all images by Roger Mullin unless otherwise noted
Ordinary exploration begins in the juiciest sort of indecision, in deliberate, then routine fits of absence of mind... Exploring requires the cloak of invisibility bicyclists and walkers take for granted. 10 — John R. Stilgoe
Cognisant, dreaming, or somewhere in between, we are at any time in dialogue with the things that make up our environment. Each day threads a path that collects a spectrum of events. But what events and what things? Is a highway a reasonable framework to hang your experiential hat on? To Rome, all roads led, but the closer the approach, the more those same roads postured to afford defensibility of the empire. Access and access denied. Strategic planning. What underlies any plans for our surroundings and what do they support? The projects here exist on a path; each use existing within a broader experiential narrative that expands conventional understandings of architectural program. Part of a design-build praxis, they each were completed over two-week periods with community members and groups of 10-12 students of architecture from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova
Scotia. Each project engages with remoteness and a limited palette of materials, tools and skills. Pragmatic, they also navigate a broader field that reveals the sometimes-latent qualities of site or a situation 11 . Like land and conceptual art projects from the 1960s and 70s, the margin as site is conflated with the effort to access it. Imagination, location and time take on significant roles. 12 These projects are cast as a kind of proto-infrastructure – sharing the motives, conditions and timeframes of their installation. They demonstrate both a considered function and an instrumental approach for future work and thought. Humble things, models that suspend disbelief. p
Roger Mullin teaches design, construction and representation at Dalhousie University School of Architecture. He is concerned with material investigation and material culture through modes of design-build and architectural representation.
10 John R. Stilgoe, O utside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places 11,12 Martin Hogue, 'The Site as Project, Lessons from Land Art and Conceptual Art'. Journal of Architectural Education , Vol. 57, No.3 (Feb 2004), pp. 54-61
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on site review 41 :: infrastructure
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