city in anything other than a car. Various
horticultural attempts have been made to soften this autoscape but the
renaming of Burwood Highway to Bush Boulevard simply amplifies the
need for other mobility options to bridge the divide between commerce,
education and aged care facilities. A relocated transport hub building on
the efficient Smart Bus and an extension to the light rail are anticipated
to transform this current obstacle.
“…you make a building as a place where something can happen, not as
a kind of monument standing on its own, but as a screen’’. Brian Eno,
Sunday Arts, 31 May 2009
In 2004, Knox was chosen to participate in the Next Wave Festival
because it is located in the physical centre of Metropolitan Melbourne’s
urban expanse. Colliding Worlds was about young people and a sense
of belonging in the world. New media artist Pip Shea conducted a series
of art workshops with young people who produced the images for a
light based work. Knox City Shopping Centre supported with the site
for the final works and studio space. Projected onto the front of the
shopping centre, the developed artworks were viewed by an audience
of tens of thousands of motorists on their way home in evening peak
hour traffic along Burwood Highway. Part of Sean Loughrey’s work (see
Rembrandt’s) occupied the temporal and spatial notion of adverting
space in a bus stop on Burwood Highway.
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The naming of place traces the history of locale and the appropriation of the name Knox City (kc) by the Knox City Shopping Centre
displaces Knox Council (kc) from the centre of the City of Knox metaphorically, spatially and notionally. Knox Central (kc) is an area the size
of Melbourne cbd and the public realm at the centre of this idea is an
empty flooding space with an island of protected indigenous flora as the
site of this temporary installation.
Knox Central Urban Design Framework
Street and Ozone, Knox City Shopping Centre in the closest simulation of an urban environment in Knox to celebrate the opening of the
Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games.
These new commissions introduce an aerosol art program within the
context of a comprehensive vandalism prevention program. The underpasses lend themselves to legal street art projects that make an audience of walkers, joggers, skaters and cyclists. Local communities can
be involved in a process that essentially and simultaneously extends
peoples understanding of art and creates something provocative and
beautiful from crude infrastructure. The career of street artists is a dynamic one and artists involved in the program over a number of years
progress to larger projects and commissions and receive peer recognition in publications both virtual and hardcopy. The DabsMyla murals
have the theme of life, death and reincarnation. Inspired by the deaths of
some close friends, it could also relate to the life cycle of street art.
9. Lewis Park in flood. Photograph by Anthony McInneny
10. Landscapewallpaper, Jillian Allan RMIT Public Art, Retarding Basin,
Collage 2008
11.Park Park, Anthony McInneny. Collage 2008
12. Mark Hocking plan
13. Nick Pratt
14. KCKCKC, Anthony McInneny, Lewis Park Retarding Basin,
Re appropriated Officeworks sign, 1.2m x 2.3m x 0.3m. 2009.
Photograph by Anthony McInneny
15. Love Me While You Can, DabsMyla, Lewis Road Underpass,
Blind Creek Retarding Basin, Knox Central 2009
Photograph by Anthony McInneny
Knox City Shopping Centre
“Identity and relations lie at the heart of all the spatial arrangements classically studied in anthropology” Marc Auge, Non-places. Introduction to an
anthropology of supermodernity
Global shopping centres have been described by French anthropologist
Marc Auge as a non-place, a place without history, relations or identity.
The idea of a non-place is contested with the opening up of the big box
shopping centre and the interface of this regulated and surveyed space
with civic and publicly owned recreational spaces such as a retarding
basin. The naming of streets formerly designated that to which it led or
after a person or event of collective significance – Station Street, Market
street, Victoria Street, Kings Way, Federation Square – but the streets
and localities of the shopping centre are named after that which it surrogates – Melbourne Street, Capital City Boulevard and Ozone. Ozone
is an outdoor dining area embraced as the place of public gathering in
Knox Central.
Party Pacifica
Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games Opening
Knox Shopping Centre/Ozone
Creative Producer Caroline Stacey
Sporting Heroes photography by Andrew Chapman
Knox Commonwealth Choir Director Belinda Gillam
Creative Producer Caroline Stacey created and directed three projects
– Sporting Heroes, Commonwealth Choir and Party Pacifica - that culminated in an event that would rival the celebrations at the Melbourne
Federation Square. Award winning photo journalist Andrew Chapman
created 30 community portraits and Belinda Gillam arranged and directed a 200 voice strong community choir. On a Wednesday evening, 6000
people gathered at the junction of the appropriately named Melbourne
18. Find Me, Janelle M Pani projection, Knox City Shopping Centre,
Bus Terminal, Burwood Highway, Wantirna South
Photograph by Pip Shea, 2004
19. Eight Crosses, Eight Windows (Possible Things Project 3),
Sean Loughrey, Burwood Highway, digital print in AdShell,
1.8m x 1.2m 2009. Photograph by Anthony McInneny
Rembrandt’s
The triangular land that Rembrandt’s sits upon is identified in the Knox
Central Urban Design Framework as a key redevelopment site, the location for a ‘feature form’: a building of significance in the creation of a
new urban form for Knox Central. The importance attached to this site
stems not only form its strategic proximity to the expanding Shopping
Centre and the considered civic cultural precinct, but also its physical
position as a ‘gateway, to Knox Central and for its historic relevance to
the community.
