julian raxworthy
>> >Design

(return to >> JR-FRLA)

... a vicarious designer. I design with my eye, through criticism of students projects and project visitation.
Fleeting moments are seized hungrily on fragments of paper and in sketchbooks, opportunities for graphic design are descended on joyously. Is this design? it feels like it, but is it real?
Always going back to practice..AGAIN.. its all potential until it never happened..

A selection of design moments in the last 10 years..

Federation Square	1997	John Burgess, Kirsten Bauer, Peter Connolly, Julian Raxworthy (were OTHER CONSULTANTS)	Federation Square was a great project to be around in Melbourne for many years, not least for those of us who did the competition. The competitors formed a predictive salon refuse before the outcome had even been announced.. rumours were that at least one team fought the council workers to keep the tender box open. Working with John Burgess, me doing CAD, and him rendering by hand, woken up after every print and then doing a great picture. Simone slee drafting hundreds of coutours. I still think the mound would have been great. General configuration resembles whats there, dont you reckon. The one and a half project by OTHER CONSULTANTS.
Greening Sydney Road	2000	ASPECT and Deep End, with Blue Square	This was an interesting, horrible project. Bart Brands came to Oz and at dinner one night, suggested to Rene and Marie-Laure, from Deep End (the LA's who ended up doing a lot of the local Fed Square work) and myself and Kirsten Bauer from ASPECT, that "good people collaborate" because if a project needs it, find the team for thr project, and forget the ego's. Thus Deep End and ASPECT did "Greening Sydney Road" for the City of Moreland. It was good and it was a hard collaboration that almost ended up in mediation a few times, though we all talk now.. Sydney Road is crazy busy and full of stuff so to "green" it we had to think of other ways than just street tree planting. We thought to make a "ductile hedge" that moved around up, under, along the streetscape depending on the conditions encountered. It was made of Stainless steel mesh and Matt Butler from Bluesquare helped develop the modules. The council used a consultation process that was a little deceitful, so that when the community got the project their reaction was "what the hell is that?". I think the project lasted for all of 6 months before it got pulled out. The total cost, including fees was only $150K, and we managed to get in two or three aerial modules. It would have made good BBQ's, but I never found out what happened to those flashy little grills.. now soemthing similar is in the grounds of Southbank TAFE in Brissy..
Atherton Gardens Estate Redevelopment	2001-2003	with numerous students and staff, but particularly Jason McNamee and Quinton Duffy(RIP).	The Atherton Gardens project was always going to be a non-starter and everyone knew it but me. When I was first handed this hot potato it came via my Dean at RMIT Martin Mowbray who was trying to consolidate existing relationships with housing bodies in Victoria. The project was initally just a garden for the community centre at this high rise housing estate, but we got caught up in being ambitious and trying to develop a landscape o centric approach to neighbourhood renewal. The idea was that the landscape was a model for all the otehr relationships on the site, both phisical and invisible. I ran 2 studio's around the project and there were 2 consultancies arising. I basically gave it 2 years of my life, and probably 10 agencies, 60 students worked on it. We almost started a research unit, and in the end I stopped working on it because I suddenly saw that there was no stable policy, staffing or funding situation that would allow it to really happen. Before it started Leon van Schaik said to me "dont do it - it wont get built and it will be a nightmare", and I shoudl have seen that he had been through this type of situation before with student projects. They never come to anything real, and so long as you dont beleive that they will, you are probably alright. In the end we got a real job for the community centre and I employed Live Load as architects, however the business was not ready for this type of job and couldent service it. Quinton Duffy from Live Load died recently which was very sad as he was the second person I met in Melbourne and a great guy and architect. I ended up having to finish the project myself at nights and nothing came of it, though I hope that maybe some consultant might later have used it as a brief.
Queensbridge Square Competition	2002	with Jason McNamee and Kirstin Thompson Architects, Nick Murray project architect	This project was given to us by Kirstin Thompson (a great architect and friend) because she was asked by COM to be on an invited shortlisted competition and didnt really have the time to do it. The three of us (Jason, Nick and I) did it fast using diverse techniques, and it was an opportunity to put into practice some of the ideas and techniques from my masters. We used different drawing, physical modelling and computer techniques to produce the scheme that was ostensibly about creating a space which was not just about moving through it passively, but a space that asserted its presence. It was not selected (none of the comptetion entries were) but because COM owned copyright, interestingly the final built scheme contained bits that strangely resembled other schemes.. is it just me of is that a red mound built like ours? Our scheme lacked a bit of judgement because we were in too deep, or too close, but had lots of enthusiasm, and was great fun.
National Arboretum Competition	2005	with Rene van Meeuwin and Penny Bovell from UWA, Jason McNamee, and assisted by UWA landscape students	It horifies me that the last design project I did was 2 years ago, but it was a fun one, even if it was a bit off the mark. The National Arboretum was one of the biggest competitions that Australia has had, which was won in the end by Taylor Cullity Lethlean, with my friend Scott Adams heading up the team, ironically who would have been otherwise Jason and my collaborator. In this scheme, which was enjoyably done with Rene van Meeuwin and some great studnets I met at UWA, we tried to use masses of trees as the tools, in relation to earthworks or "dirt cushions". The idea was to work with trunks and different types of forest, playing with the idea that "you cant see the forest for the trees". We also tried to build in ideas about Australian culture by making a Bunnings one ofthe central parts of the scheme. Considering that Dairy Farmers Hill looms over Canberra, we were trying to use the side of the hill as a pictorial surface. Scott and TCL's winning scheme of 100 Forests worked with similar ideas, as did a number of others - its always interesting to see that in a design culture sometimes things are "in the air".

(return to >> JR-FRLA)