published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Architecture

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Architecture

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Architecture

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Architecture

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Architecture

As urban centres rapidly expand, a trend appears to be happening which is threatening the uniqueness of these centres. International homogenization is making the place "a small world after all". To deal with this, cities have established institutions and attractions to celebrate the heritage, culture and characteristics of a place. Tourist attractions are built with the goal of giving visitors the "most real and authentic experience" of the place, distinct from anywhere else in the world. They also play a significant role in educating the local citizens and improving their daily experience of city life, which may be taken for granted. Playing on Vancouver's infamous reputation, this project, the Museum of Rain, will attempt to give visitors an "authentic" experience of what it is like to live in perhaps the rainiest city in North America. The site is on the north shore of False Creek, on the old Expo lands, along the Seawall. The location of the project helps create a continuity of attractions with Science World, Chinatown, Gastown and the sports stadiums, all located in the area. As well, it provides an opportunity for a visual attraction in the urban landscape along the Seawall, thus, strengthening and improving an area that is quite desolate at the moment. The museum is designed to give the visitor a heightened sense and appreciation for this aspect of nature, which may be disliked or taken for granted by many people. There are basically two parts to the building, an information ban on the north side of the building and an experiential zone to the south. The experiential zone is divided according to the senses of sound, sight, smell and touch. It is with the exaggeration and amplification or rain through the senses and the educational information that the visitor's experience will be greatly impressed into their memory and implore a better understanding and appreciation for Rain.

In October 1997 The Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design proposed that a Museum of Moving Images be built at the site adjacent to the intended Granville Island Film Center currently under development permit application at The City of Vancouver. ECIAD intended the museum to show "... the magic in which the film was created by..." In addition, the program would comprise a library of books, videos, and compact discs. The starting point of the thesis was the two key words of the program: "moving" and "image". The museum was dependent not only the phenomenal qualities of site but the recognition of the visceral and of the construction of images through human vision and experience. The thesis explored fundamental constructs of film (the projection of light through an image on transparency onto a surface and further, the way the eye registers that phenomena) as a basic framework for realizing the principles of the moving image. Beginning at the ground both the parking on the site and the adjacent site gradually slopes to the lowest part of the "bar" building which from ground to sky consists of gallery, retail space, library, small theater and administration offices. The bar is intersected by a series of "tubes" containing the museum spaces. The front facade along the retail strip is the point at which all of the program can be read simultaneously. The first tube begins at the point of entry of the museum and gradually rises and switches back and forth through the site up to the third level of the larger bar building where there is a connection to the neighbouring film center, the library, or the roof top. Each tube is punctured with slots that allow glimpses and chance visual connections of other bodies moving through the museum and facilitates the registration of the bodies position within the space of the museum and the site.

Abstract available in pdf file.

This thesis explores the rich and provocative fields of interaction between Australian artists and museums from 1975 to 2002. Artists have investigated and engaged with museums of art, social history and natural science during this period. Despite the museum being a major source of exploration for artists, the subject has rarely been examined in the literature. This thesis redresses this gap. It identifies and examines four prevailing approaches of Australian contemporary art to museums in this period: oppositional critique, figurative representation, intervention and collaboration. / The study asserts that a general progression from oppositional critique in the seventies through to collaboration in the late nineties can be charted. It explores the work of three artists who have epitomised these approaches to the museum. Peter Cripps developed an oppositional critique of the museum and was intimately involved with the art museum politics in Melbourne during the mid-seventies. Fiona Hall figuratively represented the museum. Her approach documented and catalogued museum tropes of a bygone era. Narelle Jubelin’s work intervened with Australian museums. Her work has curatorial capacities and has had real effect within Australian museums. These differing artistic approaches to the museum have the effect of contesting history and expanding narrative within museums. / Curators collaborated with artists and used artistic methods to create exhibits in Australian museums during the 1990s. Artistic approaches are a major methodology of museums seeking to contest traditional modes of history and expand narrative in their exhibits. Contemporary art has played a vital, curatorial, role in the Hyde Park Barracks, Museum of Sydney, Melbourne Museum and Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, amongst other museums. While in earlier years artists were well known for their resistive approach to the art museum, this thesis shows that artists have increasingly participated in new forms of representation within art, social history, and natural history museums. I argue that the role of contemporary art within “new” museums is emblematic of new approaches to history, space, narrative and design within the museum. (For complete abstract open document)

This thesis discusses how museum structures were redefined over a twenty-two year period in specific relation to the impetus of Video Art. It contends that Video Art would be instrumental in the evolution of the contemporary art museum. The thesis will analyse, discuss and evaluate the problematic nature and form of Video Art within four major contemporary art museums - the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Georges Pompidou National Centre of Art and Culture in Paris, the Tate Gallery in London and the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) in Sydney. By addressing some of the problems that Video Art would present to those museums under discussion, the thesis will reveal how Video Art would challenge institutional structures and demand more flexible viewing environments. As a result, the modern museum would need to constantly modify their policies and internal spaces in order to cope with the dynamism of Video Art. This thesis first defines the classical museum structure established by the Louvre during the 19th century. It examines the transformation from the classical to the modern model through the initiatives of the New York Metropolitan Museum to MoMA in New York. MoMA would be the first major museum to exhibit Video Art in a concerted fashion and this would establish a pattern of acquisition and exhibition that became influential for other global institutions to replicate. MoMA's exhibition and acquisition activities are analysed and contrasted with the Centre Pompidou, the Tate Gallery and the AGNSW in order to define a lineage of development in relation to Video Art. This thesis provides an historical explanation for the museum/gallery's relationship to Video Art from its emergence in the gallery to the beginnings of its acceptance as a global art phenomenon. Curatorial strategies, the influx of corporate patronage and the reconstruction of spectatorship within the gallery are analysed in relation to the unique problematic of Video Art. Several prominent video artists are examined in relation to the challenges they would present to the institutionalised framework of the modern art museum and the discursive field surrounding their practice. In addition, the thesis contains a theoretical discussion of the problems related to Video Art imagery with the period of High Modernism; examines the patterns of acquisition and exhibition, and presents an analysis of global exchange between four distinct contemporary art institutions.