Description:

"Retrospect" was designed as part of a tiny co-housing community to celebrate and enhance human connection while performing an old-fashioned chore: hand-washing clothes. By bringing this domestic task into the public domain, the project seeks to encourage users to connect using analogue methods.

Each of the constituent processes involved in laundering clothing by hand has informed the idiosyncratic spatial design, highlighting the intricate parts of what makes handwashing a lost tradition. This act of manual domestic labour is performed in a public domain in Coyle Park, Point Chevalier.

"Retrospect" is separated into three stages: washing, drying and folding, allowing the user to experience a sense of community that is bonded by an appreciation of this daily chore.
The first stage commences once the user steps into the laundromat, equipped with bespoke basins that enable people to scrub and wash their garments with no worry for their tender hands.
The second stage is the beacon of the amenity, an attention-grabbing carousel-like dryer. Propelled by the wind, the bespoke canvas sails lining the exterior walls rotate. As the walls spin, garments also spin within the space, accelerating drying times. These sails are screen printed with a design co-produced by the team and renders abstract expressions of wind patterns found on the site.
The final, folding stage, allows people to enhance both their folding and communication skills by fostering relationship building through the patience of folding clothes in a shared space that allows human connection.

This laundromat harnesses the prevailing wind to dry clothes. Rainwater is also collected from the site along with wastewater from residents, which is filtered through wetland plants for reuse. Retrospect, "in looking back and contemplating the past", means to reawaken the lost tradition of handwashing and our ability to connect with others during what seems to be an arduous task.
This project reimagines the ubiquitous laundromat, offering an open invitation to people of all ages to bond through a chore mostly seen as a drag.