It was a beautiful day on Saturday – and the perfect day for spontaneity. After eating waffles on the sunny steps of Fed Square, I invited friends and strangers to build something together outside.
Melbourne! It's a beautiful day. Who wants to construct a thing out of newspaper/cardboard in the city together?
— 李尚倫 (@LeeShangLun) September 19, 2015First: we needed materials. We borrowed a trolley from a liquor store and went rummaging for more cardboard – our principle suppliers ended up being RMIT's back alley bins, MindGames, and Starbucks. Thank you for your patronage.
We set up camp in City Square and started building the first thing we saw: St Paul's Cathedral. Some people passing by joined in.
I love the aesthetic and approach of collaborative cardboard construction: the tangible immediacy of taping things together without a plan, revelling in slapdash and serendipitous solutions. It's super gratifying to see structure emerge from what seems like chaos.
And then suddenly: kids! Dozens of young architects and artists appeared seemingly out of nowhere to design and decorate the church. They stuck flowers onto the wall, made a boxy sofa for sitting down inside, and transformed the whole thing into a magic castle.
All in all, we spent $40 and only broke around a dozen clauses from the Activities Local Law.
