TROWER FALVO ARCHITECTS

ProjectYearCategoryInformation
Brooklyn
2024Residential
PhotographyDescription

Westgarth
2024ResidentialPhotography
Description

Glencairn

2022Residential
Photography
Models
Film
Description

Postal Hall

2022CivicPhotography
Installation
Models
Description

The Basin
OngoingCivic
Models

Warrandyte
2020ResidentialModels

Elsternwick
2020Residential Models

Quarry
2020Research
ModelsDescription

Invisible Cities
2020Exhibition
Models
Description

Bushfire Australia
2010Exhibition
ModelsDescription

Ground Form
OngoingExhibition
Publication
ModelsDescription

Levelling
OngoingExhibition
Publication
Models
Description

External Walls
OngoingExhibition
Publication
Models
Description




External Walls

Exhibition
Ongoing

Model Photography
Garry Smith

“A series of small objects made from thin slices of timber is presented with an unusual degree of precision. In this study of theme and variation our attention is drawn to slight shifts in emphasis and technique, within an overall formal repetition. The work reads at one level as a self-referential set, complete, but it is also fragmentary – each piece a snapshot of a continuous thought process around the making of something else. The models are a methodical study of alterations made to an existing site, and a method of communicating this process with a client. Put together as a whole, the sequence also presents an argument for an approach to architecture and a way of building.

The location of these careful investigations is a small plot of fairly ordinary land in suburban Melbourne, on a corner, with a slight incline, and containing an existing L-shaped structure. Rather than starting the design process through the imposition of volumetric forms from above, this sequence works literally from the ground up, starting with the digging of foundations. The thinking and model-making here work in the same order as the process of building on site; first establishing levels, retaining the earth, then raising walls, spanning floors between them, and so on. Each decision is isolated and presented in a paused state, as a partial completion or abandonment, open not closed. Like ruins.

This way of thinking is as much concerned with earthworks as architecture. The entire site (and by extension the entire city) becomes a construction, with levels made and walls retaining, forming steps and terraces. Terraces become courtyards or half-enclosures, external spaces become rooms, rooms form into complexes. There is a long tradition of architecture conceived organically as an extension of its surroundings, but the concern here is unusually microscopic. The studies place emphasis on and amplify the smallest adjustments in level and alignment, working at the scale of civil engineering, where small shifts are affected over broad horizontal territories.

At the end we are still not sure what type of buildings or structures these are – we cannot yet understand their external image or surface qualities – but that is the point. A process that starts with the designing of foundations is as much concerned with what is hidden as what is visible. Dayne Trower’s models position us deeply within, in contact with the ground, embedded.”

Nigel Bertram