DeadCentre

D’Arcy Newberry-Dupé and Brenton Porter of ODE Architecture Studio
with Todd Andrew Cathcart.

Architecture Studio Project
School of Architecture and Built Environment
The Univeristy of Newcastle, NSW
2021, 2022

Forensic Dossier: A Collation of Student's Drawings and Frots of Details and Materiality, 2021

‘DeadCentre: Western Vernacular Extractions’ was an Architecture studio project coordinated alongside Brenton Porter of ODE Architecture Studio, conducted as a 10 day travelling elective through the University of Newcastle. Run in 2021 and 2022, we performed an intensive roadtrip, cutting a looping transect through Western NSW with 20 Bachelor and Master’s students to perform a ‘forensic’ analysis of this areas vernacular.

A consistent suite of drawn, collaged and written materials were applied to document the various towns encountered and landscapes traversed. Layering town morphology, landscape systems, historic structures, key buildings and industries, residual and operating mine sites, anecdotes and fragments to create descriptive cartographies.

The research interrogated the built environment as it oscillates between attributing identity to structures of utility (the corrugate shed) and the continued perpetuation of Victorian structures and detailing that is emblematic of colonial oppression, segregation, and ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples. The data collection focussed on vernacular that relate to two binaries: ‘Placed’ – being details, structures and systems that reference British colonial interest, aesthetic and attitude and ‘Of Place’ – that which has emerged as a response to environment, climate, scarcity and isolation.

A question of what is significant vernacular in the built fabric of these centres stimulates a broader discussion around Australian identity politics and the unceded territory that this nation occupies.

The intention of this project was to re-direct student focus and energy from the heavily populated eastern fringe, and expand their scope of interest towards radical rural futures. 

Participants:

2021

Claudia Smith, Lachlan Howard, Larissa Gafa, Jack Piercy, Alex Jones, Chloe Gesler, Madeline Brennan, Ally Cullingford, Rueben Bacon, Will Henry, Lachlan Adams, Paris Perry, Emily Symes, Samantha Bailey, Sophie McCarthy, Mackenzie Beets, Mahalia Leckner, Zachary Sheffield.

2022

Ava Gleeson, Peter Begg, Gabrielle Colthorpe, Jake Dempsey, Savannah Rooke, Nicholas Wilson, Rylan Jackson, Rachael Tillermans, Meg Reading, Lochlan Southgate, Barry Lane, Hannah Brookefield, Luke Celona, Tom Rindo, Lily Thomas, Zoe Devlin, Ethan Cranfield.