Mark Jacques is an urban designer and landscape architect. He graduated from the UNSW Sydney’s College of Fine Arts in 1994 and was awarded the inaugural Richard Dovey Medal. In 2016 he founded Openwork, an office focused on public space realized through projects in landscape architecture, urban design, research and speculation. In 2015, Mark was appointed Professor of Architecture (Urbanism) Industry Fellow within RMIT University’s School of Architecture and Urban Design. In 2021, Mark was appointed to the inaugural Melbourne Design Review Panel, part of the City of Melbourne’s Design Excellence Program.
I collect toolboxes and the toolboxes collect objects.
The objects are sometimes tools in the normal sense of the word: blades, squares, tape and glue that are used by the office to make the small models that are part of our practice. But there are other objects in the boxes – things that don’t look like tools (although they really are). The job that these “other tools” perform is that of remembering. They are mnemonic objects that help me remember bigger ideas and remind me of the conversations that I’d rather be having. Their value is entirely in the private world of reminiscence and the way that it rubs against (and hopefully rubs off on) the quotidian world of office production.
These are four of the other tools.
Pinecone
The pinecone was collected from the grounds of the Hornsby Olympic Swimming Pool at the base of a tree that was grown from a seed taken from the Lone Pine on the Gallipoli Peninsula (or so the plaque said). The pinecone helps me remember the civic shape of public life in the suburbs, the persuasiveness of relics in my childhood (especially false ones) and landscape’s ability to transfer an idea effortlessly from one place to another.
Pinecone
Image: Kate Meakin
Small knife
The small knife was bought in Barcelona while walking with Spanish architect Eva Prats the first time that I taught in her RMIT studio on collective housing in Poblenou. The knife is an aide-memoire to making by hand, slicing apples at three in the afternoon and the beauty of the everyday. The fact that it carries the name “Miralles” is a bonus.
Small knife
Image: Kate Meakin
Grey stone
The grey stone was stolen from the garden of the NGV during a site visit with Amy Muir (of Muir Architecture) for our project Doubleground. The stone once formed the floor of Roy Grounds’s Bamboo Court courtyard and was dumped in the back garden with all the other stones when the 2003 retrofit took place. The stone calls to mind the useful irritation of hidden stories, the optimism of collaboration and the importance of stealing from galleries.
Grey stone
Image: Kate Meakin
Brass stencils
The box contains brass stencils with one-inch-high figures. They were given to me by Scott Anderson, film director and fellow alumni of UNSW Sydney’s College of Fine Arts. The box is a nudge to the useful power of competition and one-upmanship, wordplay and the alchemy of hardware stores. The stencils are often brought out, but are yet to be used. They’re waiting for some words that are worthy.
Brass stencils
Image: Kate Meakin
This text is an excerpt from the catalogue for Subject/Object, an exhibition curated by AILA Cultivate that explored the intersection of everyday living and design practice. The exhibition took place from 17 March to 20 March at 514 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne as part of the 2022 Melbourne Design Week program.
