Titled Inventing the Site – Creating a Symbolic Urban Landscape, Dr Carmen Fiol-Costa will discuss the notion that the given context for a project is often that of suburbia with no other available spaces save the remnants of the metropolis. MC’d by Joe Agius, this NSW Chapter presentation is an opportunity to engage with our inaugural Droga Architect in Residence.

Q & A with Residency Jury members, Paul Berkemeier and Brian Zulaikha.

In her lecture Carmen will discuss – in her words:

The given context for a project is often that of suburbia with no other available spaces save the remnants of the metropolis.

The lots that we are given for designing parks and public buildings are the sites of pre-existing polluting activities, noisy factories or empty areas, resulting from the inability of developers to build houses or other amenities on them.

The site in the present-day metropolis is an empty lot always associated with conflict.  Therefore the contemporary project has to come to terms with difficult problems that the traditional one would e unable to solve.  In most cases our process of design goes through a preliminary act of inventing the site.  It deals with the reinvention of the site by rediscovering its underground identity, by an interpretative reading of its presence and its traces, through the study of the site story and contemporary uses.  The site is something that has to be defined; it is a question of edges, borders, connections, and a real process of implantation.

Thursday, 15 May 2014 6:30 PM (AEDT), Tusculum, Auditorium 3 Manning Street, Potts Point, Sydney, NSW