Kate Donaldson

University of Melbourne
Australia

This project is one of ‘unconcealing’, of bringing tensions to the surface by choreographing anxious architectural encounters with contested histories and the ignored ecological catastrophes of big science.

The Maribyrnong Defence Site is a 128-hectare disused defence facility in the suburbs of Melbourne and by introducing six stops along a network of raised ‘clean ways’ across the site, the project brings together a leisure-seeking public with discrete scientific programs that reference lost or remnant site conditions.

Strange Encounters create space for physical confrontation, collisions and entanglements with the consequences of weaponisation and creates democratised encounters with a once hidden landscape.