Architect Victoria / Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture / Edition 3 2023

Architect Victoria

Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture + Architecture from Russell & George, Kennedy Nolan, Archier, Wardle Edition 3 / 2023 $14.90 Official Journal of the Australian Institute of Architects Victorian Chapter Print Post approved PP 381667-00206 • ISSN 1329-a1254 .

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Scan here for more information Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture

Contents —

We acknowledge First Nations peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the lands, waters, and skies of the continent now called Australia. We express our gratitude to their Elders and Knowledge Holders whose wisdom, actions and knowledge have kept culture alive. We recognise First Nations peoples as the first architects and builders. We appreciate their continuing work on Country from pre-invasion times to contemporary First Nations architects, and respect their rights to continue to care for Country.

Architect Victoria Official journal of the Victorian Chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects

Foreword Victorian Chapter President 04 David Wagner

Acknowledgements 06

Contributors

Guest editorial 08

Danielle Jewson David Ritter

Urban futures 09

Guest editorial Danielle Jewson

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The smaller picture Dorothea Yannoulidis

Multiplicity as a catalyst 12 for renewal Nick Bourns and Tiffany Tan

Asian cities: 15

Finding the soul of future urban living in the streets Craig Czarny and Garhana Waty

Streets as convivial 18 social spaces Dan Hill

The transformation of 22

George Street, Sydney Bridget Smyth and Michael Harvey

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ootpath / flow path F Emily Russo

Sentient buildings: 58

28

I nformed inclusive design for climate action Richard Mullane

Systems thinking for 61

Maybe, but why?

Daniel Prohasky

the next generation Brendon McNiven and Dominik Holzer

Whose voice counts?

32 Nikhila Madabhushi

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The importance of Gender Impact Assessments in shaping future cities Ella Gauci-Seddon

What does the future 38

Changing with grace 64

Harriet Oswald and Katarzyna Jurkiewicz

Architecture

city look like? Next question.

Mike Hewson and Sunday Reed

Yakimono 70

Systems thinking in architecture

76

Guest editorial 41 David Ritter

by Russel & George Nikita Bhopti

Off Grid House 86

by Archier Nikita Bhopti

Our Solarpunk future 43 Zack Semke

Big data for a better future 46

94

Jessica Christiansen-Franks

Radical resource custodianship 48

development Samantha Peart Harnessing the power 54 of integrated design Rob Brimblecombe

endigo Law Courts B

by Wardle Reinette Roux

Profile

Robbie Neville and Lucy Marsland

Architecture as a system: 51 Designing for regenerative

Wilam Ngarrang Retrofit

by Kennedy Nolan Phillip Pender

At home with 100

photographer Tom Ross Elizabeth Campbell

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Office of the Victorian Government Architect Victoria’s Housing Statement: Our role in a reset Stefan Preuss

Foreword —

Our urban future is both exciting and daunting: a world where the parameters with which architects and designers must grapple seem to have expanded exponentially.

It is a future where continuing as normal is not an option, but the age-old challenge of knitting together a built environment to house our community still exists. The Institute’s recent national conference engaged with a breadth of urban conditions, not least of which was the selected venue in Canberra. As a low-density garden city characteristic of early twentieth-century urban thinking as advocated by proponents such as Ebenezer Howard, it hardly seems the model for a high-density, net zero carbon, cyclical economybased contemporary city. Yet there arises within Canberra instructive urban prototypes.

Victorian Chapter President David Wagner FRAIA

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Adjacent to the industrial suburb of Fyshwick, Dairy Road is a recent development centred around utilising some large nondescript industrial warehouses, previously government storage and now adaptively transformed to provide for a myriad of uses, including community, leisure, entertainment and hospitality. With a light fit-out beneath a large expanse of metal deck and mixed but carefully curated tenancies, Dairy Road is an insightful example of lateral thinking utilising extant built fabric to create community. From its central core, the developer is proposing to construct a periphery of mediumrise residential development within a re-wilded landscape.

Not far away in the suburb of Kingston, another medium-rise residential development, Kingsborough Village, has been recently built to create community. With a series of five and six-storey apartment buildings providing some 280 homes, designed by a mix of architects and arranged along a narrow strip of community facilities and commercial outlets, it would not look out of place in Melbourne or Sydney but is a significant step for low-density Canberra.

Canberra Glassworks is a contrasting adaptive transformation of Canberra’s oldest public building, the John Smith Murdoch—designed 1913-15 Kingston Powerhouse.

The cement-rendered structure with large-span steel trusses has been adaptively transformed from an industrial factory generating electrical power into a centre for ACT’s glass artists to work before public audiences. Utilising opportunities and existing built fabric to enrich, extend and embellish is appreciably more complex than demolition and construction but portrays a texture and material richness while utilising the efforts and resources of earlier generations.

The Institute recently met with the University of Melbourne’s facilities development leadership to better understand and challenge the university’s current estate plan, which is founded upon demolishing major twentieth-century structures across the Parkville campus, particularly along the Grattan Street frontage. Similarly, in meetings with the Minister of Planning we have asked for the Government to reflect upon the relationship between a net zero carbon and sustainable action policy and the proposed demolition of all 44 high-rise public residential towers across Melbourne. As architects, we appreciate that pragmatic considerations are significant to the development of our built environment, but we also know that the simplest solutions are not always the best and that part of our role as design professionals is to advocate for the best built-environment outcome.

In developing future urban models and conditions, we must consider not just operational energy expenditure but also embodied carbon, materials and energy, cultural and architectural heritage, and the importance of established communities. When developing the new housing that has become our most pressing building task, our community must first acknowledge and utilise the resources expended previously to the benefit of today’s and tomorrow’s communities.

Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture

Acknowledgements —

Contributors

Emma Adams is an editor and the editorial and publishing lead at the Australian Institute of Architects.

Annie Luo is an independent multidisciplinary designer, with a predominant focus on visual identity, digital design and print media.

James Staughton FRAIA is the editorial committee Chair, an architect, and director and co-founder of Workshop Architecture.

Nikita Bhopti RAIA is a project architect at Sibling Architecture, writer and curator.

Elizabeth Campbell RAIA is a senior architect at the City of Melbourne. She is a contributing editor of Architect Victoria.

Yvonne Meng RAIA is the founder and director of the architecture and design practice Circle Studio Architects.

John Mercuri RAIA is a senior architect at Workshop Architecture and editorial committee member.

Justin Noxon RAIA is founder and director of NOXON Architecture and an editorial committee member.

Phillip Pender RAIA Grad is a graduate of architecture at Davidson Architecture.

He is a writer and editorial committee member.

Stefan Preuss RAIA is the Associate Government Architect at the Office of the Victorian Government Architect.

Tom Ross is a photographer living and working in Naarm (Melbourne), published locally and internationally.

Reinette Roux RAIA is the industry engagement lead at the Australian Institute of Architects in Melbourne.

Editorial director Emma Adams Editorial committee James Staughton FRAIA (Chair) Nikita Bhopti RAIA Elizabeth Campbell RAIA Yvonne Meng RAIA John Mercuri RAIA Justin Noxon RAIA Phillip Pender RAIA Grad.

Guest editors Danielle Jewson David Ritter

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Publisher Australian Institute of Architects Victorian Chapter, 41 Exhibition Street Melbourne, Victoria 3000

This publication is copyright No part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, mechanical, microcopying, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the permission of the Australian Institiute of Architects Victorian Chapter.

State Manager Daniel Moore RAIA

Disclaimer Readers are advised that opinions expressed in articles and in editorial content are those of their authors, not of the Australian Institute of Architects represented by its Victorian Chapter.

Similarly, the Australian Institute of Architects makes no representation about the accuracy of statements or about the suitability or quality of goods and services advertised.

Creative direction Annie Luo On the cover Yakimono by Russell & George.

Photo by Tim O'Connor Printing Printgraphics

Warranty Persons and/or organisations and their servants and agents or assigns upon lodging with the publisher for publication or authorising or approving the publication of any advertising material indemnify the publisher, the editor, its servants and agents against all liability for, and costs of, any claims or proceedings whatsoever arising from such publication. Persons and/or organisations and their servants and agents and assigns warrant that the advertising material lodged, authorised or approved for publication complies with all relevant laws and regulations and that its publication will not give rise to any rights or liabilities against the publisher, the editor, or its servants and agents under common and/ or statute law and without limiting the generality of the foregoing further warrant that nothing in the material is misleading or deceptive or otherwise in breach of the Trade Practices Act 1974.

Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture

Danielle Jewson is a design manager and principal strategic designer at the City of Melbourne.

David Ritter is founder of the Melbourne office for progressive, global sustainability consulting practice, Atelier Ten.

Nick Bourns RAIA is a director at NH Architecture, a Victorian Chapter Councillor and Chair of the Large Practice Forum.

Rob Brimblecombe is co-founder and director at n0de, focused on the transition to a net zero renewable powered future.

Jessica Christiansen-Franks is an urban designer and landscape architect and cofounder of the social analytics platform, Neighbourlytics.

Craig Czarny is a landscape architect and urban designer with experience across practice on local and international projects.

Ella Gauci-Seddon is a senior landscape architect and gender equity lead in City Design at the City of Melbourne.

Michael Harvey is the program manager of urban design for the City of Sydney.

Mike Hewson is a visual artist with a background in structural engineering and heavy-civil construction.

Dan Hill is director of Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne.

Dominik Holzer is the previous Victorian Chapter education committee Chair.

He researches and teaches at Melbourne University.

Sunday Hyde is an eightyear-old whose ideas suggest that the future city may not be drastically different from the present.

Katarzyna Jurkiewicz is a principal in Grimshaw’s Auckland studio where she is also sustainability manager.

Nikhila Madabhushi is an architect, researcher and educator at Equity Office and Fire to Flourish.

Lucy Marsland is a senior environmental designer at Atelier Ten, leading their materials and embodied carbon practice.

Brendon McNiven is an enterprise professor at Melbourne School of Design.

Richard Mullane Associate RAIA is the board director and managing principal at Hassell in Melbourne.

Robbie Neville is the founder of Revival Projects, a multidisciplinary sustainable building practice.

Harriet Oswald leads the Melbourne ESG Portfolio at Grimshaw which supports the studio's carbon neutral business operations

Samantha Peart Affiliate RAIA is global head of sustainability at Hassell with extensive local and international experience.

Daniel Prohasky is an architectural engineer, inventor of robotic technology, and co-founder of Curvecrete.

Emily Russo is an urban designer at the City of Melbourne.

Zack Semke is the director of US-based Passive House Accelerator and a member of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

Bridget Smyth FRAIA is the City Architect and executive manager design and public art for the City of Sydney.

Tiffany Tan RAIA is a principal at NH Architecture and an advocate for architecture that eschews unnecessary embellishments.

Gerhana Waty advocates for equitable urban mobility through her leadership in the Streets for People initiative.

Dorothea Yannoulidis B.Des is a student of architecture at Kennedy Nolan.

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Guest editorial —

As a non-architect, grappling with an approach to the topic of future cities, it felt necessary to consider the broader challenges of the present which lie at the forefront of the planning and design of cities.

Systems thinking means to approach building design, construction and operation by considering the wholeof-life inputs and outputs (from both inside and outside the site boundary) as part of a connected whole.

A climate and biodiversity emergency, rapid population growth, affordable housing shortages combined with a cost-of-living crisis, an ever-increasing political divide and evolving technologies transforming how we move, connect and live. These challenges are not exclusive to Victoria; they are widespread; they are universally shared, debated and explored.

An interdisciplinary mix of city-shapers and thought leaders are featured. All are actively tackling these challenges through projects and research around the world. With the needs of community at the forefront, each contribution delves into the innovative methods and approaches used to instigate positive transformations and ultimately strive for an enduring legacy. Through the themes of place identity in renewal, public space as a driver for innovation and design processes for an equitable future, this edition highlights that ultimately the decisions we make today have a profound impact on the cities of tomorrow.

Throughout a career pursuing the integration sustainability into architecture it’s clearer to me now more than ever that we need to nurture systems thinking. It's obvious that the natural world is an ecosystem, our communities are social systems, and the economy is a financial system, but these do not operate in isolation. These systems are dynamically interlinked, leading to the consequences of environmental destruction and climate change that are now beginning to feed back so disruptively. It is a complicated reality to grapple with, but systems thinking is an approach that is vital to ensure our industry can address the most pressing challenges of the 21st century.

With the input of leading local and global visionaries, academics and practitioners from a range of architectural and engineering backgrounds, this edition explores environmental, social and digital themes under the broad umbrella concept of systems thinking in architecture.

These essays are drawn from insights of what this means in practice, what changes are needed in the way we work together and some of the emerging trends and possibilities for our future.

Guest editor Danielle Jewson

Guest editor David Ritter

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Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture

Guest editorial

Urban futures Words by Danielle Jewson

This edition explores urban futures through projects and processes that embrace the memory, experience and participation of people. It delves into the concept of place identity in renewal contexts, seeking ways for cities to incorporate diverse identities and stories.

It considers public space as a trigger for innovation, with a focus on streets, proposing ways to transform them into resilient places that support civic life. Lastly, the edition centres on design processes for an equitable future. It raises questions about the intended beneficiaries of cities and how designers can genuinely respond to the needs of community.

An interdisciplinary mix of contributors are featured, including architects, urban designers, landscape architects, a visual artist, and an eight-year-old future tech-entrepreneur. Each contribution collectively shapes a vision for the future city.

We open with a poem about character, identity and place from the perspective of a student architect. A lemon tree in a suburban garden sets the scene. Dorothea Yannoulidis reflects on the evolution of cities over generations, shaped by the people, families and cultures who inhabit them. She proposed a vision for the future city, one that is “green; rich; beautiful”, an ambition strengthened by an impending sense of urgency and responsibility to act.

The concept of multiplicity as a catalyst for urban renewal is proposed by Nick Bourns and Tiffany Tan. Reflecting on the lessons learned from the renewal of Queen Victoria Market, they emphasise the importance of understanding the rich and diverse histories, voices, and experiences. They assert that renewal projects must adopt processes which embrace diverse perspectives and unique historical and cultural backgrounds. In this space, the role of architects is often to mediate between competing interests to establish a cohesive narrative representative of the place while offering new horizons.

In a fireside chat between Gerhana Waty and Craig Czarny, they reflect on their professional journey working in dynamic Asian cities. Despite the grand ambition of rapid urbanisation, streets in many Asian cities remain central to heritage, identity and commerce. They acknowledge that the perceived informality of streets, having genuine connection between the public and private realm, serve as spaces for spontaneous interactions and cultural exchanges.

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Guest editorial —

These scenes are increasingly difficult to manufacture in an Australian urban context; however, they offer important lessons for future streets.

These observations are reasserted by Dan Hill, revealing that the essence of a city lies in its streets, where culture, community, and daily life unfold. Despite streets diminishing their true purpose as vibrant public spaces, Dan highlights recent programs, where streets are re-envisaged as conduits of activation and connection. He highlights the emergence of the "one-minute city" concept in Sweden and the subsequent Street Moves project that explores how citizen involvement in shaping streets and provides replicable approaches for cities to transition toward vibrant and community-oriented neighbourhoods.

The transformation of George Street in Sydney is showcased by Bridget Smyth and Michael Harvey. The construction of the Sydney Light Rail marked the beginning of this transformation. The shift from a car-choked, noisy thoroughfare has not only made the street more resilient and liveable but has also led to economic growth and increased civic life in the city centre.

Reflecting on the vulnerability of streets in the face of increasing disasters, Emily Russo recounts the infamous 1972 downpour that turned Melbourne's Elizabeth Street into a watercourse. She highlights how cities often forget recurring threats and default to the status quo over transformative adaptation. Looking to the Netherlands, Emily advocates for streets to serve as overt reminders of the need for transformational adaptation to address root causes of vulnerability and engage with multiple possible futures.

Shifting our thinking to equitable design processes, Richard Mullane questions the influence of AI image generation technologies in the design of future cities. Through the

Resilient by Design and Colma Creek Restoration projects in San Francisco, Richard asserts that design advocacy and participatory design processes are essential for effective, human-centric outcomes, emphasising the irreplaceable value of creativity, compassion, and local knowledge in driving meaningful action toward climate change.

In a regional Victorian context, Nikhila Madabhushi also advocates for participatory design processes, recognising the fraught concept of the term 'community' and the top-down consultation approaches typically embedded within practice.

In areas like disaster recovery, where meaningful engagement is often challenging, Nikhila draws on the Connecting with Country Framework as a process to understanding diverse communities, particularly in the context of Indigenous Knowledge. She notes that the shift toward community-led processes requires adapting core skills, to enable inclusive decision-making and to maintain places “long after they are built, and we are gone”.

In a call to action, Ella Gauci-Seddon provides an overview of The Gender Equality Act and insight into the role of Gender Impact Assessments as a catalyst for shaping the future city. From public furniture to transport, she acknowledges the impact of the gendered approach to the design and planning of our cities. She highlights that cities are considered to be not equally safe, inclusive and accessible for people of all genders and identities.

We conclude with a conversation between Mike Hewson and Sunday Hyde. Together they explore the concept of the future city through the eyes of an eight-year-old. They discuss and draw Melbourne with inspiration from what is and what should be, ultimately emphasising the importance of living in the present. Sunday envisions a future city with both old and new buildings and importantly, one where architects still play a role.

Danielle Jewson is a design manager and principal strategic designer at the City of Melbourne.

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Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture

Urban futures —

The smaller picture Words by Dorothea Yannoulidis

Adjacent to the footpath a low brick and iron fence.

Beside it, a concrete yard (weeds in its cracks) garnished by bursts of yellow, fallen from the lemon tree.

A house, sits upon stolen land.

With its rows of deep orange brick white bulbous balustrade and table setting on the terrace it elicits memories of European summers.

It appears unextraordinary, even insignificant certainly not heritage.1 Once incongruous, today it sits familiar within the minutiae of suburbia.

Yet it speaks of otherness, in a foreign land to some of pride; to others of struggle; it speaks of an Australian Dream.

A city is not always intentional but often incidental. 2 The future city will be green; rich; beautiful; aspirations, of the student, architect, planner.

Long-standing, driven now by urgency and the burdening weight of responsibility.

Always encouraged to look at the bigger picture.

But first comes the house, then the street the district, then the city.3 Amongst the bigger picture, it is easy to forget the individual.

My yiayia did not know that her lemon tree would one day sit as a symbol of a collective history.

A symbol, and a reminder too that despite what we propose, our future city will bear the marks of those who inhabit it.

Notes Mirjana Lozanovska in her seminal text Migrant Housing – Architecture, Dwelling, Migration (2019), highlights that despite the influence of post-war migrant homes on the architectural fabric of Melbourne, it is often excluded from representations of housing history. Such houses are also often exempt from heritage overlays, unlike their colonial counterparts.

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Philip Brophy at his lecture for The Politics of Public Space – Volume 3 (2020-2021) remarked on the fallacy of intentionality: “No matter what you want to project, and no matter what you want to stage, the conditions and the factors will almost immediately change once you enact something.”

