Dr Chris Brisbin

My research spans several areas:

1. How buildings activate the street and foster community making through architectural devices such as verandahs, and other threshold conditions to the street;
2. How urban spaces are activated and contribute to place- and city-making;
3. The contemporary architecture of China;
4. Copyright in Chinese architecture;
5. Contemporary space/image relations in Architecture and questions of criticality, authorship and originality in contemporary design practice; and
6. Architectural design philosophy and approaches to design studio teaching in Higher Education.

I have co-convened symposia and conferences on Criticism, Criticality and Critique since 2012, exploring the inter-disciplinary structures of critique, criticism and criticality across the disciplines of Art, Architecture and Design. This has led to a series of essays, invited talks, and magazine articles exploring what is at stake in architectural copyright, criticism and criticality in the counterfeit contemporary architecture of China. I am currently co-editing a book with Dr. Myra Thiessen that attempts to bring these inter-disciplinary threads together entitled The Routledge Companion to Criticality in Art, Architecture, and Design, to be published in late 2017.

Chris graduated from The University of Queensland in 1995 with a Bachelor of Design Studies. He later completed a Bachelor of Architecture (Hons I) in 2001. Chris commenced a Masters in 2002 that he subsequently upgraded to a PhD in 2003. Under the supervision of Prof. John Macarthur, Prof. Antony Moulis, and Prof. Andrew Leach, Chris's doctorate was awarded in 2010. For more information on Chris' PhD research, view his PhD and all other research publications, see his detailed bio and cv at <academic.edu> and <reserachgate.net>.

critique/criticality/post-criticality in art, architecture and design

I have embarked on a new major research project as part of my post-doctoral research program. The project focuses on the philosophical structures of architectural counterfeiting in China and has evolved through a series of research events and publications that I completed in 2013-14. The two initial events brought together national and international experts to discuss contemporary issues surrounding critique, criticism, and criticality in the round-table event, SEE NO EVIL | HEAR NO EVIL | SPEAK NO EVIL: the changing nature of architectural criticism, that I hosted in Adelaide (March 2013); and the Critique2013: An International Conference Reflecting on Creative Practice in Art, Architecture and Design, that I co-convened and presented a paper at in Adelaide (November 2013). In addition, I have researched and presented two follow up papers in the critic|all: International Conference on Architectural Design and Criticism in Madrid, Spain (June 2014), and at the Architecture, Law and the Senses Symposium in Sydney (September 2014). As a result of these research events and publications, I am currently co-editing a book on Critique-ality in Art, Architecture and Design with Dr. Myra Thiessen (Visual Communications, UniSA).

China’s rapid densification and unquenchable demand for Australian resources is a much debated and contentious political narrative within contemporary Australian society. Whilst the sheer scale of China’s low-cost labor force has historically fed both the consumptive desires of the West and its own economic growth, China’s population is rapidly transforming from working-class producers to middle-class consumers. In 2013, the emergent middle-class equated to 1/3 of China’s population of 1.354B, and is set to exponentially grow to 70% of its projected 2030 population. Whilst there are undeniable environmental costs that result from this 7.15% exponential growth, there is also a cultural and environmental cost created by rapidly increasing middle-class consumption. Chinese research that has been conducted into the counterfeiting of movies and computer games in China suggest that approximately 98% of Chinese engage in computer software piracy. In addition, up to 90% of daily-use goods available in urban areas are counterfeit. The single greatest generator of China’s skyrocketing middle-class is the concept of ‘face’ and its affect upon the ‘status consumption’ of Western luxury goods. The effects of this extraverted display of luxury has super-charged consumption and bred piracy of all forms of consumable goods, including, more recently, the architectural icons of the West. There is limited academic literature accounting for the widespread copying of Western architecture in China, aside from Bianca Bosker’s Original Copies, Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China (2013), which primarily examines Chinese architectural copying from the perspective of the conceptual relationship between the authentic original and the nature of the Baudrillardian ‘simulacra’ that is present in the copy. Limited research has been conducted from the specific viewpoint about what this architectural copying means for Western and/or Chinese architectural identity, or Chinese consumption more generally.

More recently, China has begun to openly appropriate and copy the architecture of the West—including exemplars of the post-industrial architectural canon—vehemently embracing them as accoutrement of modernization and social status. To promote the image of success in China apparently means to look like, and dwell in, the icons of Western modernity; such as reproductions of Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp (1954) in Zhengzhou (2004); reproductions of the architecture and engineering of Haussmann’s nineteenth-century Paris in the ironic montage of Tianducheng’s Eiffel Tower (2007) copy with surrounding baroque cityscape buildings; or, more recently, reproductions of Zaha Hadid’s SOHO shopping complex in Beijing (2011–14) in the Meiquan 22nd Century building in Chonjing (2012), to name but a recent few.

