This has been the most interesting reading so far. One of the most important questions it raises it what happens when the physical site has disappeared, can we still bring back the memory? And how memory links to the physical site or place?

– A photograph (visual spark, aide memoire) can support bringing back the memory of that time, place, event

– In Seven Lamps of Architecture by John Ruskin he explains how memories are triggered through material objects – “We may live within [architecture], and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her”

The whole book: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35898/35898-h/35898-h.htm#Page_167

(This quote was in Chapter VI in paragraph II)

I liked the quote from Victor Shklovsky saying that ‘And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony.’ – is this saying that the meant to bring the objects alive and give it “texture” – we experience best when in that place however art can bring you back to that place and bring it alive again

I think that the memory can still stay alive through representation such as old videos, photos etc. however it might never compare to the experience of being in the exact same space again.

The phrase ‘Architecture of the heart’ refers to how we hold on to emotion in regards to remembering a place. Also others argue that memories are always anchored in spatial frameworks.

Place and memory and intertwined. When we relate this history we realise that history is shaped by what we record, curate, remember but mainly how they are recorded in a place: ‘a constructed, three-dimensional, architecture in the mind’s eye’. Then our memories are triggered by this connection to place and we don’t have to be physically in that place. Even the virtual space could count.

Hornstein, Shelley 2011, Introduction, Losing Site: Architecture, Memory and Place, Ashgate Publishing Limited, Surrey, England.

Last Friday we got to brainstorm in class about our final group project, which would present all our work from the semester. Our group had many ideas, some a little out of reach (time machines and such). We went able brainstorming but looking out different mediums and then linking them together such as starting with photography, video or audio individually then branching them together. We realised that choosing one medium would not be able to adequately showcase the variety of work we would produce that could range from audio to video to even an exhibition. So with the variety of work we would need to have a mixed median to showcase it.

Just three of our ideas:

1. A treasure hunt (not virtual) – using the two buildings to create an amazing race type game which groups of students can go around and view our work, get clues then it would link to the next one

2. Virtual reality app/website – virtual tour

3. Having projection screens put up in the building correlating with where the work takes place

We ended up going with the virtual tour idea/augmented reality. Here are some of the examples that we found online:

http://museumvictoria.com.au/melbournemuseum/whatson/current-exhibitions/melbournestory/virtual-exhibition/

http://www.frick.org/visit/virtual_tour – liked how they have the larger bird eye’s view map and then it went into each separate room so you can have a broader view of how the whole building fits together

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/visiting/virtualtour/#/central-hall/

https://www.youvisit.com

http://www.vtility.net/SampleVirtualTours

The main idea: How RMIT works in with City of Melbourne planning?

Here are my notes from the discussion

Place vs. space

Space – materiality, contained, defined by objects

• Opposes set of behaviours, notion about public behaviour
• Behave – manner in the which the space dictates what you do in that space – do you study, walk, talk etc. not always just manners
• Dimension – not always walls e.g. buildings surrounding a pack could add dimension
• Material
• Intent –> Program –> Inhabitation

E.g. Place makers: farmer market at primary school, festival in laneway, music festival – blues fest

 Can you have a place and no space, a space and no place?

He thinks that they are intertwined – (space and place) – how a space is activated makes it a place – Nature of program responds to place

1. The city

RMIT is “Part of a living city”

1:1000 (Scale of the city) + 1:1 (Stuff you touch) – able to plan, dictate

Spend on the money that people can touch – forget able the ceiling, computers (things you can’t touch)
I do agree, but definitely should still think about the visual aspect, not completely forget it

History of City

• Was going to be Geelong for a long time – the ships docked nicely there
• Hoddle saw where the aboriginal people were settled

The city – Unfinished project (BIG Architect) – ongoing development

• Population growth
• Seoul – 80% – 20% Rural to City – reversed in 40 years
• Australia most urbanized Cities in the world – approx. 94%
• Book – “City limits” – published by Melbourne University
• Only two books written about Australian cities in the last 20 years
• 4 of our cities – in the top 10 livable cities
• What do our cities do? –> Civic – Civitas (Romans) – how the city helps democracy

Fed square – protests for Iraq – 100,000 people – made fed square a place that was embraced – before people were just annoyed that they spent so much money on it – over 500 million for a public place

No other Australian city has a place to gather like Fed Square

RMIT – the school is open

• How do we invite the city in? Bowen Street was opened up
• Starting to look like the city – in terms of the grid – How the city organizes it self

– civic centers – organised around the CBD – parliament, church, MCG, arts centre

Grid – economic function not landscape function – so it could be divided up

How the smaller streets could be used – minor to the majors – small commerce there

Laneway culture – Meyers place 1994 – 6 degrees bar – 6 architects from Melbourne Uni couldn’t get a job – all together brought a lease

Liquor license went from $25000 –> $250, number of toilets price went down as well

2. Legibility – semiotics

Communicate these things to people

How do you get someone to behave in a civic manner?

