SELECTEDWORKS 2011-2013

MOB: 0411890144EMAIL: MICHAEL.BAKER@GMX.DEGRADUAND: BACHELOR OF DESIGN IN ARCHITECTURE (UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY)

MICHAEL BAKER

W O R K S

Cockatoo Island

4 MUSEUM FOR PACIFIC ARTS

Design Construct Protest

12 AN ARCHI-TECTURE TO PROTEST

Cinematheque

22 CARVING LANDSCAPES

Primitive Hut

28 JOE’S TEA CABIN

Berlin

36 EXHIBITING THE STREET

Melbourne44 EXHIBITING THE WIRES

COCKATOO ISLANDThis museum/archive for the Pacific Arts at Cockatoo Island celebrates the sensation of losing oneself between object and the perpetual discovery of that object, mirror-ing the exploratory sense of Cockatoo Island itself. Fale Pasifika uses holographic technology to display a selec-tion of works from an underground archive, in small, con-tained spaces on the surface of the Island. The two are connected by tall crevasses carved into the sandstone, making the rooms of the archive entirely accessible.

http://architecturedesignplanning.ap01.aws.af.cm/projects/5100b40b1c086ad31d000013

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DESIGN CONSTRUCT PROTESTAngered at the 38 percent reduction in contact hours for design teaching for the Bachelor of Design in Architecture course, students led by myself, embarked on an “unauthorized” five-week design and construction project, titled BDES0000: design+construct+protest. The outcome of the studio was constructed as a series of installations built from 6-9 April 2013, in the courtyard of the Wilkinson Building at the university. Despite the rain, an es-timated three hundred current and former students, staff members, architects and others attended to show their support. I was the founder, project manager and lead designer for this project, possibly the most im-portant undertaking for my own education and architectural experience.

http://architectureau.com/articles/guerrilla-architecture-sydney/

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CINEMATHEQUEThis project explored the relationship between cinema and architecture. Using the film Lessons of Darkness by Werner Herzog as starting point, the ramifications of a landscape proposal carved out of Sydney’s sandstone cliffs were investigated. The focus was not on a total work of design but on fragmentary propositions, seducing ques-tions of inquiry and of course a few pretty pictures.

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Knowledge of digital fab-rication techniques has formed a core part of the education at University of Sydney’s Bachelor program. This model was made from a series of plywood contours drawn on the CAD program Rhino.

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PRIMITIVE HUT

Joe Glover, my good friend and colleague designed this very basic ‘Tea Cabin’ for his fami-ly’s property near Golbourn, in the southern highlands of New South Wales. My role here was to simply help in its construction, labouring with very rudimentary carpentry skills and help-ful advice on the details of the design. Its inclusion here is on the basis that it inspires me. It is, at its essence, what Australian architecture and design should be about: a couple of mates getting together to build a cubby.

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BERLINThis proposal seeks to explore the consequences, of the archi-tectural device of ‘wall’ and its implications for the people of the city of Berlin. The proposal was developed in a studio lead by Dr. Claudia Perren at the ANCB in Berlin, which focussed on curatorial practise and the role of architecture in exhibition, and exhibition in architecture. This design imagines a number of platforms clinging to the sides of the archetypal Berlin ‘hof-haus’ .Architecture is both the exhibitor and the exhibited.

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When I was about 5 my father owned a pharmacy in Friedrich-strasse. Every day he would catch the underground to work pass-ing through stations in the west, but always to arrive again in the eastern quarter. Shortly after my brother was born we decided to move. Berlin had always been my parents home, despite years of persecution of my father due to his Jewish roots, the invasion and widespread looting of Russia at the end of the war, they had met here and I was born here. But they could see the wall was coming, it was time to go. So everyday for a year, my father continued to catch the underground. He would get off at a West Berlin station offload some household items to his brother and continue on his way to work. If anyone would stop him he said that he needed the fork, chair, pillow or kitchen sink for work today as he would be sleeping, eating or renovating at the pharmacy. And so he progres-sively smuggled half a household through the underground to his brother in the west and then to our new home in Lower Saxony. Later when we would visit my uncle in the east we would ride the same train, now the stations where my father used to leave cutlery for my uncle to collect were closed, they became just like ghost stations.- Dorothee Wallis, 17.06.2013

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MELBOURNEThis project relies on spectacle to render visible aspects of the Internet’s ‘place’. The archi-tecture revealed, has no program of its own, no circulation of its own, no spatial constraints. Instead it externalises the existing spatial capacity of an otherwise non-spatial infrastructure.

A city’s wires are usually chaotic eyesore cupped by cable management systems in the ceiling. This is, put simply: an unveiling of what is truly a remarkable spectacle hiding in the ceilings of our buildings, under the earth and in the water.

http://usydarchexhibition.com/wired-melbourne

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Through spectacle, architecture can reconfigure our perception of complex phenomenon con-tained in a singular image, in this case that 21st century marvel we call the internet.

What we see in terms of the internet’s infrastruc-ture is left to our imaginations, buried under-ground, or undersea. We imagine flashing lights, interconnected nodes of access acting like the human brain unfathomable in its entirety, and only slightly less incomprehensible in its decon-structed parts.

Perhaps this is because we find it hard to define a place where the internet lies, and since we cannot define place we cannot see an Architecture to go with it.

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The internet does have ‘place’.

It’s place is the enormous data centres with whirring cooling tow-ers and endless rows, of servers upon servers upon servers, used to store data; yours and mine.

Its place is the small hump in the sand at Bondi where undersea connects to underground.

Its place is your front yard where the old copper wire network con-nects to your home.

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MOB: 0411890144EMAIL: MICHAEL.BAKER@GMX.DEGRADUAND: BACHELOR OF DESIGN IN ARCHITECTURE (UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY)

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MICHAEL BAKER