Soft Infrastructures: St Kilda Reimagined is a speculative architectural project by artist and architect Associate Professor Matthew Bird (Studiobird & MADA), developed in collaboration with Associate Professor Brady Robards (Digital Sociologist, Monash University) and Dr Suzanne Barker (Urban Planning and Design, MADA).
Set against the backdrop of St Kilda’s shifting social and cultural landscape, the project asks what forms of architecture might emerge when intimacy, gathering, and sensory connection become scarce civic resources. In an era of disconnection, Soft Infrastructures investigates how design might choreograph new forms of closeness, creating spaces that invite encounter rather than isolation.
Reimagining the lost Palais de Danse and the adjacent St Kilda Triangle as speculative sites of renewed civic intimacy, the exhibition combines an animated film, architectural photomontages and a sculptural seating prototype to explore how bodies, materials, and atmospheres can co-produce belonging. These works operate as both proposition and experiment, testing how architecture might serve as a medium of collective emotion, shared rhythm, and public care.
The project features photography by Peter Bennetts, architectural visualisations by John Wong, and an edited film and soundscape by James Wright.
