To my teammates from @URTeam 7, I wanted to share these conversations and reflections, this is for all of you

Tired after three very long days, I only made it through the announcements, a little boogie and photo shoot with the team before I hit a brick wall and had to leave the party.

It was a cold but beautiful night and even though I desperately needed sleep, my feet walked me back to our site. Sitting back in one of our so-called urban tents, I immediately felt calm. I probably would have fallen into blissful sleep right there if I hadn't been joined by a couple of people. "Where do you think they got all the bottle caps?" I could hear them asking each other.

Noticing me reclining there, they recognised me from the group photo we had posted on the orange balustrade to introduce ourselves, and asked me, "so where did you get the bottle caps from?" They were local residents of the Docklands who were spending their Saturday evening walking around and visiting all of the ten sites. "A home brewery shop actually." They smiled and started picking up the caps and throwing them into the gravel.

I got up and shared with them the stories of how we had filled the past three days. I showed them the bottle caps that the local contractors (but not Joe!) and others had left behind in the holes of the timber decking which had been our inspiration. I told them about some of the people we had met and the lunchtime events where we invited people to play the game (that they had already picked up on and were already playing!) The woman suggested that you could sit in the structures and "look out into the Zen garden" or play the game from that vantage point - something no one had mentioned before. The man walked around into the site and gasped as he saw the structures from the other side, "it's beautiful - it's a great surprise for those who bother to walk around".

They were so engaged and curious and their questions about the making process kept flowing - it all felt a little bit magical. How did you attach the caps? How many are there? Was it hard work? Did you have an assembly line going? Did it take longer than you thought? Did you have fights in your team? Was there a lot of pressure? Did the people who came to your events help you to make the blanket? Did you do the plants as well? Finally they moved on to see site 1 before heading home, but as they walked away they shouted, "Good luck! We hope you win!" I didn't have the energy to chase after them and tell them that the judges had already announced their decision.

I suddenly felt inspired to walk around to all of the sites. Each of the groups no doubt had their own stories and methods and ideas and I had a strong urge to experience all of them as a whole conversation. Funnily though, as I walked around the Docklands, I kept seeing bottle caps everywhere - the tactile indicators near the tram stops especially reminded me of our very repetitive little material. (I definitely desperately needed sleep at this point!)

I sat quietly at site 3, I lay down very very briefly at site 4, I slipped and sat at site 5, I sat at site 6, and I watched some very drunk teens trying to climb up site 7 and create an impromtu bar.

-

"Hello again." I was heading towards site 8 when I ran into the same couple I had met over at our site again. "Oh, hello!"

"So you must live near here?" They pointed out their apartment building along New Quay.

They had seen all of the projects and were heading home. I asked them how they were enjoying their evening. They talked about how they loved walking through the fluffy blue one ("it was amazing!"), they loved how different groups had decided to spend time on different things and they were all so diverse, they thought some of them "didn't take much effort", and they sweetly flattered me with another compliment for our group ("the intricate gold reminded me of our home, of India", "yes it was very relaxing"). They loved "the hanging weeds" and found it amusing that "at that last one, there were some drunk people making a bar in the pink structure". I loved that too.

"So, when do you find out?" they asked.

I told them the results.

S: "Really? I didn't understand that one. I didn't think there was much effort... but... well, I guess judges know best."

T: "Not necessarily. What was the criteria? How did they decide so quickly?"

me: "I think they had a few hours this afternoon, maybe 4 or 5 hours? There were a few judges here, and some of them were overseas."

S: "Oh, then they are not the experts. I am the expert because I live here!"

-

Suddenly they realised they hadn't found site 10. I told them I hadn't seen it yet and was heading there but that it was roughly near the ice skating rink. "Okay, we'll find it tomorrow. It's late. Next time."

I finished the rest of my walking tour - site 8, site 9, site 10 - and jumped on the 86 tram home.

I was tired but I was beaming. I thought the quality of all of the sites were amazing
and I loved the experience of working with and getting to know the members of my team and the many many conversations that we had with the residents and workers and visitors around the Docklands.

At the GPO stop, a man jumped on the tram and turned to a guy next to him and said, "it's cold out there, but it's warm in here". The guy ignored him, so he said it again "it's cold out there, but it's warm in here". Nothing. He shrugged. I smiled. He smiled back but we didn't have a way of continuing the exchange.

He noticed the girl sitting opposite me was fiddling with the many bags she had with her. That was his in. "Why do you have so many bags?" She told him that she was moving to Melbourne from Sydney for a job for a few months. She was heading to her friends place in either Carlton or Collingwood, she couldn't remember. He helped her to work out that it was Collingwood. She asked him where he worked. He came and sat closer. He told her he used to be homeless but that he was now a chef in an Indian restaurant in the city. He gave her the restaurant's business card. She asked if she could keep it, then tucked it into her backpackers' backpack. She told him that she did support work for homeless people and they began to discuss issues of homelessness in Melbourne.

Here were two strangers, sharing basic but intimate details of their lives, within the time it takes to travel between 6 tram stops. I said goodbye to them both and got off at the corner of Gertrude and Brunswick. I don't think there was anything else that could've happened that would have completed my experience of the Urban Realitites: Landscape Urbanism 3 Day Design Challenge more perfectly.

As we reflected in our book, it seems so obvious, but conversation is talking about something with someone.

Because we were making, we had something to talk about.
Because we were talking, we had someone to make for.

