RMIT ARCHITECTURE DESIGN ELECTIVES SEM2, 2020

SEMESTER 2 | 2020

MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE DESIGN ELECTIVES

Architectural Publication Elective Thursdays 6.30pm-9.30pm

SH S H II F FT T

PROOF introduces you to the ins and outs of independent architectural publishing. The purpose of this elective is to generate ideas, produce original content and then edit and curate this content with the work of others to form your own publication.

The course is split into two halves. The first half uses a variety of provocations (readings, talks, events, guest lectures, buildings) to encourage a critical response to issues related to the field of architecture. These weekly responses will be varied in theme and format, cumulatively building an archive of collective content. The second half of the course will see you managing, editing, curating this content to form your own publication.

This will be your final submission.

Throughout the semester we will have a series of guest speakers working in and around publishing. This will provide a valuable insight across a broad spectrum of local publications, both current and historical.

Skills • • • • • • •

you will learn: Editing Commissioning content Graphic design Original short form essay writing Thematic development Interviewing Exhibition curation

PROOF is taught by Stephanie Pahnis, Nicola Cortese and Lauren Crockett.

to view work from last semester: www.issuu.com/caliperjournal | http://try.at.studio/rmit_proof Image by Isobel Moy, Semester 01 2020

Clients

101

Understanding the small scale property developer In this elective students will learn the basics of how owneroccupiers and small scale developers subdivide small scale inner urban sites for development.

Students will learn how to find sites and how to asses a their suitability for subdivision. Each student will develop a built form envelope that takes in to account the planning constraints of building height, setbacks, crossovers, parking, heritage, neighbourhood character, cultural heritage, council contributions, construction costs, utility costs, design costs, marketing costs, taxation structures, sale prices and agent commissions.

Students will learn about the development process, how to establish title boundaries, Wednesdays 1:00pm > 4:00pm

Tutor: Dr Jan van Schaik: practicing architect at MvS Architects, a researcher and senior lecturer at RMIT Architecture & Urban Design, and a creative and cultural industries strategist at Future Tense.

how to process adverse possession claims, and how to structure the development financing.

Students will be run their project through a mock local government planning process including pre-planning meetings, dealing with council planners, the public display and objection process and the Victorian Civil Administrative Tribunal (VCAT).

The elective will also brush on how to design for the right type of builder, how to chose a builder, and triggers of the unionising of sites.

The ultimate output of the elective for each student will be a series of drawings suitable for a planning application and a development finances chart.

Please click here to view the exhibition of the work from this elective last semester.

jan.vanschaik@rmit.edu.au

DE-URBAN Architecture Design Elective – ARCH 1340 Semester 2-2020 Thursdays, 10.00 am – 13.00 pm Tutor: Mauro Baracco

If read through the Latin suffix, the term De-Urban means: Around Urban.

This same term – De-Urban – also intends to suggest design thinking and related actions involved with the act to ‘de-urban-ize’ as taking the urban away – removing urban footprint and volume inappropriately located in ecologically sensitive areas.

Analytical research, studies and initial design proposals undertaken through this elective will be focused on re-imagining cities through design alternative approaches that repair the places they are part of, at many levels: from the repair of natural ecologies to other related forms of repair towards urban, architectural and landscape spaces, as well as social and cultural conditions.

In particular, the research activities will involve analyses of ecologically sensitive water catchment areas and Western Plains Grassland vegetation type in urban and suburban precincts of Melbourne’s Western Volcanic Plains, with the aim to identi-fy large scale masterplan directions for conservation, landscape connectivity and amalgamation to then guide locations and large and small scale strategies for building and infrastructure that will not inhibit the conservation, repair and functioning of these ecosystems.

The research project will investigate areas that are part of the catchments of the waterways of the West in Melbourne, including Werribee and Maribyrnong Rivers, and major tributaries such as Moonee Ponds Creek and other tributaries such as Stony, Kororoit, Lollypop, Laverton, Emu, Steele Creeks and Little River, amongst others.

Research investigations will also involve collection of bibliographic background and project references in empathy with the design approach undertaken through the semester and related speculations on alternative forms and strategies towards land occupation.

Historical and site analyses as well as initial ideas for alternative forms of urbanization, will be produced through drawings in the form of diagrams and evocative representations.