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3

See Alison and Peter Smithson’s Hierarchy Association

Dorothea Yannoulidis B.Des is a student of architecture at Kennedy Nolan. Following a year off study, she will be returning to the University of Melbourne in 2024 to begin her Master of Architecture and Urban Cultural Heritage.

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Urban futures —

Multiplicity as a catalyst for renewal Words by Nick Bourns and Tiffany Tan

We can learn a lot about ourselves by understanding how our cities have evolved and been shaped over time. Cities are rich places, characterised by layered histories and the many experiences of the people who live in them. This richness and multiplicity make urban renewal projects both complex and rewarding for those fortunate enough to have the opportunity to be involved in realising them.

We have a number of tools that we return to repeatedly when working on renewal projects. Firstly, we recognise that in order to embed diversity in a place, we need to acknowledge the many voices and range of experiences of the people who spend time there. We also need to understand the histories of the place, both its pre-colonial histories of Country and the more recent built and natural histories. Additionally, we understand that renewal projects are best undertaken by many people who share a common goal.

All these elements must be balanced against the interests and investments of all those involved, which also inevitably shape renewal projects. It is up to us as architects to mediate the breadth of interests and find a common narrative that weaves the elements together into something that echoes the richness of the place providing opportunities, not just for renewal, but for regeneration.

Listen If there is one principle that we want to pass on to the next generation of architects, it is that architecture is created by many people and architects are just one of the hands. We urgently need to move on from the belief in a ‘hero Architect’ with a capital ‘A’.

If people contain multitudes, then so do our cities. Part of our role as architects is to honour the many voices in the design process, distilling and curating them to find common themes and moments of intersection. So-called city shaping projects require the authorship of many, and architects have a responsibility to facilitate an inclusive renewal process. This is why community consultation and codesign are so important in this context.

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If you listen closely enough, through deep listening, you can find opportunities for inspiration.

We have personally been involved in the Queen Victoria Market Renewal for close to ten years. We learned a lot about the market through ongoing consultation, starting with a process called a People’s Panel, which was made up of market traders and community members. We came to understand that for many of these people, the market is an inclusive community meeting point and much of its value comes from its role in facilitating authentic, person-to-person interactions. This insight foregrounded our design approach in considering how we could retain the social value of the market and even enhance it by creating more spaces to facilitate these interactions.

Reveal When approaching a renewal project, we try to let the place do the talking, understanding that the best places are uncovered rather than created.

After all, there are no new places to be created. Places are shaped by what they are today, and what they’ve been in the past, and most importantly, what we need them to be in the future. Any new imprint on the city needs to recognise these historical storylines and either retain and manifest the stories once told or reinterpret, build, and extend Country and place, and reinterpret and build upon them.

At QV, an urban retail, commercial, and residential village occupying an entire city block in central Melbourne, much of the urban form was created through an interpretation of Melbourne’s laneway network. The site, formerly the old Queen Victoria Hospital, was divided into a series of discrete precincts comprising squares, arcades, and laneways. This arrangement replicates the richness and diversity of the surrounding city fabric and addresses the adjacent 19th-century Queen Victoria Women’s Centre and State Library of Victoria buildings.

The challenge for the team here was negotiating between the old and the new, acknowledging the need for retail

Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture

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Queen Victoria Market Sheds Restoration. Traditional Owners: Wurundjeri Woiwurrung. Architect: NH Architecture with Trethowan Architecture. Builder: McCorkell Constructions. Photographer: Dianna Snape

Urban futures —

shopfronts and commercial spaces, and balancing this with our responsibility to create a type of civic architecture to respectfully express and inhabit the historical city block.

Mediate Returning to the market for a moment and the lessons it can provide. Markets are as old as cities. In many cases, they are self-organising and ad-hoc, activated by exchange in all its forms – social and cultural as well as economic.

In the early days of Melbourne’s colonial history, it was a market town with different types of trade occurring at various sites. The Queen Victoria Market site itself has many incarnations as a cemetery, a livestock market, and a wholesale fruit and vegetable market occupying a series of laneways. For centuries before that, it was an important meeting place for the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung People and close to the significant landmarks of Flagstaff Hill and the creek line that runs under Elizabeth Street.

We are reflecting on all these histories as we work on the design of Gurrowa Place, a new mixed-use development planned for the southern edge of the market precinct. It is inherently a process of exchange, a process of engaging in the give-and-take of balancing many voices and their competing interests with the desire to create a legible and rich public realm which pervades and stitches the market precinct back into the CBD. A framework for regeneration We recognise the public realm as something that is in a constant state of flux and understand that any large-scale renewal project needs to apply open-ended design thinking. This is why we consider our role in these projects as providing a framework and not a series of built impositions within the landscape with the public realm as the leftover in-between.

In our recent work as leading the design team working on Gurrowa Place, we think of this framework as an urban reef, an organic structure that brings an ensemble of elements together. The urban reef is a system of clear yet complex spaces, enabling a multiplicity of histories and current-day requirements to be hosted. It also creates a flexible enough collection of spaces, so that it is a resilient model which will continue to embrace and accommodate the life of the city as it inevitably evolves.

This system of well-proportioned lanes and passages is paired with a large open space which can tell the stories of its past. The project reconnects with the market as well as providing a whole new set of opportunities and reasons for Melburnians to come together.

Through listening, observing, and reflecting on our cites and their evolution, we can understand the importance of civic spaces like markets and their value to our public realm.

Reflect and learn Recently, we had the opportunity to look at the context of Market Square in Geelong. A late 20th-century mall noted as a market in name only, it was built on the site of the colonial market which

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was central to the town’s thriving wool trade. One of us grew up in Geelong and it’s clear that the city has long been missing a vibrant centre, possibly because of this erasure of the old market – a space for commerce and interactions at a human scale.

We are constantly learning from these cities, helping us to understand the inherent cultural value of sites such as the Queen Victoria Market. The lesson for us is to be additive and not reductive, to renew and not replace, to add layers, while preserving the intangible social value of what is there now.

As architects, we should be resolute to renewal, restoration, and reconciliation. To reflect on the past, believe in the present, and design to sustain the future.

Nick Bourns RAIA is a director at NH Architecture, a Victorian Chapter Councillor and Chair of the Large Practice Forum. His design leadership is driven by a desire to embed a meaningful response to place and Country in his projects and informed by wholehearted engagement with the community, stakeholders and user groups.

Tiffany Tan RAIA is a principal at NH Architecture and an advocate for honest architecture that eschews unnecessary embellishments. Her approach to shaping diverse and inclusive neighbourhoods is rooted in a profound commitment to engaging deeply, fostering broad perspectives, rehabilitating and respecting Country and ultimately, instilling delight within the community through thoughtful design.

Notes The name Gurrowa has been proposed for the project, which is a Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung name meaning a place of exchange and interchange – being reflective of the purpose of the market, the development vision and conversations had.

Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture

Asian cities: Finding the soul of future urban living in the streets A conversation between Craig Czarny and Gerhana Waty

Asian cities have long been the stage for ambitious demonstrations of future city ideals. They often seek to showcase advancements in technology, infrastructure and planning while concurrently grappling to manage basic threats that come with rapid urbanisation. In Asian cities, we observe the paradox of grand ambition side by side with unbridled urban chaos and informality. But beneath this constant tension, it is the city’s streets that hold true as places that support life and serve as the medium for culture, commerce and identity.

In this conversation, Hansen Partnership urban design directors – Craig and Gerhana – delve into the profound significance of streets in Asian cities as a bedrock for future city thinking from their extensive and diverse life and working experiences. They shed light on the invaluable lessons offered by secondary city, town and village streetscapes, emphasising the importance of sustainable and community-focused urban living as the essence of future cities.

Below The 5-footway is an opportunistic, flexible space that evolves throughout the day and unique to its local context. Source: Hansen Partnership

Craig Czarny: We have spent the past few decades working in some of the most dynamic and rapidly growing cities across Asia. Some have embraced the latest planning discourse and are constantly evolving. But rapid growth has also come with significant challenges – noise and air pollution, crippling congestion, and social inequality.

While some of these places are seen as symbols of progress, they also face some of the most pressing challenges of our time. As urban designers and planners, we have an opportunity to apply our observations and learnings to the design of future cities. The challenges facing Asian cities are complex, but by no means insurmountable – so what are the lessons that you think are meaningful?

Gerhana Waty: We can look at Singapore – a successful transformation from a humble port city into a global financial hub. Many national capitals are seeing Singapore as a model, but it is vital to remember that Singapore's (cultural, geographic, politico-economic) context is not replicable. Most other cities have failed to emulate or deliver a comparable response – often prioritising economic-infrastructure growth over human-centric/ spatial design.

Creating a better future for rapidly growing cities of this kind is possible only by prioritising people first. This means putting a focus on public spaces and streets that support social programs, cultural programs, public transportation, environmental initiatives, and human interaction at the highest tactile level.

CC: Indeed, there is something about the relentless pursuit of progress in some of these cities which neglects the physical/ cultural fabric (what we call character) with detrimental effects on community and belonging. We have seen some neighbourhoods completely transformed to make way for development programs – but somehow, the streets sustain.

And sometimes within a matter of months, the armature of the street (even in newly built districts) comes to life with

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Opportunistic nature of activities occurring in street side shops and tenancies, actively demonstrating recycle, reuse and the stretching of limited resources in Ubud, Bali. Photographer: Craig Czarny

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shoplets, street stalls, informal cooking and dining spaces, and even micro-urban agriculture. Despite the modernity above, the streets seem to hold true.

GW: It is also the structure of these street spaces – and adjoining functions which invite this kind of granular activity.

We have learnt through collaboration with local practitioners that traditional and deeply entrenched city by-laws play a crucial role in the organisation of urban and street spaces. The laws have not changed, but the way people utilise the streets have.

The peculiar five-foot way (or more in some instances) within a landowner’s title adjoining the street creates a street setback that becomes an ‘in-between’ space. Sometimes it is used for motorbike parking, outdoor trade, or a quasi-seating/ neighbourhood kids play-space. Often, it also absorbs level changes between the street and floorplate. It is fertile ground for opportunistic urban living and public-private interaction.

(WSUD), urban greening (trees or understorey), canopy shelter, optimised walking surfaces, and integrated infrastructure are all possibilities, but importantly not to the detriment of the vitally active public private street edge.

GW: The future looks bright for these cities if we can get that ground plane right. Of course, the overambitious visioning and master planning will continue – but if the lessons of the urban block framework and street condition can be entrenched in local laws and regulation, then there is some faith that street life can survive – if not thrive.

Of course, there are relationships between what happens above and at the ground level plane that require attention (ie surveillance, impacts of shadow or wind as a result of building profile), but I am not certain that these determine success. It is the horizontal plane that deserves our ongoing attention and dedication.

CC: The street scene seems to be the common thread in so many models of the Asian urban condition, whether they are MegaCities, Tier 1 cities, secondary cities, towns or villages.

Almost in spite of the changes going on around them, the ground plane offers the most valuable lessons in opportunistic and community-focused urban living.

If anything, future cities for us is about future streets and ensuring that within that rigid model that they are amenable, safe, equitable to all users, engaging (activated) and good for all people on foot. It’s also critical for them to express a vernacular - reflecting local custom, ways of life, environment and economy.

A local street life in Penang, is not quite the same as in HoiAn or in Makassar.

GW: But there are a few ingredients that characterise streets in the Asian urban context that are not spatial.

How about the opportunistic nature of activities occurring in street-side shops and tenancies, actively demonstrating recycle, reuse and the stretching of limited space and resources?

We might consider this charming or fascinating, but it is a result of a mash-up of private and public functions.

Day and night, these streets are rare outdoor places in cities and towns typically devoid of structured public open spaces. These streets provide the stage for spontaneous interactions, cultural exchanges (remember wedding and funeral canopies we saw stretching over streets in Surabaya) and community gatherings. That is what really fosters positive urban living that should be emulated by a future city.

CC: True, there is a lot more though that can be done to contemporise the condition. Twenty-first century streets are not those we know as conduits for bikes, cars and more recently trucks and buses. In the digital age – and climate crisis (think heat island effect/ seasonal monsoon inundation) there is scope for a new street case study.

Streets that exhibit water sensitive urban design

Craig Czarny is a landscape architect and urban designer with over 35 years’ experience across practice on local and international projects. Craig is founding director of Hansen Partnership's design group, a Fellow of PIA and AILA and an honorary principal fellow at the University of Melbourne’s School of Landscape Architecture.

Gerhana Waty is the urban design leader at Hansen Partnership.

She advocates for equitable urban mobility through her leadership in the Streets for People initiative. Her expertise shapes inclusive urban landscapes, emphasising non-motorised mobility. Gerhana's international recognition stems from her impactful work in public spaces. She mentors in academia and advocates for inclusive design principles in the Urban Design Forum.

Architect Victoria

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Streets as convivial, social spaces Words by Dan Hill

“We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In this exquisitely connected world, it’s never a question of ‘critical mass.’ It’s always about critical connections.” – Grace Lee Boggs

The street is the basic unit of city: all systems converge on the street, all culture plays out there, one way or another. Streets host protest or celebration, but also quiet reflection, chance encounter, mundane chore, creative exchange, the complex essence of everyday urban life. “The magic of the street”, according to Rebecca Solnit, is in precisely this “mingling of the errand and the epiphany.”

Streets reveal what cities are really about: culture, conviviality, community, exchange. Note, therefore, that they are not about traffic. Yet for the last few generations, streets everywhere have been degraded and denuded, those primary purposes relegated in favour of becoming mere conduits for the private car. The impact on our cities has been disastrous, for in denying the street’s ability to create and carry culture, in favour of traffic, we are denying the idea of the city itself.

We should be clear that Melbourne, and Victoria’s regional cities as with Australia’s generally, are among the worst offenders here. Decades of car dependency have created a neutered and diminished environment.

This has been recently exacerbated by a hugely damaging and careless increase in SUV sales – usually not used by tradies or for rural escapes, as the tax breaks and advertising would suggest, but instead for short urban trips like school runs, shopping, footy. By actually encouraging this – in an echo of Donald Horne’s statement about Australia’s secondrate leadership – our country has become an international

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leader in SUV take-up, at precisely the time when it should instead be encouraging smaller, lighter, and cleaner vehicles, driving a massive shift towards active transport, like bikes and e-bikes, public and shared transport, e-cargo bikes for logistics.

The chance to build on Australians’ renewed interest in cycling which emerged under COVID has been frittered away, with cycling participation now dropping again. This is largely due to cyclists feeling unsafe; understandably given increasingly pervasive SUVs bursting at the seams out of parking spaces and traffic lanes.

Australia’s streets, then, are increasing greenhouse gas emissions and pollution, urban heat and stormwater runoff, maintenance costs, congestion, major injuries and deaths, while decreasing mental wellbeing as well as public health, urban biodiversity, and social, cultural, and political interaction.

The data is clear. We are shredding the “invisible fabric of our connectedness” that Grace Lee Boggs wrote about. Given this rapidly creeping heavy metal takeover of what should be green, convivial, social spaces, this change is not only functional and environmental, but cultural and aesthetic.

Right page Street Moves, Stockholm. Photographer: Dan Hill

Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture

The dressmaker’s floor Robin Boyd, in his aside on Melbourne’s city plan, starts to describe the city’s streets yet his focus, perhaps typically, is on their buildings and their featurist patterning, which he marked down as “a dressmaker’s floor, strewn with snippets of style.” Indeed, as the dressmaker’s floor rather than the dress, few of Melbourne’s streets are truly elegant.

Yet happily, it is increasingly possible to see that, elsewhere, this narrow definition – street life equals traffic – has reached the end of the road. From Bogotá’s La Rolita electric bus fleet to Barcelona’s SuperBlocks, influential cities are signalling another direction.

Paris is doubling-down on its 15-minute city concept, reorganising much of the city such that its citizens can meet most of their daily needs within a short walk or cycle ride from their home, obviating the need for car-based transport. They are actively removing tens of thousands of parking spaces, freeing up the streets around schools from motor vehicles entirely, building proper bike lanes while greening streetscapes.

Yet though the 15-minute city is eminently sensible, it betrays its somewhat technocratic origins, in which the municipality better organises amenities around clusters of density on behalf of districts of people, rather than any deeper shift in planning practice. It is benevolent municipalism.

How could the 15-minute city be broken down to hundreds of street-scale, citizen-led relationships as well?

A smaller scale does not mean smaller ideas, but more critical connections, more diverse responses, more inventive designs, retaining the vivid colour in the stories of everyday streets, rather than abstracting upwards into a grey district.

The one-minute city Hence the one-minute city, prototyped in Sweden over the last few years. This is simply the space outside your front door, the street your block or house sits on – but more importantly, it’s the invisible fabric the relationships you have with that environment, and in that environment. It’s not literally bound by one minute, but loosely describes the immediate neighbourhood, defined by regular and direct participation, by shared and intimate responsibility. Here, you probably know the owner of the coffee shop on the corner, the teachers in the kindergarten, the names of your neighbours, or of the trees.

Perhaps you could imagine growing and sharing vegetables in the street with these people – whereas you are unlikely to be planting tomatoes in some street a 15-minute bike ride away. At the one-minute scale, the line between dwelling and street is blurred, engaging a sense of reciprocal responsibility for our shared environment.

Vinnova, the Swedish government’s innovation agency created the concept, and with ArkDes, the Swedish national centre for architecture and design, they have been pulling together public and private sector with citizens in Sweden

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to cultivate experiments in these one-minute cities, defined around culture and nature rather than traffic.

Working across interconnected scales, their Street Moves project explored how transforming a few Stockholm streets might build insights, patterns and coalitions that could help retrofit all the streets in the country, all 40,000 km of them, to become “healthy, sustainable, and full of life”. For this, Vinnova and ArkDes built a stack of system players behind the prototypes, a platform including Volvo Cars, Voi micromobility, and key representatives of national, regional and municipal governments.

Yet the first prototypes were designed by six-year-old schoolchildren, from the schools on the first set of prototypes on inner-city Stockholm streets. These children are the true experts in their street after all, rather than the transport planner at city hall several kilometres away. Equally, the street designs the street because, as Michael Sorkin put it, “The street belongs to the people!”

The schoolchildren describe desirable applications for the streetscape, as a layer of interventions (akin to apps) on top of a repeatable extensible parking bay-size boardwalk platform (akin to an operating system). These applications might be seating to encourage social activity, playground equipment, scooter and bike parking, plants, sandpits, tool sheds, chalkboards, barbecues, and so on. The role of designers working on the project was to translate the school kids’ ideas into a workable modular system.

As each street has different people on it, each street will be different, with the emphasis on the lived expertise of the neighbourhood. This street-up model is clearly a quite different approach to the traditional urban planning model, which zooms in from the top-down, usually falling short. Instead, learning flows upwards, as the stack can absorb what might work as a more general principle. Prototypes are always wrong, but in useful ways.

