A photo of 5 UTAS Architecture students standing in a row infront of a dense and wet Queenstown bushscape. The have their arms around each others shoulders and are all smiling wide at the camera. Trees in the background are similarly tangled. No credit.

The Queenstown architecture language study project was conceived as a design–research exploration of the architecture of Queenstown conducted by students in a final-year architecture unit at the University of Tasmania. The team – Hamish Saul, Jessie Pankiw, Martin Tracey, Samuel Hodgens and Steph Papastavrou – spent an intensive week in Queenstown in March 2023, surveying the town and collecting fragments of architecture prompted by Dr Andrew Steen and Mia Kealy from the University of Tasmania and Mat Hinds from Taylor and Hinds.

Framed by theories of de-familiarisation, realism and radical care, the team engaged a rigorous process of intentional slowness to avoid trope and romantic metaphor and learn from matters of fact of Queenstown. The products in The Unconformity 2023 Art Trail exhibition are not intended as aesthetic objects, but rather as elaborations of the existent fabric of the town that inform perception and future architectural intervention.

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The Unconformity acknowledges the palawa people as the original and traditional custodians of lutruwita/Tasmania. We commit to working respectfully to honour their ongoing cultural and spiritual connections to this land.