Issue 15 – July 2015
From the Associate Dean Research Early in 2014 the Faculty of Built Environment set in place a formal process to identify research areas to prioritise for future investment. This exercise came on the back of our having drafted a new faculty research plan for 2014-2016 which reiterated and recalibrated our aspirations for more and better research but required substantive areas on which to concentrate. A major catalyst at that time was the previous Vice Chancellor’s ‘spires’ initiative, a university-wide program to identify and back research winners across all faculties offering prospect of significant returns on investment. In March last year the faculty hosted an internal Research Futures Forum to hear and discuss ideas on possible topic areas/research initiatives in which the Faculty might invest in some way. This proved a productive workshop with a range of opportunities being flagged, some of which remain relevant and have continued to be pursued by individuals and groups most directly concerned, such as our research clusters. But out of that event and subsequent deliberations and investigations two BE-led ventures were identified as major research priority areas: urban informatics (developing on the potential of urbanbuilding analytics) and design technology research and teaching (picking up on the area of architectural science). Both these areas were seen as strongly supportive of the ‘sustainable cities’ spire identified by the VC. Assessment of the feasibility and desirability of developing both areas as research targets proceeded and on 1 July 2014 the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research) was briefed on our plans to seek the university funding to help support these areas. We continued to develop plans on both fronts, but initially targeted urban informatics where the strong nexus with the City Futures Research Centre provided a firm foundation and the need to move quickly was paramount. A formal submission made in late November 2014 proved successful and was the basis for our hiring Professor Chris Pettit (ex-University of Melbourne) who commenced as our Professor of Urban Science in May this year. We will move to make two supportive research appointments later this year. Meanwhile, work proceeded with developing and refining what we called the ‘High Performance Architecture’ initiative as the basis of a second submission to the DVC(R) and the University’s executive. Key drivers of this exercise were the desire to uplift our capabilities in design science and technology that had been an historic strength of faculty research since the 1970s alongside a parallel review of new directions for the professional teaching curriculum in Architecture. Two weeks ago we learnt that this second submission had also been successful. It entails a significant investment by the University to fund several academic positions for both research-teaching academics and postdoctoral research fellows. The Faculty itself has committed funding to complement what will represent a transformative investment of our research and teaching capacity in Architecture. More details will be made available as the recruitment process unfolds.