A Tepid Metonymy

This submission was a response to a Master of Architecture studio prompt, Architecture for Films; or: A Cinema. The studio asked each student to write an exposition addressing the studio prompt and design a proposition that gave it architecture. Theoretical positioning, project site, size, program, concept and representation were determined by the student. The project goal was to translate film montage theory and practice into architecture. It sought to defamiliarize rigorously defined existing fabric through cutting and reassembly and set up new relations to building and context.

Films are made through cutting and editing, meaning rendered through the stitching of frames. The rearranging of frames in a sequence changes the meaning of the film through altered associations. Early Soviet filmmakers, constrained by a lack of camera equipment, made films by cutting and re-arranging existing stock, often hundreds of times. While the content of the frames did not change, reconfiguration changed the meaning. Acts of montage subtly played with timing and viewer expectation to produce a jolt or shock that sharpened attentions and heightened emotional affect. The 1938 Tepid Baths was nipaluna/Hobart’s last outdoor pool. An 18-year period of abandonment post-1996 fenced off rooms and spaces of the buildings and pool and disconnected the public from the adjacent rivulet. It encouraged illegal activity, the site becoming heavily graffitied and damaged by uncoordinated attacks. This proposition applies filmic montage techniques to the pre-existing built fabric of the long since demolished Baths. Three design strategies are used: Matta-Clark-esque cutting and rearranging of existing built elements; changing spatial and bodily relationships to the building and context by dropping and lifting floor planes and editing arrival sequences along the river; and projecting film onto existing surfaces to merge their form through function. Representational techniques used reinforce these strategies. The proposition is a built echo of film’s effect on our perception of reality. Something familiar made strange invites attention. In the current climate emergency, Soviet film theory logic of reuse is prescient. The proposition becomes an architectural and filmic response to the site and its existing matter, reconfigured, not removed. New meaning without new building.