Over the past twenty years, The People’s Republic of China has actively solicited Western architectural practices to design many of its internationally recognizable cultural icons, such as the stadia of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, the Beijing National Aquatics Center (2003–8), designed by Australian architects PTW Architects, and the Beijing National Stadium (2003-8), designed by Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron. In many projects, Western architectural practices were partnered with local Chinese practices in order to catalyse cultural and knowledge exchange and, more pragmatically, to document and administer day-to-day building construction. This research explores the philosophical implications that arise when this cross-cultural partnership leads to the illicit copying of Western-designed buildings in China, such as the Meiquan 22nd Century building’s (2012–) re-presentation of Zaha Hadid Architects’ SOHO shopping complex in Beijing (2011–14). When Western architectural practices collaborate with Chinese partners on projects in China, many fundamental assumptions about Western Copyright Law, and the philosophical structures that underpin it, such as authorship, ownership, and originality, are fundamentally brought into question. Whilst I have conducted extensive research surrounding the complex philosophical, historical, and cultural complexities of questions relating to the legality of Copyright, the research has also explored copying, originality, authorship, creativity, criticality, and post-criticality (both historically and in a contemporary context), the research in consciously scaffold primarily by Western sources. In order for the work to be cultural enriched and validated, it requires a direct cultural engagement with Chinese academics in China, and the building of research networks in China in order to develop my cross-cultural literacy that is not possible in Australia.

Visuality to visualistic: reconciling the developed surface/s of contemporary architecture

This research chronologises a history of the theory and techniques applied in the representation of space in both art and architecture. It draws upon various key moments in this history when the way in which we view and understand the technical representation of objects—their meaning and relationship to the viewer in space—fundamentally changed; such as the development of linear perspective in the Renaissance, the development of the camera in the nineteenth century; or the development of virtual reality today. This research attempts to draw upon and learn lessons from this complex pluralistic history in order to suggest how we might go about addressing contemporary problems in visual culture and architecture more specifically. Contemporary problems such as the compositional tactic and embedded meaning that might be engendered in the application of images onto the surfaces of buildings—when the buildings themselves loose their sense of object-ness, and become pure image. How do we reconcile such imagistic and aesthetic-based compositions with the reality of the places in which these compositions are to be inserted: real spaces with real flesh-and-blood people whom occupy and experience space haptically—as a bodily and multi-sensory experience—not purely visually? Put simply, how do we embed the old with the new when the formal surfaces of the new are conceived as image/s?

This research is significant because it bridges between art history, visual culture, and architectural history, using historical resources in order to instrumentally explore contemporary problems in Visual Culture and Architecture. The research both historicises and speculates on the changing relationship between pictures and viewers in Western Visual Culture; in terms of the dynamic interchange between static and moving images, and stationary and moving viewers. That is to say, it is both reflective and projective in attempting to provide a lens through which to suggest relevant techniques that could be applied in the conceptual and technical application of pictures on the interior and exterior surfaces of architecture today. This research is therefore aims to assist academics and architects alike in approaching the design of technically and conceptually rich façade systems for their buildings that use new image technologies in meaningful ways.

The Anatomy of the Edge: Exploring the threshold between Landscape and Architecture in the verandas of Australia:

This research is based on a design-research based (teaching nexus) project that I have been working on for several years that aims to (A) identify and chronologise a history of the ‘veranda-edge’ as a vernacular form of edge treatment unique to Australian Architecture; and to (B) establish a cultural history that outlines the importance of urbanising such veranda edge-conditions in promoting a vibrant occupation of a building’s urban and suburban edges. In so doing, verandas effectively promote social interaction between people, galvanizing communities together through the social rituals of the ‘everyday’ events of urban and suburban life, whilst also acting as a key architectural device in maintaining the safety and security of both the occupants of the veranda, and the public space the veranda addresses.

It is an interdisciplinary project that moves between the domains of Interior Design, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Philosophy and Critical Theory. The research uses measured-sectional/elevation drawings, as a device to interrogate and reveal the anatomy of a-typical verandas in South-East Queensland and in South Australia, in combination with conventional literature-based research. The research investigates both the verandas’ pragmatic and phenomenological qualities in addressing questions such as; the climate specificity of building edge conditions in mediating climate; the sociological aspects of the veranda as privacy threshold and identity marker; and finally, the veranda as a conceptual and liminal space; as a space that is neither interior nor exterior, architecture nor landscape, but something uniquely in-between.

The veranda is generally discussed in terms of its functional ‘threshold’ characteristics; the space held in tension between the domestic interior and urban/landscape exterior. Its emphasis was on the technical and the experiential; based on the scale of people, at moments of either transition from inside or out, or inhabitation of the in-between. As a result, this project aimed to document variations of the veranda’s anatomy in its context and, in so doing, speculate upon the nature of its relevancy in architecture today.

This research is significant as it provides key strategies in addressing environmental and social sustainability challenges of how to design and build contemporary architectural projects that thermally responsive to their environments whilst promoting vital connections between people and the communities and places that they live. The challenge to transform our lives and our cities to be more sustainable—for both the sake of the environment and our own psychological well-being—requires an erosion of the traditional research silo that inhibits interaction between conceptually familiar disciplines. The capacity of this project to bridge between disciplines has already been manifest in the collaboration between artist Victoria Hamilton and Landscape Architect and academic Julian Raxworthy. Pivotally, the veranda research aims to provide a unique picture of an architectural building typology that doubles as a narrative device through which to discuss vital aspects of sustainable urbanism; how we create and connect to vibrant places and liveable cities in the era of climate change and increasing global population growth. It therefore aims to provide key strategies to aid architects in designing new homes in Australia, and providing more thermally comfortable and sociable living environments for the people whom dwell in them.

Affiliated academic member of the ATCH (Architecture, Theory, Criticism, History) Research Centre at The University of Queensland

Qualifications

• Doctor of Philosophy University of Queensland

• Bachelor of Architecture (hons) University of Queensland

• Bachelor of Design Studies University of Queensland