TL;DR

TL;DR was a competition entry for the 2019 National Gallery of Victoria Summer Pavilion. It was a collaboration with:

Lance van Maanen, Australian architect
Mark Lane, Australian architect

TL;DR stands for ‘too long; didn’t read’. It calls for the compression or summary of the main ideas in an online forum post or email. It is used to seek clarity or simply troll a user on the other side of the discursive fence for being verbose and unable to prioritise.

This proposal was for a distillation space for the debate around the Apple flagship store planned in Melbourne’s Federation Square; a proxy space located in the Grollo Edquist garden at the NGV. It is a space for fun and contemplation and encourages a playful engagement with the intertwined histories and tendencies of civic and commercial space.

It did not intend to weigh into the sentiment ‘yes’ or ‘no’ debate itself but asked a pointed question about the mediums, methods and qualities of public discourse on public space.

Forums and Forums

There is no shortage of controversy surrounding the proposed Apple flagship store in Federation Square. It has generated one of the most high profile discussions about the identity of public space in Melbourne since the initial design and construction of Fed Square itself in 2001.

Most protestors invoke a conceptual separation of civic and commercial space, in spite of the long and dynamic history of their combinations, the origins of the forum as a marketplace and the key role of art and architecture as a tool of seduction and power – by church, family, state or corporation.

Those in favour of the proposal underestimate the city’s myths about itself, and the popular sentiment of symbolic discomfort towards a tech giant whose business indeed is to make sites generic.

One of the most curious components of the debate is where it is taking place: Not so much in ‘the square’ itself, but online: on Facebook and Twitter and forums; on laptops and tablets and smartphones. It is increasingly difficult to extract the experience of the city and of digital platforms from one another.

The Flagship

The architectural proposal is a translucent flagship cuboid, lined with a steel mesh curtain that allows air flow and daylight to filter through with a subtle rippling motion.

It is orientated to true North and lifted above the ground plane, leaving the bluestone paving and kikuyu grass thresholds of the garden intact. The faint shadow of the mirrored ceiling tracks and shears noiselessly throughout the day, over the lavender bed that encircles the cuboid with an equally Groundsian geometry.

Inside, a large suspended oblate (squashed) spheroid lamp glows and pulsates slowly every 10 seconds, keeping rhythm and illuminating the garden at night. It is part town hall clock, part flagship logo and part ‘macguffin’ – a mysterious object onto which vital desires are projected.