Studio + Residence, Vaughan Springs

Full description

RESEARCH BACKGROUND
The Vaughan Springs Studio + Residence examines the architectural opportunities of living lightly on the landscape. It considers a field of scholarship that values site knowledge and its impact on the design process. It also examines the impact of dynamic processes and events of inhabitation. The design responds to the site, in the small rural town of Vaughan Springs in Central Victoria.

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION
This project expresses how site knowledge is generated through on-site and off-site operations. Occupying the edge of a terrace carved from the ground, the studio and residence is a small building in a big landscape featuring remnant walls and fragments of infrastructure. The architectural design of the project mediates between the transitory elements of a place and a work, evolving throughout its lifetime to create a unique architectural response.

RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE
The Vaughan Springs Studio + Residence model was included in the Abundant exhibition at the Australian Pavilion Venice Biennale of Architecture, 2008, and featured in the accompanying Australian Institute of Architects (AIA) publication (p. 231). The research featured in a public lecture titled Transitory Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture + Design, Hochshule Wismar, Germany, 2003. The lecture was presented to the public at Leopold Franzen University Innsbruck, Austria. It prompted Black's invitation to assume a Visiting Professorship at Innsbruck in 2007. It was also presented at the 2009 Robertson Memorial Lecture at Curtin University of Technology (mentioned in the Australian Design Review).