Palimpsest Part 1 Project 2024 Marcus Tan University of Melbourne | Australia Between the Melbourne CBD and the Yarra river is Enterprize Park, a waterfront parcel of land. It bears intense socio-cultural history, as the chosen place of landing for European settlers arriving on ships. It is a place that is simultaneously emblematic of the dispossession of Indigenous Australian land, and the hopeful idea of a new beginning for settlers. This tension is manifest on site in monuments dedicated to this event, including Indigenous Australian art and other ship-related sculptures.The Palimpsest, is a proposal for a public library, which uses the analogy of a palimpsest as a way to understand the site. The site is conceived as containing multiple layers of memory superimposed upon one another, with some of these histories crystallized in the form of said monuments, and with other histories lacking representation. The main gestures are threefold: firstly, to excavate, or reinstate a history of the river on the site, of which the site bears close relation to but has no representation of. Secondly, to acknowledge the immensity of history afforded by the site which remains unrecorded and imperceptible today. And lastly, to plan in such a way as to bring these monuments together in a singular architectural expression. Marcus Tan Tutor(s)