Team 9 - 72 hours begins… Day 1

It was a beautiful start to Day 1 - sunny and still...(or so we thought)!

Team 9 (SH10.K) received our brief for site 4:

Urban / Stitch:

Sculpture thoroughfare

Fixing, a temporary procedure to affix one to another,make mend or join something, suture.

Your challenge is to create a weave using the existing threads to offer an alternative experience to the thoroughfare.

You are required to tap into the physical and invisible site conditions.

You must consider the dynamics of time; Eg, night and day, site conditions, seasons etc.

Our Site:

Is really interesting! A thoroughfare between the two National Australia Bank buildings linking Bourke St to the Harbour, along Captain's Walk. Although our site is outside (has an open roof), unless you actually look up you might not even realise this? It feels very enclosed and separated from the outside world. It is a transitory space, almost entirely surrounded by the built form and its main occupants are office workers coming to and from their buildings. Our space is not highly visible to the public from the Harbour and completely invisible from Bourke St. It is however, extremely visible from the office floors above with any meeting rooms and corridors overlooking our site.

We spent a lot of time walking around the site and talking with office workers and general passers by.

There were some really key elements that stood out to us:

- Even when it is calm and still outside, within our site there is always wind. Wind comes in from both directions. There is even a ‘wind door’. When this is down the main circulation is through a small revolving door.

- It’s dark and cold with no life and all hard paving.

- Our site has slope and framed harbour views. It is mostly office circulation, and a smoking corner.

Ideas:

We talked about A LOT. in brief...

- Connections: bottom to top, left to right and through, the need to attract and distract people into our site, the idea of bring people in and spitting people back out. Do we want to create a usable space?

- The relationship and different experiences of Bourke Street and the Harbour boardwalk - what is the role of our thourougfare/corridor/ system

- Wind and sound. Stitching people together, stitching people to place.

- Work versus play, the head versus the heart, creating different environments

Of all our discussions and ideas we keep coming back to one main natural element which we think distinguishes our site from others. Wind. At 6:30pm we are still talking! We love the idea of the energy of wind, and turning wind into a physical entity. But all we’ve really figured out is that we are all just full of hot air!