nsw undergraduate medal
We would like to congratulate our very own Michael Connolly -a member of our team at environa for over three years- on his recent achievement.
Michael was awarded the AIA NSW Undergraduate Medal at the 2022 Student Architecture Awards last Friday for his individual studio project ‘The Motion Repository’.
His project was nominated by the University of Sydney to be presented before an AIA jury panel in February, where it was judged alongside other top undergraduate projects from universities across the state and chosen as the winner. We are very proud of the talent in our team, and want to take the opportunity to celebrate their work both in and out of the office.
See highlights of his project below:
The Motion Repository is a theatre that connects the individual to the pre-industrial heritage of Glebe Island, returning to a time when the human condition was shaped by landscape. By wind. By tide.
The project was developed through an investigation into decommissioned industrial sites throughout Sydney Harbour. Their remnants hold stories of a lived experience, occupying space in a physical sense but devoid of the energy and aura they once imbued the harbour with. The Motion Repository attempts to reconcile a sensitive history of colonisation, industrialisation and gentrification to find a new identity for a theatre; one which celebrates the forgotten energy of the underlying landscape. It proposes an alternative to current trends of urbanisation through land reclamation and encroachment, making use of in-situ material excavation and reprocessing to create a tidal landscape that instead gives back to the harbour.
The concrete site is carved back from the ocean to reveal the underlying stratum, with massive structural foundations recast from the excavated rubble. A large reservoir captures the high tide, releasing it on demand to navigate a landscape of channels, mangroves, and pillars. These pillars float among the waves and pierce through the open-air lobby, cafe and bar, passing their rhythm into fabric shades draped throughout the ceiling. The auditorium itself features a double-skin; one to allow dramatic thoroughfare for wind and shelter from rain, another to seal the 250-person performance chamber within. The building becomes not just a vessel for the performer, but an instrument for the land, the wind and the waves.
