Porosity

Public Art is a vehicle for testing the physical and social boundaries of architecture in relation to public space. Porosity is a measure of the permeability of a material or material condition. I use the term to describe the edge condition between public and private space. This edge condition of architecture is in a permanent state of flux under the weight of new construction, the expansion of roads, attachment of signs, creation of tunnels, invasion of monorails, encroachment of building extensions and the continual intervention of cars, trucks and motorbikes. It is replicated internally in buildings at the edge between private space and access corridors and vertical access systems which combine with foyers to make transitional public spaces. Public art projects can link and engage this labyrinth of spaces and expand the social and cultural equation of the city.

Porosity: The revision of public space in the city using public art to test the functional boundaries of built form. This research aims to test the functional boundaries ascribed to the physical dimensions of public space in the city. It involves using Sydney’s central business district as a paradigm for public space within architecture and testing it via the device of public art and the procedure of comprehensive mapping of both internal and external spaces in Sydney. Public art is ideally suited to the task of interrogating architecture due to its symbiotic relationship with built form. As a marginal practice it also allows comment on or contradiction of the mainstream text of a culture. The research will result in a series of virtual 3D maps, computer driven images and physical scale models of an expanded field of public space in central Sydney. It will also produce an index of spaces which redefines our perception of the limits of both architecture and public space.