News
28 MAY 2021Releasing the spirit of LEGO
Rhonda Dredge’s review of Lost Tablets at Sarah Scout Presents, CBD News, May 2021
CBD resident and architect Jan van Schaik creates sculptural toys from LEGO, exhibited internationally, with his series Lost Tablets set to feature in the online edition of the Venice Biennale of Architecture. He gave a talk at Sarah Scout Presents ahead of the Biennale. Known in CBD art circles as both an organiser of art talks and a collector, van Schaik draws on his architectural training — referencing columns, arches and pediments — in his restrained approach to construction. One piece, Lady Nelson, is named after a lost ship, though van Schaik playfully deflects questions about its fate, suggesting a Google search instead.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE COOK
27 MAY 2021Secondhand Lego blocks
Lost Tablets listed with Newsela: curriculum material for the US education system, May 2021
Now his "Lost Tablets" artworks, made from secondhand Lego, are selling for $3,500 each.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ARRON CHRISTOPHER REES
23 MAY 2021Sculptures from LEGO
Rachael Davies reviews Lost Tablets, Brick Fanatics, May 2021
Australian architect and artist Jan van Schaik created "Lost Tablets," a sculpture series made from second hand LEGO bricks inspired by the ancient ruins beneath Athens' Parthenon. Started in 2019, the roughly 10 inch high sculptures deliberately incorporate worn, discoloured pieces, including bricks bearing previous owners' marks like teeth indentations and stains, to evoke weathered ruins. Van Schaik spent about AUD $15,000 sourcing bricks globally, with finished sculptures selling for $3,500 AUD each. The project juxtaposes LEGO's identity as a familiar children's toy with its reinterpretation as a serious architectural and artistic medium, transforming everyday play material into archaeological looking artifacts.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE COOK
19 MAY 2021ABC Perth
ABC Perth, Afternoons with Christine Layton, May 2021
On Radio Perth, hosted by Christine Layton, Jan van Schaik delves into the creation of his project, Lost Tablets. The vibrant and playful sculptures are constructed from ordinary lego blocks, holding an architectural language that combines both his artistic and architectural interests. Further discussed is the relation between the familiarity of Lego and the inevitable connection we have to the built environment.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER BENNETTS
18 MAY 2021The Project
The Project, Channel 10, May 2021
Channel 10's panel from The Project discuss Jan van Schaik's Lost Tablets.
18 MAY 2021Reddit post
Reddit, May 2021
The Reddit post highlights Jan van Schaik’s “Lost Tablets”, a series of artworks made from LEGO bricks. The post focuses on the striking appearance of the pieces and their prices.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY SIMON STRONG
17 MAY 2021Karl Quinn’s review
Karl Quinn’s review of Lost Tablets at Sarah Scout Presents, The Age, May 2021
Would you pay $3500 for a "sculpture" made from second hand LEGO blocks? Melbourne architect turned sculptor Jan van Schaik makes abstract sculptures from second hand LEGO bricks and sells them for around $3500, raising the question of how something made from an ordinary children's toy can be considered valuable contemporary art. More broadly, the work explores how we assign value to art, whether that value comes from the materials, the artist's ideas and labour, or the context in which the finished object is presented, with LEGO's associations with childhood and play adding another layer to that question.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE COOK
14 JANUARY 2021Special mention
Architecture Australia 2021 Unbuilt Award, January 2021
This piece reviews MvS Architects' Lost Tablets, a series of 36 sculptural works made from found LEGO blocks, likening them to serious architectural art rather than mere toys. Each tablet, sized 19x24.5x5cm, pairs a "sheer" face bearing marks of the blocks' previous owners with a "dynamic" architectural face. Evoking ancient ruins, Borromini's churches, and Gothic cathedrals, the tablets balance childhood familiarity with architectural semiotics. Named after ships found adrift and crewless, the works — exemplified by Ryou-Un Maru — are described as too solemn for pure play, yet deeply inventive and wondrous.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER BENNETTS
26 JULY 2018Architecture Awards
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The Australian Institute of Architects announced the winners of the 2018 Victorian Architecture Awards at its annual awards night on Friday 29 June, with RMIT University's New Academic Street project the most celebrated of the night. Designed by MvS Architects in collaboration with Lyons, NMBW Architecture Studio, Harrison and White and Maddison Architects, the project won the coveted Victorian Architecture Medal, plus top prizes in the Urban Design and Educational Architecture categories, along with awards for Interior Architecture, Sustainable Architecture and the Melbourne Prize. Winners will progress to the National Architecture Awards, to be announced in November.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER BENNETTS
02 JUNE 2018Best of the best
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Francesca Wallace's online article, published 30 May for Vogue, showcases "the best of the best" public architecture in Victoria this year, rounding up standout projects across two categories, public and small project architecture, for the grandest, most beautiful designs the state has seen in 2018. New Academic Street at RMIT University, designed by Lyons with NMBW Architecture Studio, Harrison and White, MvS Architects and Maddison Architects and shortlisted for the annual Victorian Architecture Awards, features prominently in the article
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER BENNETTS
02 NOVEMBER 2017SPECULATIONS
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On Monday 2 October, Jan, Leon, Anna and Mon delve into robust discourse and fervent speculation as they unpack the concept of "betting on architecture," rethinking normative understandings of the city, its economies, policies, procurement models and architectural outputs. Making proposals is no safe or neutral practice, given the risks of projecting utopian ideals into reality, yet provocation is now both a business model and a way to explore uncharted territory. Speakers will examine the thinking behind design decisions, the moment of calculation before committing, and the speculative instincts driving risk, weighing a "good bet" against a "gamble" amid mounting pressures of money, time and entrepreneurship.
Speakers:
Jan van Schaik - MvS Architects, WRITING & CONCEPTS, RMIT University.
