Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning



DAAE2001 Australian Architecture

Assignment Two
Investigating a Site (or, Digging In)


Herbert Gallop, The Bridge Under
Construction, (Milsons Point) 1927, oil on
board, 45x36 cm (Lawson Menzies)



What kind of information can you gather around a specific site, or work of architecture? This second
assignment trades the breadth of the first to ask you to research one site in particular. What can you
find? What does it suggest of where else you might look? Evidence like official documents, photographs,
newspaper articles, paintings, diary entries, letters, published analyses or commentary, architectural
drawings and construction documents all provide information. It also poses questions that can send you
off looking for other evidence. Again, it asks, what do you want to know? But this time in conjunction with
other questions: What can you know? And how?
As a starting point, take a project or site you have encountered in your first assignment. See what you
can find. Reproduce you finding as a series of annotated images. You might arrange these as a
powerpoint presentation, or use another program that deals readily with images and text together.
Look for different kinds of evidence that allows you to view your site in the round. Or explore a single
body of evidence that in its iterations allows you to do the same. What can you find? What can you
use? What do you choose to set aside?
Evidence will be drawn from a range of sources. Basic online searches may offer a starting point, but
they will not be the end of your investigation.
Your site choice is to be constrained by two criteria: it must be (or have been, at some point) in New
South Wales; and it must interest you. Beyond this, it will be architecture, one way or another (we’ll talk
about that in class), and therefore the product of somebody’s intentions.
This assignment will help you learn something about how to find historical material; and to engage
with institutions and their holdings. As with assignment one, you will inevitably discover something you’ve
not seen before. The questions of that assignment remain in play: How does it connect with what you
know? What can be said about what you already know? Or in what other ways can you know it?
You will identify fifteen (15) pieces of evidence, offering a brief commentary on each, and supplying
details of their sources, and saying something of what one might draw from each.
One again: you may format your selection and writing in any way you wish. However you proceed,
legibility is important. Each piece of evidence (high resolution, carefully documented) will be
accompanied by text of 100 words. Captions and further reading (documentation to follow the Chicago
Manual of Style) are in addition to this. Evidence may be taken from any defensible source, so long as it
is properly acknowledged. (If, for instance, you find something online, your job is to figure out its
origins.)
You will prepare your evidence as a dossier. Submission will be as a document lodged through the
Canvas assignment portal. This is less a work of curation than an investigative dossier. It trades breadth
for depth, while testing some of the same skills. Through this evidence, you will build up a picture that
you will articulate in the third assignment. The accompanying text, necessarily brief, will serve to direct
our eyes to the pertinent details, or help us to recognise how a single document relates to a larger
whole.

To Recap
15 pieces of evidence, sourced from institutional collections or other legitimate sources.
For each, an explanatory text of 100 words.
Source and further reading supplies for each piece of evidence.

Our Suggestion?
Take a week or two to choose a site. Find one thing, make some notes: day’s work done.

The Fine Print
This is to be read in conjunction with the Unit of Study outline. Any amendments or clarifications will be
made on the Canvas site of this course, with an announcement to be posted to all students.

Weighting: 20%
Due: Friday 8 April 2022, 11:59pm (end of Week 7)

Learning outcomes assessed: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (see Unit of Study outline).

Assessment Criteria
1. The clarity of your curiosity (5 marks)—how well can we recover the questions you have asked as you
have gathered material on your chosen site; does it direct you somewhere in particular? This criterion
concerns your starting point for your search and how you have developed it.
2. The range and selection of your evidence (5 marks)—does your selection of evidence, and what is
said about it, reflect a wide-ranging search for materials; does it move beyond the worldview offered
by a single source; is there room in the selection to surprise us; or teach us something? This criterion
concerns the scope of your investigation.
3. The analysis/description of your evidence (5 marks)—what can you say about what you have found;
does the description help us to see it in new ways, extend what we might assume, or challenge it; how
far does your direction go in enriching what you have to show us? This criterion concerns the relationship
of description to evidence.
4. The quality of your presentation (image resolution, format and design) (5 marks)—have you found
the best way to present your evidence; and given clear thought to putting together the submission, as a
dossier; is everything spelled correctly; grammar under control; sources accurately documented? This
criterion concerns technical aspects of the work.