Maidy Lewis
ARCH 1142 / A R C H 115 4 Founda ti o n D es i g n S tu d i o Cit y Li mi ts RMIT LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE SEMESTER 01, 2010 STUDIO PAMPHLET
st u d i o a b s tr a ct ‘Foundation’ 1. the basis on which something is grounded 2. the fundamental assumptions from which something is begun or developed or calculated or explained 3. the act of starting something for the first time; introducing something new various web definitions
image
This course is the first Design Studio in the Landscape Architecture degree program at RMIT. In this foundation course, students are introduced to the discipline, discourse and culture of Landscape Architecture: what it is, how it is theorised, and how it is practiced. The thematic basis of this semester is the conception of urban space as a phenomena produced within a system of inter-relations. These relationships will be explored in the City Limits studio through three projects which introduce students to a series of approaches to landscape architectural design. Each project will be driven by a specific design generation technique allowing students to experience and engage with a range of design methods. This is an intensive studio which aims to introduce a number of key approaches to designing. The projects are intended to foster creativity, imagination and experimentation.
Hamish Smillie
image
Throughout the semester students are required to re-imagine the City – or ‘city-ness’ - through design projects that engage with Melbourne’s CBD at three distinct scales. 1. (Sml) Urban Explorer 2. (Med) Urban Surface 3. (Lge) Near Futures
Giles Redward
image
Brett Frost, Heath Blair, Jake Orvad
Carl Hong
Carl Hong
Foundation Studio Coodinator: Kate Church Tutors: Rohan Buckley, Jock Gilbert, Claire Martin, Andrew Miller, Caitlin Perry, Saskia Schut
u r b an exp l or er
Maidy Lewis, Michael Ryan, Tom Chapman
This is the first of three projects which engage with the city and ask you to stretch students’ imaginings about the urban landscape. It asks students to explore the city as a laboratory of dierent types of spaces, to learn ways of seeing and drawing space, to experiment with ways of modelling or materialising spaces. The Urban Explorer project is a four week project which explores the city at the small scale, introducing students to the micro, the detailed and the fleeting aspects of the urban environment. This
project utilises narrative as a tool to generate and develop design - drawing from art, literature and film to consider ways engaging with space, movement and time. The tasks students undertake are aligned with particular drawing and making techniques such as mapping, model making, film and collage. The project includes camp,workshops and culminates in a public exhibition.
u r b an surf a ce
Carl Hong
As Landscape Architects, our medium is the landscape itself: the ground, the surface, the terrain. This second project engages with the city at a somewhat larger scale. This project asks students to design a new surface alongside Federation square, over the rail tracks to the Exhibition Street bridge. In this project students are literally creating a new ‘ground’, a surface where there was previously just air. What can this new surface, this urban terrain offer to the city? What does it change?
This project asks you to explore and develop your understanding of surface and through this to challenge the assumption that surface is two dimensional, flat, ‘thin’ or static. Urban Surface is framed around approaches to bringing student’s individuality to the design process and considering the ethics of the relationship between the designer and ‘the public’. It is intended to build on techniques from the first project and introduces ideas of (formal) composition.
NEAR FUTURES
n e ar futures
image (s)
HOW DO WE (RE)MAKE THE CITY? HOW DOES THE CITY OPERATE? WHO IS THE CITY?
THE FUTURE IS NEAR... ‌and the Melbourne CBD is not how you remember it. It is now almost entirely inundated by sea water. There are great fluctuations in climatic conditions – with long dry winters followed by searing summers during which there are frequent storm events. There is no clean water source. There is no petrol. Global trade networks are no longer operational, prompting an economic crisis far worse then the recent GFC. These changes have induced a mass exodus from the city.
Most buildings have been abandoned and are no longer configured by corporate spatialisation. BUT: A group of people have recently returned and are reappropriating the abandoned spaces of the CBD. These inhabitants are all young. Their ages range from 18-30. They have survived this massive change through their resourcefulness and ability to adapt their living habits.
image (s)
Upon their return, they have noticed: • The entire city and its related infrastructure has changed. • Open space has entirely transformed. • Food production has become localized. • Water collection has become a necessity • The power grid is non-operational • New micro economies and systems of exchange have emerged. • The entire transportation system has adapted and new forms of transport have materialised
For this scenario-driven project students create an enclave for these inhabitants in one of Melbourne’s abandoned buildings. The enclave must respond to the new climatic conditions and produce food, clean water and energy for 100 inhabitants as well as recreation spaces and living space. How will these inhabitants reappropriate the city? What opportunities exist within the present infrastructure that express themselves in the future? This final projects is based around around conceptual thing and understanding systems.