Phase Change at TarraWarra Museum of Art

A working design laboratory focused on the changing nature of the environment in relation to TarraWarra Museum of Art and neighbouring TarraWarra Estate, as well as the Yarra Valley more broadly, will be conducted at the Museum, 28 March – 8 June 2015.

Led by design academics and students from RMIT, Phase Change will envision scenarios for sustainable and resilient futures.

Phase Change will engage directly with global warming and its ecological impacts at a local and regional scale, and work across a range of design disciplines and related practices.

The laboratory will be spearheaded by Charles Anderson, landscape architect, artist and Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture and Design at RMIT University.

Phase Change will take place in the North Gallery of TarraWarra Museum of Art, and on certain days Charles will be joined by Dylan Brady (studio505) and Michael Trudgeon (RMIT D-Lab/Crowd Productions), as well as 20 RMIT students.  The design laboratory will evolve during the course of the exhibition. It will be a place for discussion, debate and lively interaction between the public and students and will generate a dynamic, participatory installation.

Significantly, the studio has the opportunity of working with Arup, an International Engineering company which will test and explore the potential of a new software tool in order to more rigorously model relationships between built form and future weather systems.

Sourcing recycled materials from the TarraWarra Estate and local waste stations and op shops, the students will create a ‘performed installation’. They will study the typical energy flows and materials cycles of the valley in their thinking and production. They will work to envision a museum of the future in terms of sustainable design, production and practice. This pop up studio will be embedded in the museum for just over two months. The public is invited to engage with the participants, and there will be a feedback system, of the students’ invention, that will invite comments.

The laboratory will culminate in a public forum on Sunday 31 May from 12noon to 5pm, where the participants and invited speakers from the fields of sustainable design, economics and Indigenous knowledge will debate issues highlighted by the project.

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