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Safety Net

Part 2 Project 2007
Clara Ho
University of New South Wales | Australia
Every city has its exclusionary zones. They are the abject sites, forgotten spaces, the
terrain vague of suburbia. This project takes a portion of a transmission line easement as an example of such a site. The dangers of high voltage power transmission and fear of exposure to electromagnetic radiation render the easement an abandoned strip of land, void of use. The safety net eases these fears, protecting the space from both real and perceived danger. The project offers an opportunity for renewed contact with the site, whilst preserving the inherent nature of the site.




Armed with an array of processes begged, borrowed and stolen from the world of art
practice, this studio went stalking suburbia. With very few co-ordinates we found
ourselves most fascinated by the many and varied non-places: voids, edges, seams and
residue sites that the city’s peripheral terrain revealed. Repeatedly the projects sought
new and unfamiliar ways of seeing and interpreting suburban forms and conditions, ways
that challenged assumptions and sought the unexpected.
Clara’s project emerged from a fascination with the reading “Terrain Vague” by Ignasi de
Sola Morales. How, she asked, can architecture operate in these spaces, so abundant in
the expanding suburban field, without erasing them, and the subversive power they
appear to hold? Her project takes a simple physical discovery and translates it with great
imagination and precision from the impossible to the plausible. A no-mans land lost
between fences becomes a wondrous night garden, a pseudo natural phenomena, like a
(sub)urban aurora borealis laced across the city.

2007
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