Gleaning The Discipline

Where can the value be found in the valueless? What about those things that architecture hates to deal with – the ugly, the empty, the useless. Is there an architecture that can find joy in those things, that can fossick the bones of the old and the dead and come out with something beautiful? These are the things this project seeks to address, through conceptual frameworks laid out by Helene Frichot, Zoe Sofia and Jane Bennett.

The project is as much about the method of gleaning, as it is the architectural product of it. Gleaning is a process by which the critical distance of architecture is collapsed, the architect operating with their back bent, and their eyes on the ground.

I have gleaned the former ABC site in Elsternwick, in search of vital things. I have found them, I think, and have put them into something new. This project sits at the intersection of memory, heritage, and operative drawing. Apprehended through the eyes of Bruce, a 92-year-old who has lived across it for his and its whole life, the new ABC building is a theatre, a workshop, an office, a paddock. If nothing else, I hope he’d like it.