Summary

Cellar is a design and art project by Nina Nervegna and Felix Garner-Davis, combining material production with speculative research into sites around Naarm/Melbourne. It runs parallel to their conventional, construction-based architectural work. Thematically, Cellar is focused on attention and tension, using creative tools to investigate alienation and intimacy among subjects, objects, and environments. These tools include mapping, drawing, prose, poetry, installation, and field recording.

Position

This work proposes that architecture benefits from a mix of disciplined formal expression and transdisciplinary experimentation. It attempts to generate frictions by placing text, art, sound, and philosophy beside site analysis and construction detailing. The idea is that architecture excels as a host discipline, specifically as an instrument of sustained attention: to form, feeling, memory, ecology, and the layered contexts in which building occurs.

Background

Nina and Felix studied art and literature before moving into architecture. They work together on Yalukit Willam Country at Garner Davis Architects. Their graduate thesis at the Melbourne School of Design, Limb, proposed a rainwater-management and pollination network in Fishermans Bend, developing prosthetic structures for birds, bats, bees, butterflies, and people. It has been exhibited at the Robin Boyd Foundation and 3553, published in Inflection, and recognised with the Bates Smart Award. Nina has also received the Ernest Fooks Memorial Award and the Edward Fielder Billson Medal.

Training

Nina holds a BVA in painting from Sydney College of the Arts, an MDes in service design from the University of Technology Sydney, and an MArch from the MSD. Felix holds a BA (Hons) in literary studies from Monash University, focused on spatial poetics and Gothic literature, and an MArch from the MSD. He formerly edited Malevolent Soap, a journal of international poetry and fiction. His collection drone was published by no more poetry in 2021.

Transmission

Outputs are shared through exhibition, publication, discussion, teaching, and collaboration with other designers, artists, and writers.

Contact

Emails should be sent to info@cella.red.

Instagram handles are @ninanervegna and @un___furl.