Ability for the architect and urban planner to dictate those

How it is delivered – use of the space – research begins with careful observation not a research question – what you see and observe

Look at a way that is part of the city – how it delivers massive potential into the city – look at it not as an RMIT building but part of the city

Building 2o and Storey Hall 

Building 20 – Historic – museum but it’s a private space as well

Re-writing its own story – beginning to add to its heritage – because of the things now occurring within it

Capture point of time – restore the heritage

Peter Elliot – timber, glass, – respect, to the proportions of it

A.R.M – Storey Hall – very modern but still small moments there

In week 4, we went to do an activity at the Museum of Melbourne. We got an two hours to walk around the Museum of Victoria’s MELBOURNE exhibition. Here were some of the answers I jotted down:

What ARTEFACTS indicate particular notions of ‘place’?

Being  an exhibition about Melbourne everything indicated a notion of a place. But if we want to get really technique a lot of them would still be a space, without personal meeting for me as opposed to a place. Things that were of significance to me and I could still identify today was the notion of Melbourne as a ‘meeting place’, Bendigo, Ballarat and “Little Lon”.  It was surprising to find out the previous uses of little Lonsdale St and how it was kinda of Melbourne’s red light district.

What elements on display are distinctly MELBOURNE?

Trams, “Little Lon”, Gold rush, Luna Park, Capital Theatre box office, West Gate Bridge and Phar Lap (who had a whole section).

One of my favourite parts was the model of inside of the Capital Theatre.  I love that old 50s style cinema. I’ve always ‘loved’ the idea of older films, that were seen as ‘classics’ but honestly I never really watched many until last year in our cinema class when we were learning about auteur theory. We watched a lot of Ernest Lubitsch and Blake Edwards. Currently, being the easter break I’m having a little James Stewart marathon. Anyways, cinema has way of transporting you back into another time and that theatre let us step into the past world. That’s why I loved all the models so much like the bookstore (which I wish I could have gone to) and “Little Lon”.

What have you noticed about the WAYFINDING techniques used throughout the exhibition?
Titles, signs and descriptions
Splitting different areas into dates – although it was hard to do it in a linear order, however that might not have been the intention
It is a really open circular structure so visitor can ‘flow’ through it, its not a rigid layout

Does the exhibition take care to tell ‘multiple’ stories… what are these?
They separated the aboriginal history from the white settlement – two separate parallel histories
The “Little Lons” had different perspectives, each room was dedicated to a different person
However, it was one perspective for each location or historical event, it lacked different perspectives

How does it tell the story of pre white settlement (from what perspective is it told?)
– They didn’t really go into a lot of detail, there was an indigenous exhibition on the ground floor however I still find it strange that they would not include more, the section was smaller than Phar Lap’s section

How does the Museum deal with ‘difficult’ or ‘tragic’ stories?

– They just try to tell the facts – not many embellishments
– E.g. About the spanish flu – “saddest in Melbourne’s history” – they didn’t over emphasis that much

What ‘media’ do they use to tell the stories?

Displays, viewing objects with descriptions
Soundscape with the Gold Rush carriage
Map – digital
Location recreation
Video – documentary, film
Radio
Interactive objects, activities – like playing with the Gramophone, the big dipper ride

They even have a virtual tour on the website here. It could be interesting to do something like that for our own presentation later on, certain sections have videos or extra things like the stain glass window video.

Tracking back to two weeks ago when we went to the public records office. This was definitely a place I didn’t knew existed. So it was interesting to find out what they had there and what kind of people go there as well. They have kilometres of records, from public building plans to court cases. I would find it hard to decide what to keep and when to throw it away. Of course their space is limited however you never know when that information is useful again. They wrote this on a blog post on their website about the key reasons why they should keep the records:

•  preserve evidence of past decisions and actions;
• support transparency, openness and accountability in government;
• preserve the documented memory of government and its citizens;
• support research by providing documentary evidence for academic and research communities and the general public;
• support individuals and communities to reconnect and preserve identity and memory and facilitate redress, recovery and reconciliation

“Ned Kelly, from a prison photograph taken when he was 18. Composite image from VPRS 515P Central Register of Male Prisoners”

The most interesting part of definitely the court cases from the supreme court that they had records of, they even had evidence for some, such as pleas, poison even bullets. Some of these cases was something I was going to look into more for the upcoming semester crits.

