Ghost Town

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Research background: In 2013, the City of Melbourne set a competitive Expression of Interest process to find suitable artists/designers to exhibit work at the Platform Public Contemporary Art Space at the Degraves subway, Melbourne. The proposal by John Doyle and Laura Mártires (Index Architecture), was awarded the right to occupy the space for the month of February 2013. The 'Ghost Town' proposal included the selection and curation of contributions by 11 emerging architecture practices including Edmund Carter & Catherine Ranger, MUSK Studio, Searle x Waldron, Kart Projects, Architecture Architecture, Tessellate, Branch Studio, Bild Architecture, Freadman White, Wowowa & Index Architecture. Research contribution: Ghost Town contributed to design research by providing a platform for the exposition and exhibition of the unbuilt work of emerging practices. This included unsuccessful competition entries and preliminary iterations of built work that have been discarded through the design process. Exhibitors were invited to exhibit a physical fragment of an unbuilt project, and attempt to animate the installation through the course of the exhibition. This a novel approach to exhibiting architecture which is generally presented as static images. Doyle's contrbituion was a fragment of an unbuilt library in Korea. A sectional model takes over the entire cabinet, animated with live plants, giving passers-by an insight into what the space would be like had it been built. Research significance: 'Ghost Town' was the first emerging architecture and design show at Platform, a long-established and influential exhibition space that had previously only shown artists. The space, in a commuter subway under Flinders Street station, attracts thousands of people each day. The exhibition was reviewed by Katelin Butler in Architecture Australia, 22 Feb 2013. Butler wrote that this type of pop-up exhibition was vital to "the promotion of architectural ideas to the general public".