The research outputs of this elective, undertaken in collaboration with LWCircus international organization https://lwcircus.org/ and other local government bodies, community groups and stakeholders, will contribute to an overall research project that will be presented and profiled at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of 2021 Venice Biennale, as part of the Resilient Communities exhibition at the Italian pavilion.

Students will work both individually and in groups.

Block Party: Richmond Vicky Lam RMIT Architecture Elective Semester 2 2020 Thursdays 12:30 pm - 3:30 pm This is a communications and urban research elective that will focus on the historical and urban transformations within the suburb of Richmond, with particular focus on Victoria Street and Lennox Street. The aim of the elective is to produce compelling visual represntation for an area that is the locus of competing pressures of public housing against growing gentrification, ethnic diversity and transformation and economic decline due to drug problems.

This elective seeks to represent the complexity of this context through mapping studies, collective drawings, and short film.

PRECEDENT STUDIES Students will explore precedents of visualisations of urban transformation: - Kon Wajiro - Drawing Architecture Studio - Liam Young - Super Studio - Mario Gandelsonas - Work AC- 49 Cities - Archigram - Archizoom Students will be working in groups throughout the semester 1/ Class Presentation of Precedent Study and Site Research Drawings at mid semester 2/ Participate in Aftereffects workshop at week 5 (date TBC) 3/ Produce a 1-2 minute film in Aftereffectds due at WEEK 12.

4/ Contribution to a publication of the collective research 5/ Individual Folio submission

Illustration: Laura Zammit

Bachelors and Masters Elective- Wednesday 9.30-12.30 PETER BREW 100.10.01

degrees of DIFFICULTY Who has not put down a book in annoyance or tossed one in disgust, to then read it

without putting it down. Reading is not nearly as straightforward as its made out to be, we skip words, repeat sentences, miss pages and search for words in a box full of them, We are compromised by reading, we are just as likely to be emboldened as insulted or diminished. we encounter difficulty; we experience doubt, and on occasion we give up. To look at books as repositories of knowledge says nothing of the experience of reading, after all it is not our knowledge of doubt but the feeling of doubt that causes books to shut and be returned to the shelf. And it is not what we know about anger but anger that causes a book to be thrown aside.

Is it ironic then that the feeling of doubt is a prerequisite to understanding the modern text ? .

“I am a thinking (conscious) thing, that is, a being who doubts, affirms, denies, knows a few objects, and is ignorant of many- (“cogito” dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum—res cogitans) Rene Descartes’ 1641 That the very sensation that causes the book to be returned to the shelf is all that we needed to realise its purpose. It followed from Descartes that modern philosophy is the phenomenology of reading, The” I “who doubts; the reader, who mouths the words, is the instrument of knowing that recognises truth.

From Descartes truth is not known but experienced; the experience of the reader reading.

This project will carefully read a number of primary texts from Philosophy, Aesthetics and Architecture.

A reflection on each weeks reading will be the basis of a journal, This will be collated and submitted for assessment at the conclusion of the semester.

Text to be exerts from; 1 M Tafuri; Humanism Technical Knowledge and Rhetoric; The debate in renascence Venice.

2 Rousseau; The Social Contract (Foucault commentary) 3Gombrich from Perfernce for the primitive 4 J von Goethe – On German Architecture (commentary by J Pevsner, E H Gombrich and VonMuke and Purdy et el) 5 Alois Riegl; The Modern Cult of Monuments .

6 Wilhelm Worringer; Abstraction and Empathy.

7 Walter Benjamin; On translation. The storyteller.

8 Hegel Notes on aesthetics 9 Roland Bathe; Mythologies .

10 Foucault; What is an Author- (Giorgio Agambon The Author as Geasture) 11 Kuhn; The structure of Scientific Revolutions .Agambon What is a paradigm 12 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari – What is Philosophy 13 Elizebeth Groz The thing 14 Agambon from The signiture of all things

“What matter who’s speaking, someone said what matter who’s speaking” Samuel Beckett – texts for nothing