Without the bags, that man might not have had the opportunity to talk to the girl on the tram. She might have just ignored him like the first guy had. Without the traces we left on our site, I wouldn't have had met this lovely Indian couple who really helped me to process and understand our project better.

How can we change the way we plan and design our cities?

Conversations.

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Dear Michelle (and Team 7),

Thanks for your moving reflections of our three days adventure. It doesn’t seem to feel like it was a long time ago when we were furnished with white, easily ripped overalls, with our brain counting every second that mattered, questioning what seemed to be one of the most critical questions: will those damn bottle caps get threaded in time?

I also would like to thank you and everyone in the team for the opportunity. I have learned so much and have been humbled by the experience.

I am reluctant to be nostalgic of what we’ve done. In a strange way, somehow I felt relieved when I learned that the still creature that we (team 7+ passerbys + resident of docklands) designed has gone and been cleaned up with virtually no trace. The sight of it is no more. But, like the death of a star, I want to believe it is now etched in our collective memory with heightened consciousness: the sound that we heard, the small objects that we held, the scale of the space, the arguments made and the tensions that arose. As the very artifact that could answer our query of history is now gone, the tales that our mind create of what it was once will form and in due time, I believe, we all will have completely different stories of what happened. It may become somewhat of a myth. And that is beautiful.

I am reluctant to be nostalgic… but I would like to share with you and the team a few things that I observed during the three days process. Call it a personal post-rationalization if you like.

First is our sense of informality.

Conversations, as you expressed, were integral to the whole process. Our three days were spent iterating and curating through ideas with input from so many people. You have gone over this in your reflections much better than I ever would. But I would like to add more to the plate: the informality of the architectural and design elements that we worked with.

The obvious ones, such as the usage of plywood (which somehow reflects the typical interior of Melbourne cafes), mesh + bottle caps, all raw and unfinished, are signs of informality. The way we had to crouch and crawl to get in and out the space, the slightly dangerous (pointy) end of these pods, the sights and vistas that these pods compel us to look, and the composition of the installation itself are really creative, informal elements. If anyone is there, they will know it.

But I felt the happiest when I learned that we used gravel as the floor surface of one of our pods. The usage of gravel, I think, was the plateau of our informality. When I first saw it on Saturday, I immediately tried to position myself as a visitor and thought: shit, that looks like a bed of some sharp small rocks! I didn’t think it was very inviting. So I tried sitting on it very briefly.

I was tired and emotional. The surface felt like an alien that tried to grab me. I felt a push and pull, only distracted by the slight chiming of the bottle caps. But when I went back in on Sunday, all sober and awake, it was quite a different sensation: I was able to comprehend the difference between this surface and the typical cushiony surface that my back is accustomed to. I didn’t resist it anymore, and somehow the gravel formed itself to the contour of my body as I lied on it. The whispery sound of the bottle caps was no longer distraction and had become a part of the elements. The sound of the wind. Yes, every slight movement I made, I could hear it! The “srrrrk” sound I heard when the gravel moved as I bent my legs, the “thugg!” sound as I accidentally bumped my head against the plywood and the “crrlingg lingg crlling” I heard when I moved my fingers around the bottle caps and the mesh. It was quite intimate (like you, I could’ve fallen asleep had I not heard the footsteps of visitors touring these sites!), and strangely enough, it was comfortable.

Comfortable?

And that’s what I asked myself: Our perception of comfort.

I was immediately aware of my optical discrimination of the gravel. I was aware of my unfortunate dismissal of only seeing the gravel as merely a surface to sit on. I realized I imagined an experience which I haven’t even experienced. Why did I do it? Is it because of the daily visual indoctrination of the idea of “comfortable surface”? Is it because of the intellectual distortion of material properties that I thought I knew: of hard and soft, strong and weak, big and small, sharp and dull? Or is it because the distance that I had between myself and the new thing?

When I sat there, I realized I could pick up the rocks and threw them around. Grab a clump of them and pour it on my legs. Roll my hands on them to create sound. The way they form around my body. Suddenly, it was becoming comfortable! I then knew the material and the material knew me. It felt raw and real. For the purpose that it was (a surface for people making conversations), the gravel really worked. I imagine you could be playing with the gravel as you are talking.

Our site location also helped: the wind, the hot sun, the water all helped create some kind of sensation that, I think, would be hard to replicate else where.

These two ideas of informality and perception of comfort are very apparent in the design and it formed well with the intention of the space: a place to create intimate conversations. No, not a meeting space as typically devised to make business deals and money, nor a place of rendezvous. It is simply a place for intimate conversations. (Although I’d be equally happy to hear if these conversations are also involving arguments, tensions, some bitch slaps and the like)

So will this experiment be a turning point in the way we approach design? Who knows. As Ammon said on the award night in our conversation, “we didn’t win, and you know what, we may never win, we may never get accepted”. And he may be right. And honestly I liked to take that as a compliment of our hard work. Perhaps constant acceptance may be the very thing that will hinder our progress and experiment. Perhaps we should fail more, earnestly, than winning. Perhaps what we did was answering a challenge with another challenge.

But perhaps that’s the only way to ever get out of this damn rut of architecture.

I love you all. And sorry for being so nostalgic.

ps. Upon rereading what I wrote, I would like to make a correction. It is untrue that there is “virtually no trace” of the installation. As long as there are construction workers having lunch there, we will always sight those beautiful bottle caps.

— Kamil Muhammad