Recovering Vagrancy Studio

Honours Interior and Spatial Design 2012
University of Technology Sydney

The military establishments sited in principle positions in and around Sydney’s coves and peninsula have grown from the tentative hold on space from Lieutenant Cook’s first landing in Botany Bay in 1770 to an outward (sea facing) defence system at the turn of the 20th century. These are the continuation of a boundary system, albeit through in their own construction. The English colonialists not only colonized the land but had also brought in their wake, their European conflicts and rivals with countries such as France, Germany, Spain, Portugal etc. Now in the 21st Century the physical remnants of the military establishments: the scarring of the land for stone and concrete bunkers, trenches and gun encasements have lead to a series of demarked historical sites.

The Interior Design and Interior and Spatial Design Honour’s 2012 projects focus on establishing a series of programmes of response to the bunkers, the topography and edge conditions to activate their programmes on the one hand, and further afield, incorporating social programmes and the City of Sydney on the other. Given that these bunkers never fired a shot in wartime we have taken the view to work in, with and to adapt the military sites as Vagrant spaces for interior and spatial design experimentation without being held to historical protectionism that can stymie such experimentation. We have taken the view that the spatial design aspect of the program to be the expanded field of interior design. Students today will show a body of work that reflects their investigations.

Lecturers: Tom Cole, John Cabello, Peter Farman, Ben Anderson

Students: Quincy Ye, Alana Minaeva, Jessica Page, Adriana Haindl, Jessica Margiotta, Allisha Middleton-Sim, Lucy Green