Empathy (Einfuhlung): ... How the body in responding to certain stimuli in dream objectifies itself in spatial forms - and with this also the soul - into the form of the object. Robert Vischer On the optical sense of Form a Contribution to Aesthetics Before we as individuals are even conscious of our existence we have been profoundly influenced for a considerable time (since before birth) by our relationship to other individuals who have complicated histories, and are members of a society which has an infinitely more complicated and longer history than they do (and are members of it at a particular time and place in that history); and by the time we are able to make conscious choices we are already making use of categories in a language which has reached a particular degree of development through the lives of countless generations of human beings before us. . . . We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong -

karl Popper

The plant contemplates water, earth, nitrogen, carbon, chlorides and sulphates, and it contracts them in order to acquire its own concept and fill itself with it (enjoyment). The concept is a habit acquired by contemplating the elements from which we come……p 106 Gilles Delueze and Felix Guattari What is philosophy Paul Valéry wrote in a very remote context. “Artistic observation”, he says in reflections on a woman artist whose work consisted in the silk embroidery of figures, “can attain an almost mystical depth.

The objects on which it falls lose their names. Light and shade form very particular systems, present very individual questions which depend upon no knowledge and are derived from no practice, but get their existence and value exclusively from a certain accord of the soul, the eye, and the hand of someone who was born to perceive them and evoke them in his own inner self.”

Aristotle briefly defended them in his fragmentary Poetics. In particular, Aristotle defended the arts from Plato’s charge that they are cognitively useless, trading in mere images of particulars rather than universal truths, by arguing that it is precisely the arts, or at least poetry, that deliver universal truths in a readily graspable form, unlike, for example, history, which deals merely with particular facts (Aristotle, Poetics, chapter 9, 1451a37–1451b10).

Thursdays 1.30 -4.30 Lecturer - John Cherrey john.cherrey@rmit.edu.au

putting the pieces together

In this course, you will explore the world of architectural detailing.

If you want to understand how buildings are designed and constructed close up, then this in the elective for you. The approach is hands-on.

Following an intoduction where we examine the principles of detailing, you will be commence the first of two assignments. For each assignment you will be given a set of architectural drawings and asked to complete a a selection of the missing details. The work you detail will be from award winning practices, both local and international. The class will be like working working in an office; you produce the work and then it will be marked-up for correction and improvement. During each class, you will be given the design & technical know-how to assist you in working through your set of detail problems.

| UROBOROS

| Marc Gibson | 9:00am - 12:00pm | Wednesday | | Outline Uroboros centres around the idea of inheritance through iterative analysis and optimization. Students will create, refine, and position a digital toolset that interfaces bottom up algorithmic generation of geometry, procedural rationalization, and top down intervention through modelling.

The first half of the semester will tackle the fundamentals of building solvers to test large numbers of solutions to find targeted outcomes. Students will form groups to build a series of tools that solve a speculative design problem such as: Form optimization (curvature, load analysis), faรงade panelization or circulation wayfinding.

The outcomes will be controlled, analysed and represented through dynamic dashboards designed by students. | Prerequesits Students are expected to have completed Communications 3 (Grasshopper & Mesh modelling).

No prior coding experience required. | Evaluation Students will be assessed on their design, visual communication and comprehension of data structure to control layered parametric procedures. Individual folios are to be submitted at the conclusion of this subject. | Core Techniques

| Topology Generation

| Develop Algorithmic Systems

| Genetic Solvers & ML Panel Clustering

| Automated Documentation

| Fundamentals of Coding C#

| Interactive Dashboards [Winforms]

RMIT University Architecture Bachelor/Master Elective History and Theory Stream Semester 2 2020 Fridays 1pm-4pm Richard Black

Rewilding Architecture

FORMALHAUT Kuhprojekt, Vogelsberg, Hessen, 1986

Overview Writer Robert Macfarlane tells us that the ‘idea of the Anthropocene repeatedly strikes us dumb. In the complexity of its structures and the range of its scales within time and space – from nanometric to the planetary, from picoseconds to aeons – the Anthropocene confronts us with huge challenges. How to interpret, or even refer to it? Its energies are interactive, its properties emergent and its structures withdrawn. We find speaking of the Anthropocene, even speaking in the Anthropocene, difficult. It is, perhaps best imagined as an epoch of loss – of species, places and people – for which we are seeking a language of grief and, even harder to find, a language of hope’ (Macfarlane, Underland, p364). The reality of climate change has provoked a critical reflection on architecture and demands an urgent rethink of our relationship to nature, in all its forms, and for its status in the architectural profession. This elective explores these issues, and more: specifically, what are the implications for architecture and its design knowledges in an era of environmental collapse? Underlying this is a belief that design has a critical role to play, and that the essence of design knowledges and processes can assist in navigating a new relationship to nature whilst considering dramatic shifts of the traditional frameworks of what constitutes architecture. So then, what can architects do to promote a new, more radical, but still sympathetic, understanding of nature?

