Slow Knowledge

This brief will consider the public library as an important piece of public infrastructure, and engage with challenges in the materialisation of appropriate tectonic concepts.

The site is located adjacent to Yarraville train station on a vacant carpark close to the fine grain, pedestrian friendly urban scale of Ballarat Street precinct.

The studio will focus on apertures, on how light is controlled and sculpted with the structure, on how the various programmatic requirements of a library demands different light and spatial conditions. It should also respond to the urban environment with an adjacent public square as part of the proposal.

We will draw heavily on precedents to learn from, making large scale physical sectional models to study and test ideas. Students will be expected to work in various scales and resolutions, from 1:200 to 1:50 minimum.

It aims to be an active studio where students will learn to actively, systematically and critically analyse other students’ work with the objective of healthy peer critique, fostering a strong studio culture.