The latest project from Architecture Architecture is a piece of garden joinery, designed to weather and age. Eventually the steel will shift from oily black to rusty orange, the timber from warmer yellows to a weathered grey – the slow seasons of a decade or two. Like everything in a garden, its impermanence reveals the passage of time.
The following essay by Architecture Architecture director Michael Roper, was recently published in ‘Water: Curse or Blessing?’ as part of the Aedes exhibition of the same name. It explores the mythology of water in the Australian landscape and presents three Australian architectural propositions by Richard Black, Ross Brewin & Tom Morgan.
The Australian people gather at the ocean’s edge, a great arid landscape burning at their backs. Once the sanctum of an ancient people, Australia is now home to 22 million immigrants, 18 million of whom have barely ventured inland from their newfound shores. They look out towards the distant lands of their ancestors, across the oceans that delivered them. They yearn for home. Not for the homes they have left behind, but for the home they continue to build. Caught in the dream that first spooked their ancestors, they think often of the water’s cool promise – of opportunity and redemption – so they gather at the ocean’s edge, the shimmering red centre burning at their backs.
It is an irony that this vast, flat land, surrounded by many thousands of kilometres of coastline, should offer so little by way of hydration. In fact this is the driest, most arid of all continents. The Australian tastes this irony whenever he plays in the copious waves he cannot drink. It is a saltiness, deposited on the tongue of his famously dry wit.
And yet, while it never rains, (as the expression goes) it pours. For, although Australia is a land of scarcity, it is also a land of abundance, cycling irregularly between years of drought and flood. Again the ocean plays a role, its changing surface temperature invoking those mischievous South American siblings – El Niño and La Niña. He brings the cool ocean currents, a false balm to the accompanying years of drought. She brings the warm currents, and with them the rain. Together they torment the entire eastern seaboard of Australia with their uncertain temperament. Here, where soils are most fertile and the yielding crops are sown, Australian farmers are forever at the mercy of the terrible duo.
1935 Illustration of a Bunyip (artist unknown)
Of course, this is nothing new. From the very beginning, earth-bound life has been at the mercy of its water supply, tied to the creeks and rivers that thread the landscape fertile. While some organisms have adapted to survive long periods without – for man, life simply expires within days. No wonder the story of water bears mythical significance in so many cultures. Not least for Australia’s Aboriginal people for whom all life springs from the river’s Rainbow Serpent and the billabong Bunyip haunts the stagnant waters.
'Badeschiff' public swimming pool on the Spree River in Berlin.
Conrad Schumann breaching the 'Berlin Wall'
AIA National Conference Flyer
Image by R&Sie
Tanker 721 by Tom Morgan
A select group of Australian architects have been chosen to participate in the ‘Water – Curse or Blessing’ exhibition to be held at the Aedes Galleries in Berlin later this year. Exhibitors were asked to put forward projects which address the role of water in Australia with a focus on social and ecological agendas. The final selected exhibitors are Ross Brewin (Carrera Lakes), Tom Morgan (Tanker 721) and Richard Black (Tidal Garden). Architecture Architecture director Michael Roper is co-curating the exhibition.