Spotlight 20: Jarel Cheah
- archigrammelbourne
- 2 hours ago
- 9 min read
Jarel Cheah completed his design thesis Maintenance Infrastructures in 2024 at the Melbourne School of Design. This project investigates the ecological and socio-cultural value of vacant lots in the middle and outer ring suburbs of Melbourne, more specifically working on a collection of three adjacent vacant lots in Epping. His proposal arrived at a series of temporary structures aimed at reframing our relationship with urban ecologies through a labour of care and engagement, advocating for an ongoing process of learning about the maintenance of land.
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Shreya Desai (SD): Throughout your journey in architecture you have sought out a variety of interdisciplinary subjects including going on an exchange to TU Delft. Could you tell us a bit about how these experiences may have shaped the way you position yourself and your approach to design?
Jarel Cheah (JC): Throughout my education journey, I've explored a broad range of ideas through specific agendas from design studios and personal research.
My first studio - Offcuts, led by William Cassel and Rachel Halstead gave me an opportunity to embed material reuse into my thinking. I also had the chance to look deeper into First Nations culture and knowledge for my project, which probably could’ve been another studio on its own with the amount of reading I was doing.
At TU Delft, I completed the Interiors Buildings Cities studio, which gave me the opportunity to explore the ways in which a corner building relates to the city while making highly detailed 1:33 scaled physical models. BOTHY, with Andre Bonnice, expanded my perspectives on architecture as systems and components, rather than artifacts.
In my role as editor for Inflection, I helped inform the Regeneration theme for the 2024 issue. Working with knowledgeable academics and practitioners working in that space allowed me to formulate thoughts about architecture’s role in relation to the climate crisis. This all culminated in interests that are quite broad, and gave me a more interdisciplinary lens when positioning my thesis proposal. I would like to think these experiences helped inform an architecture that is more considerate and critical of its own limitations.
SD: Your thesis “Maintenance Infrastructures” aims to highlight the overlooked potential of so-called ‘vacant lots’. What was the brief, and what were your first steps in defining the scope of your research?
JC: Maintenance Infrastructures started out as a curious study into disused quarries/landfills, sites that are abandoned and deemed contaminated by DEECA. I expanded my scope to look at this condition and transitioned to looking at vacant lots, essentially smaller, decentralised versions of the condition seen in quarries: products of economical and political forces that are symptomatic of how land, governance and capital affect urban form.
There is also an inherent inequality in the size and frequency of vacant lots appearing in suburbs with higher disadvantage. Based on publicly available datasets by EPA and DEECA, I was able to map out the frequency and size of these spaces that exist in suburbs of higher disadvantage. Research has shown that disadvantaged suburbs lack access to good quality public green spaces. Besides that, the most significant ecosystem decline also occurs in the state of Victoria, due to the widespread land clearing. By going deeper and attempting to highlight public green spaces, you can start to see where the opportunities exist to reappropriate vacant lots.
Architectural tools like mapping and drawing revealed what to research, but I was also doing theoretical readings simultaneously. My thesis supervisors Virginia Mannering and Hélène Frichot encouraged drawing as much as researching, itself a form of creative research. They both inform each other to reveal potential modes of inquiry.
SD: This layered approach asks fundamental questions about the way ‘vacant’ land is valued, perceived, and therefore maintained. What were some key references that informed the framing of your project in this context?
JC: One of the key aims of the research included investigating the perception of vacant lots as empty and disused. Vacant lots that are maintained (mowed, fenced, occasionally landscaped) often signal that the land is “in waiting” for development and tied to economic value. There are also some interesting conditions where goats are brought in to graze the land and keep them looking tidy, and these can be found in inner suburbs like Fitzroy!
