Monash Art, Design and Architecture Graduate Exhibition 2023
One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it. - Anton Chekhov
Chekhov’s Gun is a studio that investigates the threshold between the whimsical world of theatre and performance and architecture as a practice. It asks students to interpret, translate and transform extra-disciplinary material in the context of built form. The studio develops student’s skills in interpreting multidisciplinary media; film, text, news, art and music as a basis of architectural intervention.
Students have produced architectural outcomes that interpret and analyse this media, which were then embedded into the context of the site - the Palace Theatre. By separating the design process into pieces, there is a simultaneous zooming out and shifting of hierarchy - developing and demonstrating skills in both small interventions and larger civic gestures.
The studio argues that a multitude of stories can and should coexist within a place, and that an architects’ intervention lies within the context of many overlapping voices and histories. By encouraging students to actively participate in an outcome of many parts, they have developed skills in embedding their work within layered social and built environments.
Studio Leaders: Eilidh Ross and Alexis Infeld
