Dark Heritage

This studio questions: how can architectural projects critically deal with sites of historical harms? How are these histories currently narrated within their memorializations and reuse, and what would a more honest treatment of such sites entail architecturally whilst also leaving room for new future uses and narratives? To integrate this, Pentridge Prison - a site of former colonial incarceration, closed in 1997, and recently redeveloped into a new urban precinct - has been interrogated as both a case study and site for speculative spatial intervention.

Through conducting critical readings of the site’s history and significance, as well as its present day reuse, students develop architectural projects which can question, challenge and critically frame these histories, whilst also suggesting new future uses for the site. Moving from explorations into architectures of memorialisation, students combine material observations taken from site visits with critical framing of historical analysis to propose a pavilion scale architecture which can act as both a counter-monument and a tool to reframe how the former prison is narrated and conceived.

Studio Leaders: Mark Romei