Month: April 2017

2004

Cope St., Alexandria, Sydney

Today 2/6/09 it was reported that the oceans are becoming more acidic. This is yet another in a series of markers on the road to irreversible damage of our environment.

So do we raise the bar?

Do we build a parasite bar in a laneway?

The bar being a reading of the depth of water as the ice-caps melt.

At 7m meters Underwood Street will be flooded with tidal surges and the flotsam and jetsam of our civilisation. As a collaboration the work combines the landscape of weather with the physicality of the architecture of catastrophe and the technology of games.

The bar responds to visiting crowds and their collective inaction with the force of virtual weather. This weather projected through digital beamers and broadcast through sound speakers in the installation builds in its ferocity as a response to increasing numbers.

Wing House plays on wing as a metaphor both as aeroplane and as eagle, perched on the cliff’s edge with wings outstretched.

The topographical extremes of the Table Cape site meant that Wing House was to hover, with only its claws penetrating deep into the ground.

“I like the idea of attaching things… Here was a situation where the site was so extreme the building becomes a little bit like a parasite, clinging for survival to this edge. And it didn’t take long for the metaphor of flight to come up. You stand there in the wind with your arms out and you’re almost doing the building.”

2010

Elizabeth Bay Rd., Elizabeth Bay, Sydney

2004

Cope St., Alexandria, Sydney

 

The “Cope Street Parasite” public art project is a site specific interaction with Cracknell and Lonergan’s new apartment block in Waterloo. The apartment block design is elegantly modernist with simple rectilinear geometry. Lonergan often delights in strong primary colours which find expression in this scheme with strong reds to the base of the building. This design strategy links a social agenda and engagement with the streetscape and includes an undercroft café. The sculpture works both with the building and the scale of the street. Its site specific character relates directly to the building and its context in the following ways:

The sculpture meets the building on its own terms. Together they make a new synthesis and give new meaning to the term site-specific. Every parasite structure reacts in a different way to its context and the nature of the built form. It also reacts to the public program associated with the building.

The shapes of the sculpture are derived from spheres and ovoids, sliced to create façade shells. This contrast of geometry enhances and draws attention to the building. The sculpture is more fluid and expressive than the building and in keeping with the nature of the street. One highlights the other.

The scale of the work is in keeping with the scale of the building. No parts of the work protrude above or below the building structure.