PRESENTATION TO PIA : THE CREATIVE USE OF CONFLICT

Understanding Art Architecture and Urban Design and how it relates to planning

Malcolm Middleton : Queensland Government Architect

Ove

Arup

MAJOR CHANGE IMPACTS

– ECONOMIC

– POLITICAL

– TECHNOLOGY

– PROCUREMENT

– PLANNING

Design thinking is not just an exercise that is particular to

architects – there is transferable power within

design to influence other disciplines. I’ve learned that

while ethics seeks reconciliation of group conflicts,

design makes creative use of conflicts. This

means that the design thinking that architects embody is

not a luxury for society – it is a necessity.

Victoria Beach – Mayor of Carmel , California.

Portrait Project in Melbourne – Grocon / ARM

‘WE SHAPE OUR BUILDINGS AND AFTERWARDS

OUR BUILDINGS SHAPE US’

Winston Churchill

‘On the night of May 10.1941, with one of the last bombs

of the last serious raid our House of Commons was

destroyed by the violence of the enemy and we have

now to consider whether we should build up again, and

how and when. WE SHAPE OUR BUILDINGS AND

AFTERWARDS OUR BUILDINGS SHAPE US. Having

dwelt and served for more the forty years in the late

Chamber, and having derived great pleasure and

advantage therefrom, I, naturally, should like to see it

restored in all essentials to its old form, convenience and

dignity.’

Winston Churchill

AIA Code of professional conduct states

‘…dedicated to the advancement of architecture

through involved and innovative practice, with

the aim of raising the quality of the environment

and, consequently, the quality of life’

Harvard Graduate School : Ethics program

‘…there is a great deal of difference between the

science of building and the art of architecture

and an even greater difference between a

building’s profound duty to ethics and art’s

complete freedom from ethics.’

Design thinking is not just an exercise that is particular to

architects – there is transferable power within

design to influence other disciplines. I’ve learned that

while ethics seeks reconciliation of group conflicts,

design makes creative use of conflicts. This

means that the design thinking that architects embody is

not a luxury for society – it is a necessity.

Victoria Beach – Mayor of Carmel , California.

The formal use of noble materials – copper, bronze and stone from a

long historic tradition to signify a place of importance.

The informal use of noble materials: glass and ceramic to signify

enlightenment or just playfulness

THE LEWIS KEEBLE

MEMORIAL LECTURE

2012

“….to find the common basis for the joint work of the

Architect, the Landscape Architect and the City

Planner….Urban Design [being] wider than the scope

of these three professions”.

Josep Luis Sert

Urban Beauty inheres less in the buildings than the

negatives, the spaces they make - rooms, plazas,

porticos, lanes and squares.

Elizabeth Farrelly– February 2015

CONTEXT

The artist is a creator of beautiful things.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are

corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are

the cultivated. For these there is hope

All art is once surface and symbol.

Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril

Those who read the symbol do so at their peril

It is the spectator and not life that art really mirrors.

- Oscar Wilde

Art in the city

Messages and memory in places and spaces

Art is not necessarily produced to make you feel

better but to make you feel differently about the

world around you.

The beauty question

‘To most people it seems a small question, almost

trivial , a foible …it is a question every bit as

important as Medicare and motorways.’

Elizabeth Farrelly

‘People will say architecture cannot be ugly- like

painting or depict it because we have to look at it

all the time. They are wrong…It is perfectly right

to say that brutalism should not be prescribed for

mass housing, nor built for those who have no

choice over where they live.. Yes we should

have local aesthetic boards when it comes to

minimal living standards, but not when it comes

to cultural centres, building for the arts or

national identity, the building tasks where ARM

has flexed its aesthetic muscle and woken us

from preconceptions. ‘

- Charles Jencks

Fog Sculpture National Gallery

Tottenham Court Rail Station

Yayoi Kasuma

Where art is architecture and architecture is art

Where art is architecture and architecture is art

Buenos Aires Street Art

Mix of Street Art and tagging

South Brisbane Rail Viaduct

OFFICE OF THE

QUEENSLAND

GOVERNMENT

(Street) Art can have a commercial purpose

Or a private one : Gibbs Farm NZ

Case Study 1 - Roma Street Parkland

Case Study 2 - HINZE DAM VISITOR CENTRE

Case Study 3: SOUTH BANK

Case Study 4: SHWEDDAGON PAGODA,

YANGON, MYANMAR

Case Study 5 : DJEMMAA EL-FNA, MARRAKECH

MOROCCO

2012 Keeble Lecture response:

It has been said that Town Planners know something about some things.

It has been said that Engineers know everything about one thing.

It has been said however that architects know something about everything.

Which only goes to show that together we have a chance to know everything about all things.

Therein lies the genesis of collaborative urban design.

Victor Feros