At the University of Sydney's Muniment Room Catherine Lassen stages an architectural encounter with Edmund Blacket across time

摘要

The Finnish architectural critic Juhani Pallasmaa uses the word encounter to describe human engagement with architecture. It is a decisive use of terminology. To encounter architecture suggests that one comes ready to question and to react to it. It has a subtle but vitally different connotation from words such as dwell or inhabit, with their literary implication of a more passive form of occupation and acceptance. The concept of an architectural encounter has particular resonance with the recent refurbishment of the Muniment Room at the University of Sydney by Catherine Lassen. It is a project that asks us to question and interrogate, rather than simply experience it. It insists we be active in seeking out its architectural nuance, as a neatly parcelled and simplified historical essay is deliberately withheld from us. The Muniment Room occupies the most important formal axis of the Main Quadrangle at the University of Sydney. Located in the clock tower, beneath the carillon, it is now a fitting home for an international research centre dedicated to the philosophy of time.