Link to photo: http://prov.vic.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/ned-kelly

Yesterday the two groups presented, the first about Google maps and the second about apps relating to RMIT (RMIT lost on campus, digital signage at RMIT, safe zone app etc.).

It was great to see all the research that had gone into the other groups and they only got to show probably only a quarter of their research from the last couple of weeks. Our class will use this research to create our final project at the end of the semester.

Some ideas that popped up:

From the Google game, Ingress, that used certain places around Melbourne as “portals”. Rachel brought up a great idea about using our researched buildings as portals and then when they take a picture of it or use some sort of QR code perhaps it could link them to what it used to look like –> history of the building. Or even one of our pieces that we work on like a short film.

The interactive digital signage could be turned into an interactive map to showcase our work for a day –> this would need some advertising involved as well –> it could be like a guide or kind of treasure hunt where you have to go to all the destinations, while learning about the building along the way –> then picking up clues/facts that link to an app/game

We could just create a game using google maps to showcase our work –> you can be a character in the game and you have to get past certain levels – Storey Hall could be the first few levels and then the Magistrate Court being another few levels and then building 15, 20 and the fig tree area could be incorporated if people are still researching them

These are only a few – our group researching about Way finding is still to present which could add the conversation about certain medians we could use or mix together.

One of the phrases that got my attention in this week’s reading was the idea/discipline of “acoustic design”. According to Murray Schafer acoustic design “should function alongside any form of urban development and architectural work.” Mainly because the design of the built environment has “radical implications for the acoustic environment: population density, noise pollution, the erasure of ‘sound marks’*.”

It is quite amazing how a lot of the time sound or acoustics of a room isn’t taken into account. Especially one of the 5 senses that allow us to ‘be’ in the environment and experience the space.

I remember last year hearing about one of the new rooms in building 80, the cinema, was built with acoustics in mind. Since it is mainly used as a cinema screening room the acoustics of the room were taken into account and the lecturer should be able to stand at the front and not need a microphone.

* Sound marks refer to “a community sound which is unique or possesses qualities which make it specially regarded or noticed by the people of that community.”

In class on Monday we were given about 45 minutes to go to our chosen building to record the soundscape and the space’s own unique sounds. Firstly, building 20 is a very quiet building. The fact that about 10 of us went to the same building probably made up for most the sound in there. The rest was the occasional staff member talking in their office, the sound of shoe heels on the concrete stairs or when someone opened a door which let in a gush of street noise.

Since the building is so quiet there wasn’t a lot of varying sounds to record. If you listened to the sound recording you wouldn’t be able to identify that it was building 20. Perhaps the quietness is part of its unique soundscape. That the space is filled with silence and the liveliness only comes when you bring forward the past like tours of the building, the architecture and more visual aspects. Although, the stairwells create a lot of echo which is unique to the building.

In the reading that we were given ‘Background Noise: perspectives on sound art” by Brandon LaBelle the author distinguishes between a “site” and a “non-site”. In my previous post I did call building 20 a museum and in that sense is a non site because of the reflection nature of a past place. Is Building 20 a “non-site” to house the “site” of the former magistrate court? I think because of the dual functionality of the building it acts as both depending on the subject.

Architecture has become more interesting to me in the last couple of months, this is one I stumbled across today.

http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/daily/2015/03/barcelona-hospital-de-la-santa-creu-i-sant-pau-restoration

The inside ceiling of the Grand Entrance *

I have chosen a building in the judicial precinct, which is Building 20 at the corner of Russell St and La Trobe St. It was formerly the Magistrate court in Melbourne and before that the Supreme Court. I’m going to describe the history of the building more to you later because I only want you to know the extent of my previous knowledge when viewing the building.

The first time I visited the building we went through Building 1 to get through to it. It’s quite a seamless entrance and I didn’t actually realise until the second time around when I officially entered building 20. I was with my class and our teacher; Rachel was able to give us a tour and some history behind the building. Previously I wasn’t sure what Building 20 was used for or even if the main entrance at the corner was in action. Staff offices now occupied the old courts for quite high-level members of the university like Vice Chancellors.

The link between Building 1 to Building 20 – the outline of the previous tall door frame outline is still present

The shell of the interior architecture was still in tact. It was quite a unique staircase because there were no pillars holding it up but it was a heavy concrete material. It looked like a floating staircase. There was another contrast between the heavy chipped material and the polished and clear cut glass doors that have been put into place. I think it has been a theme with older historic building to have glass doors inside because it doesn’t draw away as much from the building’s rich architecture.

