Tatlin Tower

Cracknell and Lonergan Architects worked with Michael Rakowitz (USA) on his installation for the Sydney Biennale 2008: White man got not dreaming which respond to contemporary Indigenous life in Australia, creating new associations with the history of visionary architecture and its failures.

The construction is a full-scale contemporary version of avant-garde Russian artist Vladimir Tatlin’s model for Monument to the Third International (1919). Tatlin’s tower, which was to have been made of spirals, was never built; today, it is a symbol of revolutionary and visionary thought. Rakowitz’s Tatlin tower is a rebirth of collective hope, as it recycles discarded materials from old houses, soon to be demolished, owned by the Aboriginal Housing Company in Redfern, Sydney.

Photographs: Peter Lonergan