You could be forgiven for thinking that a class called "Pneumatic Structures" might be a plastic surgery elective devoted to Dolly Parton-esque breast implants.
In architectural terms however, it refers to blow-up constructions, and was the name given to an architecture elective held at RMIT this semester.
The fruits of that class will be on proud display this Saturday night at Blow-Up Festival, which sees Pneumatic Structures teacher Jack May turn his Brunswick backyard into a playground of oversized inflatables, most of which were designed and constructed by his students.
"The class essentially had to design an air-inflated structure that would facilitate some kind of event," said May, who spearheaded the project with fellow architects James Fletcher and Alex Gibson.
Together they make up the design collective 227768c, and their work has appeared at much larger-scale festivals including Let Them Eat Cake and Paradise.
The trio said they were inspired by Ant Farm, an avant-garde architecture and design group founded in San Francisco in the late 1960s that travelled the US with its "Inflatables" series of experimental blow-up structures.
"Our works falls somewhere between art, architecture, technology and events," said Fletcher. "Architects are so interested in what's necessary; what we're saying is maybe what's interesting is going beyond what's necessary."
Their inflatables are certainly bigger than your garden-variety pool toy: the dome erected on May's lawn is four metres in diameter, essentially a huge beach ball that revellers can zip open and climb into. Hanging above the backyard is a giant inflated pillow canopy – 7.5 metres long and wide.
A 25 metre-long, two metre-wide blow-up tunnel – originally designed for Paradise music festival – will extend down the side of the house, forming the entrance to the party.
May has had an underground ducting system installed in the garden to facilitate the air supply to the inflatables, which will come from blowers hidden down the side of the house.
The late Melbourne architect Peter Corrigan was a mentor to May. He studied under Corrigan at RMIT before going on to work for him.
"A lot of his practice was about exploring the potential of Australian suburbia and looking at suburbs in different way, much like this project," May said.
Projections by Iolanthe Iezzi, Alexi Freeman and Byron Meyer will be cast onto the inflatables as day turns into night, and bands and DJs including Pikelet, Golden Girls and Merve will perform – potentially inside the dome. Add lights (borrowed from RMIT) and smoke machines, and you've got yourself a backyard festival.
Blow-Up Festival is in Brunswick this Saturday from 6pm to 1am. Tickets are $15.