Footnotes To A Carpark, 2024
How many ways can we act on the calls of our city?
The calls come as whispers, moments from the past that emerge and intersect with the present.
They manifest as rhythms, routines, rituals, and movements within the city.
The calls come loudly as shouts of protest, rage, and demands for change.
We must also listen to silence and absences, or rather, learn to read presence in places we've been conditioned to overlook.
Architecture is a practice of looking and listening, of overlaying time, stories, excerpts, atmospheres, archaeologies, adaptations, forms, materials, systems and processes.
Rereading, Footnotes Of A Car Park engages with the layered history and architecture of the Brutalist Cardigan House, constructed in 1974 to a design by noted architects Mockridge, Stahle and Mitchell. Amidst conflicting ideologies, the building has been at risk of demolition, sparking public debate over its heritage significance, conservation and its ongoing use.
The video combines material from Mockridge, Stahle, and Mitchel, State Library of Victoria Archive, Alex Alexander Archives, Google Earth, photography by Pier Carthew and Keelan O’Hehir, and speculative design proposals and video footage by Dalton Stewart. The assemblage offers a reassessment and reflection – of both the building and site, but also of the architecture’s connection and entanglement with social, cultural, aesthetic and environmental concerns
Location:
Cardigan House Car Park, Carlton
Dalton Stewart
B. Johannesburg, South Africa 1996. Lives and works in Naarm Melbourne, Australia.
Dalton Stewart has a creative practice that explores the reciprocity between architecture, design and the visual arts, seeking new systems of knowledge and worldviews for our future. His work explores deconstruction and reuse, to broach the complex histories and cultural significance of buildings, materials and processes within the built environment. He completed a BFA from the Victorian College of the Arts (2016), where he was the recipient of the John Vickery Scholarship, and is currently undertaking a Master of Architecture at the Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne (2019–) and was awarded the MacDonald Scholarship (2020). His work has been exhibited at fairs, galleries and institutions, including the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; Coolchange Contemporary, Perth; Firstdraft, Sydney; Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne; and the National Gallery of Victoria’s Design Fair, Melbourne.