Situated at the high point of Knox Central, the architectural referencing
of Rembrandt’s Entertainment Centre is a pastiche of French architecture and Dutch fine art mixed with a vaudeville tradition. In the absence
of a city centre, Rembrandt’s was in many ways the popular cultural
venue, place of public ceremony and urban amenity for the eastern suburbs for 30 years.
Rembrandt’s: 9 Installation
Rembrandt’s Entertainment Centre
Burwood Highway, Wantirna South
Curated by Anthony McInneny and Simon Whibley
November, 2009
“…the curators dispersed the artworks in a manner that encouraged exploration of the whole venue…the hide-and-seek curation and the unnerving
inhabited-by-a-ghost museum experience was exploited…” Architecture
Australia review, March-April 2009
Artists and architects created nine installations in this disused 1970s
reception centre as part of a public farewell to this iconic form. A partnership project with RMIT Design Research Institute (Urban Liveability)
Knox City Council and the Department of Planning and Community
Development.
Antarctica’s project focuses on the back of house, the intriguing behind
the scenes spaces that are without decoration, spatially determined by
function and fairly ordinary. This work jams the space: making it unworkable, burying its functionality and splitting the space.
Golden Memories draws on the palpable sense of cultural preservation
that exists within the abandoned shell of this once hotspot of suburban
celebration.
Untitled activates the anticipatory space of the now inactive site. The
dining tables set and prepared for the next event echoes the ethos of
Rembrandt’s. A solo waiter unsets the tables, performing the actions in
revere. Played in ‘forward’ motion the beginning is the end, a final dissembling of Rembrandt’s.
This series of emblematic crosses are seen as heraldic signs. The building is seen as an object in the world, like any other object. Heraldry
defines an historical element of suburban life – groups of people under
one banner, whether it is family groups at weddings or sports clubs at
the match.
Rembrandt’s Triangle
Antarctica was engaged in an interesting proposition. How, outside
statutory authority might Council inform and influence the development
of a key site in Knox Central that they do not own? Antarctica developed a land use and preferred design form for the site to assist Council
to simply generate discussion around ideas with potential developers
of the site. The design was underpinned by research into the economic
feasibility of the proposed land use and reinvents the site of the former
entertainment centre as a work, residential and recreational hub.
20. Rembrandt’s Burwood Highway sign. Photo: Anthony McInneny
21. Eight Crosses, Eight Windows (Possible Things Project 3),
Sean Loughrey, Rembrandts Façade. Photograph by Nobuo Omichi
22. Diamond Drape, Antarctica, represented by Simon Whibley, MDR
Board, Tape, paint and steel rod, Kitchen. Photograph by Nobuo Omichi
23. Standing in the Shadow of the Shaman, Sanné Mestrom, Liquor
store room, Rembrandt’s. Photograph by Nobuo Omichi
24. Golden Memories, Workshop Architecture, represented by James
Straughton, Foam core board, glue, tape and paint, various dimensions.
Photograph by Nobuo Omichi
25. Untitled Video, Sally Mannall, video performance screened onto
Rembrandt’s Stage. Photograph by Nobuo Omichi
26. Rembrandt’s Triangle. Potential form for discussion with prospective
land developer. Antarctica
Civic Precinct
The existing civic buildings in Knox Central consist of civic offices and
meeting spaces and regional library headquarters. Built in the 1970s
and burnt to the slab in the 1990s, the ‘new’ civic offices were literally
built on the old foundations. The Civic Offices are considered a key part
of the Civic and Cultural precinct that is intended to interface with open
public space and mixed-use development.
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PumPuP
The ubiquitous advertising inflatable of most suburban bulk goods and
car sale yard precinct has its origins in the works of the 1960s within the
idea of portable/collapsible architecture. The ignoble end to an inspiring idea is the basis of PumPuP. Award winning sculptors Christopher
Langston and Sarah Givins were engaged through the Arts Victoria,
Artist Development grant, to engage with young artists in the development of a series of inflatable sculptures. This project engaged young
people with the idea of scale and impact within a visually congested
urban landscape and the subversive nature of instantaneous art.
Weapons of Mass Distraction was inspired by the propaganda that justified the second War on Iraq. Young artist involved in PumPuP wanted
to use the notions of advertising props and the actual use of inflatable
forms in war (inflatable tanks and people as decoy and ploy) to get a
message out to decision makers. Clown in a Toaster presents a sinister
take on the idea of festival and the interior of Invasion is an immersive
environment for the deposit of messages from/to another world.
