Curating the Void

The Deer Park Explosive Factory is a site with a contested industrial history. Arguably a historically important site for Melbourne, it was the first site that produced dynamite for the gold fields in the late 1800s creating the wealth that lead to Melbourne’s formation and prosperity as a city. However, it was also a destructive landscape where some workers lost their lives.

Now, remediation works aim to cleanse the site of its manufacturing history and resulting contamination. The site is being wiped clean and is at risk of losing its history and memories that gave the site its identity.

It is a site on the precipice of change where its history could be forgotten.

As the buildings and landscape of the explosive factory no longer act as a physical repository of monuments to the site’s industrial history, the studio explores how architecture can navigate the complex terrain of the site, identity, and memory in a period of environmental, economic, and social transition.

The studio will consider the site's complex context through an architectural project that responds to the past and emerging history of the site. Emphasis will be placed on the subjective experience of the site, the aesthetics of place, and the pragmatics of space. Ethnographic mapping, abstract orthographic drawing, narrative-based text, and, physical model-making are key explorative and representational tools that will be used to uncover the hidden histories of the site.