Urban Islands: The Mid-Review

July 21, 20093 Comments Tagged: architecture, ballistic, fabric, feedback, material, random, remix, studio, Urban Islands, urbanislands

Yesterday I was graciously invited by Joanne to come in and sit in on the Urban Islands mid-review. It is midway through the 2 week workshops, so the instructors and their studios were presenting how the progress was going.

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Update: You can read the full review of Mette's studio, and Mark's studio here.
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I found my way to the studio just before 10 to a smattering of students, and all manner of pieces of material, wood, paper and concrete. It was like a cross between an art studio, and a mad scientist's lab. From the looks of things, the students had been working like crazy since I had last seen them, and there was certainly some interesting stuff going on.

Before long we all grouped together and were taken through the proposed projects by Mette's groups, complete with demonstrations of working prototypes and semi-finished pieces. All the groups in this studio are working loosely in the realm of fabric and material. There was a lot covered, and some very interesting work (and even more interesting ideas) and I will be covering the specifics for each of the studios over the next couple of days.

Mark's studio was next, working under the title ballistics, but thinking in terms of the concept of drawing in many ways. There were again some interesting concepts, and it will be really interesting to see how they all come to fruition as the week progresses. If they are completed as they are imagined, they will truly be something to experience.

After a break for lunch (well I went and had lunch, I am SURE some of the students merely used the time to complete some more work) we were back to see what Geoff's studio had been up to.

I found Geoff's studio particularly interesting, with the work so far taking quite a graphic approach - almost perfectly in the vein of what we cover at Design+Build. I won't go into the specifics just yet (more on that later) but he has had his students working on presenting different aspects and traits of the island, to the end of essentially remixing these traits into their final project.

We were briefly interrupted by the urgent need to evacuate the building. No explanation as given for the siren, and our quick exit - but it was nice to get some fresh air, and in some ways clear some brain space for later on.

Once we were allowed back in the building, Geoff's studio finished presenting their progress and everyone trickled back to what they were working on. The students now have till the end of the week to get their projects finished and all ready for the closing day out on the Island, this Saturday.

Interspersed throughout the day were little bits of feedback and suggestion from the instructors and organisers. There was such a wealth of wisdom and creative thought in the room, that concepts and ideas were flying around the room at a crazy rate. Ideas being built on and critiqued on the fly, suggestions being made to the students on how to expand and improve their projects.

The overall push was for the students to be thinking in a twofold manner. To be imagining the impossible, really stretching what they were going to suggest and present, but at the same time bring a huge sense of reality to these impossibilities as they were really going to happen, or perhaps already had.

I have some more photos from the day over on flickr and I will be writing more detailed rundowns on each of the studios over the next couple of days.

If you're going to be in Sydney on Saturday (25th July) I would highly recommend you try and make it out to Cockatoo Island for the Review Day, where architects, artist and other guests will be presented with the work from the studios and be discussing it. You can find out more about that here.

Hope to see you there.

UPDATE:
For further reading, Nick (one of the students involved) has posted more about the mid-review over here.