‘A Chance to Feel Alive’ is a collaboration between two climate focused, futurist design studios - Five Mile Radius and Julia Watson. Fed by a symbiosis between the site, sunshine, and a multitude of non-human species, the linear shelter protects from the evolving climate while creating outdoor rooms of interspecies engagement. The project draws from examples of indigenous nature-based technologies that empower communities towards climate-resilience. In India, the Khasi people create monsoon-proof bridges by training rubber trees to grow over local natural scaffolds. In Iraq, houses made from one ubiquitous material, Qasab reeds, float to withstand fluctuating water levels. In Melbourne, a modular system of walls, benches, and planters are made from our contemporary material, construction waste. This system becomes a scaffold to the living, hosting plants which eventually blanket the structure, absorbing atmospheric carbon through an organic, responsive canopy. The outcome is a ready replicable material palette that enables regenerative protection along the circulation systems of the city. 

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The project is imagined as a prototypical module of a larger walkway, an urban ecological corridor that could respond to local conditions and materiality wherever it grows. In the context of the City, the walkway sequesters, moderates micro-climate, houses habitat and protects humans from erratic climate patterns. In the context of the site, it commences the act of sheltering patrons upon exit from the gallery, then extends to the rear of the Grollo Equiset Garden, providing a covered route that offers views to all major sculptures. Sited in response to local conditions, the structure shades from the summer sun to the north and protects from wind driven rain and prevailing winds, while the landscape interventions act as windbreaks, cooling devices and sensory enhancements. 

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The shelter responds to the contemporary matter of its context, being composed of a previous generation of buildings who’s deconstructed residue forms its carbon-based tissue. Here, this waste-based scaffold is prefabricated from decommissioned fire sprinkler piping and crushed masonry gabion. Spaces for ritualistic human acts - sitting, relaxing, focusing, bathing, gathering and playing - are arranged along the axis with the audience invited to occupy these spaces over the course of the day and seasons.