Winning entry for the UTS School of Architecture Revamp
The School of the Clash will critique the current model of governing the Architecture school. The way the school relates to the field of architecture and the context of Sydney will be questioned. The renovation of the school will emphasize the development of a new culture of negotiations within the school over the branding of its facilities. The intervention explores a broad context, which involves urban, architectural, managerial, pedagogical and material confrontations. The revamped building mediates with the city through a strong geometrical insertion, whereby the university reclaims an active presence and also suggests an active role for the school in the cultural and political future of Sydney.
The fragmentation that currently occurs within the school between different ideologies will be embraced. The dialogue between different institutions within the school will be brought out from behind closed doors. The school becomes democratised in a constant process of negotiation where studios, bureaucracy and practitioners must periodically redefine their relationships to each other in a space that treats these once isolated entities as equals. Assemblages of typologies are brought together in new ways – reprogrammed as dialectical battle learning devices – in order to question the landscape of multiple micro-paradigms currently reigning in the school. Academics, post-masters and students alike must question their “positioning” within the field as an integral part of their education. These positions must be defined on a “compass” which is negotiated in alignment with shifts in the relevant discourse of the time. The School becomes a microcosm of the contemporary field.
The School of the Clash will incorporate experimental models of practice to both contribute to the school’s autonomy beyond the bureaucracy of the university and fill the current gap that exists between traditional notions of education and practice. The proposed post-masters program does not propose integration with the existing notion of practice, rather, alternatives to it. This program will grant “resident practices” continued mentorship and buffer the associated costs of practice while also contributing to the education of students and the dialogue within the school.