Leon van Schaik - RMIT University.
Anna Fairbank - Architect + Artist.
Monique Woodward - WOWOWA.
When: Monday, October 2 at 6:30pm
Where: Loop Bar, 23 Meyers Place Melbourne
21 JULY 2017The grey fortress
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The article published on July 21 2017, reviews the final chapter in the long history of the built infrastructure of RMIT University's city campus. Likening the old buildings to a citadel, which has now been stormed, with holes punched through its fortress walls, opening the building to the street, and making the campus more transparent. Edgar describes the architectural collaboration as a landmark exercise in adaptive reuse, where the modernist grey ghosts have not only been preserved, but reincarnated for 21st-century university life.
Read the full article on the SMH website
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NIK PANTAZOPOULOS
26 OCTOBER 2016New Academic Street
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New Academic Street has been featured in Architecture Australia as a case study for how city campuses are becoming a model for urban development that seeks to rebalance private and public use. Andrew Nimmo writes that the city campus can be an effective agent of urban change, adding to a city's cultural landscape and offering an ideal model where self-interest gives way to mutual benefit and a different balance between private and public use. The project is a collaboration between MvS Architects, Lyons, NMBW, Harrison and White, and Maddison Architects. Read the full article in the July/August edition of Architecture Australia.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER BENNETTS
26 OCTOBER 2016The Home Within
As part of the upcoming Melbourne Festival and MPavilion public programs, Jan van Schaik will join a panel discussing Chiharu Shiota's large scale installation "The Home Within," which will travel to different venues across the city. The discussion will further explore Shiota's work, the notion of home, and the relationship between public and private space, featuring van Schaik alongside Anaïs Lellouche and Larissa Hjorth. The talk takes place 6pm Thursday 13 October at MPavilion, forming part of the Melbourne Festival's visual arts program and MPavilion's public programs, organised by Anabelle Lacroix.
26 JUNE 2016Occupied
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Occupied is a showcase of local and international practitioners exploring ideas of housing more with less, retrofitting, adapting and repurposing existing structures and environments, ranging from the pragmatic to the utopian and the research driven to the purely speculative. Exhibitors include 5th Studio, all(zone), Ash Keating, Atlanta Eke, Baracco + Wright Architects, Breathe Architecture, Lyons Architecture, MvS Architects, NMBW Architecture Studio, Stefano Boeri Studio and many others, with Supershared created by Jacqui Alexander and SIBLING. Curated by Grace Mortlock, David Neustein and Fleur Watson, the exhibition is held at RMIT Design Hub, Building 100, Project Rooms 1, 2 & 3, corner of Victoria and Swanston Streets, Carlton.
Where: RMIT Design Hub, Building 100, Project Rooms 1, 2 & 3, Level 2 & 3, Corner Victoria and Swanston Streets, Carlton, 3053, Entry to Design Hub Project Rooms via forecourt and lifts
When: 29th of July - 24th of September, 2016
Open Times: Tuesdays – Fridays 11am – 6pm, Saturdays 12pm – 5pm
24 MAY 2016PROCESS
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On Monday 6 June at Loop Projects Space and Bar, Process Loop investigated the notion of "collaboration" and the three main types of working relationships now considered the new normal, asking how collaborations happen, on what scale, and whether too many cooks spoil the broth. Adam Pustola and Nigel Bertram presented the RMIT New Academic Street project, a collaboration between Lyons, MvS Architects, NMBW, Harrison & White and Peter Maddison, delivering a new student experience across multiple buildings and functions in the university's city campus.
17 MARCH 2016WRITING & CONCEPTS
We're tickled pink that Hannah Bertram's WRITING & CONCEPTS Lecture, produced by Jan van Schaik, has been picked up by the Saturdays Paper's 'Gadfly' column - thanks Richard Auckland! This week we will be hearing from Robert Nelson, an Associate Director of Student Learning Experience at Monash University - a well published author in the field of art, architecture and education.
Lectures are held Thursdays at 5:00pm at the RMIT Design hub.
11 JUNE 2015Practice Research
This week features two PRS floor talks by PhD candidates Jan van Schaik (13 and 16 June) and Georgia McCorkill (17 June). Van Schaik will examine an experimental design practice built on nine sub-practices, from reworking other architects' propositions to intuition, chunking, discomfort and "fake it until you make it," exploring how peer communities and random events shape creative practice and the complexity of claiming authorship. McCorkill will discuss the creative practices behind award winning special occasion dresses, examining how sustainability coincides with one off design and the relationship between sustainability and fashion's poetic impulses. Both talks are held in Project Rooms 1 & 2, Level 2, Design Hub, RMIT University.
29 MAY 2015Breaking the mould
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MvS Architects' collaboration with Kuala Lumpur based firm iPartnership has been reviewed in AIA International, highlighting how the partnership has brought life and flair to the built environment. Now well into their fifth joint project, the firms recently picked up an award at the PAM Awards in KL. The process involves an integrated style of practice, with MvS directors travelling to Malaysia regularly to provide experience and feedback to local designers. Both firms benefit from sharing design ideologies and methods, giving rise to new design strategies that drive continued growth and evolution for both practices.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY H. LIN HO
07 NOVEMBER 2014Bold, Creative, Bright!
The prospects for a new Shepparton Art Museum has been the 'talk of the town,' with Simon McArthur & Associates and MvS, encouraging the community to help shape a new art museum by describing what would encourage them to visit, whilst also voicing their opinion on the placement, contents and services to supplement the building. By engaging the people early on in the process, it's possible to establish a brief which is representative of the greater community, thus satisfying the needs of the community as a whole. The feasibility project is due to be completed at the end of the year. The Article 'Bold visions for future sought,' Bishop, J. Appeared in the Weekend News, 27/09/14