Projects that are undertaken can be located between four overlapping themes: built work, research, discourse and education. As a registered charity the studio is legally bound to a constitution that controls its operation and output. This alternative mode of practice questions how we might work within the limits of our profession to develop ethical projects that have social, cultural and environmental integrity.
In 2020 OFFICE announced the release of a quarterly publication which deals directly with the politics of public space. The publications are a collection of transcribed public lectures which occurred weekly throughout the City of Melbourne. The location for each talk dealt directly with its formation, occupation, and development. This research has informed their proposal for Test Sites.
Commodified
Commodified attempts to reveal the commodification and extraction of wealth from land as well as the transaction of limited public assets for increased developer profit, beginning with colonisation up to the present day.
The intervention is a bluestone boulder, a natural resource which has been mined, commodified and absorbed by both the public and private sphere here in Melbourne. The test site is 80 Collins Street, a recent development which in 2020 was purchased for $1.5 billion and resulted in the removal of 135m2 of open air public accessible space. Like the development, this boulder removes public space from the city's fabric yet this intervention forces pedestrians to be confronted directly. The size of this rock is directly related to the amount of wealth extracted from the site with each square millimetre equating to $2 withdrawn from the land. The audience, upon further investigation, will find markings which communicate the monetary exchanges that have taken place for the last 180 years and the public assets that have been forfeited within these transactions to the benefit of the developer.
As this set of conditions occurs throughout central Melbourne we propose a number of boulders be located throughout the city, all at varying sizes in relation to the wealth extracted from the particular site. This series of interventions will create a network of artifacts which will reveal some of the underlying complexities of the privatisation of public space. At a certain point the rock will be relocated, in consultation with Traditional Land Owners, to a permanent resting spot where it will continue to reveal and educate the public about the significant issues of the commodification of land.