Arizona

The studio will begin in a trans-pacific study of arid regions in both Australia and the USA Southwest. Examining precedent studies of large scale arid infrastructural pasts and futures across between Arizona and Australia, the studio will support students interested in architecture in a global world, where architectures connect and communicate across individual national boundaries.

Exploring experimental earthen architecture, adobe, clays, sands, mounds, the studio will link to chemistry of novel material aggregates for shaping form from dirt and ground. We intend to examine earthen technologies, both ancient and futuristic, linking to sciences of geotechnical engineering, earth, connecting with geotechnical disciplines in practice in Australia through lectures.

Sculpture, monuments, ground and groundwater internationally, each of these frameworks and fields support projects that look at the relationships between architecture, infrastructural function and monumentality.

We will design a phytoremediation plant for the Menindee Lakes, configuring and inventing both a machine for filtration and remediation and also the building that houses and accommodates use, maintenance and operation.

The studio will engage actively in the invention of new materials. Coursework will support a breadth of new skills in digital and physical design workflows to do with earth. Students will design and invent their own material systems that drive their architecture.

Studio Leader: Charlotte Algie