The Street Moves kit-of-parts was fabricated in Swedish glulam (glued laminated timber), cut precisely to street edges but capable of being re-used or recycled over time. Drawing from Brian Eno’s design principles written for Street Moves, wood enables a form of everyday adaptability that concrete, asphalt and steel – the typical materiality of the street – do not.

Ultimately, these simple wooden structures will fade away, moving elsewhere, starting different conversations, leaving a fabric of more permanent structures, threading together “the dress” as well as the “dressmaker’s floor” of change. This dynamic also suggests a shuffling of spreadsheet columns, from a cost (maintenance) to an investment (care) in the municipal balance sheet. That care can be brokered as a shared responsibility between citizens and the city. More complex, but more potent. The project is producing a new value model indicating that hugely increased societal, environmental and economic value of reducing car traffic in this way.

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Hyperlocal prisms of neighbourliness With Street Moves now its second phase, extending to further cities beyond the first wave of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Helsingborg, ArkDes report a queue of almost 25 Swedish cities – almost 10% of municipalities in the country – each keen to trial the ever-evolving street-kits.

These are the first planks of a one-minute city movement, a diffuse patterning of organically diversifying and adapting neighbourhoods, at an intimate scale within which citizens can meaningfully co-own, co-design and co-produce public and natural life in their streets, their squares, these gardens, these theatres of everyday life. These neighbourhoods sit within 15-minute districts, just as those districts in turn sit within larger cities, within bioregions, each nested within each other.

The New York Times, noting the Swedish one-minute city experiments alongside several others, including a similar Parisian three-minute city micro-neighbourhood model, described this as a “rapidly expanding movement to reclaim cities from the group up and to recast urban living through a hyperlocal prism of close interaction, mutual support and a sense of neighborliness.”

Melbourne and Victoria’s regional towns have every chance to join this movement, developing their own variations on these nested system transformation programs, not least because they will have to. The alternative does not bear thinking about. The question must be ‘how’ rather ‘why’, and based on Melbourne’s different challenges and opportunities to Stockholm, which small steps to take first?

Street Moves is ultimately no more than a small step in this shared direction too, this expanding movement. But with its ambition describing an arc from a handful of streets to all the streets in the country and capturing the imagination worldwide, it may be an important one. It begins to explore how we might reverse the polarity of traditional urban planning and architecture: streets and neighbourhoods rather than individual buildings and abstract plans, and then the city, built up on a dynamic of diverse adaptation. There are new capabilities to build here, shifting our perception of architecture and foregrounding the role of public designer, capable of shaping public discourse as well as public spaces, facilitating learning by doing, building critical connections to repair the invisible fabric of connectedness that our streets support.

The 15-minute city has immense potential, but only if the one-minute cities within are thriving, owned and produced by the streets themselves.

Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture

Dan Hill is the director of Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne. Dan's previous design leadership roles include Vinnova, Arup, Future Cities Catapult, Fabrica, SITRA, and the BBC. Dan is also visiting professor at UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose and a member of council on Urban Initiatives.

Above A kit of parts for innovation. Designs by Lundberg Design and Vinnova

Architect Victoria

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The transformation of George Street, Sydney Words by Bridget Smyth and Michael Harvey

The role of the street is evolving. George Street in Sydney has existed, in one form or another, for thousands of years. Originally a Gadigal trade route from Warrang, it traversed the ridge of the peninsula, past the shores of Tumbalong and carried on to what is now Newtown. Colonial settlers relied heavily on Gadigal pathways, as they were unable to navigate the dense and alien scrubland of Warrane.

Over time, the track become an artery of the growing colony. At first named Spring Row, then Sergeant Major’s Row, then High Street, modern-day George Street was a wide dirt track by the 1800s. It was eventually paved with timber blocks and then, in the 1930s, the timber blocks were covered with asphalt.

In the 1950s Sydney ripped up its tram network, once the second largest in the southern hemisphere.

With the advent of the motor vehicle, George Street became a street designed primarily for the efficient movement of vehicles. Pedestrian amenity suffered. Traffic light sequences were designed to maximise vehicle movement, not pedestrian movements. Awnings and traditional verandahs were removed from buildings, lest a wayward vehicle cause them to collapse.

Likewise, trees were removed to maximise road space and improve driver sightlines.

By 2010, George Street was broken. Choked by up to 660 buses in the morning peak, it was no more than an unworkable traffic-jam. It was faster to walk from Central Station to Town Hall than to catch the bus. George Street had no pedestrian amenity, there were no seats and only three trees between Town Hall and Circular Quay. Walking the street was deafening and alienating, it was simply a means to get somewhere else.

Returning the street to the people In 2004 with the election of the independent team lead by Lord Mayor Clover Moore, under the platform of a City of Villages, the need for an overarching city vision became apparent.

The development of Sustainable Sydney 2030 began as the roadmap to ensure Sydney’s liveability. As part of the

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development of this vision, the city engaged Gehl architects (now Gehl People) in 2006 to undertake one of their Public Space and Life Studies. This detailed urban analysis identified the shortcomings of Sydney’s city centre and suggested bold initiatives to improve our city. One of these ideas was to close George Street to vehicular traffic and introduce a modern transport system to replace the polluting and noisy Sydney buses.

In 2013, we published the George Street Concept Design, a blueprint for a different George Street. Together with Gehl Architects (now Gehl People), we designed a street for people, a street free from cars. Trees, seats, bubblers and outdoor dining opportunities were possible. We exhibited the concept design at Customs House and asked the community what they wanted to see in the street. Visitors could write short notes and suggestions for George Street and post them on a public wall. The public support was greater than we anticipated. The community wanted the same things we did; fewer cars and more inviting places to sit or to walk.

Our design challenged the accepted notion that streets were for cars and buses. By returning the street to a pedestrian and public transport-oriented space, we created opportunities for public life to flourish. Outdoor dining opportunities became a possibility, as did spaces for buskers and events and temporary exhibitions. The street could be accessible and inclusive, catering for the whole community, not just private vehicle users.

Between 2015 and 2019, Sydney Light Rail was constructed, and a portion of our vision became a reality.

Bathurst to Hunter Street was now traffic-free and public life began to return to George Street. Shortly after the completion of the light rail, Transport for NSW agreed to our requests to extend the pedestrian-only boulevard. Central Station to Bathurst Street was completed first, followed by Hunter to Essex Streets. Only a fraction of the street remains open to traffic, with plans to redesign underway. The vision of a fully pedestrianised George Street is now within reach.

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George Street Sydney transformation, City of Sydney with Transport for NSW and ALTRAC. Photographer: Richard Glover

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A resilient boulevard Well-designed streets and public spaces are key to a resilient, future-focused city. Now a connected and green corridor, George Street is ripe for new ideas to flourish. The street today is essentially a blank canvas, kitted out to provide new opportunities. Without traffic, but with all the ingredients for public life, it is only just beginning to develop its own identity and character. Outdoor dining is appearing all along the street.

Pedestrian activity is high throughout the day and well into the night. Street performers take advantage of the crowds.

The many public seats installed are always in use as people stop to talk, eat lunch, or take a break. The positive social outcomes of the street’s transformation are plainly visible.

Canopy cover and the greening of the city also contribute to the resilience of the city centre. The addition of street trees not only provides shade and amenity but reduces the urban heat island effect and makes our city more resilient in the face of increasing temperatures.

Economically, the new pedestrian-friendly George Street is more valuable than it ever was as a road.

It has improved surrounding land value, rental income and business turnover. Over $8 billion has already been invested in new development along the street. A diverse and thriving economy is what underpins a resilient economy.

The transformation of George Street has re-stated the importance of civic life in the city centre. For too long, the city core was no more than commercial office space, car parks and the means to get vehicles in and out. We hope that George Street is the catalyst for a re-balancing of the function of the street. A serviceable city that simultaneously provides a stage for civic life. George Street is once again a boulevard fit for the future. It is a case study in how he transformation of one main street can transform the quality of public life in a city.

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Bridget Smyth FRAIA has over 20 years of experience in urban design and architecture. She has worked on major public domain and infrastructure projects in Australia and the USA. Bridget is the City Architect and executive manager design and public art for the City of Sydney.

Michael Harvey is the program manager of urban design for the City of Sydney. He graduated from The University of Sydney with First Class Honours and the Ethel M. Chettle Prize in Architecture. He has designed and delivered major public works for government for 20 years.

Below George Street Sydney transformation, City of Sydney with Transport for NSW and ALTRAC. Photographer: Richard Glover

Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture

Footpath / flow path

Words by Emily Russo

At around 4pm, on the cusp of peak hour, Elizabeth Street momentarily reclaimed itself as a watercourse during a disastrous downpour. “White-capped waves" violently carried cars and bananas south while commuters sought street furniture for safety. When the rain subsided, the disaster persisted. The city was in a state of total chaos; unnavigable traffic jams, exhausted emergency services, and thousands of dollars of damage to shops and stock.1 This was 1972; a disaster by no means isolated nor natural. Prior and subsequent flash-flooding events on Elizabeth Street have exposed the inherent risks of replacing a creek with a man-made street, a development pattern not unique to Melbourne.

Building on floodplains and along watercourses is a common characteristic of colonial cities. A river with a city problem2 applies to Brisbane and cities globally that attempt to exist and operate disparately from nature. In the aptly named Year of the Great Deluge, 2022, eastern Australian cities experienced widespread devastation from extreme weather events.3 The compounding nature of climate change, along with urban development patterns, meant that infrastructure and communities were barely able to recover before the next threat arrived.

Unsurprisingly, streets feature heavily in media coverage to communicate post-shock catastrophe. We rely so heavily on streets for access and connection, but this is not always consciously appreciated until the familiar is disrupted. Floating debris, concealed street signs and submerged cars all become jarring visual billboards of wider logistical and community breakdown. And yet, despite the repeated events and the overrun of imagery, we have become numb to the implications of a doomed street.

A degree of forgetfulness is baked into city-shaping.

Recurring and escalating threats, like flash flooding on Elizabeth Street, aren’t necessarily fore fronted in our collective memory.

Instead, recovery tends towards rapidly restoring a prior condition, removing any sign of ruin, and erasing any trace

that might indicate our streets are fragile. The default towards an ordered and immaculate aesthetic conceals the inevitable reality of decay and informality that we should perhaps embrace.

The potential practices of subtracting, unbuilding and revealing are discarded in favour of adding, building and concealing.

Our streets are inherently risk riddled. They have at some point disturbed pre-existing landscapes to facilitate now highly movement-dependant networks. They are typically hardengineered, asphalted armatures under relentless demand to be dynamic public spaces that keep people moving and goods flowing.

This constant need to service many users leads to an inclination to uphold business-as-usual. Too much change causes disruption, longer term solutions require more resources upfront, and major interventions necessitate robust partnerships and community buy-in. The highly entangled environment of streets can sometimes mean that we dismiss other possibilities in favour of a frictionless recovery. The result is a dangerous postdisaster inertia – a reflex to simply resume and reinstate.

Meaningful disaster adaptation measures cannot be realised once this reflex to cope takes hold. Shifting to a different setting, Victoria’s Resilient Coast: Adapting for 2100+ provides a strategic framework for coastal hazard risk management and adaptation. The document identifies a spectrum of adaptation approaches to “reestablish and restore systems and assets to a similar state” post-impact to more transformative tactics which look to “change the fundamental attributes of a system to reduce the root causes of vulnerability and shift systems away from unsustainable or undesirable trajectories” prior to or following impact.4 While coastal environments are vulnerable in different ways from our streets, they have suffered from similar coping strategies in the name of resilience. Rising waves trigger sea walls to be built higher in the same way that flooding prompts culverts to be made larger. This heavy infrastructure has now become physically and culturally immoveable.

Architect Victoria

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Water is featured and welcomed in Watersquare Benthemplein, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (Source: De Urbanisten, Jurgen Bals)

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An emerging trend towards soft infrastructure provides a promising future direction for addressing intersecting city threats. Pilot projects across streets globally have shown that nature-based interventions can provide exciting benefits.

Frequently, however, these interventions remain as discrete experiments which lack strategic implementation at the pace and scale required.

A system-wide approach, more seriously entertained in countries such as the Netherlands, offers some hope in this space. The aftermath of significant disasters in the 1950s and 1990s, catalysed a suite of government programs, supported by dedicated investment, across Dutch neighbourhoods.5 Projects expanded beyond their defined boundaries, and instead framed as interwoven interventions serving a wider catchment.

Resilient Rotterdam, a vulnerable delta city, is an exemplar of this integrated approach. The city’s public spaces demonstrate an engagement with resilience through environmental, economic and social lenses, and importantly, through self-reinforcing processes of active learning from prior disasters.6 Cities in the Netherlands are the repeated benchmarks, not only for the simultaneous small and large-scale applications of water management and cooperative, strategic policies, but for the underpinning cultural framing and language relating to natural systems. Streets in the Netherlands serve not only to tangibly mitigate risk but to expose and broadcast the escalating realities of the city to the community through design. Daily encounters with public water squares, canals, windmills, and spongy surfaces provide for pleasant places to spend time in, but they are also constant material reminders of both historic and imminent disaster.

The argument for transformational adaptation of our streets is not only that it is the most effective long-term approach, but crucially because it is the most overt. Grander gestures help us reckon with our own relationship within layered systems; to recall the past and engage with many futures, not just an eternal present. By exposing things as they are, by faithfully communicating our current predicament through design, our streets can become instructive places that make obvious our collective responsibility for ongoing care.

Without even considering or pursuing a pathway towards transformational adaptation, we simply replicate the usual routines and assumptions that overlook the root causes of vulnerability. Our streets need to offer more than the refuge inadvertently afforded by a bench seat surfacing above the deluge. While drizzle can so easily become downpour, it doesn’t necessarily have to become disaster.

Notes S. White, ‘From the Archives, 1972: Chaos as floods batter Melbourne’, The Age, (14 February 2020), <https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/from-the-archives-1972-chaos-as-floodsbatter-melbourne-20200213-p540oi.html>.

1

M. Cook, A River with a City Problem: A History of Brisbane Floods, (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2019).

2

‘The Great Deluge: Australia’s new era of unnatural disasters’, Climate Council, (28 November 2022), <https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/resources/the-great-deluge-australias-new-era-ofunnatural-disasters/>.

3

Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA), ‘Victoria’s Resilient Coast – Adapting for 2100+’, The State of Victoria Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (2023), <https://www.marineandcoasts.vic.gov.au/marine-coastal-management/victorias-resilientcoast-adapting-for-2100>.

4

T. Erdbrink, ‘To avoid river flooding, go with the flow, the Dutch say’, The New York Times, (7 September 2021), <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/07/world/europe/dutch-rivers-flood-control. html>.

5

City of Rotterdam, ‘Resilient Rotterdam Strategy 2022-2027’, City of Rotterdam (2022), <https:// s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/storage.resilientrotterdam.nl/storage/2022/09/09093215/ Resilient-Rotterdam-Strategy-2022-2027.pdf>.

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Emily Russo is an urban designer at the City of Melbourne.

She recently completed a Master of Disaster, Design and Development, building on her studies in architecture and civil engineering. She is interested in the intersection of resilience and design; her latest research focusing on adapting public spaces in the context of escalating coastal hazards.

Architect Victoria

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Informed inclusive design for climate action Words by Richard Mullane

In 2017, I led the Hassell team in the Resilient By Design and Colma Creek restoration in San Francisco’s Bay Area – a project that saw community and public officials working with local, national and international experts on the challenges of climate change and ecological disaster around the bay. The program was tied to The Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities network that aims to strengthen cities for the 21st century. Although San Francisco is one of the world’s most captivating waterfront cities, it also happens to be one of the most vulnerable – with the Bay Area predicted to experience sea level rises of up to 66 inches/​ 168 centimetres by the year 2100.

The Hassell+ team brought together Australian, Dutch and Bay Area designers, engineers and ecologists with local community organisers and activists. Built upon deep research insights, our regional proposal featured a network of green spaces, creeks and revived high streets serving as points of collection and connection for restored social and environmental systems. From the ridgeline to the shoreline, this involved a regeneration of social, educational and ecological systems to manage water in locations most vulnerable to climate impact. Our team then applied these stage one research concepts to specific sites in South San Francisco for the second stage of the project – the Collaborative Design Phase – in partnership with the community through our project storefront and many outreach events with local partners.

In the five years since this design proposition, we’ve undertaken two more stages of nature-based adaptation funded through various State and local grants. We have also contributed to emerging efforts by local government and community organisations around aligned projects building upon the objectives of Resilient By Design, as advocates for the community and the inherent project opportunities for building resilience within their city.

To my mind, this experience perfectly illustrates the skills required by future designers in more informed and inclusive purpose-driven projects. In increasingly complex social and

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environmental contexts, the need for research-led practice, technical collaboration, stakeholder engagement and community co-design will be core to the skills of any successful design team, and the AI tools that enable us.

Informed, research-led and contextual Design for a changing climate needs to be more informed, evidence-based and locally responsive than ever before.

The environmental science of design – whether that be soil, water, ecology, carbon and climate-performance – must intersect with the social science of design and the opportunities to deliver greater equity and impact for the communities in which we work. As such, designers of the future require a literacy beyond structures and services to understand and develop strategies in response to issues as broad as polluted ground water or emerging public health challenges.

Beyond engaging with specialist researchers and guiding their investigations towards focused insights for pragmatic solutions, our industry will increasingly be called on to prioritise and integrate these findings to align the efforts of collaborative teams on complex projects. Regenerative design calls on an integration of site insights at scale, a challenge for both design skills and collaboration skills.

Half of the year-long project Resilient By Design was dedicated to the research stage. Layers and layers of environmental, economic and social data was analysed and intersected to locate the sites and communities most vulnerable to both climate change and the emerging liveability challenges of the region. Engineers, ecologists and economists crunched data, debated findings, built models and ran scenarios, then tested early proposals with local regulators and academics.

From maps comparing tidal wetland restoration progress to primary schools and associated safe cycling routes, the broadening of data sources increases the potential innovative, contextually responsive design ideas. But at the same time, the broadening of evidence holds design to a new level of

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Colma Creek adaptation, Resilient by Design San Francisco. Architect: Hassell + CHS Consulting, The Civic Edge Consulting, E2 Design Lab, Lotus Water.

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accountability, calling on a more broadly educated and processdriven designer to facilitate the involvement of a greater number of experts and contributors.

Inclusive and participatory While AI offers remarkable potential and efficiency gains, the core elements that make design truly effective and humancentric seemingly still remain out of its reach. Inclusivity is a fundamental principle in ensuring the delivery of meaningful project outcomes with regenerative impacts.

With an emphasis on the involvement and empowerment of all individuals in decision-making processes and initiatives, inclusion encompasses community engagement, environmental stewardship, responsive project objectives, and active listening to the diverse perspectives of the community through a wide range of community groups. Alongside this, sharing research and technical insights in a simple and understandable way fosters transparency and ensures that everyone can participate meaningfully and benefit equally.

