INTERIOR DESIGN / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE SPECIALISATION 2016

FRAME MELBOURNE

ross mcleod + charles anderson

The Frame Melbourne project was a unique research collaboration between the RMIT School of Architecture and Design and the Lendlease Melbourne Quarter development. The project involved the engagement of an interdisciplinary team of Interior Design and Landscape Architecture students who were asked to develop approaches to the design and installation of an urban artwork on the 17 meter long hoarding that borders the MQ construction site, on the corner of Flinders and Spencer streets Melbourne.

Initially the students worked together collecting and collating information about the site, from its historical legacy as the founding place of white settlement in Melbourne and the location of John Batman’s cottage, it’s various transformations due to its adjacency to the early port of Melbourne, its role as a major rail transportation hub for the city and its current context as the eastern gateway to the developing Docklands region. The design team also formulated appropriate strategies for community engagement with the site, exploring the social, cultural and ethnic contexts of the Central Business District, the Docklands and greater Melbourne.

From these initial investigations the team identified ways in which a public artwork may interact with the wider community and encourage a sense of common sharing between them. From these considerations Framing Melbourne was born. The project worked on many levels, postcard and social media campaigns promoted across Melbourne’s multicultural landscape invited Melbournians and visitors to share their feelings about ‘what makes you feel at home’, while the Framing Melbourne website acted as an online gallery which served to document both Melbourne’s rich diversity and its common values; its private worlds and emotional heart.

The projects culmination was the installation of the Urban Surfaces Gallery on the site. Nestled at the western edge of the small park next to the Grand Hotel and framed by David Michael Bell’s iconic W-Class tram sculpture, the gallery features a selection of the images that people have contributed to the project via Instagram, Facebook and the website. Against a backdrop of Australian floral wallpaper, the artwork suggests the cosy confines of a domestic setting on which a collection of framed ‘moments’ are displayed. Each image is an original and heartfelt expression of home which when gathered together in this urban context serves to capture our communal and personal connection with place.

Frame Melbourne Postcards

MQ Hoarding proposals

#Frame Melb Website