Site 8: Team X - THE INHABITABLE SKIN final photos

SITE 8: Team X - The Inhabitable Skin

Site 8: Team X - THE CONCEPT

“I fall into the ocean..”

There is a lack of connection between the water and the ground plane. The shadows are reaching down to the waters edge and spilling out to the sea.

Hour by hour, we mark the shadow lines along the ground plane positioning the site within its context and laying down roots. Short observational films capturing sensory moments of these interfaces are embedded via QR codes along the lines.

A measure of time is created that also becomes a positioning device, operating as a net and a surface to record the collective voice. Instead of appealing to the question of ‘what do you want?’, we seek to appeal to the question of ‘how do you feel?’.

Get down on their knees in their business suits and write.

“excuse me, where can I get a good coffee around here?”

A chance encounter with a stranger passing though the site within minutes of us first arriving and the question ‘where can I get a good coffee around here’ had us stumped. The humbling search by this man for the warmth and familiarity that only a decent coffee can provide on a wintery Melbourne morning, hooked us to the site in a way that was otherwise missing.

Our intervention sought to break the rigidity of the space and float above the materiality creating a second skin to the site and allowing for the symbolic coffee cup to act as the vessel for a collective mass.

Pinched and folded, the ground elevates and creates a new dynamism and form. The cellular nature of this new topography allows an artful choreography of the cupped surface.

Flexible, raw, sustainable. A sinuous new material is introduced that generates an organic new skin. Warping and twisting off the horizontal plane, in real time on site, contrasting with the rigid and sharp architecture. A bulge in the ground plane was born.

This installation allows us to float above the horizontal plane, opening and revealing a new presence for this space within the imaginations of the people who use it most.

Lapping metres below and stretching beneath the concrete surface of the site, water defines the Docklands. Our installation seeks to bring the water onto the ground plane as opposed to being limited to a visual presence. Soil and water become a sequence of cells across our new skin, and bring a tactility and softness to the site otherwise starved of both.

An undulating skin of human scaled containers suspend the very matter that we felt was the most untouchable within the site. Soil and water. Planter beds and containerised trees float significantly above the pavement in almost every instance. The presence of soil on the site is symbolic of the future potential of the Docklands second generation.

A layer of seedlings is incised into the new skin, and bleeds onto the concrete. A playful transaction between residents and the installation is established by the taking of seedling cups. The domesticity of the herb, in this instance mint and parsley, is made portable, made permanent, and taken home. The object is renowned.

Site 8, Team X: Timelapse

TEAM X: Site 8 - Making

Team X met early in the 44th hour of the 72 hour Landscape Urbanism design challenge. In a small room in Urban Central we sit on bunk beds and sprawl on the floor and review our progress and discuss as a group the overarching theoretical elements informing our incision into Site 8 @ Docklands. We talk about our individual interpretations of our work and discuss how we feel about the design. The shared con

versationat the beginning of the day ensures we are all in agreement with the direction of our project and are committed to the demanding task of continuing the construction process. Our team departs from room 324 of our shared accommodation and we fragment into smaller groups - moving to the site, to source material and to Shed 4.

At Site 8 the structural form of our design is weaved & wired & glued & tied into shape. A skeleton for the synthetic skin of our design rises up from the cold expanse of concrete upon which Site 8 is situated, the organic structure Team X is creating captures the attention of passing residents and visitors throughout the day - as we work we are all invited to discuss our design and the project. We are pleased and somewhat suprised by the extent of community engagement and the level of curiosity the public are demonstrating, instigating questions to the 10 of us as we construct the design in our white plastic overalls.

"What are you doing..."

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING.."(yelled to us from a 3rd floor balcony)

"Is it a whale you're building..?

'Mate, Is that a model of an enlarged prostate?"(we decided to interpret this as a weirdly flattering question).

"What's going on here..?

and on and on the questions came. The curiosity and comments were entirely positive - not one derisive comment on the project or the design was expressed. We felt this spoke of an underlying desire from the public that they WANTED to see creative activity happening in the site. Team X is asking one another what will groups from the 40,000 strong football crowd make of the project as they head to the bars and restaurants surrounding Site 8 after the game. Hmm....

Some members are considering camping out all night to protect our baby from any possible attack - while others of us think our project needs to defend itself and prove it can survive in the world without our constant care. My God, being a parent is hard work because we can't help but love and want to protect our baby from the destructive elements in the real world!

In the 50th hours of the competition you would have seen Team X filling & tieing sandbags. Who would have thought tieing sandbags would prove to be such an unpleasant task? You would have seen Team X drilling & cable tieing bamboo and fitting netting over the form. The construction process proved a need to be responsive to the materials and to let the nature of the bamboo guide us as we constructed the form throughout the day.

TEAM X: Site 8 - Layer 2

Team X meets early at HQ and plans how to attack the design process today. We realise we are in combat against time. Splinter groups break off to hunt down various resources and bring them back to the site. The site is occupied all day by some of the team as they record the shadow lines of the surrounding built form from sunrise to sunset. The Shed 4 contingent research materials on line and debate the intervention's functionality and durability and safety with the site engineer and calculate costings. "Between the idea and the reality falls the shadow" (T S Elliot).

The elegant conceptual design is reformed and restructured to independently exist in actual form in the specific site. The process of firing the design is super-heated by the strictures of time. The process of Team X burning away the impractical and impossible design details to reveal a robust yet elegant design takes the entire day and will be an ongoing process requiring all team members to endure the necessary heat.

Moments of joy and relief punctuate the day for Team X as specific elements of the design are resolved and solved. Team X increasingly shed their individual egos and merge into a cohesive force with a single goal - to realize a shared design dream. A synergistic energy radiates through team X as the construction process begins under a cold wind but a glorious golden orange sunset.

TEAM X: SITE 8 - Materiality

TEAM X: SITE 8 - Gestation

Team X shuffles out of Urban Central in the cold Melbourne morning and makes its way to Docklands, adding 10 more members to the other 90 white jump suited participants gathering by the waters edge. Do passing motorists wonder if a newly formed cult has come to worship the cow in the tree,100 believers awaiting some divine bovine inspiration? Perhaps we really are a newly formed cult seeking some new understanding.

We are given our brief and the location of our site. Our intent is to cut & fold the surface, opening & revealing to create an inhabitable skin. Our uniforms of white plastic overalls befit the emergency surgery we must now undertake on our site.

The siren sounds and all 100 participants run to their site. Team X bigness to test their site, measuring the parameters, mapping the groundplane with their bodies, walking, sitting, looking, talking, posing, ideas start percolating.

The excitement of physically exploring the site transforms as the 10 of us quietly sit together and absorb it, thinking about the project. Ideas start percolating and we head back to the industrial cavern of Shed 4 where the trace paper is rolled out after lunch and the conversation begins in earnest.

The conversations intensify - how do we realise the intervention? What do we want to generate and build? What do we want to avoid creating? Egos emerge - ideas are debated - and take on a life of their own - ideas are torn apart and discarded- new ideas are thrown down on the table and interrogated - former ideas reappear evolving into hybrid designs - a Frankenstein stitched together starts to take on a life of its own. The monster idea gets cut up - cosmetically enhanced and emerges as something elegant and functioning.

Final agreement? - a design concept has taken form for which there is shared agreement & shared excitement in the team. There is a sigh of relief as we realise that no one felt compelled to pull out a tazer or start stabbing anyone with a stanley knife in the process of realising this concept. Birth is never an easy process.