This is at the crux of the challenge for future designers delivering an inclusive and participatory design process. Taking the complex analysis and insights from a broad design team of experts, distilling it into clear and understandable messages to an engaged community of stakeholders, then enabling open and creative co-design processes that empower that community and build stewardship for projects going forwards.

Our engagement in South San Francisco began with the transformation of a vacant 100-year-old bank in the city’s Main Street and included partnerships with local historians, native plant nurseries, environmental justice and youth leadership groups, summer camps and local primary schools. From colourcoded post-it notes on a 5-metre-tall map to recorded creek histories with 80-year-old residents, our process was narrative based and aimed at building understanding and inviting creative contributions. We designed engagements to reach across all cultural and age groups, extending as far as a children’s book on the climate impacts on Colma Creek for primary aged children (published in three languages and dropped into community groups and street libraries in the middle of the pandemic).

Future clients and founders will look to designers to be as innovative with their processes for the purpose of inclusion as they are with their design solutions.

aren’t enough to help realise a project. Engaging politically with funders and communities brings visions to reality and is becoming just as important as the final product.

When designers take on an advocacy role, they become the voice of the community, distilling context, nuance and wildly divergent opinions through the process of design.

Beyond the conventional boundaries of design, they find themselves responding into the realms of politics, social causes, and community needs – connecting with the very essence of design and its place in our world.

This holistic approach allows us to craft campaigns that resonate deeply with people, engendering empathy, and fostering genuine connections. Building political support, attracting funding, and creating a sense of community are all rooted in the ability to understand and connect with people on a profound level, something that AI lacks. Designers' capacity to envision and advocate for the greater good, going beyond serving a single client, is a uniquely human trait. As such, it emphasises the irreplaceable value of human creativity, compassion, and understanding in driving meaningful change.

Design without purpose will be easily accomplished by the growing army of AI bots. From where we stand, on the cusp of enormous change, it’s difficult to understand how emerging forms of AI might enable more inclusive design processes.

Designers will be expected to be capable of being effective advocates for purposeful projects, which essentially comes down to our ability to have conversations with other humans.

Conclusion Designers have never been passive in the projects that come to us.

We are already engaging in more informed and inclusive design processes, but in addition, we must demonstrate a range of new skills as advocates for purposeful projects that support more resilient and equitable cities.

And we’re perfectly placed to take on this role.

It’s in our DNA to explain the value of the projects and educate communities and stakeholders along the way. Visions and images help us, as they always have – but beautiful images

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Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture

Richard Mullane Associate RAIA is the board director and managing principal at Hassell in Melbourne. With qualifications in architecture, urban design, plus urban/environmental management, Richard is a strategic planner and placemaker with extensive global experience. A strong advocate for collaborative and site-responsive design, he is passionate about unlocking the potential of cities by creating unique and sustainable design solutions through close engagement with local communities.

Left Jon Hazelwood's Naturopolis experiments in making our cities more biodiverse Above and far left: Small stakeholder meeting, Bay Area Resilient by Design San Francisco, Community Shopfront.

Photographer: Kingmond Young

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Whose voice counts?

Words by Nikhila Madabhushi

Lately, it seems that ‘community’ has become the c-word.

Reconciling who community is within a project context has become so fraught; I sometimes cringe and feel like I’m swearing when I refer to clients, collaborators or end-users in this way. For a time, I thought this was just a semantic rabbit hole. However, over the past few years, I’ve seen a midcareer pivot into global development, and have returned to architecture with several new lenses to view practice through.

One key learning was that generalising who this catch-allterm community is meant to represent can be problematic and potentially harmful.

In her late sixties power-piece, A Ladder of Citizen Participation, Sherry Arnstein brings the problem of understanding who community is into sharp focus. She does this through dissecting participation as an outwardly democratic practice designed to foster community-led ideation – and ultimate governance or ownership – of public projects. In her article, Arnstein carefully describes the concept of the ladder, which reveals that participation is a mired process, often an empty ritual1, rather than an effective move to redistribute power.

She warns us that when we hear about community consultation, and the like, it is often less about changing the status quo and rather, often a token gesture by powerholders2 towards having questions they need answered.

I often revisit the ladder before I start a project.

Despite its hierarchy – which Arnstein herself describes as an at times un-useful limitation – it reinforces the nonhomogeneity of community. The ubiquitous label of community has a tendency to gloss over the diversity of people, and how they choose, or don’t choose, to group themselves, across virtual, physical and geographical realms, or across time. I’ve come to learn that misunderstanding who community is, has immense implications for practice. During a burgeoning movement within our discipline to better contribute to disaster preparedness and recovery, we are implored to harness community skills3.

But how we get the process and product of design right4

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through public engagement – often conflated to community – creates the most difficult challenge for us yet.

As a discipline we largely work top-down. Our partners are often agencies, organisations, authorities, owners and funders, but rarely communities. Agencies such as Emergency Recovery Victoria (formerly Bushfire Recovery Victoria), formed soon after the 2019/20 bushfires across Australia, aimed to privilege community-led recovery5 above all else. This was juxtaposed by a strand of recovery established within building and infrastructure departments, along with several others.

What becomes exposed in this recovery narrative is the inherent complexity in working from below, within an expert-led discipline.

This conundrum raises questions on how we contribute to such well-intentioned agendas, when we are armed with limited skills in establishing who a community is? How do we know who is in or out of this social phenomenon, who is participating, who is being represented and whose voice goes unheard?

Evidence suggests that groups of people with strong networks (community?) recover well from catastrophe6 – so how do architects and planners harness this in our contributions to repair, recover and rebuild towns and regions? A first step might be to broaden who we’re answerable to, beyond the fiscal and bureaucratic sponsors of a project. However, tender processes often relegate architects to privileging the agendas of such stakeholders. A shift away from this would require us to sharpen our formative training and highly adapt our core skills; we would need to develop mechanisms to embed durational engagement and facilitation practices throughout the design process.

Working in the hamlet of Genoa in Bidwell Country (far East Gippsland) in the years after the 2019/20 bushfires, I recall volunteer fatigue becoming a common issue for local people living the realities of community-led recovery.

Right On Country co-creation with Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation (GLaWAC), Equity Office x Monash Master of Architecture, 2023. Photographer: Spencer Mu

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This underscores that there is definitely work for us to do.

But it also highlights a fine line between engaging respectfully, and slowly, until there is a collectively informed, meticulously inclusive body of decisions we’re acting on.7 Development scholar, Robert Chambers, suggests that we are prone to skewing processes to get answers to our questions, and not everyone else’s. Model projects are always located just off the tarmac roads – easy to get to from the city – rather than in deep regions and contexts, physical or metaphorical.

Recent compilations like the Connecting with Country Framework integrate various pieces of Indigenous Knowledge, providing clear inroads into identifying what community is.

While designed to offer a framework for Country-led thinking in design, it also highlights how Aboriginal communities are diverse, contextual and relational. This way of thinking offers an approach for engagement that also creates the necessary pathways to understanding who community is, across all cultures.8

Many experiences along this journey of reorienting practice have led me to question what we, as architects, are actually compromising when we give away our power?

Do we need to if there is a transparent consensus between the powerholders and the have-nots9, for what a collective vision is? So far, I’ve found that participatory design, in its basic form, works. It propels people towards thinking in place-based ways.

It expedites decision-making across broad groups of people and invites a critical consciousness of one another's concerns for the places they live in. It also garners trust in a designer’s capabilities, especially when such processes can be properly facilitated not only at the inception of a project but weaved into its fabric, in creative, iterative ways. Participation reveals the interrelationships between spaces, and the programs, services and networks required to maintain them, long after they are built, and we are gone. It is likely that communities are formed, not around intangible, but critical facets of place – hence why we need to dig deeper to understand who community is.

Nikhila Madabhushi is an architect, researcher and educator.

Her research-based practice, Equity Office, foregrounds decolonising and participatory design methods for the built environment. Nikhila’s work has been supported by various recognitions, enabling her to gain diverse knowledge(s) on the confluence of Country, disasters and place. She is currently a research fellow within Fire to Flourish.

Notes Arnstein, Sherry R. “A Ladder Of Citizen Participation.” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 35, no. 4 (July 1969): 216–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944366908977225.

1

2

ibid.

Australian Institute of Architects. “Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements.” Australia: Australian Institute of Architects, May 4, 2020. https://www.architecture. com.au/wp-content/uploads/20200504-Australian-Institute-of-Architects-Royal-Commission.pdf.

3

Donovan, Jenny. “Designing to Heal: Post-Disaster Rebuilding to Assist Community Recovery Part A: Disaster Impacts and Recovery.” Environment Design Guide 78, no. JD1 (October 2013): 1–7.

4

Bushfire Recovery Victoria. “Recovery Framework.” Framework. Melbourne: Victoria State Government, 2020.

5

Jennings, Fiona. “Navigating Uncertainty: A Qualitative Study of Resident Involvement in the 2013 Forcett Tasmania Bushfire Disaster.” PhD, RMIT, 2018. https://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/ eserv/rmit:162621/Jennings.pdf.

6

Chambers, Robert. “Poor Visibility.” New Internationalist, February 1, 1981. https://newint.org/ features/1981/02/01/poor-visibility.

7

8

Above Drawn by Nikhila Madabhushi and Robert Lees acknowledging the work of muf art/ architecture (2009), TACSI (2022) and Yunkaporta (2019).

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Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th anniversary ed. New York: Continuum, 2000.

Arnstein, Sherry R. “A Ladder Of Citizen Participation.” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 35, no. 4 (July 1969): 216–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944366908977225.

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Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture

The importance of Gender Impact Assessments in shaping future cities Words by Ella Gauci-Seddon

The Royal Commission into Family Violence and resultant legislation has brought about changes to the way that built environment professionals are required to approach design.

The legislation provides frameworks to help ensure we are addressing important issues regarding gender inclusivity. Understanding and addressing gendered outcomes is now a mandatory responsibility.

furniture that is designed for an average man’s body to the planning of our public transport networks. As a result, our cities are currently not equally safe, inclusive, and accessible for people of all genders and identities. And the result of this? The people who the city is not designed for are unable to participate in the world in the same way. This creates barriers to participation and contributes to broader unequal outcomes.

Understanding the Victorian Gender Equality Act The Victorian Gender Equality Act, enacted in 2020, is a pioneering legislation that aims to advance intersectional3 gender equity by helping to identify and remove the systemic causes of gender inequality both in the workplace and in community initiatives. To achieve this, the Act requires all defined entities (primarily public sector organisations and universities) to undertake the following.

In 2015 Victoria conducted Australia's first Royal Commission on Family Violence1. The findings revealed that to tackle family and gender-based violence, Victoria needed to address the root problem of gender inequality. The commission made 227 recommendations, one of which led to the introduction of the Victorian Gender Equality Act in 2020. This Act and its requirements have generated increased energy and efforts around the design and delivery of gender equitable cities, places and spaces.

01 Take positive action in working towards gender equality within the workplace Organisations are required to develop a Gender Equality Action Plan (GEAP). These plans must describe the status and experience of gender equality in the workplace, and detail steps to eliminate barriers and biases and increase equality for people of all genders. GEAPs are informed by data from workplace audits. In a built environment context, this step has the potential to address impacts of the over representation of men in design, planning and decision making.

Spatial injustice — Understanding the problem in the context of the built environment Discussions around the gendered nature of our cities' design and planning have been increasingly prevalent. The historical and current over representation of men in design, planning and decision making is well documented2 and significant work and research has been done to articulate the impacts that this inequity has had on our cities. These impacts range from public

02 Consider and promote gender equality in policies, programs, and services Organisations are required to apply a gender lens to all new or updated initiatives, including the design and delivery of built environment projects. This is being done through Gender Impact Assessments, discussed further below.

This two-pronged approach ensures that the impact of the Act is broad reaching. It also acknowledges that workplaces

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upholding social justice principles are better equipped to deliver outcomes that advance equality, and offers the means to progress toward this objective.

Applying a gender lens through Gender Impact Assessments While all aspects of the Act will impact how our cities are made, built environment professionals will work most directly with Gender Impact Assessments (GIAs).

What are Gender Impact Assessments?

GIAs are systematic analysis tools that are used to recognise and understand potential gendered impacts of actions or initiatives and identify positive opportunities to overcome them. They have been globally adopted and are gaining recognition as an effective means of delivering gender transformative outcomes. Under the Act GIAs must be informed by data and research. This is helping to elevate the voices of the community in the design and delivery of initiatives.

The process Undertaking a GIA involves first defining the initiative and considering if people of different genders and intersecting identities have equal opportunity to access and use the initiative.

Following this initial assessment, evidence (qualitative and quantitative data and other research) is collected, collated and analysed to further understand the potential gendered impacts of the initiative. This information is used to develop options and recommendations to mitigate these impacts and create an initiative that is inclusive and accessible for people of all genders and identities. Post occupancy assessments, evaluation and monitoring are not currently part of the GIA process, however they will be important to understand how GIAs are impacting our projects.

Why are they important GIAs provide organisations with a structured approach for informed decision-making. They help reduce conscious and unconscious biases by requiring evidence-based recommendations, improving gender outcomes. GIAs also influence community engagement, city planning and decision

making, ensuring a broader perspective that caters to diverse community needs.

The legislation of GIAs has elevated the importance of considering and mitigating gendered impacts, providing organisations with a remit to prioritise, resource and fund this work.

Challenges The implementation of GIAs is in its early stages and there is a lot still to be figured out. The GIA template from the Victorian Government is necessarily very general, so each organisation and department must find the right approach. Establishing ways to embed the GIA process into the design process will be important to ensure it does not create additional work, but rather strengthens existing approaches. Nevertheless, there is a strong drive to work through these challenges, and we are witnessing a shift in discussions, perspectives, and interest in the topic.

Applications within the private sector GIAs hold significant implications for the private sector.

Although not currently obligated to follow the Act, they are already encountering requirements when working with government clients. These will continue to expand.

There is an opportunity for the professional peak bodies (AILA, AIA, PIA and others) to provide forums for building and sharing knowledge around the topic in partnership with experts.

Conclusion The Gender Equality Act has established a valuable framework for the creation of gender-inclusive cities. The effectiveness of this framework will largely depend on the way we, as professionals in the built environment, put it into practice.

The legislation of GIAs elevates and ephasises the importance of gender-inclusive design, however the key to success will be moving beyond compliance. If we harness and embed this powerful tool it holds the potential to enable the delivery of gender-transformative outcomes, develop better practitioners and create better cities. Ultimately, we have an opportunity to actively contribute to the primary prevention of violence against women, children, and other marginalised communities.

Notes 1

https://www.vic.gov.au/about-royal-commission-family-violence

2

Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning Design - The World Bank

Intersectionality refers to the compounding effects of discrimination that occur when someone experiences multiple marginalised identities. This creates interdependent systems of discrimination and privilege for either an individual or a group. These identities include (but are not limited to) Aboriginality, ethnicity, age, religion, race, class, sexual orientation and disability. The term was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989.

3

The Gender Equality Act 2020 is the first legislation globally to require the application of an intersectional lens. This means going beyond gender and considering equity for all identities, making the impact more comprehensive.

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Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture

ICTO THE V

RIAN GENDER EQUALIT Y A CT

ES

R

FR A M

WORKPLACE AUDIT/SURVEY

REPORT

T

M

I

R K P L AC E O U T C O M

DEVELOP/ IMPLEMENT GEAP

TS (GIAS) MEN S S U NI T Y O U TC O SE O MM ME S GC AS N I

R

P

WO

I

M

RO

G V IN

FO

AC

GEN DE RI FR A M MP EW OR AC K

L

Y IT

L ANS (GEAPS) NP O I T

FO

GEN DE RE QU EW OR A K

PROVING GENDER EQU K FOR IM IT Y O E WO R UTC M A OM FR ES

PR

OV

01 DEFINE INITIATIVE AND CONSIDER POTENTIAL GENDERED IMPACTS

02 COLLECT, COLLATE AND ANALYSE EVIDENCE REGARDING GENDERED IMPACTS

03 IDENTIFY AND ANALYSE OPTIONS TO IMPROVE GENDER INCLUSIVE OUTCOMES

04 PROVIDE RECOMMENDATIONS AND IMPLEMENT

Ella Gauci-Seddon is a senior landscape architect and gender equity lead at the City of Melbourne with experience spanning public and private sectors, academia, and the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA). Her dedication to advocacy, empowering women, and advancing young professionals in landscape architecture earned her the AILA President's award in 2021. Ella's passion lies in promoting equity and social justice through city and place design.

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What does the future city look like?

Next question.

A conversation between Mike Hewson and Sunday Hyde

Artist, engineer and self-described 'lazy anthropologist' Mike Hewson, has created extraordinary urban places for our smallest citizens. Collaboration and iteration are core to his design process.

St Peters Fences sculpture park in Sydney – which emerged from a drawing exercise with local school children – exemplifies an ability to capture the whimsical and chaotic imagination of young minds.

Hewson's rejection of mundane contemporary public spaces and his curiosity of everyday objects, reveal an unconventional perspective toward the built environment. Pushing beyond design standards and ridiculing over-regulation, Hewson's projects often provoke controversy and debate among the aggrieved grown-ups but are immediately understood by children.

Children are our greatest critics – deeply honest, opinionated and mostly unbothered by the impending fears we have towards the future. Embedding kid’s perspectives in the planning of cities is rarely executed well; however, it can enable resilience, social connections, and imaginative risktaking. Hewson believes a great deal of public space is designed in a manner that lacks generosity toward the people who use it. “Alongside the responsible-duty-of-care-risk-management approach design, why not equally assume that people are smart, capable and able to navigate and comprehend novel and challenging environments?”

In a conversation with Sunday Hyde, Hewson explored the possibilities for the future city through the eyes of an eight-yearold. Through generative illustration, what became apparent was a fundamental disinterest in the topic of the future, emphasising the importance of living in the present. This reflection serves as a reminder that our greatest legacy may be our ability to fully appreciate our complex world as it exists today.

Ultimately, Hewson's work and Sunday's ideas suggest that the future city may not be drastically different from the present. Instead, it may involve the continuous evolution and adaptation of our surroundings, with the inclusion of different perspectives, all rooted in the enduring essence of the present moment.

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Mike Hewson:

How far away is the future?

Sunday Hyde:

In two seconds... a millisecond!

MH: Alright, two seconds, that’s pretty close. So, it is not sometime in the future? It is, I guess, two seconds away?

SH: Two seconds is in the future! Right now, I am speaking into the future.

MH: That’s true. So, if we are already in the future we can draw whatever we want. Should we just draw Melbourne then?

SH: Yep. I can get inspiration from that. We can draw the types of stores we could have. But should we draw what there already is or what there should be?

MH: This is a good question. Do you think we already have what we should have?

SH:

Let's draw just a little bit of change and like, in the middle.

MH: What's happening in your store and how is this future store different from a store?

SH: I'm not sure what type of store. I'm just drawing the outside. All of the essentials. Just everything that you can see on the outside. It's not really futuristic. It just has more stuff that you can buy and more electronic signs.

