Australian Institute of Architects_ MA|A (National Architecture Week)_(Film
and Architecture Group:CINESCAPES w Delia Teschendorff & Helen Stutton _ www.deliateschendorff.com.au)
For MAA 2011 I curated the following program:
ACMI _ Mediatheque Project 2011
The Shape & Form of Home [Melbourne + Beyond]
The theme of this year’s MA|A (National
Architecture Week) is “home”, in terms of architecture and the city what could
this mean? Helen Gibson wrote, almost 10 years ago, that she thought the
problem with urban planning and design in Australia was that it did not engage
with the people who are indented to live in these, proposed, spaces.
In what ways does the form of the city
shape our experience of home? What is home _ are we referring to the central
city of Melbourne or the house where we live? Perhaps both - the two being
intertwined and interconnected, what shapes and forms will Melbourne take? - will we continue to sprawl or densify? - how else could we live?
How do you live? What do you want your
home, at an architectural and urban scale, to be like?
The following films tell different ways of
how we have lived and do live in Melbourne and other places - perhaps we can
take all our experiences and ideas to suggest how we might live. What shapes
and forms do we want Melbourne [home] to be? And how do we want to live in
theses spaces?
Helen Gibson “Planning and Communicating
to Achieve Sustainable Strategies” in Take 1: Urban Solutions: Propositions for
the Future Australian City, Editors Michael
Keniger, Geoffrey London, Carey Lyon Ian McDougall Stuart Niven, Peter
Williams, The Royal Australian Institute of Architects, Canberra, 2002.
HOME (2007) 2.25 Zephlyn Neilsen
this film asks is it physical or
something intangible?
OLYMPIC GAMES, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA 1956
(1956/1999) 9.41 Straford
Brothers
filmed during the games and edited in
late ‘90s the film takes us back and also connects us to a more recent
Melbourne – collectively linking us all through images of central Melbourne
(& Sport!). The Pool, by architects McIntyre, Boland, Murphy & Murphy, has
a starting role - the images of which are beautiful.
A PLACE TO LIVE A PLACE TO LIVE (1972) 10.43 Aust. Gov.
describes to migrants the housing
options in Melbourne & Australia in the early 1970s.
WORLD TO CONQUER (1952) 6.06 Frank & John Straford
takes us to a suburban home with
backyard in the 1950s – it brilliantly references classic Hollywood and the
silent tradition and it is an outer space experience.
NARRAPUMELAP (1974/2007) 3.42 Gracemary Cumming & Grace
MacGugan
describes the experience of a home – in
between states – an almost empty house with strong experienciential memories.
TRIPOLI, MELBOURNE, ME! (2007) 2:07 Dania Dabliz
describes, two homes, Dania Dabliz tell
us what it is to emigrate for her, she also talks about city shapes – density
& sprawl – and the experience of these city types.
FROGGIE (2001) 12.22
Joan Robinson
describes and shows the importance of
place lived and how types of living change over time – the young girls in the
share house are a new addition to Brunswick, not so much seen in the 1950s.
MARVELOUS MELBOURNE 1910 (various)
this film takes us all back to a place -
1910 only 75 years, since white settlement (1935) – at the beginning of the
gold rush era - in the 1850s - people would have held in living memory a “Melbourne”
as home that figured differently, and not in an insignificant way, these
experiences of home should also be considered in any proposals we have, in
looking presently and forward, for Melbourne as home.
Louise Mackenzie_copyright_2011
