Above
Masterplan concepts and foyer rendering of the Museum of Modern Art at Heide/Banksia Park, by O’Connor + Houle.
| | PAUSE was an exhibition of new architects and their investigative documents.
The show sought to scrape under the surface of current architectural ideas, to see what is swelling and swirling around in the world of dreams.
It tagged onto preceding exhibitions held in Melbourne over the past 20 years, which attempted to take the idea of ‘architecture on show’ further than merely showing photographs, plans and computer images of projects.
In this case, exhibitors were aged from 42 to 26, most were born in the 1960s, so the average age is around 34, and the sexes were equally represented. We have become used, but not immune, to these sorts of exhibitions of up-and-comers. Students go through similar presentations during most years of their studies and every now and then a new theme emerges which is investigated, analysed, discussed at various architects’ venues around town and, finally, if the idea has legs, an exhibition emerges.
Such exhibitions seem normal these days, yet just 20 years ago, on 9 September 1979, a rare exhibition of architects’ work was held in Melbourne – the Melbourne 4 exhibition at Powell Street Gallery, South Yarra. (In fact it was five architects – Peter Corrigan, Maggie Edmond, Peter Crone, Greg Burgess and myself.)
At the time there had been precious little public display of architecture in a commercial gallery, or any other museum for that matter: some colleagues even considered the idea preposterous and unprofessional, that it may have been (that dirty word) – advertising.
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