THICK AIR

“In alarming proportions, beauty, silence, astonishment, inspiration, magic, sorcery, enchantment, and also serenity have disappeared from architecture entirely; however, all of these have found a familiar place in my soul.”
--- Luis Barragan

Thick Air was a perceptual laboratory, where each experiment focused on developing sensitive awareness to colour, light, and time. The concept – the primacy of the idea – was abandoned, and in its place, all design workwas run through a series of processes, or experiments. The focus was on breaking apart and understanding spatial atmospheres as a major medium in architecture, to create dynamic compositions composed of light, and to choreograph the movement of bodies and imaginations.

This studio took students to the valleys of the Victorian Alpine region to breath the mountain air and to learn how to see the colours of the world. It was a tonic, and an intensive for remembering all that was forgotten and neglected during lockdown. It involved a series of sketch designs culminating in a final proposition for accommodation, a spatial sculpture, and an Onsen, to be integrated into a 100-year-old walnut farm in the foothills of Mt Buffalo.