Lively Infrastructure

“What is the infrastructure for culture, and can it be designed into the city?” (2017) LSE Cities, Theatrum Mundi

This Studio will be framed by two overarching themes exploring ‘material cultures’ and ‘cultural infrastructures’ and using a study of these two ideas to structure on-site activities and research, culminating in the design of a piece of cultural infrastructure.

Material culture is grounded in the objects, tools, and architecture that surround people. It includes the usage, consumption, creation, and trade of objects as well as the behaviors and rituals that the objects create or take part in. Students will start by considering where culture in the city exists; how to identify it; how to engage with it; how to re-materialize it; and finally, how to make spatial proposals that support it.

The studio will focus its study on central Footscray, liaising with local organizations, and undertaking site research uncovering everyday material cultures. Final design proposals will be for small-scale public realm proposals, that combine to imagine

a cultural infrastructure strategy for Footscray. The studio will combine the team work in the research phase, individual work on the proposals and the collaborative formulation of a group strategy.

Tutors

Mel Dodd, with Dasha Spasojevic

Mel Dodd is Director of Spatial Practices at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, UK. Her teaching, practice and research interests focus on the relationships between social and political infrastructures, and built environments. She is an architect and an ongoing collaborator with muf architecture/art since 1997, and contributory author to the practice publication ‘This is What We Do: A Muf Manual:’ Her forthcoming Book ‘Spatial Practices: Modes of Action and Engagement with the City’ will be published in October 2019, featuring contributions from an international set of experimental practitioners including Jeanne van Heeswijk (Netherlands), The Decorators (London), Hector (Newark) and OOZE (Netherlands).

Dasha Spasojevic is a doctoral student at MADA, currently working in the RISE project - designing the project’s engagement framework that includes community and cross-disciplinary co-design of a socio-technical infrastructure for 12 informal settlements in Fiji and Indonesia. She is an architect specialised in planning and socially situated environmental design, with the experience in co-design research and projects in various cultural contexts and diverse communities (UK, Netherlands, Belgium, the Balkans).