The syllabus is structured around a critical review of communities of practice within the field - across architecture and urbanism, and other related disciplines tracing lineages of ideas emerging over the past 30 years to the present – to make an assessment of the discourse. These include built and unbuilt works by artists, architects, landscape architects, as well as various forms of writing - a range of material that is broad and yet focussed, crossing disciplinary boundaries from ecology, urbanism, art and architecture, exploring ways in which an engagement with nature in its various forms is being reimagined as a response to the pressing issues of economic and environmental decline. Several years ago, architect and critic Alan Colquhoun summarised the contemporary situation: ‘Today the west is wealthy and promotes mass consumerism. Its aesthetics is based on extravagance and desire’ (Colquhoun AA Files 67, p146) - a thread running through this semester will be a critique of such excess and a questioning of architecture, its role and its design design processes in these uncertain times – as well as a brining into focus a greater awareness of a socially, ethically and politically aware creative practices: a new regime of care.

The seemster begins with a review of several recent (and not so recent) exhibitions and their curatorial themes: Radical Nature - Art and Architecture for a Changing planet 1969-2009. Curator: Francesco Manacorda, Barbican Art Gallery, London.

Broken Nature: design takes on human survival, Milan XX11 Triennale, 2019. Curator: Paola Antonelli, Ala Tannir, Laura Maeram and Erica Petrillo.

Critical Care Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet, Architekturzentrum Vienna 2019. Curator: Angelika Fitz and Elke Kransny Repair Architecture actively engaging with the repair of the places it is part of. Australian Institute of Architects Australian Pavilion 2018. Curators: Baracco + Wright Architects in collaboration with Linda Tegg Finding Country, curator Kevin Obrien (Venice 2012)

Semester structure/assessment tasks Wks 1 - 6 Archive: beginning with the exhibitions above, and supported by additional key texts, films, documentaries, art works, architectural works, urbanism and reference material (available on the Rewilding Architecture Elective canvas shell) – this archive forms the base material for a structured review of selected discourses. What are the significant ideas, practices and projects? What are the key ideas and themes that can be drawn out of this pre-existing material? How can we navigate a new relationship between architecture and nature? Across the first six weeks, you will make 3 tutorial presentations (working in teams of 2).

Wks 7-12 Drawing + Text: rewilding architecture, having developed a working knowledge of the material explored in the Archive (weeks 1-6), make a speculative/propositional drawing and 1000-word text (mini-essay) expanding upon your understanding of the key issues explored in your tutorial presentations and research. As a mode of exploration, through mark making, lines, image and so forth, this drawing builds upon a tajectory of ideas around nature, culture, being.and the anthropocene. Architecturally, its focus should be upon depicting a spatial condition, a threshold between inside and outside - maybe an inside framing an outside, between architecture and nature. Conceptually it can also be imagined as an updating of a genre of representation during the romantic period - from the beginning of the 19th century - where ‘the window became the central motif in the painting, especially in Germany and the Scandinavian countries. The window permitted the painter to produce a subtle confrontation between inside and outside, light and darkness. In the first few decades of the century, the figure at the window gazed at distant nature or into infinity’ (Georges Teyssot, Interior Landscapes, Lotus Documents 8, Electa/Rizzoli: Milan, 1987, p65). What might this be now? Drawing (and text) are to be assembled into an elective exhibit at the end of semester – imagining this an addition to the those such as Radical Nature etc.

Dr Richard Black is a registered architect, educator, author and Associate Professor with RMIT School of Architecture and Urban Design. His teaching, design practice and research activities explore overlaps and adjacencies between architecture and landscape. With Anna Johnson he has co-authored several publications, most notably Living in the Landscape and Urban Sanctuary, both by Thames and Hudson; and in 2017 they established an architectural practice based in Castlemaine. Richard’s mapping of the Murray River floods, fieldwork and associated design projects, have been acquired by the Centre for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, USA. Richard’s design projects have been nationally and internationally recognised through exhibition and publication. He obtained his B.Arch (first class honours) from Curtin University (WA) 1987 and has completed post-graduate study (1991) under Sir Peter Cook at the Städelschule Art Academy, Frankfurt, Germany. He completed an M.Arch (Research) in 1998 and a PhD (2009) both at RMIT University.

