Thursday, October 20, 2011
SEE-SAW &company, in collaboration with their project
partner Gaffa gallery, invited PIDCOCK Architecture &
Sustainability to take part in this years "See-Saw: Mend, Make-Do
and Build Anew" as part of the Sydney Design 2011 festival.
The See-Saw project invites top design students from a range of
Sydney design courses to join in an cross-disciplinary,
collaborative project. This year the students were asked to combine
their skills and imagine future solutions for the city of Sydney.
The unique structure of the project is that the students only get
two days to work within the Gaffa Gallery with a limited selection
of materials and the knowledge that their response to the brief has
to be installed in the gallery at the end of the second day. To add
an extra bit of spice to the event the brief is only revealed to
each group on the morning of the first day!
Our role within the two days was that of "Mentor" for our
student group, a loose job description which would turn out to
range from promoting discussion, offering advice, focusing energies
to hanging out of the gallery ceiling with a hammer. Our Mentor
"Team" consisted of myself, Caroline and Clare.
Day 1:
Our team assembled in the gallery's foyer at 10am and cast their
eyes on the brief for the first time, "Shelter & Community".
Caroline started the discussion about what "Shelter" and
"Community" could mean in a modern urban context under the
headings, "Mend, Make-do and Build Anew". What aspects of "Shelter
& Community" need mending? How can we make do? And what
requires total rethinking, and justifies building anew?
After lunch the discussion continued but at this stage all
sleeves had been rolled up as concepts moved from "storyboarding"
to "prototyping". The idea of creating a "Social Hub", a "node" in
the city that acts as both a shelter and a meeting point at a local
scale but also enhances feelings of community citywide at an urban
scale, began to emerge.
Day 2:
A deadline is a wonderful thing for focusing the mind. With the
knowledge that the installation had to be in place by the "close of
business" that day the day began to proceed on three fronts,
presentation boards, prototype models and large scale "in-situ"
work in the gallery.
The design response to the brief was to provide a network of
"hubs" around the city of Sydney. Each "hub" would be located
strategically in an area of the city where it was found that the
public space would benefit from an identifiable "nodal point" which
offered both shelter and also information relating to city events
and history. On an urban scale each "hub" would also be linked to
all other "hubs" both stylistically and also from a communications
point of view. This design response can be explained as a type of
"urban acupuncture" that fulfills the brief of "Mend, Make-do and
Build Anew".
-Fergal White