MH: While drawing the Melbourne Town Hall clocktower, visible from the nearby window, do you reckon they will turn clocks into stores?

Right Sunday Hyde and Mike Hewson imagining and creating the future city.

Photographer: Danielle Jewson

Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture

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Urban futures —

SH: Maybe it could have a door with a sci-fi keycard so you can open it, so people who have the keycard can ring the bell.

It could be a little bit of a tablet, like an iPhone mini. Then you can get it onto the right app because it could have free apps.

Maybe it could be a QR Code.

MH:

SH: Yeah. When you're in the future, you just notice all the differences.

MH: Now you are going to tell me ideas for the future.

They don’t have to be different from now but they can be and I'm going to draw them.

What is inside of the building?

SH:

SH: You go up a flight of stairs, little curly stairs, you know?

And then there will be the big bell and you ring it, just like a normal old-fashioned bell. Nothing too fancy.

A 68-floor detailed apartment.

A sci-fi computer that has a little force so you can see it and tap the air and it will put the code in.

MH:

MH:

So, it is not a sci-fi bell, it is just a casual bell.

SH:

A bell that you can see every day.

MH: Okay. Are there old things in the future too? We don't hate old things.

SH: Yes, we still keep old things now. We still keep some of the old buildings like my house is a really old building. One of the fancy ones.

MH: Yeah, that sounds about right. Architects like fancy buildings (disclaimer: Sunday’s dad is an architect). Do you think there will be architects in the future?

SH:

Definitely.

MH:

Why wouldn't computers just design it all?

SH:

Artificial intelligence is not always very intelligent.

SH: Textas that can have a machine stuck to it and then it can draw automatically for you when you say the words.

Theme parks that have rides where you float.

Landscapes that look like you're walking on the rainbow.

When you have to write your name down, you need rocks on the paper and then trace the rocks. And then the paper will get a little signal to a computer and then you just type in what you want to be written.

There will be buildings made of fluff.

I have an idea from a dream. A little museum for kids that has about a million pillows and a pillow slide. Everything you could hope for is made out of pillows. It’s not really a museum, it's just like a fun park where there's lots of pillows.

Diamonds are now worth less because they found a new type of thing that is worth more than diamonds. Something that's really valuable.

MH:

MH: Oh yeah? Is someone going stop it from being intelligent?

Like other architects?

SH: I can’t predict the future. I’ve only listened to Harry Potter where they predict the future. I’ve never predicted the future.

MH:

But we are guessing right now?

SH:

Yeah. A good old guess.

MH: Are any of your friends worried about the future? Do any of your friends say “oh when I’m older, it is going to be all broken”?

SH:

No

MH: So, do you think the world in the future is going to be a good place?

SH:

Yes

MH:

So, what you're saying is, the future is not that different?

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Woah! Yep, that sounds like the future.

And what do you do with it?

SH: You can make clothes out of it. You can dye your hair with it. You can make toys out of it. You do anything with it and you can keep it as a treasured possession.

MH:

Do you think in 100 years buildings will look the same?

SH:

Yes, they will all have bricks in them.

MH:

All right, we've got a pretty clear snapshot for the future.

Mike Hewson is a visual artist with a background in structural engineering and heavy-civil construction. He is has completed five large-scale public art commissions in Australia, many of them are sculpture park/playgrounds. Hewson received a Bachelor of Engineering (Hons) from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand in 2007 and a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University, New York in 2016.

Sunday Hyde was born in London and now lives in Melbourne.

She met Mike Hewson at a workshop at MPavilion, where she led a design team to create a giant tower in the shape of a Frank Green water bottle.

Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture

Guest editorial —

Guest editorial

Systems thinking in architecture Words by David Ritter

A system is a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network; a complex whole. Systems thinking means to approach building design, construction and operation by considering the whole-of-life inputs and outputs (from both inside and outside the site boundary) as part of a connected entity.

For example, it’s obvious that the natural world is a complex ecosystem, our communities are social systems, and the economy is a financial system, but these do not operate in isolation. With environmental destruction and climate change now beginning to feed back so disruptively, it’s clearer to us than ever before that these systems are dynamically interlinked; one impacts the other. It is a complicated reality to grapple with, but systems thinking is an approach that is vital to ensure our industry can address the most pressing challenges of the 21st century.

As architects or engineering consultants, we are too often conditioned to think and behave in a manner that is counter to this. Under the pressures of time, scope, and fee limitations it is far easier to apply our analysis to a limited set of factors or inputs only, or to focus on one part in a way that excludes the complexity of a system as a whole. If we are not careful, we will remain stuck in our silos and miss the opportunity before us.

In a rapidly evolving world of potential for new, greener technologies, our industry needs systems-thinking to deliver urgent change. As team leaders and design coordinators, architects are ideally placed to bridge the gap between the conventional static approach to architectural design and dynamic ecological, social and technological systems. We must look beyond architecture as discrete object creation to a model where the return on investment is to be seen in a much larger context, founded on concepts of natural capital, social value and entrepreneurial opportunity rather than a singular financial asset with a one-dimensional economic bottom line.1 We can chart the evolution towards an increasing sophistication of systems thinking within our own practice to some extent. Over three decades of working across the globe at Atelier Ten, the end goal has shifted from sustainability, a simplistic concept of doing less bad, towards achieving regenerative outcomes that have a net positive impact on ecosystems and society. Added to this are layers of systems thinking such as resilience, health and wellbeing and the

Guest editorial —

possibilities of data and technology to facilitate these goals.

With a rapidly greening grid, our efforts have also shifted from a narrow focus on reducing operational energy of buildings, to the task of reducing upfront or embodied carbon emissions due to the higher time-value of associated carbon savings. It has been astonishing how quickly this transition has occurred, particularly in cities such as London and San Francisco where the shift to renewable power, local planning policies and the ESG drivers of major tech and corporate clients has required a holistic approach to demonstrating whole-of-life carbon emissions.

We are at the nexus of operational and embodied carbon impact evaluation that turns some of our conventional decision-making processes on their head. For example, the operational benefits of low-energy building components such as concrete (thermal mass), aluminum shading devices or high-performance building services systems must be evaluated against their upfront carbon and environmental impacts.

Furthermore, in this context, the drive towards adaptive re-use of existing buildings and circular-economy thinking starts to fundamentally change the way material resources are considered, and how buildings and components are put together for reconfigurability or end-of-life disassembly and reuse. Not to mention the opportunity to re-consider the role of the architect in this changing landscape.

Although the level of holistic systems thinking across industry is still at a relatively low base, the growth of skills and knowledge in this space is set to grow rapidly as a greater abundance of lifecycle impact data, BIM tools, multi-parameter analysis techniques and AI are adopted for solving such complex systems problems. In the light of this, it’s abundantly clear that we need a new breed of architecture and engineering professionals who are able to connect the dots by engaging with their peers to ask the right questions, evaluating holistically and collaborating iteratively to achieve the ambitious step-change that is needed.

David Ritter is founder of the Melbourne office for progressive, global sustainability consulting practice, Atelier Ten, David has 25 years of experience in delivering cutting-edge design solutions founded upon a deep appreciation for systems thinking in practice. David regularly teaches at universities across Melbourne including integrated architecture and engineering design studios at the University of Melbourne and the sustainable construction course at Swinburne University.

Notes 1

Mark Miller, Systems Thinking & Architecture, https://www.medium.com, Nov 4, 2017

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Our Solarpunk future Words by Zack Semke

If we do not or cannot envision the future we want, how can we create it?

For many of us, it’s all too easy to imagine the terrible, particularly as we witness the damage caused as we edge up towards 1.5°C of global heating today. Additionally, we are relentlessly bombarded by Doomist messages.

We are so good at envisioning nightmares when it comes to imagining the future. Entertaining pop culture and aesthetic movements – like Cyberpunk, Steampunk, and Dieselpunk – which fixate on the apocalypse. Some of my favourite movies growing up, like Mad Max and Blade Runner, tell that story.

But is apocalypse inevitable?

In the months leading up to the United Nations (UN) Climate Change talks in Paris in 2015, the accepted wisdom was that the world was headed to about 5°C warming by the year 2100 if we did not change course. Today, prospects for the future look quite different. Most analyses of our current trajectory of warming, based on the economics of clean energy and the current policy environment, peg our new business-as-usual trajectory at somewhere between 2.4° and 2.7°C of warming by 2100.

Of course, there is a healthy range of uncertainty around any of these projections. But it now looks highly unlikely that we will hit 5°C. That is great news. However, we still have a massive amount of work to do. This new business as usual is around twice the level of warming we are already experiencing. The result would be tremendous human suffering and ecological damage.

If we are in a race with climate change, then we are still in it, but it is far from over.

One of the biggest reasons we are still in the race is that clean energy has defied all projections, plummeting in price at a rate that virtually no one saw coming. The exponential growth of clean energy deployment has also played a role.

The cause of these cost declines and exponential growth rates in clean energy is almost as exciting as the cost declines and growth themselves: learning by doing. Also known

as Swanson’s Law or Wright’s Law, the principle is that as a technology’s deployment doubles, all of the learning and microinnovations that go into making that deployment happen drives down the cost of that technology by a certain percentage, known as the learning rate. For the past decade, the learning rate of utility-scale solar has been a whopping 36%, meaning that each time global solar deployment has doubled, the cost of solar energy has gone down by more than a third.

This dynamic sets up a beautiful feedback loop. As more solar is deployed, the cost goes down more, which encourages more deployment, which drives cost down further, and so on.

How does Passive House fit into this climate race? The genius of Passive House design is that it recognises that the building itself – its skeleton and skin and how all the building’s components function together as a system – is technology.

So, just as in solar and wind and batteries, we can harness the power of learning by doing. Anyone who’s been involved in more than a couple Passive House projects will tell you that learning by doing is real. You will hear anecdote after anecdote about how the first project that you do will be challenging, but the second gets easier (and therefore cheaper), and the third gets easier still, and so on.

In the US, it looks like we are seeing this learning by doing with Passive House on a regional industry-wide scale, too.

Data from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency compares construction budgets for 268 proposed multifamily projects over a three-year period: 194 conventional buildings and 74 Passive House buildings. In year one, there was a 5.8% cost premium for the Passive House proposals compared to conventional buildings.

By year two that went down to 1.6%. And by year three, there was a 3.3% savings for the proposed Passive House buildings compared to the proposed conventional buildings.

With technologies like Passive House, solar and wind energy, battery storage, and electrification keeping us in the race, it is time to lift up our heads and envision a different future from the apocalypse of Cyberpunk.

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Background art for Chobani Dear Alice commercial with line animation by artist Daniel Clarke

Systems thinking in architecture —

Enter the aesthetic and literary movement of Solarpunk.

Solarpunk is a response to Cyberpunk. It recognises that if we spend all of our energy imagining apocalypse, then we won’t have any left to envision the future that we actually want to build.

“Solarpunks ask ‘what kind of world will emerge when we finally transition to renewables?’”, says Jennifer Hamilton of the University of Sydney. Solarpunk recognises that we are not making that transition fast enough, but it imagines what we can create when the transition finally happens.

“Solarpunk begins with infrastructure as a form of resistance,” writes Adam Flynn, author of Solarpunk: Notes toward a Manifesto. So, that protected bike lane is a form of resistance. That streetcar is a form of resistance. The high-speed rail linking cities is resistance. That multifamily Passive House building is resistance.

The Solarpunk manifesto starts with this: “We are Solarpunks because optimism has been taken away from us and we are trying to take it back.”

Punk owns outrage. What Solarpunk is doing is keeping that outrage, but reclaiming optimism, recognising that we need both. To create the future we want, we need to hold these two emotions simultaneously.

Solarpunk art explores the coexistence of technology and nature, of cities and re-wilding. You see lots of trees on buildings in Solarpunk art, which raises questions of weight, concrete, energy performance, and embodied carbon. Passive House designers and builders have contributions to make to the conception of Solarpunk architecture.

For me, Passive House already is actively Solarpunk.

It is Solarpunk, because Passive House buildings are healthy havens for people, even in the face of climate change. It reduces energy demand, which makes the clean energy transition easier.

It also reduces energy load. The superior thermal envelopes allow Passive House buildings to act like a long-term thermal battery, sipping a bit of energy from the grid, and not stressing it. This means that the future clean grid will require fewer clean energy resources to heat and cool our Passive House buildings, which makes the clean energy transition easier, which makes a Solarpunk future possible.

And, perhaps the most Solarpunk thing about Passive House buildings is their passive resilience. These buildings provide survivable shelters even during power outages, heat domes, intense pollution events, and the other disruptions we are likely to face due to climate change.

We know we are in a race with the climate crisis, and we should be outraged by its impacts and the efforts by far too many to slow down climate action solution-making.

But, on the climate solutions side we can accelerate virtuous circles to destroy demand for fossil fuels and put the brakes on climate change. At the heart of many of these virtuous circles is the power of learning by doing, a power that applies to Passive House design and construction. Considering that buildings are responsible for about 40% of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions globally, that is a big deal. We all have a starring role to play in building a Solar punk future. Let’s do it!

Zack Semke is the director of US-based Passive House Accelerator and a member of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership Corps. He works to accelerate the transition to healthy, zero carbon buildings for everyone.

Left Theresa Passive in Austin, Texas, withstood the 2021 deep freeze, maintaining safe temperatures inside after days with no power. Photographer: Casey Dunn

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Big data for a better future Interview with Jessica Christiansen-Franks by David Ritter

David Ritter: Who are Neighbourlytics?

Jessica Christiansen-Franks: We are – truthfully known – recovering landscape architects from a placemaking consulting and urban design background. When we started the business, it was in response to problems in the consulting space, particularly a lack of information for consultants to base decisions on. But we are now a software platform. Our team are largely software developers and data scientists, and then urban life experts like demographers, town planners and place makers who help interpret the data. Our goal, we call it our theory of change, is to help city makers globally make cities people love and feel connected to.

How is this data gathered?

We're looking at where people are leaving information behind about what they did and what they valued by virtue of them doing something. So not telling us they did it, but actually doing it.

There are four types of data that we bring in: Firstly, we bring in crowdsource maps. So, Google, Apple, Facebook etc don't make the map. People search for things, have events somewhere, rate review, start a business, or whatever they're adding to the map. They're all actually wikis of people using the neighbourhood. So, we pull together all of those wikis and add them together to create the map the neighbourhood made by its inhabitants.

We also bring in mobile phone movement data. This is where we can look at behaviours of place, although mobile phone movement data is very difficult to interpret and trust.

The next type, which we're most known for is what we call social chatter, which is what people are saying when they're in a neighbourhood.

The fourth dataset is ratings and reviews. Now this is really interesting because there's a misunderstanding that the star rating of a neighbourhood or of a restaurant is really

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important. What's actually more important though is whether people left a review at all. It's the action of bothering that tells you it was important to them.

This is all about determining values. Because people post on Instagram what they want their friends to know they did, it tells you what's important to them. There are some interesting dynamics here, like in Cremorne -where nature comes up really strongly as something people are photographing and talking about, but can you think of one tree in Cremorne? But because when there are moments of greenery climbing up a wall and you see a moment of something beautiful like that, perhaps you value it more. And this is where values are different to behaviour and opinion. People perhaps don't even notice that they love nature so much, but when you look at what they're posting about and showing their friends about their lives, it's coming through really strongly. The same thing happened in lockdown where the communities posting much more about public space and about nature, were the apartment neighbourhoods, the higher density ones.

We can understand inhabitant’s behaviours and movements through buildings and urban environments in ways we never could before. How can we use this data as designers to shape the future?

Firstly, it enables understanding of the context of any project.

Before we had data easily available, it was very hard – when you are building a school or building a train station – to really understand the proper catchment and context of that place.

This feeds into the second piece, which is looking at a place order what are its unique value proposition strengths? and what is it missing? This is best done by benchmarking against other precedents. And again – now that there's data available – effective benchmarking is possible. When it's just consultants observing things, it's very difficult to benchmark that train station against 50 others because it's very labour intensive

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to do that. Lastly – once the project is underway – data enables you to track change over time. Is it delivering on the things that it needed to? In some instances, the project has the ability to change its direction a little bit, even just change the tenancy mix or try a different activation initiative.

whole industry, we need to keep asking the question and keep thinking about what is appropriately public and what isn't.

Access to smartphones, big data and the like can be used by authorities and mega-powerful private companies to exert an Orwellian Big Brother style influence. Are we in danger of slipping toward such a dystopian future?

The big trend here is the movement towards the hyper-local.

So, this was already a trend at play pre-COVID, but COVID accelerated it. Gone are the days of us thinking that big regions have a uniform identity, and they should all tap into each other.

People want experience. We are now in the experience economy.

This is a well-documented phenomenon. People gain social value, attachment and brand loyalty and all those things come from experience and from connection which comes from this hyper-local experience. When people worked from home during COVID, they became really attached and connected to their local neighbourhoods. And so, it means at the hyper-local level we have let’s say – Carlton being uniquely different from North Carlton or Abbotsford from Collingwood. That's how people want neighbourhoods to be. And it means architects need to think entirely differently about the way their buildings are being utilized in those contexts.

Big data is forcing the sector to think about the neighbourhood as a system. Previously – when developing an apartment, office or built to rent project – you find out what amenities are needed and try to jam it all in your building.

That's not the trend now. People don't want everything in the one building. They want to know what's immediately around them so that they can participate in the neighbourhood around them.

I was worried when we started our business six months before Cambridge Analytica happened. At the time this became part of the public conversation around data privacy and what's appropriate. And for me was actually the most exciting thing that had happened because it meant there became a more sophisticated public understanding of what is appropriate and what's not.

There's a vast difference between the public realm of data and the private realm of data and we make a very specific distinction that we will only capture things that are in the public realm that are publicly posted. There was a point in time that we were capturing Facebook events that were public but lots of people were mistakenly putting their kids' birthday party as a public event because they didn't know how to use the platform.

So, it's theoretically public but is it appropriate for a property developer to see with someone's private kid's birthday party? No. That doesn't pass the pub test? So, there are lots of opportunities for data to be used in terrible nefarious ways, but I think as a

What are the big future trends that architects need to engage with?

Jessica Christiansen-Franks founding director and CEO of Neighbourlytics, is an urban designer and social entrepreneur who has dedicated her career to understanding the social dynamics of urbanisation. Passionate about creating neighbourhoods people love and feel connected to, Jessica co-founded Neighbourlytics, a data platform that uses big data to gain insights into community lifestyle, values, and behaviour.

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Radical resource custodianship A conversation between Robbie Neville and Lucy Marsland

Circularity is a system of material re-use and regeneration where we ask, What resources have I got at our disposal to bring to life what I want to create? By shifting project thinking toward radical resourcefulness and resource custodianship, the inherent utility and beauty of materials is recognised, respected, and re-imagined.

Lucy Marsland: How do you see the construction system working now and what’s not working?

Robbie Neville: Our economy is geared around linear consumption, and, as a result, we look at old materials and think they are redundant. My whole education for designing something new was not geared around being resourceful, it was geared around nominating new stuff. Behind the scenes the old stuff is just gone.

