This piece was conceived as a part of the By-Product 2021 exhibition for NGV Melbourne Design Week where participating designers were asked to create a piece utilising waste generated by their practice.
The waste material utilised for this sculpture is stone offcuts, inspired by the architecture studio sample library and by extension the wastage generated by building procurement at large.
The Australian construction industry generates over 20m tons of waste each year, yet it’s easy to become acquiescent to this fact from within the woke confines of the architecture studio, brimming with indoor plants and keep cups. The towers of physical samples endemic to most architecture studios are both a tangible and visual reminder of the material effects of the design process. It also serves to track the constantly “evolving” trend-scape which dictates much of what is added to (and removed from) our built form.
In a media age where visual overload and market saturation have become both normative functions and generators of design, what becomes of these soon to be discarded materials – products which are in every other sense enduring and robust contributors to the built environment but which will at some point or another fall prey to trend impermanence.
The robust materiality and reference to architectures of bygone eras remind us of the potential longevity and enduring quality of the work of architects.
This piece comprises Fibonacci Terrazzo in Softshell and The Graduate.
