Housing Blocks

RMITSchoolofArchitectureandUrbanDesign

Semester1,2023

StudioLeaders

MarySpyropoulos

JoshuaLye

StudioTimes

Mondays-6:30PMto9:30PM

Thursdays-6:30PMto9:30PM

Due to the imminent population growth, we will continue to build new cities at high density. New high density developments must engage with the complexities of contemporary practice by generating alternative design models and processes that are capable of responding to different conditions and challenges.

In this context, the studio will be looking at new models for future hybrid programming. Interfacing notions of co-living, co-working, sharing economies and industrial 4.0 programming within architectural space. Providing an opportunity to wrestle with basic questions of how we live, what kind of spaces we need and want, and how this affects the dynamics between architecture and social inhabitants in our future urban environments.

The studio will be investigating medium scale residential typologies on a site located in North Melbourne. Investigating potential for future living beyond established models, connecting its design patterns directly to local physics, exponential technologies, construction methods of CLT prefabrication, disruptive patterns, emerging community spaces and social dynamics.

Students will learn about design systems that are computational and universal through the simplicity of discrete building blocks, connection logics and complex aggregations. Students will explore a platform of architecture that allows for virtually infinite combinatorics and emergence of complex tectonic states through the collective action of underlying elements.

Critically students will gain an understanding of how to design through development of plan, section and its manifestation as architectural space. Students will critically examine historic and current works of architects such as Sou Fujimoto, Moshe Safdie, Jean Renaudie, Daniel Kohler and others that begin to offer rich tectonic models of architectural production. Through these investigations, students will produce proposals for high density, hybridised residential buildings that speculate new ways of future living and working.

Students will be working in teams throughout the semester. Prior knowledge of Rhino and Grasshopper is highly encouraged but not required.