The design development process doesn’t currently start with: what resources have I got at my disposal, to bring to life what I want to create?’ In an ideal world we would ask that question first and the resourcefulness in that question would trump aesthetic and all the other considerations: whether you need to compromise the operation, the performance, or the timeframe. At the moment, we don’t think like that.

What is the Revival way of thinking?

RN: We’ve set ourselves up so, whatever your vision is, if it uses existing materials, we can bring it to life.

When we look at existing materials, we join the dots between the resources and whatever the new application, concept or design is. It’s easy for us to join the dots. That’s all we do.

When you start thinking about resourcefulness first, what opportunities emerge?

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RN: For us, Melbourne is home. The scope of opportunity for re-purposing here is so immense because Melbourne was built out of timber and brick.

When we look at those two materials, they are easy to deconstruct. The process of taking them from built form, through deconstruction and preparation for new form, it’s faster and shorter than any other resource I can think of. We can clean a brick that’s been there for a hundred years in 60 seconds and it’s ready for use in structural application. For timber, sometimes the de-nailing or the machining process can be a bit laborious, depending on what the timber has been used for, but we are talking minutes to make wood ready for re-use.

They’re the building blocks of Australia really. Certainly, in Melbourne, we built this city out of timber and brick and so that’s where we are seeing a lot of opportunity come to life, because it’s everywhere.

How are you implementing this system of circular materiality on projects?

RN: We are the principal contractor for the new head office for Bar Studio on Easy Street in Collingwood – the old PBS Radio Station building. It is a really interesting adaptive re-use project.

The building is about one hundred years old, built out of timber and brick. We had to completely deconstruct and rebuild the brick parapets so that we could replace all the lintels on the first floor. But every single brick has been kept on site and repurposed on site, where we could. We have sliced them in half long ways, all the paving for the courtyard has been made from the brick. The bricks have featured in landscaping elements.

Over 10,000 bricks were demolished, cleaned, kept on site, and repurposed.

LM: I always think of timber as unique in its organic aesthetic and biophilic quality, what is special about timber in adaptive re-use?

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Easy Street adaptive re-use, rear courtyard under construction. Photo provided by Revival Projects

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At Easy Street, the first floor was held up by 25 RN: Jarrah columns, 200x200. They’d been there for one hundred years. We’ve been using those Jarrah columns for various design elements throughout, re-purposing them into the design.

Last week, we took our first delivery of bathroom vanities, that have been made using the Jarrah, and positioned them within 5 metres of where those columns stood for the last century.

We’re making the toilet cubicles and doors and partitions, kitchen joinery, all of the landscape seating – we’ll use every single column. That’s a great story of re-use.

We’ve even kept the sawdust from every single column. We’ve got a brick press and are making compressed sawdust brick and compressed sawdust tiles – targeting that zero-waste point, which is fun.

LM: Timing is everything when it comes to radical collaboration. What is the key to timing and framing engagement to implement this circular way of thinking toward that zero-waste point?

Below left Central Club Hotel re-use project, de-nailing timber. Photo provided by Revival Projects Below right Easy Street adaptive re-use under construction. Photo provided by Revival Projects

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RN: Earlier the better! I used to get phone calls that said ‘Hey mate, we’re knocking a building down today. If you can get here by 3pm you can take these materials.’ Over the last seven to eight years of building up Revival, those phone calls have changed. Now I get ‘Hey I’m a developer, we’re looking at making our final offer on buying a large site. We’d like to understand the feasibility of a broad re-use strategy in our proposed development.’ If a re-use strategy is adopted at that moment, it informs everybody’s approach to whatever their involvement is in the job.

We are implementing transfer-of-custody agreements.

We don’t reduce this resource to a commodity by putting a price tag on it. Our philosophy is that, when something is reduced to a commodity, the exclusive criterion of the exchange is that the two parties agree on something, the price tag. I think that cultivates consumption, there’s no duty of care in that, all that matters is that you can pay the price.

The earlier we start scrutinising, assessing and identifying what is there and how can it possibly be relevant and utilised to the proposed future use, the easier everything is, the scale of what you can achieve is much greater.

Robbie Neville is the founder of Revival Projects.

Revival is a multidisciplinary sustainable building practice, with services spanning resource consultancy, construction, structural engineering, manufacturing, and timber processes that include milling and drying.

Lucy Marsland is a senior environmental designer at Atelier Ten, leading their materials and embodied carbon practice.

Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture

Architecture as a system: Designing for regenerative development Words by Samantha Peart

As architects and designers, our role extends far beyond creating aesthetically pleasing structures; we are stewards of the built environment, responsible for shaping spaces that harmonise with the world around us. In the quest for sustainability and regenerative development, the architectural design process must undergo a transformative evolution. This evolution is not just a response to the growing environmental crisis, but also an acknowledgment of the intricate interconnections that shape our world. With over two decades of experience in designing sustainable and net-zero buildings and places, I have come to realise that embracing systems thinking is the key to unlocking the true potential of regenerative development and fostering the true evidence-based, value-driven collaboration needed to address many of the interconnected social, environment and economic challenges we face.

Traditional architectural design often focuses on individual sites, treating them as isolated entities. However, to achieve regenerative development, we must shift our perspective to encompass a broader systems-based approach.

Sites are not standalone nodes; they are dynamic components within a complex web of systems. By adopting systems thinking, architects can recognise the profound impact a project can have on the larger ecosystem. Just as a single thread is integral to the tapestry, each building contributes to the intricate fabric of the environment we as humans are nested within.

The paradigm of considering projects as mere nodes that consume resources is inadequate for regenerative development.

Instead, we must view each project as a place intricately woven into multiple systems – ecological, social, political, resource, climatic, and economic. A truly sustainable building or place cannot be divorced from its surroundings. Contextual analysis must encompass the interplay between these systems, ensuring that the conceptual design aligns with the rhythms of nature and society. Recognising these interconnected layers empowers architects to design with a holistic and evidence-based mindset.

What if we could re-write a city’s future through a

series of smart, data driven, systemically interconnected design solutions? Our team for the Resilient by Design challenge in San Francisco – from Australia, the Netherlands and the Bay Area – leveraged the mapping of over 18 data sets integrated with deep community engagement. Together, this work gave San Francisco a range of creative, evidence-based opportunities for strengthening their waterfronts and communities. It resulted in the funding and design for the Colma Creek Adaptation aiming to deliver flood management, ecology restoration, and access to the water, and build environmental stewardship within the community.

The system of time is also often overlooked in traditional architectural design, and emerges as a vital factor in regenerative development. Lessons from earlier projects and current undertakings within similar systems should inform the design process. Designing for adaptation is crucial – both in terms of changing usage patterns and the evolving climate. Spaces should be versatile enough to accommodate unforeseen shifts while remaining true to their purpose. Embracing the organic relationship between humans, nature, and the built environment invites innovation and adaptation, fostering spaces that evolve gracefully.

Designed in collaboration with Djinjama, a First Nations cultural research and design agency, the Advanced Manufacturing Research Facility (AMRF) First Building places sustainability at its heart – and restores Indigenous Australian culture as the lifeblood of the land. Facing the future while honouring the past, the AMRF First Building is a collaborative space for government, industry and research to incubate innovative manufacturing projects. The building has been conceived as a ​kit of parts, its timber structure comprising prefabricated modular components that are mechanically fixed together. These can be disassembled, expanded, or even relocated. In this way, the AMRF First Building leases the land when in use, with the aim of returning it to its Traditional Owners afterwards.

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To catalyse regenerative development, architects must understand stakeholders on multiple levels. While comprehending the immediate client's aspirations is paramount, it is equally vital to acknowledge the broader network of influencers. Clients are not isolated entities; they are part of a chain that extends to their stakeholders' stakeholders. By aligning design objectives with a larger network of interests, architects can navigate the intricate dynamics that shape value and work with technical consultants and specialists, clients, investors, users, policy makers and other key stakeholders to uncover and drive systemic shared value through projects.

A thought-provoking lens through which to view regenerative development is by considering nature as a client.

This perspective compels us to design spaces that prioritise nature's needs alongside human requirements. Just as we seek to fulfill client demands, we must honour the intricate requirements of the ecosystems that surround us. This shift in mindset pushes us to create designs that are not just harmonious with nature, but actively contribute to its flourishing.

Biodiversity loss is a pressing issue in contemporary cities. Jon Hazelwood is leading Hassell’s Sydney Metro planting trials that aim to achieve a beautiful, biodiverse ground-level landscape that will inform the design of future public landscapes

across the city. Low-maintenance landscapes typically include a small range of robust plants with limited visual appeal and low biodiversity value. To improve the quality of low-input public landscapes and make our cities more attractive and biodiverse, these plantings have been designed as a novel, low-cost and resilient alternative to conventional public plantings. These planting trials are the result of a design collaboration between Hassell, Sydney Metro and our friends at the University of Melbourne’s Burnley Campus.

The path to regenerative development requires architects and designers to transcend conventional thinking. The evolution of the architectural design process hinges on adopting systems thinking, where projects are not seen in isolation but as part of a greater whole. A multifaceted approach that integrates ecological, social, political, resource, climatic and economic systems is essential. The element of time must be woven into design, enabling spaces to adapt and evolve gracefully. Engaging with stakeholders on diverse levels ensures that regenerative development aligns with a broader network of interests. As we contemplate a new definition of ‘client’ and therefore ‘value’, we reframe our purpose as designers, striving not just to create structures, but to nurture a regenerative relationship between the built environment and the world it inhabits.

Samantha Peart Affiliate RAIA has extensive sustainability experience, including in the senior leadership roles she’s held internationally. Her work has spanned 20 different countries and involved sustainability strategies, design and initiatives for multiple sectors at all scales. Before joining Hassell as global head of sustainability, she was a senior director at Development Victoria, where she designed and implemented their sustainability strategy. Prior to that Samantha spent almost 15 years at Arup across Sydney, Singapore, Los Angeles and Melbourne.

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Designed in collaboration with Djinjama, a First Nations cultural research and design agency, the Advanced Manufacturing Research Facility (AMRF) First Building places sustainability at its heart – and restores Indigenous Australian culture as the lifeblood of the land.

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Harnessing the power of integrated design Words by Rob Brimblecombe

Like many sustainability building professionals, at the start of my career in 2010, I had a difficult relationship with energy and buildings. On the one hand they enrich our lives with shelter, comfort, convenience, and inspiration. But on the other, buildings consume resources and contribute to global warming, damaging our planet's ecological systems. This tension led to a lot of frustration and frankly the development of buildings that were neither good spaces to inhabit, nor energy, water and material efficient. In addition to this they were complex and difficult to operate.

Pleasingly, this is not where my journey ended, and at Monash University we went on to create buildings that I believe are everything buildings should be: engaging, comfortable, super-efficient and powered by clean affordable energy.

As a result, I am hopeful that these buildings will be loved and valued long into the future making them truly sustainable.

There was a series of revelations that changed my approach and ultimately set us on the right path to developing a better way of designing and constructing buildings, removing most of the frustration and making the process a lot of fun.

The first of these was an experiment we ran at Monash to explore how much energy we could save by adjusting temperature set points in buildings. While we managed to save a lot of energy, the reality was that we revealed the latent thermal chaos of poorly insulated buildings, inadequate solar control and clunky mechanical systems. During a summer trial, we raised the set points by a degree and some of the occupants were happy with this, as they had always been too cold, while others, particularly the senior executives in their clear, singlepaned glass corner offices, were roasting. Needless to say, we quickly abandoned the experiment but took away the rather obvious but incredibly valuable lesson: that the whole point of buildings is to make occupants happy and productive, so you need to start there and not compromise.

Around the same time, I attended a talk by Jason McLennan, Founder of the Living Future Institute,

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that helped reframe my thinking from buildings being a series of compromises to being an opportunity for regeneration.

The Living Futures Institute’s clear vision of buildings being beautiful and inspiring, working with natural systems to create a healthy ecosystem, was exactly what we needed. All we had to do was work out how to achieve it. Although Monash was starting to create engaging and beautiful spaces, far too often we were failing on comfort, efficiency, and operability and in some cases our goals were working against each other.

To solve this conflict, we looked to case studies such as the Living Building Challenge certified Bullitt Centre in Seattle, which I was lucky enough to visit and experience first hand what an inspiring place to work it is. The success of this project pointed to the importance of a holistic, integrated design approach.

This journey of discovery eventually led me to the Passive House design methodology, which starts with what the occupant needs ie fresh air and comfort, and uses building physics to make it happen . Rather than prescribing what a building should be, how it should look or what it should be built from. The Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) simply provides a proven physics rather than intent based framework to assess whether the building will work from an air quality, comfort, and energy perspective taking the guess work out of it for the design team.

The opportunity to apply this approach arose as Monash undertook a major program of student accommodation development. Students that live on campus often come from overseas, from varying climates, arriving without the community support of friends and family. Buildings need to be a place that enables them to feel safe, make new friends, support their physical and mental wellbeing and be a place conducive to do the learning and thinking that will shape their future. As residential buildings they were also a great place to start the process of translating the learnings from the Passive House Standard’s successful track record for delivering comfortable, healthy, and super energy efficient homes, to creating equally amazing commercial scale buildings. We set ourselves

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Bullitt Center, Seattle, WA, Miller Hull Partnership. Photographer: Brad Kahn

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Monash Chancellery, where art and inspiration blend seamlessly with net zero performance. ARM Architects. Photographer: Rhiannon Slater

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a series of engaging, functional, all electric, renewable powered, super-efficient, Passive House academic buildings, using a range of structural, facade and mechanical systems. In addition to becoming valuable assets, these buildings allowed Monash to tap into the Global Climate Bond market and explore the role that buildings can play in supporting a renewable powered grid.

The Woodside Building for Technology and Design was the only Australian building to be featured at COP 26 in Glasgow as a net zero future exemplar. What we achieved at Monash University over a decade of building planning and delivery shows that through leading-edge sustainability ambition and an integrated design approach, buildings can be far greater than the sum of their parts, allowing them to become inspiring, renewable powered places to think, collaborate, relax and celebrate.

this challenge for the Gillies Hall project, at Monash’s Peninsula Campus.

We assembled an inspired team of project managers, architects, engineers and builders, all of whom we had worked with before, together with Atelier Ten to help seed and support the integrated design approach. The integrated design approach allowed the team to find solutions that solved multiple complex design, budget, and construction challenges. For example, the use of cross laminated timber provided a means to: — Create consistent and cost-effective airtightness detailing and quality control throughout the building, — Meet the incredibly tight construction program with the prefabricated panels allowing both rapid structural assembly and for the services trades to begin work as soon as the panels were in place.

— Reducing thermal bridges, which in turn created remarkably stable interior temperatures and dramatically reduced the heating demands of the building. This made eliminating gas heating simple and cost-effective.

— Create engaging and calming interior finishes along with diverse sensory experiences for the occupants.

Dr Rob Brimblecombe is the co-founder and director at n0de, focused on enabling businesses to lead the transition to a net-zero renewable powered future as fast and cost effectively as possible. Before forming n0de, Rob led Monash University’s engineering and net zero team and co-authored the book Positive Energy Homes.

— Significantly reduce the embodied carbon of the building structure compared to concrete and ultimately enabling the building to become a long-term store of carbon.

Further to this, it made the design process engaging and a lot of fun. By far my favourite anecdote from the project was in one of the first integrated design meetings when we were grappling with the challenges of budget, timelines, spatial layout, structure and services choices. Passive House consultant, Pablo Sepulveda, quietly but confidently said “unless we find a cost effective high-efficiency refrigerator for each of the apartments, the building will overheat and be uncomfortable to live in”, such were the fine margins for meeting the ambitious performance goals. In response, Pablo and the lead architect, Simon Topliss, prioritised this relatively small decision (that is typically made once the building is mostly constructed) and found a unit that would enable the building to be the great success that it is today.

In my memory, once the team found the right domestic fridge, the rest of the design decisions and challenges of delivering Australia's first multi-residential, commercial scale, all electric, renewable powered, Passive House certified building all magically fell into place as the integrated design approach did its job.

Off the back of Gillies Hall, Monash went on to deliver

Below Gillies Hall communal space by JCB Architects. Photographer: Peter Clarke

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Sentient buildings: Maybe, but why?

Words by Daniel Prohasky

Modern buildings might be considered to have a primitive nervous system through a network of sensors receiving data across a broad range of fields such as HVAC or security systems and have traditionally included a simple pre-programmed control logic and monitoring capability as part of the building management system. Increasingly, AI is being applied to buildings as a new level of intelligence to operate them.

In an age of rapid AI development where the opportunities and risks of this new technology are being vigorously debated, we might ponder the question whether buildings can become sentient or sapient beings. With human beings, Homo sapiens, still in the driving seat for AI development, we might also consider how we can meaningfully use AI as a tool to create, build, and operate more stimulative, inspiring, and sustainable buildings.

Being sentient means the ability to perceive, think or feel things, and has emotive connotations only currently possible with human (or other living organisms) intelligence (HI) and requires consciousness.

Sapient is the capacity for intelligence, wisdom, and logic along with the ability to solve problems, learn, and understand.

It is perhaps imaginable that a sufficiently complex AI that can learn and develop beyond its original programming, take in and analyse data about its experiences, and recognise patterns then adapt them to use could be sapient. However, lacking consciousness, senses, or emotions, it is not sentient, at least not for the foreseeable future.

Buildings themselves are a product of human sentience, a structure borne of the need for shelter, protection, and thermal comfort among other things. Unraveling the mysteries of human thermal awareness and influenced by the fundamental needs of life to survive, we can speculate that our consciousness has evolved to exist as an essential interplay of gathering experience, knowledge, skill, group coordination, tool development and building structures, all in order to survive according to natural principles.

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In comparison, when we question if a building could be sentient, within the current limitations of Artificial Intelligence, they lack survivor bias, and hence they are dead.

I agree, not very poetic.

There may be some sort of poetic interpretation of the operation of a building being an extension of human consciousness through thought experiment, an academic exercise of the mind. Yet, that can apply to any creation of Homo Sapiens.

Hence, if we might consider a building to be alive, it can only be characterised by the variety of lively activities that might take place within it. The building plays the role of how alive those activities might be perceived by the Homo Sapiens experiencing the space. At best, we might consider that buildings are nonsentient beings that are born, nurtured, neglected, and eventually die. Their design life is predetermined, and determined by how useful said building is to Homo Sapiens.

We will only be able to argue that buildings are sentient once computational bits or cubits are able to convince us they are, ie once AI becomes itself sentient - which is not the case… yet.

Now, if we enter into a paradigm where buildings are sentient - what practical and meaningful use might that have? and what might it mean for creating a more sustainable world if buildings are to be truly sentient?