But unmaintained lots (weedy, strewn with rubbish, eroded) are associated with decline and poverty—even though ecologically, they may be thriving spaces free from human intervention. There are also very important discussions that should be had about indigenous ways of caring for land, and maybe there’s potential for these knowledges to be applied on an urban piece of land. I was trying to unravel how all these play out, and it led to researching more into the socio-cultural and ecological aspect of these spaces. The tension between these associations are open ended, and the ambition consisted of architecture as a method for hosting and reframing conversations around these ecosystems. Spaces could be constructed where the community learns ways to care for land: weeding, replanting native vegetation, observation, cataloguing waste and reusing them.
Ecologically, Gilles Clement’s manifesto on the third landscape, which highlights the value of abandoned spaces, was based on the notion that “the undeveloped site is the refuge for earth’s biodiversity, where minimal human intervention allows for multi-species to thrive.”1 They are dominated by spontaneous vegetation, either native or introduced and grow on poor and often compacted soils with extremely low maintenance requirements.2
Culturally, vacant lots are also coined terrain vague - loose spaces that offer possibilities for informal encounters and alternative activities outside of increasingly commodified and controlled open urban spaces.3 One of the key questions around vacant sites involve the act of designing spaces that encourage community use while keeping its informal characteristics. This means working with unpredictability, unfinished processes rather than the finished outcome. In Melbourne, a precedent for terrain vague can be studied via Testing Grounds, initiated by The Projects in 2011. Salvaged materials like pallets, shipping containers form a gallery and an atrium where temporary events can occur. A gridded steel canopy delivers power and data on-site. The proposal to turn a derelict site into a space to play and work through experimentation allows us to speculate on what creative infrastructures might look like in terrain vagues.
In discussing how architecture can start to respond to a changing set of values in our society, Giovanni Borasi emphasised the need to adopt an approach of caring rather than curing.4 The ambition was not to resolve systemic issues, but using architecture as a way to make these things apparent, and reveal the potential of them. This was the approach I took for my thesis.
SD: It is interesting to think about the idea of architecture as infrastructure, and infrastructure as temporary. How do you tie these together when it comes to designing systems of care and maintenance?
JC: The idea of architecture as infrastructure was actually a lens that Virginia and Hélène encouraged me to investigate. In the book Infrastructural Love, Hélène talks about architecture as a support system in the service of infrastructure, responding to environmental, social, and political crises. When looking at it from that lens, Maintenance Infrastructures can perform as a support system that brings third spaces and green patches to enable community engagement and foster stewardship. In the Melbourne Biodiversity Network (MBN) project by OFFICE, which proposed to convert under-utilised corridors like power line easements, rail corridors, former waterways into biodiversity corridors, you can begin to notice how different types of green spaces are thought of as infrastructures. They not only increase ecological resilience but also provide opportunities for more equitable and accessible public green space.
Working on a collection of 3 adjacent vacant lots in Epping, my thesis proposal arrived at a series of temporary structures aimed at reframing our relationship with urban ecologies through a labour of care and engagement, advocating for an ongoing process of learning about the maintenance of land.
An existing shed is repurposed into a waste depository, where waste can be catalogued and reused by the community. The nursery facilitates the propagation of threatened plant species, where indigenous-led caring for Country ecological interventions can be implemented across the site. The communal shelter is built around the existing power line- where remnant vegetation is found to be growing around. This structure is designed as a more open-ended space for the community to appropriate for gatherings, which could be BYO bar or a semi-enclosed cinema.The verandah that is offset from and wraps around the existing power line hopefully encourages occupants to pause, reflect and observe for signs of life in their natural environment.
Rudimentary construction materials serve as a structural framework, where collected waste from the depository can potentially be reused as space-defining materials. Rubble gabion is used as walls for the nurseries, the ground is brought inside by eliminating the use of a slab, where the healthy cultivation of plants is necessitated by the health of the soil. In the communal shelter, recycled roof tiles could be used as cladding; tarpaulins fixed onto battens as roof. Galvanised steel mesh is used in place of a slab to allow the ground to be exposed, occupants are encouraged to work for their comfort, such as using salvaged plywood boards to form a flat surface for social gatherings. Around the site, tyres are used as steps and planters, disused concrete panels are used as structures and follies to provide a sense of refuge from the openness of the site. Movement around the site is encouraged through non-hierarchical placement of these structures, allowing occupants to wander through the network of diverse plant species.