RMIT Architecture Elective: Semester 2 2020, Fridays 1.00pm-4.00pm

Richard Black

MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE PRACTICE RESEARCH ELECTIVE

The Practice Research Elective course was launched in semester 1 of 2014.

The concept was originated by Dean Boothroyd, with the intention of providing an opportunity for students to study with architects who have a history of contributing to the design culture of RMIT Architecture directly through the running of Masters Level design studios.

During that placement the student is exposed to various roles within the participat­ing practice which creates research projects for the students to work on - these may take the form of competi­ tions, independently derived speculative projects or possibly primary research within a particular field defined by the practice.

The project is an opportunity to interact with an office and a project team, and develop skills in data gathering, analysis, visual communication, and reflection.

Image (L-R) Antartica + Sheyon Foo, Lyons + Stella Skoumbridis , Lyons + Tanaka Van de Ven , PMA + Maia Heyson Joel Hillier

ARM + Sunny Cheng, Sarah Moussa, Olivia Akl , NHA + Thomas Belcher, Bruce,Oakley, Antartica + Lauren Garner, ARM + Sunny Cheng, Sarah Moussa, Olivia Akl

March Studio + Priscilla Khoo, March Studio + David Thomas, Zhuxi Yao, NHA + Thomas Belcher , Bruce Oakley, PMA + Minji Lee

MArch Studio + David Thomas, Zhuxi Yao, ARM + Michael Strack , Lyons + Stella Skoumbridis, ARM + Mario Shaaya

PAST THEMES & ISSUES

URBAN METRICS

NEW TYPOLOGIES

THE NEW CIVIC

IMPLEMENTING TECHNOLOGY

PAST PRACTICES TBC

NHA

ARM

LYONS

MARCH STUDIO

PMA

NAUU

INDEX

ANTARCTICA

FIVE YEARS OF PRACTICE RESEARCH ELECTIVES 2015-2020

RESEARCH METHODS

PRACTICE ENGAGEMENT

Data visualisation and graphics Analytical diagramming and mapping Analysis of policy, research papers and media Interviews with stakeholders, consultants and practitioners Post occupancy surveys, Life Cycle assessments and analysis

Student presentions to authorities, consultants and clients Student presentation to office and working groups.

Student testing new software and technology skills on real projects Student development in writing and presentation skills for industry Student exposureto office procedures, filing, standards and methods

[ STASIS ] IAN NAZARETH

SEMESTER 2 2020 WEDNESDAYS 1 PM - 4 PM

Covid-19 or more precisely the measures to contain and manage a global pandemic have subverted the matrix of rules, formulas and relationships that underpin the contemporary city. The primary function of the city as a realm of collectivity is severely challenged. Moreover, the complacent existing models of urban governance, economics, law, politics, consumption are on trial. The temporary halting of normative socio, economic and political patterns have emphasised the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of current schemas as well as chronic socio-economic inequality. It is a definite prompt to re-examine assumptions, loops and binaries of the city.

Discussion of sustainable cities and the metropolis generally is obsessed with transport and density. Mobility is so often a measure of both liveability and productivity. Density is viewed as both a measure of desirable consolidation of the city, and a threat to its liveability. The perception of density and the liveability of a dense city is relative to the amount we move around in it; similarly, our carbon footprint in a city is strongly correlated to the amount of transport we use in it. Reducing the mobility within a city would mean reconfiguring urban form and patterns of occupation - redistributing jobs and the infrastructure; capitalising on smart networks and virtual services etc.

Through this seminar we will review, analyse and speculate on the temporary and permanent transformation of the city and urban realm through the notion of stasis. There is no normal.

We approach this through two overlapping layers of investigation – The Domestic and The Civic - focal points for unravelling the networks and systems of the city.

The Domestic –interface between the immediate and the threshold to virtual – the new centrality. Is anything private? The Civic- retooling the patterns and behaviours, reconfiguring of spatial typologies, distances, intensities - What exactly is civic?

Eco‐Urban Practices introduces you to the key skills, methods and practices of the urban design professional from a multidisciplinary perspective, and with a particular focus on environmental sustainability. The relationship between urban design and global pressures of population and climate change is a key focus, as well as urban shifts in infrastructure, technology and transport. You will explore the implications of these issues on urban design processes, projects and practices, while acquiring insight from industry and government professionals, following the sustainability paradigm. We will view design practice from a global perspective, with an equal emphasis on the local. This elective will also investigate precedents, utopias, theories and manifestos in order to understand the multiple scales and networks within the city.