Might sentient buildings develop empathy toward and build a strong bond with their human inhabitants playing that nurturing and protective role to the life within them? Might they exhibit a particular character or behaviours that make them much loved by their inhabitants? The most general AI neural nets that we have taught have predominantly learnt from conveniently formatted data sets that were created by Homo Sapiens – to paraphrase, AI is created in the image of humans, as depicted online in bits. So, the short answer is – we don’t know what to expect, as there is no sentient AI in existence, and we may never know if AI can become sentient at least in the way we

Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture

Above Image produced by Midjourney AI inanswer to the question, How might you look as a sentient building?

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can consider our human sentience. We might also speculate that the sentient AI is unlikely to reside in the building itself but hosted elsewhere in the cloud, so we may not be able to consider a singular building as a conscious entity but rather as part of a larger network.

But we can at least speculate on the practicality of achieving this level of AI integration from an energy efficiency perspective. The colossal amount of computational effort and energy consumed by classical computing to serve the training of the greatest computer mind was 50 to 60 GWh (at the start of ChatGPT4). The energy cost per query of that computer mind is approximately 0.0017 to 0.0026 kWh per query.

This should be compared with Homo Sapiens – 0.3kWh/ day in computational energy and an estimate of the number of decisions or choices that the human brain is called upon to make daily being anything from the hundreds to tens of thousands depending upon which research is referred to. The mathematics of this crude logic might suggest that aside from the vast

quantities of training energy required for AI, it is also likely to be significantly less efficient than HI per query.

How many queries will be required of an almost sentient AI building per day to provide the most stimulative, and sustainably operating building? It’s a great question which Homo Sapiens don’t even know the answer to. For the sentient AI to provide such an environment, it must first understand all the intricacies of its Homo Sapien occupant which will require significant computational power. The current exponential rise in global energy and water demand to feed the power and cooling demands of data centres for cloud computing and the exponential demand or compute power to run AI minds suggests that there will be limitations to the widespread use of such computing power, particularly in a time of climate crisis.

Sentience, perceiving and feeling things, are emotive.

AI is not capable of emotion, yet. And the energy required to create our best attempt at a sentient computer mind could power 10,000 Australian homes for a year.

Daniel Prohasky is an architectural engineer and inventor of robotic technology, passionate about translating research towards industry adoption in Australia, in the pursuit of a sustainable future in construction. He is a founding lecturer in architectural engineering at Swinburne University, and co-founder and CEO of innovative low-carbon concrete advanced manufacturing venture, Curvecrete. He is Engineers Australia Victorian Engineer of the Year 2023.

Right Image produced by Midjourney AI prompted to create happy depictions of a sentient building in different weather.

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Systems thinking for the next generation Words by Brendon McNiven and Dominik Holzer

Design for the built environment is an increasingly complex prospect. The design thinking that used to occur in one mind now occurs across many, drawn from teams of diverse specialists working across multiple fronts on projects. In addition to this ‘active’ knowledge, are also the more ‘passive’ forms; rules and regulations in our building codes and guides, seemingly static, but still changing, still impacting, and shaping our designs.

Famed Dutch designer Rem Koolhaas was once asked what scared him most about being an architect. He responded that it was his feeling that he didn’t have control over 75% of his projects designated to structural and mechanical systems that were managed by others. If, as designers, we are to maintain the degree of control and sensibility we desire in our projects, we must empathise with and understand all of the disciplines that we interact and interface with. The alternative to this is at best chaos, and at worst, disfunction and failure to achieve our desired final outcomes.

In the past, architects such as Koolhaas were typically to see themselves as the sole author of ‘their’ projects, with others needed to support them to make the projects happen.

With the increasing information content associated to building and cost performance, and with the increasing diversification in the building industry in dozens of specialist trades, the romantic notion of the architect as the master builder has long faded.

From an education perspective, this is perhaps why Australia has seen a rise in multidisciplinary design degrees over the past decade. We may have begun to recognise the value of broader disciplinary understanding in the design process, or perhaps it is being forced upon us by increasingly the complex demands being asked of us every day.

The bellwether of these programmes is the architectural engineering degree. Architectural engineering is more common as a recognised practice overseas in Europe and the US where they have traditionally been more successful in blurring the lines in the offerings made to students. Students

of architecture will have commonly taken engineering subjects of interest upon graduation (and vice versa).

Importantly, the combining of the degrees is not just about technical knowledge. These degrees teach students the different thinking required for each discipline enabling them to cross the floor and generate designs catering for both. No small feat given the often-polar-opposite natures of architectural and engineering thinking.

Why multidiscipline thinking is important The driver in considering multiple disciplines at the same time has always been better design outcomes, results where “the whole [becomes] much larger than the sum of the parts”.1 The need for architects and engineers to better work together is not a new, it was observed as early as 1881 when architects lamenting inappropriate and dishonest design, commented that “architects are not sufficiently scientific, and engineers are not sufficiently artistic”.2 Discourse in on the subject came to the forefront of the design community in the early 1990s in forums as the Bridging the Gap seminar3, a three-day event held in New York specifically to discuss the topic of how to better integrate the two professions of architecture and engineering the interests of better design.

This was the era that gave rise to buildings such as the HSBC centre in Hong Kong and Centre Pompidou in Paris amongst others, icons in the successful marriage of the technical and the humanistic sides of projects.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s there were commentators such as Andre Brown4 who reflected on the design integration agenda. The American Institute of Architects issued a 2006 report on integrated practice that highlights the fact that: feedback from specialists to the designers only occurs at “discrete points with varying frequency”5. The asynchronous rhythm of design communication across disciplines is a contributing factor to the difficulty of gaining a common understanding amongst practitioners from architecture and engineering disciplines.

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Aged Care Integrated Design Studio QUT - Discussions between architects and engineers at the early design stage

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Fast forward thirty years to the present day and the need is still there and only likely to grow. The emphasis on integrating architecture and engineering has now moved beyond being focused on materiality and spatial qualities, to considering outcomes such as sustainability and well-being. These are aspects of design we must get right if we are to successfully tackle the global challenges of the 21st century.

Integrated (architecture and engineering) design studios The interaction between architects and engineers in design environments was the recent subject of an Australian study led by AIRAH, the peak body for HVAC, and involving four different universities and funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, ARENA. Masters level engineering and architecture students studied alongside each other in design studio environments on case study building designs. Zero carbon was used as a design pretext with behaviours and interactions between students studied to identify what worked and what did not in integrative design. Clients and consultants from industry were included the process to model real life practice as closely as possible.

Lessons learned The study identified some of the key disabling factors for integrated design, including the rise of remote working, project management siloing of tasks and risk aversion to shared goals. In response to these challenges the output, a Catalyst for Integrated Design document, provides guidance on how to facilitate integrated design in practice on projects.

Measures ranged from low hanging fruit such as the scheduling of facilitated integrated design workshops, or colocation of designers, through to the more significant and perhaps more difficult to implement such as promotion of alliance-type design procurement methods similar to those more commonly seen in large infrastructure projects.

In summary, at the highest level, a few design behaviour rules of thumb were identified as critical to facilitating better integration between disciplines: Talk to each other to build a relationship of trust.

Understand and Value the other’s input.

Combine functionality so elements serve more than purpose.

Perhaps the most significant outcome in the study of how architectural and engineering students interacted, however, was that it is the how of thinking that is important not the what.

While technical or factual knowledge is a commodity readily accessed through a number of avenues, the ability to think integratively is a more rare and difficult skill to acquire.

Integrated design requires architects to step into the world of mathematical efficiencies and processes, and engineers into the world of emotion and design authorship on projects. This is one important avenue towards achieving better design outcomes, both at the micro scale of occupant comfort and wellbeing in our buildings, but also at the macro scale of combatting the larger existential challenges we face such as climate change and the health of our planet.

Brendon McNiven is an enterprise professor at Melbourne School of Design. An engineer by background, Brendon joined the University of Melbourne after 30 years in practice to assist the oversight of the Masters of Architectural Engineering. Brendon’s role encompasses teaching, research and industry engagement promoting integration of architecture and engineering in the built environment.

Associate Professor Dr Dominik Holzer is the previous Chair of the Victorian Chapter’s education committee and currently researches and teaches at Melbourne University’s Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning. He is a highly regarded author, commentator, and presenter on digital practice and net zero carbon design, having recently published: Design Technology in Contemporary Architectural Practice (2023) and the BIM Manager’s Handbook (2016).

Notes Radcliffe, DF (2006). Shaping the Discipline of Engineering Education. Journal of Engineering Education, 95(4), 263–264 1

2

Viollet-le-Duc, EE (1881). Lectures on Architecture: Vol. II. James R. Osgood and Co.

Van Nostrand Reinhold (1991), Bridging the gap: Rethinking the relationship of architect and engineer, The proceedings of the Building Arts Forum/New York Symposium 1989 (720 BUIL).

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Brown, A (2001). The Engineers Contribution to Contemporary Architecture: Peter Rice.

London: Thomas Telford Publishing. pp. 17–18 4

Bedrick, J and T. Rinella. (2006) Technology, process, improvement and culture change.

Report on integrated practice, American Institute of Architects, 2006 5

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Changing with grace Words by Harriet Oswald and Katarzyna Jurkiewicz

“I think the most destructive thing is to demolish a building, get rid of all the demolished material, and then build another one when, with a bit of real design ingenuity, you can make an existing building work anew for something else” – Sir Nicholas Grimshaw

From a young age, Sir Nicholas Grimshaw harboured a deep fascination for the way things work and how they are put together, from the structure of a boat under the stress of sailing to the assembly of a steel exoskeleton. This innate curiosity evolved into a design philosophy centred on systems thinking, an approach that continues to define Grimshaw's DNA to this day, over four decades after the opening of the practice’s first architecture studio in London in 1980.

Since the inception of our practice, the concept of viewing buildings as valuable resources and harnessing their potential for adaptability has remained a cornerstone of our design philosophy. Sir Nicholas Grimshaw's ingenuity, combined with an intuitive approach to design, resulted in the early emergence of circularity principles, long before they were commonplace in the architectural community.

Bath Schools of Art and Design The award-winning and grade II listed Herman Miller factory building, designed by the Farrell/Grimshaw Partnership and completed in 1976, was the result of a shared vision that included a people-focused approach to industrial buildings and a belief that their needs, as well as the practical needs of a building, will inevitably change.

The success of the original Herman Miller building was due to not only the clarity of the project brief, but also the recognition that the design process needed to consider things

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differently in order to accommodate unknown future uses.

This was achieved by the implementation of a kit-of-parts approach to building components, with centralised service spines that run the full length of the building allowing for additional systems and new technologies to be added over time, and the Super Room, a large-span steel structure that avoids the obstruction of columns and absorbs not just the processes of a factory floor but also future uses.

Since the building’s completion in 1976, flexibility and adaptive reuse have become central to achieving a regenerative and low carbon built environment. These principles along with the values from the original Statement of Expectations subsequently became the primary drivers for the building's redevelopment 40 years later, into a new home for the Bath School of Art and Design.

In adapting the building to its new use as an art and design school, the simplicity of the facade system made it easy to remove the solid panels, refurbish them (which happened within the building itself), and reinstall them in a new arrangement that reflected the updated spatial program. As the program changes in the future, the facade will continue to be able to adapt to the needs of the Bath Spa University.

The building’s new lease of life is testament to the success of the original design, and is an exemplar of sustainable long-life, loose-fit architecture. It has capitalised on the inherent flexibility of the building’s fabric to maximise the positive impacts for the school, its students and the local community.

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Bath School of Art and Design – interior of the adapted building.

Photographer: Grimshaw

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Bath School of Art and Design – exterior modular facade system.

Photographer: Grimshaw

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Today, designing for adaptability has evolved into the way we approach new constructions by designing for their future adaptation and a changing environment as we face the global climate emergency, as well as understanding and maximising the potential of existing buildings.

We are now observing a real shift from newbuilds to breaking the cycle of demolition, rebuild, demolition, rebuild, ad infinitum. Fundamental to this is the notion that existing buildings can be recycled even if at end-of-life. An example of this is the development of a taxonomy of parts for a 100-yearold warehouse at 99-117 Islington Street in Collingwood, which is constructed of old grown timber and Melbourne brick. Using the taxonomy as a guide, the componentry can be understood and reused in the new development.

Islington St Taxonomy Our thirst for research-based knowledge continues as an integral part of the global Grimshaw studio. We design for continuous improvement by supporting experimentation, learning and the exchange of knowledge.

Our buildings will live, mature and evolve over time.

They are not merely handed over to our clients as fait accompli but rather as something that can transform to best suit the changing needs of the occupants as well as the environment in which it sits. As Sir Nick once suggested, when architects submit a building for planning permission, they should be asked to suggest alternative uses for the future. Perhaps we should also be providing a register of all materials, components and products that make up a building, and instructions for how they can be deconstructed and recirculated.

Looking towards the future, we see an opportunity to apply systems thinking so that our buildings change with grace over time to help solve some of the environmental and social challenges we face.

Harriet Oswald Driven to create design that is functional, elegant and responsive to environment and social contexts, Harriet is an accomplished architect with global experience. Harriet joined Grimshaw in 2019 and now leads the Melbourne ESG Portfolio which supports the delivery of the studio’s commitment to carbon neutral business operations, net zero carbon ready designs by 2025, and socially and environmentally regenerative designs by 2030.

Katarzyna Jurkiewicz is a principal in Grimshaw’s Auckland studio where she is also sustainability manager within the practice’s global sustainability network. She is an experienced design leader with a portfolio of projects spanning a range of sectors including industrial design and transport infrastructure where she has developed thought leadership in modular design, DfMA and circular economy.

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Yakimono

Russell & George

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Photography by Tim O’Connor Tom Blachford Words by Nikita Bhopti

A layered sensory experience, Russell & George’s Yakimono draws on the experience of a typical late-night Izakaya to plate-up a restaurant that is reminiscent of Japanese concepts, without the stuffiness of tradition.

In the heart of Melbourne, Yakimono evokes the rain-drenched streets of Tokyo. Stepping off the scattered bluestone paving onto the ground floor of 80 Collins Street, there's something almost Cyberpunk about the Russell & George designed restaurant. Maybe it’s the neon lighting. Perhaps it’s the smoke travelling down from the open grill. It's the kind of restaurant where you find yourself looking both ways before crossing the hallway – almost as if you would expect a midnight-blue Nissan Skyline to go racing across the dining room.

Yakimono’s owner and head of the Lucas Group, Chris Lucas, armed Russell & George with what they describe as “the best brief you could be given as a designer”. Chris wanted to “create something reminiscent of a Japanese Izakaya, but without the stuffiness of tradition. The best restaurants excite and transport you to different parts of the globe through their offering and their atmosphere”. And Yakimono does just that.

Spanning three storeys, the restaurant is a glazed box, pulsing with energy. Through their use of dichroic film, Russell & George create an ever-changing environment of light and

Below and left Paired with traditional Japanese timber, neon lighting and rippled metal ceilings, Yakimono's interior is a layered sensory experience.

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movement. Floating overhead, oversized circular pendants catch light to appear as though they change colour, depending on your vantage point from within the restaurant. Paired with traditional Japanese timber, neon lighting and rippled metal ceilings, Yakimono’s interior is a layered sensory experience.

With a truly Melbourne take on the traditional latenight Izakaya, the dining room adopts perimeter seating, with a large central kitchen. Open-flame grills not only drench the space in aromas of Tokyo’s dining scene, but contribute an ephemeral smokey quality. Upstairs, the bar and booth seating are modelled on Japanese train seating. Practice director, Ryan Russell, shares how the brief of “a late-night Izakaya that’s loose and fun, and a collage of Japanese and Western sensibilities” leaned towards “the restaurant needing to be lively and youthful. It needed to demand high-visual exposure”, which was achieved through pairing bold, impactful materials with sound and light. The intent was for the “experience to be more filmic than just spatial”, almost as if the diners’ movements were being translated into a cyberpunk anime movie.

In contrast to their sister restaurant Society, which sits atop Yakimono, the two restaurants adopted very different concepts. However, both are an honest reflection of Russell & George’s approach towards hospitality design. Ryan shares how they always “begin with the intention to design unique experiences. Great restaurant operators seek out individuality and a point of difference, and we delve deeply

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to find distinguishing features and a competitive advantage.

Finding them is like unwrapping small gifts”.

Through the construction of Yakimono and Society, both restaurants needed to be “thought of as a contrasting pair, but also sequenced together”. With no external crane options available, a void was cut through the floors of Yakimono to allow materiality and equipment to reach the main dining room floors of both restaurants.

Upon the success of Yakimono, Ryan shares how “good restaurants are places that take you somewhere else.

Melbourne is one of the world’s great cosmopolitan dining cities, with its restaurants being diverse and varied”. Yakimono, while braced with a brief that leans heavily into Japanese culture, is a perfect example of how an experience can be shaped around strong cultural references, yet, be executed in a very Melbourne way.

Nikita Bhopti RAIA is a registered architecture working at Sibling Architecture. A lead curator of New Architects Melbourne, Nikita is also engaged with multiple mentoring platforms as both a mentor and mentee. She is a regular contributor to Architect Victoria and The Design Writer.

Right Oversized circular pendants catch light and appear to change colour.

Yakimono

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Yakimono Practice team Ryan Russell, Design architect Byron George, Project architect Caitlin Ripper, Project coordinator Consultant/ Construction team Armitage Jones, Project manager JJA Consulting Group, Services consultant Aecom, Structural engineer Eatscape, Kitchen consultant KBR, Kitchen contractor Sphera, Lighting consultant Michael Schivello, Joinery contractor James Richardson Furniture, Bespoke item contractor Philip Chun, Building surveyor Luke Curtis, Engineer – fire safety Builder MPA Traditional Owners Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung People Location 80 Collins Street, Melbourne

Above and right Set over three levels, the interior is designed to reference rain-drenched Tokyo streets

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Yakimono

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Wilam Ngarrang Retrofit

Kennedy Nolan

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Photography by Eve Wilson Words by Phillip Pender

The Wilam Ngarrang Retrofit, a minimal intervention renewal of a 1970s walk-up apartment block in Fitzroy, demonstrates the benefits of adaptation over demolition and the housing sector’s latency in turning toward the renewal of existing stock.

Proliferating in Melbourne’s inner-ring suburbs following changes to planning controls in the post-war era, walk-up apartment buildings maximised yield on standard sized suburban blocks.

Targeting renters, they typically offer minimal shared or private open space, a car-centric sense of address, poor insulation and ventilation and tight one or two-bedroom dwellings. Despite its criticism, the typology continues to offer an increasingly soughtafter, affordable, medium-density alternative to the suburban detached house for people on low to middle income.

At Wilam Ngarrang, Kennedy Nolan has replaced dominant parking and concrete surfaces with permeable landscaping, private and shared external space, secure bicycle parking and a vegetable garden. Fifteen studio apartments, each at approximately 33 square metres of gross floor area, have been internally reconfigured with a new central joinery unit, a compact kitchen and a curtain freeing up living space and better defining space for a bed.

“Very little change was made to the existing arrangement internally. Due to a restricted budget, we had to maximise impact

Below and left Working within the original building's double-brick structure, existing studio apartments have been modernised with an uncomplicated spatial recomposition, new joinery and efficient fixtures.

