Making of Monument Part 1 Dissertation 1998 Selamije Dauti Curtin University Perth | Australia 'Making of Monument' represents the process of the theory and ideas that made the field possible. The process includes the design decisions and the chronological theory that was used to justify the actions. The theories are represented in both written (report) and visual (design) form. The dissertation was a means of not only testing the process and events that shaped the making of a monument but also looking at architecture as having the power to provide the city with an identity in which the historical and present cultural, polotical and social issues are challenged. The site is silent, an area of celebration, or one to be celebrated. It is a place where contemporary performance art associated with dance, experimental movements and theatre is celebrated as well as a place in which to celebrate mundane rituals. The result represents a tombstone for our silent river. Enscribed on it is an epitaph, a written monument which stands as an object of remembrance - a permenant record for the city of Perth. In a recent TV interview, a fashion guru was asked a question: "Who decided the colour for the year Ð you or someone more powerful than you?" He replied: "I don't think I could determine this; there is always something in the air."'Making of Monument' is an ambitious project determined to create a presence of monumentality for a city without monuments. This work transforms the Perth waterfront site into a beautiful place. The water site has been romanticised by suggestive inhabitation: departure, journey, arrival and theatre. A series of settings is created, to accommodate the city's daily leisure lifestyle. However, on festival occasions, mass gatherings are structured by these settings. Therefore, a celebration of a leisure lifestyle is architecturally transformed into ritual, and lifestyle and monumentality are thus combined.The scheme promises dreams. There is sense of lightness and also muteness among these settings: a departure jetty, lit columns in the water, an 'endless' belltower of the arrival and a 'ruin' theatre. They are virtually markers and ruins on the surfaces of the earth and water.On most days rituals are gone and only dreams of rituals remain in the shadows of these 'ruins'. There must be something in the air.