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Christopher Langton and Sara Givins, 27. Weapon of Mass Distraction
& 28. Invasion, inflatable sculptures, variable dimensions, various Civic
locations, 2006. Photographs by Anthony McInneny
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Sk8park
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“In spatial-architectural terms, the modernist space of suburbia was appropriated and re-conceived as another kind of space, as a concrete wave;
second nature was returned to first nature”
Iain Borden. Body Architecture. Skateboarding and the Creation of Superarchitectural Space. Occupying Architecture 1998.
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Skate parks are now the common “youth” public space constructed
throughout Metropolitan Melbourne generally on the fringes of suburbs.
In 2006, Knox City Council developed a commissioning process with
RMIT University Master of Art, (MA) Art in Public Space candidates and
alumni to develop concepts for a newly to be constructed skate park
and treat this as a public artwork in itself. A final work was installed in 2009.
Image Vending Machine acknowledges that skate culture pre empted
user generated, media based social networking as the basis of his
proposal to hand over scientific/military photographic technology to the
producer as an augmentation of what they already do.
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Sk8board is art infrastructure. A season of works changes the skin
of this billboard quarterly. Claire McCracken lead the first project for
Sk8Board involve over 300 year ten students in a design project about
fair wear and sustainability. Karen’s original image for this project is a
historic photograph of a young boy, now in his 80’s, standing atop and
riding a cow in the exact location of the skatepark. This site of the skate
park was formerly a dairy farm.
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29. Image Vending Machine Trials, Timothy Ryan, Riverslide Skate Park,
Melbourne, 2007. Photograph by Anthony McInneny
30. Image Vending Machine, Timothy Ryan, Research for a responsive
environment at a skate park, Knox Central. High speed cameras and
digital download 2006-2008
31. Sk8Board public art platform. Concept by Karen Abernethy. Feature,
Sneaker by Adam Kollwitz, 7m X 3m. Knox Regional Skate and BMX
Park, Knoxfield 2009
32. Ken Gilbert c.1945. Gilbert Park Reserve site. Photographer unknown
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33. RMIT Upper pool Architecture students. Portable Architecture Studio
Lead by Graham Crist. Knox Regional Skate and BMX Park used as one
of four sites for the location of proposals
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Green Circuit
Antarctica prepared the design for a new pedestrian link between the
Knox City Shopping Centre transport hub and Swinburne University.
This project grew through community consultation to eventually combine
Swinburne University, Villa Maria Aged Care and Wantirna South Primary
in a proposal for a new community hub and gardens, on a new recreational walking/jogging circuit. The project is awaiting Creating Better
Places funding confirmation.
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Swinburne University is home to the National Centre for Sustainability,
which opened in 2008
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34, 35 & 36. Representations of Green Circuit.
Planters, entrance to Swinburne Tafe Wantirna Campus and the
neighbourhood circuit. Antarctica
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Lux
The success of Colliding Worlds prompted an investigation into permanent light works that materialized in a satellite shopping centre in
Boronia built in the 1970s and undergoing urban renewal.
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Lux is a public art platform consisting of 7 designed light boxes and is
situated in Cinema Lane Boronia. This platform is urban infrastructure
for artists and the community to exchange ideas through visual art about
place. Commissioned works involve young people and professional artist
with an emphasis on contemporary art practice and lens based works.
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Oscar is a Columbian architect and artist who was invited to investigate
the outer suburb of Boronia. Like many people who visit Australia, the
dominance of the car is overwhelming. Oscar has photographed damaged and discarded parts of this essential product. The ironic images
create a highly sensual and desirable yet ultimately useless product.
Stencil was the first project for Lux. An artist in schools project supported by Arts Victoria and lead by artist Pip Shea who worked with 30
students on stencil based works.
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37. Part a Part, Oscar Perilla. Digital Print 2009 Lux series
38. Stencilled, inaugural works for Lux, Lead artist Pip Shea & year 10
students from Boronia Heights Secondary College, 2008
Anthony McInneny. RMIT School of Art
Studio Leader and Coordinator. RMIT Public Art
anthony.mcinneny@rmit.edu.au
Anthony is an artist, arts administrator and educator. He has been
extensively involved in the development of the studio practice of RMIT
Public Art. He has lead numerous projects with interventions in public
spaces. He is also the Coordinator of Cultural Development, City of Knox.
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Simon Whibley. RMIT School of Architecture and Design
Lecturer and Practicing Architect, Architecture Program
simon.whibley@rmit.edu.au
Simon Whibley has been a lecturer in the RMIT Architecture Program
since 2004 and is a practicing architect. He has worked in architectural
practice since 1997 before forming Antarctica, a multidisciplinary architecture and design practice in 2005.
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