The Floating Staircase

One of the most interesting parts of the building was the tension between the historic building and the present modern functional usage of it. All the modern features were practical like the RMIT room signs, key card scanners and large recycle bins. One of the courtrooms connected to a kitchen. The old fireplace had been closed off and was now a fully functional addition to a room that was most likely previously a judge’s chamber. The building still has its shell on but the inside has been filled with a completely different purpose. It is part museum, part office; without either purpose being fully fulfilled. On top of that there is another level of tension between a public space of the past and a private space for the University. The hallow halls still feel like it is ‘haunted’ by the past. It felt like the staff didn’t really ‘live’ in the space, in order to maintain the past I felt like they couldn’t really make it their own place.

Definite signs of renovation

The Judge’s View

The building has an otherworldly feeling and one that is separate from the rest of the University. The windows are all stained so light doesn’t come through easily. The solid brick walls block out the sound of the city streets and when you pull open the wooden side doors a gush of sound hits you, which definitely is a reality check. It is really quiet in the building, especially because the only people who use it are generally in their offices.

Somethings missing – there are gaps from the past

In the basement, there are these large arched white doors that I decided to open (maybe wasn’t meant to). Upon glimpsing inside I suddenly felt frightened. There was definitely a strange atmosphere to the room. It was a dark, narrow, long corridor like room. It was very reminiscent of a secret tunnel or passageway. The ceiling I think had wooden panels and stabilizers. It would be interesting to find out what it was originally used for. The doors were quite grand. White, arched, detailed doors but the current usage was for storage. What looked like old cupboards, some chairs and signs occupied the room. Upon reflecting on it, I think it was interesting how a space could bring about such emotion by just the atmosphere it creates. Even without prior knowledge of it I had a feeling of unease. I think it definitely was connected to the stereotype of dark, narrow tunnel like rooms.

Originally there were three main court routes to separate the public, magistrates and the accused

Named the “Bull Ring” where witnesses and defendants would sometimes wait before trial – a place of tension

Apart from that situation I found the whole building quite fascinating to walk through. Especially because I wasn’t just roaming around but I was looking out and trying to notice particular features. It was recording my thoughts on certain areas of the space and how I was feeling. This relates to the John Mason reading because I had a purpose of trying to look out for special features of the building, thus becoming intentional noticing. It was a balance trying to be in the moment and take in all that I was noticing while also trying to record everything down. As I focus on jotting down a certain point I start losing all the other observations I had because it wasn’t marked.

Why are there hooks in a court room?

Second day exploring ended with restricted access to areas

Brief Timeline of the Building

1842-3 Two storey brick building was built as the Supreme Court of Victoria

1853 A wooden extension added to facilitate the increase in cases because of the gold rush

1855 Thirteen prisoners from the Eureka Stockade rebellion were trialled for high treason – acquitted

1880 Ned Kelly tried and convicted of murder

Ned Kelly on Trial in the dock 1880

1884 The Supreme Court Moved – was now the Court of Petty Sessions

The Court of Petty Sessions 1900

1910 Building was demolished

1911 – 1913 The current court was being built and finished – designed by George B.H. Austin of the Public Works Department

1913 – 19 Million old Fossil found

1924 Gangster Leslie ‘Squizzy’ Taylor was tried for negligent driving that caused the death of a pedestrian

Police Entrance 1928

1970 Renamed the Magistrates’ Court

1997 Purchased by RMIT University

2002 Refurbished by Peter Elliott – former RMIT graduate

– Building 1 and 20 linked together to become RMIT’s Corporate Headquarters

* References

Pictures

The inside ceiling of the grand entrance – Peter Elliott 2002 http://architecture.rmit.edu.au/About/Building_20.php

1900, Court Houses, the old Supreme Court, State Library Collection, Melbourne. 

Harvey, John Henry 1928, Police Court entrance, State Library Collection, Melbourne.

David Syme and Co. November 6 1880, THE KELLY TRIAL – THE SCENE IN COURT, State Library Collection, Melbourne. 

Books

Magistrate Cases 2015, The Magistrates’ Court Melbourne – An historical outline, Magistrates Cases, viewed 10 March 2015, <http://www.magistratescases.com.au/Legal%20History%20Articles/BriefHistoryoftheCityCourt,Melbourne.pdf>

Edquist, Harriet & Grierson, Elizabeth 2008, A skilled hand and cultivated mind – A guide to the architecture and art of RMIT University, RMIT University Press, Melbourne.