Josh Robinson
The architecture factory draws on the work of Superstudio and, in particular; their projects that offer people a novel freedom of use, as well as their sense that architecture was irredeemably constrained by its dependence on external economic forces.
The problems they identified are still present; being an architecture student opens your eyes to the significance of the spaces we inhabit, yet having any authorship over such spaces is a privilege only available to a wealthy few.
Hence the architecture factory; a project that wants people to have a hand in their living spaces. It provides the facilities for a kind of DIY architecture and tries its hardest to convince people to use them.

Factory Materiality

The building is highly tectonic with expressed connections and structure, so that users have some reference for how they may put together whatever they are producing.

Rental Property Disruption

The strategy the factory is designed around: the production of flat-packed components that could be assembled in a rental property, allowing people to reconfigure the spaces of the house.

Free Architecture!

Providing the programs to produce these objects is one thing, getting people to use them is more challenging. Therefore, attracting attention and communicating to park-goers is fundamental to the architectural concept. ‘Free architecture’ means ‘architecture that costs nothing’, but also ‘liberate architecture’. Both resonate with what this project aims to achieve.

Queen Victoria Park

The building is located in the park opposite the NGV, forming a disruption in a public place where people who perhaps more readily see the value in this kind of autonomous architecture are likely to be. The building is in a visual dialogue with statues of two monarchs; placing an architecture studio and a showroom on the queen and king’s plinth. This is primarily to communicate to anyone else who may encounter the building, that to use this program elevates the user to a powerful position.

Ground Floor Plan

Telling people how to produce architecture is not in the spirit of this project. If you are tempted inside, you are provided typical spaces for producing architecture, but there is no orderly sequence from studio, to workshop, to installation; there is no uniform circulation diagram. Rather, it is up to the user to decide how to make their own architecture.

Showroom

An object the factory may produce is displayed as if its introduction into the house is something revolutionary or ground-breaking, literally blowing the conventional living room apart. Even if this object does something quite mundane, the purpose is to communicate that what can be done with these programs is significant; that it is a small step towards a larger ideal of individual autonomy.
Back to top