Transparent City 92. Image © Michael Wolf

Stasis is the slowing or stoppage of normal flow, a state of inactivity and equilibrium. Stasis is standing still, offering a perspective on systems in suspended animation – a moment to recalibrate ideologies of the urban – density, mobility, liveability, sustainability and their interrelation. How can we stay still to make the city more dynamic and more sustainable?

GRADUATE EXHIBITION ASSISTANTS

SEMESTER 2 2020

The Architecture Program requires 6 enthusiastic assistants to help with the organisation of the Semester 2 2020 End of Semester and Major Project Exhibition.

You will work closely with the Exhibition Coordinator in the design and curation of the exhibition, graphic design of posters and PR materials, website, Major Project Catalogue and other items that go to make a succesful event.

The majority of the work will be in the second half of semester, but you will be required to assist with organisation throughout the semester. There will be a crunch period in the week prior to the event, please confirm your availability over Week 13, Week 15, Week 16 and Week 17 prior to enrolling in the elective.

The team is limited to 6 people only. You will receive credit towards an elective for your time. This is not availabe through electives balloting. If you are interested please contact the Exhibition Co-ordinator Ian Nazareth (ian.nazareth@rmit.edu.au) directly.

SEMESTER 2 | 2020

MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE DESIGN ELECTIVES RESEARCH ASSISTANT POSITIONS PLEASE APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE TUTOR INVOLVED

Urban Futures Office The Megaproject

In the urban age, cities will continue to expand and intensify, to host more of society and its shared interests. Major urban projects are the primary response by federal governments and planning commissions to contend with metropolitan pressures. Cities around the world especially in Asia and Australia have witnessed significant transformation of their infrastructure and built fabric through such megaprojects. Despite ranking very highly on liveability indexes, Australian cities face challenges, with models for condensed urbanism. The sheer scale and complexity mean that global, national and local interests are interwoven and intensified at a singular moment. The risk and uncertainty for all interests is tangible and hence outcomes are largely shaped by political and economic cycles, rather than long-term resilience of local economies and communities.

The project is a partnership between RMIT University and Hayball in Melbourne with Studio UPLA in Singapore led by Ian Nazareth (Program Manager, Master of Urban Design, RMIT), Ann Lau (Director, Hayball) and Wei Yap Ooi (Principal, Hayball) and Anna Gasco (Founder & Director, Studio UPLA | KCAP, Associate | ETH- Future Cities Lab, Senior Researcher | Senior Lecturer, NUS, Singapore). The aim of this project is to facilitate a knowledge transfer to implement effective design-led urban governance in Megaprojects and to delaminate the layers and procedural nature of delivering such projects.

We seek four enthusiastic Research Assistants to work with us on developing research and analysis, drawing and publishing content that will contribute to the ongoing project and partnership. You will work directly with project team and introduced to a local and global network of industry partners.

Through this elective we seek to explore the agency of design and design-led approaches as a catalyst for social, political and economic transformation. The project will focus on investment in cities through a design-focused approach from models of planning, procurement and management of city assets. The project will address design in relation to governance.

We will meet online weekly, commencing in Week 2 of semester.

Time TBC.Please email Ian Nazareth (ian.nazareth@rmit.edu.au) directly to express your interest in this elective.

Semester 2, 2020

F U T URE OF LI FE SAV I N G RESEARCH PROJECT A small group of dedicated research assistants are required to work on the design of future surf life saving club prototypes.

The Future of Life Saving Facilities research project is a collaboration between RMIT Architecture, Life Saving Victoria (LSV) and Emergency Services Infrastructure Victoria (ESIA). The project is exploring the future design of life saving and surf life saving clubs in Victoria.

The aim of this project is to develop design proposals speculating on the future of surf life saving in Victoria, and around Australia, and re-imagining what a life-saving facility might look like, how it might integrate into the urban and rural urban contexts in which they operate, how they might better operate within sensitive natural environments and what the impact of long term environmental, cultural, political and economic change might be on the institution and built form of life saving clubs might be.