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while minimising costs. As a result, the design was based on all services remaining in their current locations as much as possible. An opportunity was found instead in adding joinery that allowed for more efficient and flexible usage. However, given it was necessary to minimise changes to the building, the potential for adaptation or accessibility improvements was restricted.”

Wilam Ngarrang operates through a renovate-to-rent model. The renewed dwellings are owned by the investment company Tripple and managed by the not-for-profit real estate agency HomeGround. Two are rented at below-market rates.

Aside from the model’s centralised financing bypassing often complicated negotiation arising from strata-titles, the fiscal efficiencies from minimised demolition and construction and the potential for streamlined planning approval are marked benefits.

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The retrofit is a demonstration project of A New Normal, an initiative led by environmental consultant Finding Infinity that aims to position Melbourne as a world leader in transitioning to a green economy by 2036. This informed a collaborative consultation, design and construction process, with a cohesive alignment of interests and sustainability objectives between Tripple, Finding Infinity, Kennedy Nolan and Wilderness Building Co. “Finding Infinity really drove the process. They were the first consultant on board and were the primary connection between the client and the rest of the team. It is rare to see sustainability placed in such a core location and proof that this was a critical goal of the project. We weren’t employed to provide typical full architectural services, instead, we were effectively on call as required, intending to do as little design

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and documentation as possible while still achieving the project goals.”

To achieve and demonstrate financial viability, priority was given to interventions that are pragmatic and cost-effective in the long term. Gas connections were removed and replaced by electricity generated by a 26.6-kilowatt rooftop solar system. Rooftop rainwater is stored in new water tanks and recirculated through efficient fixtures.

Greywater is used in the communal laundry. Heat pump systems and heat recovery ventilation units were also installed.

Wall cavities and ceilings received additional insulation, new doors and double-glazed UPVC windows were added, and gaps were sealed. New cork flooring, colourful Laminex joinery and internally rendered walls (improving airtightness) complement the tactility of salvaged timber details, tiles and existing brickwork.

Wilam Ngarrang suggests that sustainable retrofits of this sort are prime for wider uptake. However, a widespread transition is not without its challenges.

“It quickly became clear to us that current procurement and regulatory systems do not encourage retrofits. It also became clear how important prototype projects such as this can be in changing those processes. We hope that by documenting the process it will become easier to do this again in future, we feel there is a responsibility on all of us involved in these types of projects to share that information as widely as possible.”

In the face of the indiscriminate demolition of existing housing across our state and the housing and climate crises, existing buildings must be best used in our response.

Phillip Pender RAIA Grad is a graduate of architecture at Davidson Architecture. He is a contributing writer and editorial committee member.

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Above and left Internal rendering has improved the building's airtightness, while also lending tactility and warmth to private spaces.

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Wilam Ngarrang Retrofit Project team Rachel Nolan Michael Macleod Danny Truong Marnie Morieson Consultant team Environmental consultant: Finding Infinity Planning consultant: Urbis Project manager: Resin Property Builder Wilderness Building Co. Location Fitzroy Traditional Owners Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Suppliers Flooring: Premium Floors Readycork Ambient Insulation: Knauf Supafil CarbonPlus (to double brick masonry cavity) Laminate: Laminex Moroccan Clay Lighting: Ambience Lighting and About Space Reclaimed hardwood timber: Jaks Timber HRV system: Fantech Fixtures and fittings: Reece Plumbing Salvaged stone off-cuts from Franchi Umberto Marmi Australia by Corsi & Nicolai to communal table

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Urban futures + Systems thinking in architecture

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Off Grid House

Archier

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Photography by John Gollings Words by Nikita Bhopti

Located within a treasured landscape, this origami-like family home envelops several generations under one roof while mimicking tones of the mountain rocks and the creek nearby.

There’s something quite special about a family home. For many, family properties can carry ties to relatives long gone, and provide future generations with a sense of comfort and home that only comes from family. Located at the foothills of a bushland in north-east Victoria is Off Grid House by Archier. It is a brand new family home that aims to regain a sense of what the owners had lost, laying new ground for their future family tree.

“Following the sale of a farm that existed within their family for multiple generations, our clients had been disunited from the place they had long called home”, share Archier.

Purchasing a block of land that neighboured this property was their first step towards “reconnecting themselves with a cherished and untamed landscape.”

There's a prominent congregational aspect when it comes to family homes. Whether its members of family flocking together over the holiday season, or meeting for a special birthday weekend, there's one thing a family home is very good at doing – gathering and holding young and old.

Left Solar array and a 40-kilowatt battery allow the house to exist off-grid.

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Nikita Bhopti RAIA is a project architect at Sibling Architecture, writer and curator.

Above and right Exposed glulam beams and timber detailing locally sourced connect the interior with the landscape.

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Looking at typical congregational architecture across the region, Archier noted that families from this particular area of regional Victoria gathered at church. Embracing divine proportions, the volumes of Off Grid House lift from the earth much like a church lifts towards the sky.

Gabled on all four sides, each quarter of the home experiences the origami-like roofline, capturing four unique aspects of the site. Whether it’s views of the creek unravelling towards the bottom of the valley, or the subtle peaks of distant mountains, family members find themselves held in a landscape that has nurtured many generations before them.

Off Grid House stands devoid of applied ornamentation.

Instead, it heroes Australian hardwoods. Archier say the “home was engineered and designed to be structurally restrained and use the smallest amount of material.” Exposed glulam timber beams and timber detailing throughout the home not only achieve hard-working construction details but deliver a visual richness that takes the place of ornamentation. “Despite the restrained palette”, using “timbers that were sustainably produced from the same species of the trees found on the property connects the interior” of the home with its landscape.

Embracing a square floorplan, Archier placed the living zones in an open area to one side of the home and housed the sleeping areas on the other. Designed to sleep a minimum of twelve, the sleeping zones are further curated to provide quarters for the immediate family, with bathrooms tucked away for privacy and intimate outlooks onto the surrounding landscape. With clear connections to the bunk room and the downstairs living areas, the rumpus is a playful open space housed upstairs in the sculptural roof form. This heart of the home creates, as Archier describe, a “quasi-public sleeping area, providing child-like fun for even the adults.”

The careful connections to landscape are a fundamental aspect of Off Grid House. Smaller intimate moments offer family members moments to withdraw and sit alone within the surrounds. Large aspects outwards allow big family dinners to have a meaningful connection. Archier share how the builder even slept on site in a swag, “forming a relationship with the land that inspired some niche features.”

Wall lights, kitchen tiles and the ceramic basins were personally made for the home by the client. It’s features such as this that are little jewels when it comes to family homes – they will be talked about by future generations. Many decisions also ensure the home’s longevity, such as a solar array connecting to a 40-kilowatt battery, allowing the house to exist off-grid. The water comes from natural springs nearby and rainwater collected in tanks on site.

The collaborative hands-on involvement between architect, client and builder has collectively yielded its value in crafting a highly functional family home with meaningful connections to the treasured landscape on which it sits. Archier reflect on the house, noting how it “bestows a special familial storyline across many moments within the home”, that will surely be cherished and upheld by subsequent generations.

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Off Grid House Project team Archier Project Consultant/Construction team Rob Nestic – TGA Engineers, Structural Engineer Location Rural Victoria Traditional Owners Taungurung People Builder Bushblend Homes Suppliers Wall lights, kitchen tiles and ceramic basins made by the client

Left Designed to accomodate twelve guests with intimate outlooks to the surrounding landscape.

Above Careful connections to landscape are a fundamental aspect of Off Grid House.

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Bendigo Law Courts

Wardle

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Highlighting how the justice system in Australia has shifted, and how we might continue to grow in how we approach diversity, Bendigo Law Courts by Wardle studio respects all manners of reading justice. Deep listening, significant collaboration and consultation, as well as contextual analysis and interpretation are evident in Wardle’s copper and brick structure, with Bunjil the eagle rising above the consistent two-storey fabric of the historic centre of Bendigo, alongside the clock towers and spires of the town.

Photography by Luke Jarvis Tim Griffith Words by Reinette Roux

With a client committed to creating a space that is suitable to its contemporary context, the team at Wardle studio set about creating a building that is accessible, sustainable, intuitive and calming to those who use it.

Historically, courthouses have centred around the judges who operate within, but Bendigo Law Courts does not stem from that lineage. Here, we see a building that centres around those occupying the court, committed to creating room for a First Nations voice, a space that is inclusive of vulnerable persons and their needs. Following a recommendation in the Royal Commission into Family Violence, the court buildings have been made safer for witnesses, often women suffering from domestic violence, making Bendigo the first court building to include amenities such as separate and private circulation and considered spatial programming.

As with any project completed in the last two years, consideration had to made for a post-COVID world, one where 1.5-metre social distancing in courtrooms and remote hearings are very much the reality. Here we see the inclusion of screens for the witness, judge and defendant, and a judge’s quarters equipped with AV technology to deliver remote hearings across the country. The power remains with the judge, however, to make a case for a hearing taking place in person, as facial expressions make up a very important dynamic in a courtroom. There is also the inclusion of a Kurri courtroom, allowing Indigenous people to have their hearings take place in a culturally sensitive space, as well as dedicated quarters for any Elder participating in the hearing, often taking place around a custom-designed bar table.

A key consideration during the design process was the culture of the Dja Dja Wurrung (Traditional Owners), reflected in the courtroom and the materials that make up the project. The surrounding landscaping speaks to the notion of “upside down country”, the ramifications of mining on Country during the Victorian Gold Rush era. The native plants used in the forecourt signify healing, alongside the paving pattern that is suggestive of a smoking ceremony, the visual of billowing smoke leading you into the building.

Right The materal palette of copper and brick speaks to the context of the local town.

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Bendigo Law Courts

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The use of local materials and artisans such as Simon Lloyd, an industrial designer and friend of the practice, to create custom tiles in the foyer of the building, further supports this being a community project. These tiles were fabricated by Bendigo Pottery, ensuring that the local community feels part of the fabric of the future of the town, highlighting how architecture can be inclusive. A walk on Country revealed dips in basalt stone, for rainwater collection, a textural element that was brought into the foyer of the courts, paying further homage to Traditional Owners and the requirement for deep listening in order to create a space that is not only culturally sensitive, but culturally significant, leading by example for all of Australia to follow.

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Bendigo Law Courts

Below and right The use of natural light brightens a traditionally dark practice and space.

Reinette Roux RAIA is the industry engagement lead at the Australian Institute of Architects in Melbourne with a background as an architect.

Bendigo Law Courts Project practice team Adam Kolsrud, Structural lead Alan Ting, Design architect Allan Burrows, Project architect Anna Caish, Project architect Ariani Anwar, Project architect Barry Hayes, Facade specialist David Churcher, Graduate of architecture James Loder, Project architect Jeff Arnold, Interior designer john Wardle, Design architect Kah-Fai Lee, Project architect Kristina Levenko, Design architect Maya Borjesson, Project architect Meaghan Dwyer, Design architect Megan Darbyshire, Project architect Michael McMahon, Graduate of architecture Nicola Bowman, Project architect Patrick Bullen, Project architect Sharon Crabb, Interior designer Stefan Mee, Design architect Stephanie Pahnis, Project architect Stuart Mann, Documentor William Rogers, Project architect Project consultant/construction team Andrew Long & Associates, Archaeological & Indigenous consultant Arup, Threat analysis Aspect Studios, Landscape consultant Bower Architects, Peer review Buro North, Wayfinding Introba, Services consultant

Marshall Day, Acoustic consultant Meinhardt Bonacci, Facade Morris Goding, Access consultant PLP, Building surveyor RBA, Heritage consultant Urbis, Planning WSP, Civil consultant WSP, Structural engineer WSP, Traffic & pedestrian modelling Traditional Owners Dja Dja Wurrung Builder KNJV – Kane Nicholson Joint Venture Suppliers Facade, ABS Copper cladding, ARC Tensile screen/ balustrade, Tensile joinery Jacaranda Industries feature tiles Bendigo Pottery bricks Krause Bricks Artwork Bunjil, Raquel Kerr Koori Court bar table, Jason Kerr Koori Court painting Mirrors of Country, Troy Firebrace Hanging glass element, Yhonnie Scarce Bar table, Hearing Room, Daikota Nelson Bar table, Mediation Room, Natasha Carter Level two columns, Jida Gulpilil (Incomplete) Information desk, Jida Gulpilil External pavement, DjaDjaWurrung, Wardle, AspectStudios and CSV

Architect Victoria

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At home with photographer

Tom Ross

Words by Elizabeth Campbell. Photography by Tom Ross

What does the concept of home mean to you?

How do you select the things you surround yourself with at home?

How would you describe the process of renovating with a friend?

Jeepers. All the clichés, about family I guess, but also I want it to act as a constant reminder of who we are, and where we’re trying to go.

I think of it as a coral reef of our lives well lived. A team effort with Emily, Lenny, and Lucy, it’s a growing collection of artefacts of the people we know mostly, and the experiences we’ve had.

I imagine it’s fraught for some, but it was just a hoot for us. Well I can’t speak for Michael Roper (Architecture architecture), but I had fun (most of the time). Mike and the gang made the major gestures of knocking walls out, designing the steel work and things, then we only had enough money left to do the kitchen and bathroom ourselves.

How would you describe your home?

A sunny little treetop nest When photographing a project, what elements are important to you and how do you try to capture these?

I start with the designer’s intent and let that inform where we point the camera.

For myself it’s important to try to capture atmospheric qualities beyond the purely visual. Still photography is obviously reductive which has its strengths and weaknesses.

What made you decide to renovate your home instead of choosing to buy something new?

Everyone else was getting a go at it.

I’m so jealous of all the people I meet who get to work with architects to make places for themselves, it’s a wonderful process.

That, and why buy something new built by a broken system when there’s so much great quality stuff around that can be affordably given some love.

Architect Victoria

How do you select and think about colour?

The trend as I get older seems to be more and more colour, because life too short to worry about being tasteful or something.

In this case, I tried a few colours for the steel, and ended up with a pink hue I had sampled from a photo I took of the sky at dawn out our window. It was a colour I just kept noticing in the sky here.

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Elizabeth Campbell RAIA is a senior architect at the City of Melbourne. She is a contributing editor of Architect Victoria.

Tom Ross is a photographer living and working in Naarm (Melbourne). Trained at the Victorian College of the Arts, and Massachusetts College of Art, he works with architects, and storytellers, and has been published internationally.

Right The open plan bedroom with long curtain to separate spaces.

Left Existing 1960s entry looking through removed doors to the new open plan.

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Office of the Victorian Government Architect

Victoria’s Housing Statement: Our role in a reset Words by Stefan Preuss

In addressing the housing crisis, two realities stand out – we are not building enough housing and any housing being built needs to be zero carbon ready and resilient to avoid future costs of retrofitting.

Governments cannot solve this crisis alone.

However, as policymakers with significant regulatory levers at their disposal and the largest procurers of buildings and infrastructure, governments are in a good position to bring about systemic reform and change in the built environment.

The Victorian Government’s recently released Victoria’s Housing Statement: The Decade Ahead 2024-2035 aspires to improve the trajectory of housing in our State. At the Office of the Victorian Government Architect (OVGA), we are actively involved in the following strategies.

Future Homes – program expansion Future Homes is a nation-leading program that builds on the legacy of the Small Homes Service and transposes its core idea of good design made replicable and affordable to the concept of well-designed, gentle density housing in established suburbs with access to public transport and services.

A close collaboration between the OVGA and the Department of Transport and Planning (DTP), Future Homes began in 2018 with extensive research into the densification of existing suburbs. We ran an open two-stage architectural competition and extensive refinement phase, which produced four competition-winning design suites for healthy and sustainable apartment buildings. These design suites for various site configurations are exemplar 3-storey apartment buildings that are available to purchase at low cost and adapt to different neighbourhoods and sites through a streamlined planning process – with design quality assurance delivered through DTP and OVGA. The adaptation and translation phase of the Future Homes program is critical, and architects can play a key role in ensuring that designs meet client needs and respond to unique contextual conditions.

Originally applicable to selected geographic areas, Future Homes now expands across all metropolitan and most regional councils in General Residential Zoned land within 800m of a passenger railway station, a designated activity centre or specified regional centre. This does not include sites covered by neighbourhood or heritage overlays.

Beyond the recent geographic expansion of the Future Homes program, the OVGA will play a lead role in expanding the Future Homes program and adding adaptable exemplar designs for 4 to 5-storey buildings in appropriate areas. These designs will be determined through careful analysis and accompanied by respective planning provisions.

Development Facilitation Program We have commenced supporting the DTP and the Minister for Planning as decision maker in ensuring a level of design quality in the expansion of the Development Facilitation Program. We do this through design review tailored to deal with the significant number of projects. Development facilitation applies to medium to high residential developments with a construction cost of over $50 million in Melbourne and over $15 million in regional Victoria that provide at least 10% affordable housing. The program aims at removing delays from planning processes and facilitating the development of 13,200 apartments.

Activity centre plans DTP and the Victorian Planning Authority will lead on the swift development of activity centre plans that aims to facilitate delivery of 60,000 homes around an initial ten activity centres across Melbourne. The program will also consider the best way to incentivise more affordable housing. We are exploring with the lead authorities how we can embed good urban design principles in this fast-paced program and play a role in reviewing the activity centre plans as they evolve.

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$1 billion regional housing fund In past funding rounds of regional housing, the OVGA has assisted Homes Victoria with advice on the procurement and evaluation of funding applications along with design review of significant developments. We expect to continue our support in similar ways going forward in this program, which aims to provide 1300 new homes. $150 million Regional Worker Accommodation Fund This program is not just critical for respective Victorians finding a home, but also for regional businesses and organisations that struggle to attract and retain staff. We are in the process of establishing ways, in which the OVGA can support Regional Development Victoria in facilitating delivery of high-quality regional key worker housing.

$5.3 billion Big Housing Build Already underway, the Big Housing Build aims to provide 12,000 social and affordable homes through a range of government and market-led programs. The OVGA continues to provide independent advice, evaluation, and design review for selected programs as appropriate, including Homes Victoria’s Ground Lease Models 1 and 2 and significant builds such as Elisabeth Street stages 1 and 2 in Richmond North.

A new plan for Victoria DTP will lead the refresh and expansion of Plan Melbourne to a Plan for Victoria. The OVGA regularly provide insights and inputs into its development. A particular focus area is the gentle and quality densification in existing suburbs with access to services and public transport and the assurance of design quality in high density developments.

Stefan Preuss RAIA is the Associate Government Architect at the Office of the Victorian Government Architect and co-chair of the Australian Institute of Architects national climate cction and sustainability committee.

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Office of the Victorian Government Architect

ENTRIES NOW OPEN 2024 Chapter Architecture Awards architecture.com.au/awards Nightingale Village | Hayball and Breathe and Architecture architecture and Austin Maynard Architects and Clare Cousins Architects and Kennedy Nolan | Photographer: Tom Ross

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