LEE YANG YANG

architect, artist, academic


THE PINWHEEL

PINWHEEL

 

URBAN DESIGN STUDIO 541
CURTIN UNIVERSITY

THE PINWHEEL is one of the results of a design studio experiment led by Stephen Neille in the narrative of urban strangemaking on the city of Perth. The process includes mapping and recognizing the city as an existing and complete order in any given time, and positing as to slightly reset the familiar order of the city, hence the term urban strangemaking.

The urban strategy seeks to make aware of the distinctive qualities of the city of Perth, in this sense the Perth city grid and its anomalies. Irregularity of the grid such as unexpected streets end up in buildings rather than a continuous line, hence coined as linesight terminations.

The pinwheel plan is formulated due to the unaligned meeting point between Queen Street and Wolfe Lane. As the threshold, the pinwheel in this manner serves to rotate the forces not just two-dimensionally, but also three-dimensionally upwards and downwards. The facade is formed in recognition of linesight termination and dual old and new quality of Perth, serving to bridge the old and new in a gradual manner.
As an urban acupuncture, THE PINWHEEL is introduced as an urban spinning moment within an existing set of constellation of linesight terminations within the city of Perth.