Temporary Democracies highlights a landscape in flux, capturing the latent possibilities contained in the construction, destruction and reconstruction of an urban master plan. As the site moves between states of ruination and renewal it provides opportunities for experimenting with spaces in transition. This essay explores how the works connect to Radical and Utopian Architectural Strategies that subvert the master plan and create new alternatives.

The destruction of the status quo manifested in concrete forms is not new. For architectural Historian Charles Jencks, the death of the Modernist project itself can be pinpointed exactly to “3.32 pm July 15, 1972”  – the moment the Minoru Yamasaki’s housing project of Pruitt Igoe was intentionally detonated forever.[1]

This high-rise estate, built in 1956 was initially lauded as a shining example of high density public housing design, yet only 20 years later, it had fallen into poor condition. The mounting crime and social problems were all blamed on the effects of it “Modernist” design. From Haussmann’s sweeping demolition of the slums of Paris, to the erasure and development boom in China – the destruction of urban areas has been at the forefront of planning and progress.

Architecture has been integral in envisioning new ways of life, and it is through architecture that attempts for a Utopian ideal can be made concrete. Historically there have been many plans and blueprints for building ideal cities yet most utopian spatial designs, in keeping with the notion of Utopia’s neologism of the “no-place”—and the “good place”—have firmly remained in the imagination.

Critics argue that once realised, these creations fall solely into the dystopian camp. Ebenezer Howard’s “Garden City” became the unsustainable suburban sprawl, and Modernist architectural visions eventuated into low income, crime riddled housing estates on a global scale.[2]

Historic Precedents by the Avant-garde

The value of demolition versus preservation was a point of contention for the avant-gardists whose ideas for social change centred on urban elements and who often came into conflict with the city and its historical buildings. The Futurists believed that the ideal city was one that was to be built anew by each generation: “Take up your pickaxes…and wreck, wreck the venerable cities, pitilessly” – Marinetti wrote in the Futurist manifesto in 1909. Similarly, Le Corbusier wrote that “The city is crumbling; it cannot last much longer, its time is past”.[3] In opposition to this call for total destruction, the Situationist’s theory of a unitary urbanism and the Dérive resisted renewal; their imagined society of homo-ludens, with their emphasis on adventure and play, needed old and ruined spaces of mystery and spontaneity in which to play their game of life. In Theory of the Dérive, Debord wrote of “slipping by night into houses undergoing demolition…wandering in subterranean catacombs forbidden to the public”.[4]

Current utopian theory has begun to include new definitions for utopian urbanism and notions of an adaptable city, one that incorporates an open-ended agenda that encourages experiments and change indefinitely. Looking deeper, one can detect a strain of urban thinking that incorporates the dynamic and the fluid into planning ideas. In Architecture from the Outside, Elizabeth Grosz explores time and process within architecture. Grosz acknowledges the problems of the over-controlled and ideal utopian space and argues, “The task for architecture, as for philosophy, is not to settle on utopias, models, concrete ideals, but instead to embark on the process of endless questioning”. [5]

Temporary Democracies

The artists in Temporary Democracies use what can be seen as radical and utopian architectural strategies in their work to explore the potentialities of the Airds/Bradbury site under transition.

These tactics, when performed under the guise of architectural and artistic “provocations”, use the urban landscape as an experimental field on which to play.  They have taken the city and its sites at a particular moment in time and developed alternative spatial conditions, creatively re-using the abandoned program. It is a radical adaptation of the found and a re-working of the built environment.

Demolition is highly unsustainable and wasteful of resources, denying the embodied energy of an existing building. The artists selected find alternatives by adapting and recycling buildings and housing stock for new uses. In particular, Mobile Cooking Heath by Robert Guth and the Airds Men’s Shed involves the adaptive reuse of former elements of demolished housing blocks, creating a nomadic kitchen trailer.

Following in the footsteps of the avant-garde utopian urbanists, other works involve a direct engagement with the ruins and critical spatial practices of a changing master plan.

Lachlan Anthony and Benjamin Forster’s lighting installations literally casts the city and its ruins into a new light, elevating their appearance to one that is monumental and transformative, and capturing the fleeting moment. Darren Bells slide projections activate traditionally stagnant building forms by turning them into sites of spectacle and contemplation.

Bennett Miller’s work addresses the inflexibility and rigidity of housing within a master plan, by humorously engaging communities with the Myer Briggs personality test.

Using the elements of play and humour (and echoing the spirit of British architectural pranksters Archigram), David Cross makes use of underutilised recreational spaces for the enactment of Skyblind, a football game involving inflatable headgear and teamwork.

Empty spaces mean flexible spaces, and artist Bindy Cole plays with the set, consumerist program usually associated with the shopping centre or mall. In an act of detournement she creates a photobooth in the partly shut centre, for the residents to use. Similarly Kate Mitchell’s video “Future Fallout” captures a community in transition.

Urban Provocations

The Temporary Democracies projects all occur in these spaces of transition and work with the disruption of a given program – a crack in the plan. Here, the site is used as a laboratory to experiment with new uses. These projects regard the gaps as vital, enabling time and adaptation to be included in the future of the urban realm. In essence by retaining the un-built, the empty, the forgotten and the residual these projects invite time back into the design process.

Facilitating intentional urban provocations to disrupt the inflexibility of the master plan hints at what a new expanded utopian imagination could be. The ideal lies not in one absolute, but in the process of experimenting with urban prototypes.

By curating and facilitating urban provocations, it is possible to unleash experiments that contribute to a new kind of urbanism, ones that continues to strive for the “good-place” but avoids the restrictions and dead-end streets of the grand master plan.

For the future city to sustain, it needs to be open to adaptation, to flexibility and change, and to time and transformation. Architecture needs to become as mercurial as the forces of nature and the flux of human, social activities.