Constructive Dialogue
This morning, we walked over to a small firm that focuses on social projects in Australia, Constructive Dialogue. We met with one of the firm’s principals, Nick Seeman, who gave us a short presentation about the firm and the work they’ve done. The firm seeks to generate built form by determining how a building can work as a social entity, claiming that there is no point to design something without a positive social impact. Without this impact, architecture simply becomes a large piece of sculpture. The firm is fairly young, having opened 10 years ago and starting their first major project, which is still in progress, in 2005.
Before telling us about the firm, Nick’s first action was to have us all look at a photo and sketch a quick diagram speaking about social interaction within the photo. It was sort of a surprise that he asked us to do this, but a cool activity to get us all thinking a bit differently about what we were looking at.
Meeting with Nick again hit home the idea that architecture should be much more than aesthetics and iconic form. They now have 5 main clients, mostly not for profit organizations, for whom they have done small projects and renovations. Speaking with him, you realize that he’s part of a group that looks at architecture differently than a lot of people. Looking for the positives in even the worst spaces before tearing anything down, Constructive Dialogue seeks to retain as much of the building as they can, focusing on adaptive reuse, sustainability and social aspects of design. A really well-rounded firm with the best intentions for humans and nature, Constructive Dialogue should be an influence to any design students.
At this point, meeting with people like Nick and Paul and the architects of Tonkin Zulaihka Greer, I realize how lucky I am to have these experiences and realize what I could do as an architect, work that can actually make a difference in the world, architecture with a small “a” as they call it here. It’s really awesome to see people whose entire design philosophy revolves around helping others and preserving the environment.
After Constructive Dialogue, we walked over to the university to meet with Michael and have lunch, then we met with an artist from a local ARI, Bill and George (named for the streets surrounding it). The artist was Rebecca Conroy, a writer and divisor of contemporary artwork for the ARI. She gave us a good deal of information about what an ARI can be and the things they need in terms of spaces, people, etc. After this meeting, Adrian met us at the Uni and gave a short presentation about contemporary art as a follow up to the first presentation that had no images. Her and Michael then left for a UNSW College of Fine Arts radio broadcast and left us to work out some ideas of what our projects could be and what directions we may choose. Michael came back later to speak to us about our ideas. We finally left studio around 7 or so after a pretty long day, but we finally have some sense of a project starting. Don’t forget, this project is due in 2 and a half weeks now.
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