HTML [Heliotope Tactical Metabolism Laboratory]

Metabolism: the chemical processes that occur within a living organism in order to maintain life.

Ecology: the branch of biology dealing with the relations and interactions between organisms and their environment, including other organisms.

The Fishermans Bend precinct can be seen as a discrete entity, an organism that continually produces an array of fabricated matter, gases, ideas and other by-products. The HTML studio asked - What are these by-products? How can they be collected and metabolised, so that resources circulate to create an ecological system?

Over semester, students investigated the resources produced in the precinct, testing their chosen material through a series of proto-typing exercises, and proposed interjections that build on the existing system that produces it to improve the ‘biodiversity’ of Fishermans Bend.

Through rigorous studies and mappings of Fishermans Bend, students learned of the forces and systems that have acted on the precinct and proposed methods for amplifying or redirecting their trajectory, whilst exploring their predictions of the future condition of the area.

Students undertook a systematic depiction of time at different scales, from embedding mapping to detail drawing; from 1:1000 - 1:1; in this way exploring how architecture can evolve a future that continues, amplifies or forces a divergence in the city’s growth patterns.

Studio Leaders: Jane Caught and Samuel Torre