Three Constituent Parts

Property may be described as “every type of right (that is, a claim recognised by law), interest, or thing which is legally capable of ownership, and which has value. Other incidents of property which are not necessarily true in all cases include its alienability and exclusivity of use or enjoyment.” Property exists within two planes; one immanent, where its fluctuations are reflected in the built world through either emptiness or excess, and the other immaterial, the financial, economic, and legal instruments by which it is regulated. As the interstitial layer, architecture may thus become a tool by which these things can be both maintained and resisted, waning into both the metaphysical and the Concrete.

It is presumed that the real value for property lies within the metaphysical realm of the title boundary that lies within the tangible realm of paper. Stacked in rolls behind the land surveyor as they procure its very existence, and later being preserved within the concrete walls of the land titles office.

The project anticipates the need for a new method of recognition. Its presence is established through a layered, timescale understanding of a shift in perception around ideas of occupation and re-occupation, through the lens of the boundary that dictates property ownership – the title boundary. The project takes the conditions of property ownership, the boundaries that define it and the things that give it value and recognises architecture as being an instrument that can give substance to the expression of these problems. Modern legal recognition of ownership of land in Australia exists as a means of registration and administration. This was the beginning of land transformation from something physical into a liquid asset.

Each stage of the project questions how to challenge our perceived understanding of that of a colonial, outdated means of ownership.