In semester 1, a studio was run in which students undertook a deep dive into the history, constraints and opportunities of the life saving club typology. They developed a series of proposals and observations, which were presented to partners at LSV & ESIA. The ideas developed during the studio form the basis of a further research investigation in which the RMIT University research team will develop a series of design prototypes for future life saving clubs to be presented in a publication and exhibition. These prototype designs will loosely be based on the brief for the Wonthaggi Life Saving Club but are intended to be broadly transferrable so as to be used as ‘prototype’ or ‘reference’ designs that can demonstrate critical issues and possible design strategies for the construction of future clubs. The purpose of this publication is to provide a document that can serve as a tool in the initialisation and preliminary brief development of future life saving clubs in Victoria.

Students engaged in this research assistant elective will be expected to assist in the development of designs under the direction of architects, to undertake iterative and explorative design testing and modelling, to prepare drawings, diagrams and linework visualisations and to assist in the preparation of the publication.

The elective will be run by John Doyle & Ben Milbourne, with Leanne Zilka. Meeting days / times will be negotiated with the student group in week 1 to work around everyone’s schedule.

If you would like to apply to join the project, please apply directly to John Doyle at john.doyle@rmit.edu.au by COB Thursday 16th July.

RESEARCH ASSISTANTS NEEDED We are seeking a small group of dedicated students to work on a new exhibition concept for the Lyon Housemuseum, working with Professor Paul Carter, Dr John Doyle, Professor Corbett Lyon and others.

The research project will explore and unpack work contained in the recently released book Signature by Paul Carter and Sean Hogan. In the book, a series of artworks in the form of inscriptions in different public spaces around Australia have been redesigned and represented in a new medium. An exhibition at the Lyon Housemuseum is being considered as a possible third iteration of these works (geography-typography-choreography) as an immersive physical and/or virtual experience in which the content of the works, their context, their making, their performance etc might be exhibited. At the same time, the exhibition might also be imagined as an accompaniment, and a launch event, for the book which has recently been published by the Lyon Housemuseum.

What constitutes an exhibition in the post-covid creative landscape remains to be determined. Students will work closely with the project team to develop a conceptual framework for the exhibition, while exploring the potential for new technologies and new modes of exhibition that might allow a rich and immersive experience of creative content in the era of social distancing. The exhibition proposals may take the form of an entirely virtual exhibition, concepts for a physical installation in the gallery or some combination of these states.

Students interested in applying need not be familiar with the work of Paul Carter, but should have strong digital modelling and visualisation skills, and an interest in exhibition design and curatorship. Experience with VR / AR visualisation would be an advantage.

We will meet weekly for approximately 3 hours as a group to workshop ideas, and review work. Meetings will be via Teams initially, however we hope to be able to meet face to face towards the end semester. Meeting times will be negotiated with the student group so as to be convenient for all.

If you would like to apply to join the project, please apply directly to John Doyle at john.doyle@rmit.edu.au by COB Thursday 16th July.

$$ Walls 4 Sale $$ NGV Triennial 2020 + RMIT University

Bosshard & Tavor & van der Ploeg Research Assistant Elective, Semester Two

r a o f ng i k o ch r Lo a e es R w ts fe n a t s Assi

to ‘s he ex tuf lp hi f’ pr b o th it fo du e io r ce NG n an V at

Hello, We are Bosshard & Tavor & van der Ploeg and we working with the National Gallery of Victoria to create an exhibition for the NGV Triennial, which opens in December.

The installation in the NGV’s E6 gallery will be a “showflat” for a speculative apartment in Southbank. We are working with NGV & RMIT (& yourself) to create replica fixtures & components (e.g. fake toilets, fake kitchens, fake windows, fake views) to fill the apartment. We will also create some promotional material to advertise this special apartment to the public.

We are looking for a few semi-motivated research assistants with interests in the following areas to help produce materials for the exhibition : + 3D Modeling (Rhino) + 3D Printing + Photography / Photoshop + Visual Communication / Graphics + Exhibiting Architecture

bosshardandtavorandvanderploeg.com

What else... ahh yes, it is probably best if you are currently based in Melbourne so that you can participate directly in the design and fabrication process. We will communicate with you from the Schengen Territory using some form of video conference technology.

Thank you for your time, Alessandro & Li & Matthew

If you would like more information, you can write to: vanderploeg@arch.ethz.ch If interested, please write to: leanne.zilka@rmit.edu.au