Mark Romei

How architectural design methodologies can both investigate and bear witness to the spatial forms of immigration detention.

Through investigating Australia’s hotel detention network, with a particular focus on the Park Hotel, this research explores how architectural representation can act as a form of witnessing, particularly where architecture actively conceals or contradicts the sites’ function as carceral infrastructure. Beyond functioning as technical and evidentiary tools, this PhD examines expanded approaches to architectural documentation which can record in both accurate, and affective and embodied ways. To do this, redaction, absence, and opacity are employed as spatial strategies to connect representations to the carceral transformation of investigated sites and subjectivities of the architect-researcher, thus allowing for practices of architectural drawing, modelling, and mapping to function as modes of witnessing.

Biography

Mark Romei is an architecturally trained spatial practitioner who works between the intersections of critical design research, speculative proposition, and spatial art practices. Mark is a PhD candidate and Teaching Associate at Monash University.