Abstract:
The Common Life of Uncommon Objects: Architecture in an Uncanny Ecology proposes a cognitive re-orientation in the ecological visions at neighbourhood scale architecture. Both real and surreal consequences are challenging the complex and star-crossed interrelationship between humans and nature. Taking note of the prevalent and imminent imperative to incite structural shifts in our material cultural change, this theoretical investigation and neighbourhood-scale intervention represent a series of compound explorations, object experimentations and architectural projects, where the transformation of everyday domestic objects are re-portrayed. Offering an uncanny and surreal narrative to the project, a recycling depot in Point Chevalier village seeks to induce meaningful self-reflection among the suburb’s residents, regarding the recycling and reshaping of fossil-fuel and fast food stations. This project encourages the exposition of the waste cycle which have been sanitised from the urban elemental experiences – an act which hopes to bring back to consciousness the intricate ties of ecological systems through human action. Representations of the ecology are explored through the various facets of the Uncanny, a movement finding its way back into this new reality – the Anthropocene. The eerie yet familiar combobulations of this future help the portrayal of conflict between the artificial built environment and nature, finding itself in what one might now consider second nature.