Urban Islands 2009

Urban Islands is a 12-day intensive masterclass taught by 3 groups of international emerging architects on and about the controversial site of Cockatoo Island in the Sydney Harbour. This year’s line-up of international studio leaders includes: Geoff Manaugh [USA]; Mette Ramsgard Thomsen [Denmark / UK], and Mark Smout [UK].

The masterclass is open to architecture students across Australia, and ties in lectures and collaboration with the local urban authorities, questioning the creative-socio-spectacle of the event on this urban blindspot.

Cross disciplinary creativity, experimental tactics and broad based participation are needed to inject Cockatoo Island with renewed life. The proposals developed in the 12-days play an active role in generating tangible proposals for Cockatoo Island, producing outcomes such as large-scale installations, futurologist proposals, media activism experiments, and greater harbour master planning visions.

Participants will have the chance to work collaboratively with the guests and develop highly current approaches to a site of contemporary urban debate in Sydney. Furthermore they will become involved in the larger discourse surrounding the regeneration of cities through alternative cultural activism, whereby awareness and participation in these sites can play an important role in deepening cultural growth and in turn, economic vitality, for the city, advancing it towards a greater participation in the global cultural economy.

Review Day on the Island

What are 'Urban Islands'?

Shifting economies leave post industrial cities with iconic and dormant sites that are both physically and culturally vacant. These urban islands present new challenges and opportunities for the cities they inhabit.

Cross disciplinary creativity, experimental tactics and broad based participation are needed to inject these places with renewed life.

The Urban Islands project seeks strategies of engagement that respond to the unique qualities of each site whilst imbuing them with the ideas and desires of the city.

Turbine Hall Cockatoo Island

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