At the end of its lifecycle, when these spaces inevitably get developed, these interventions can be disassembled, leaving only diverse, developed eco-systems in place. A regulatory framework (similar to biodiversity offsets or conservation covenants) is envisaged for the space, where developers are incentivised to build around the area that’s been rehabilitated from Maintenance Infrastructures.
SD: It has been about a year since finishing your thesis. How do you think this project has continued to revise or reinforce your idea of what it means to be an architect, and the potential of architecture in the broader discourse of maintenance and repair?
JC: Maintenance infrastructures allowed me to not only explore a construction framework for disassembly, but also regulatory frameworks that improve our cities. As architecture practitioners, we have a body of knowledge that is increasingly more interdisciplinary, allowing us to understand complex systems that are interlinked. I think this thesis proposes a role where the architect is as much of an advocate for good built environment outcomes. The traditional notion of architectural projects only serving the client’s self interest should be questioned.
Architecturally, this project contributes to the ongoing discourse that architecture can also be about creating new ecological spaces, beyond the artifact. They aim to encourage alternate ways of commoning to educate, engage and reframe our understanding about novel ecosystems.
In discussing architecture as a way of thinking and observing the society in which we operate, Giovanna Borasi borrowed terms used by other professions like “forensic expert” or “urban detective” to bring about different modes of operation, methods and, therefore, different results when responding to some of the challenges in contemporary society. For example, by observing as found things and looking analytically at a subject matter in our urban environment, research gaps can be found, allowing for new ideas to find a place. Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour were able to demonstrate Las Vegas’ strip as a valid system, something others had missed in their haste to get out of the ‘ugly’ commercial environment. Their willingness to look without prejudice at their environment provoked a new understanding of what a city is. I think this is a really interesting way of using architecture as a tool in response to working within urban conditions but also larger, invisible systems that it is inextricably linked to. I’m interested in architecture as a field of intellectual research beyond an industry whose ultimate goal is to build. Rather than the construction of an artifact, architecture can also contribute to the construction of a cultural agenda.
SD: What else is next for you?
JC: I’m currently studying a few subjects at RMIT and University of Melbourne that I find interesting. At Melbourne, I’m currently enrolled into the Masters of Landscape Architecture program and I am learning furniture-making. At RMIT, I’m in a studio interrogating medium density apartment models, how dwellings shape our living habits and values is something I’ve been interested in. I have a broad range of interests within architecture, so I am hoping to find experimental modes of practice. I’m conscious of only working within one sector this early in my career, as I think you’d miss out on being able to think about spaces in a holistic manner.
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Citations:
Gilles Clement, “Working with (and never against) Nature,” in Environ(ne)ment: Approaches for Tomorrow, ed. Giovanna Borasi (Montreal: CCA, 2006), 98-99.
Peter Del Tredici, “The Flora of the Future,” in Projective Ecologies, eds. Chris Reed and Nina-Marie Lister, New York: Actar, 2020), 247-8.
Patrick Barron, “Introduction,” in Terrain Vague: Interstices at the Edge of Pale, eds. Patrick Barron and Manuela Mariani (New York: Routledge, 2013), 2-7.
Giovanna Boarasi, “Reframing How We Live,” in Architecture and Urbanism 610 (July 2021).
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Interview Credits:
Interviewed by Shreya Desai
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Project credits:
University: University of Melbourne
Year: 2024
Project images provided by Jarel Cheah
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Jarel Cheah is a graduate of architecture at Dion Keech Architects. He is passionate about architecture’s capacity to inspire and provoke conversations around social issues. One of his few current research interests include interrogating the use of salvaged materials in architecture, and how to promote better links between academia and professional practice.
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