ARCHITECTURE DESIGN ELECTIVES COMPRISE A SUITE OF VERTICALLY INTEGRATED COURSES OFFERED ACROSS THE BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN AND THE MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE PROGRAMS.
ARCHITECTURE DESIGN ELECTIVES DRAW ON KEY AREAS OF ARCHITECTURE HISTORY AND THEORY, COMMUNICATIONS, TECHNOLOGY, AND DESIGN, AND FROM INTERDISCIPLINARY COMBINATIONS WITH THE MASTER OF URBAN DESIGN AS WELL AS DESIGN PROJECTS OFFERED ACROSS THE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN PROGRAMS.
THE EMPHASIS OF THE ELECTIVES ARE THE APPLICATION AND SYNTHESIS OF NEW SKILLS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF YOUR PRACTICE AND KNOWLEDGE OF ARCHITECTURE.
TATTOO SYNTHESIS | SKIN AND PATTERN
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TUESDAY 17:00-20:00
100.05.008 COMP LAB
ALAN KIM
| TOOLS
Houdini
Redshift for Houdini
Grasshopper
Rhino 8
| KEYWORDS
Indexical and Non-indexical Design Process
Computational Design
Skin and Structure
Advanced 3D Modelling
ImagebyTomWiscombe|FlowerStreetBioreactor
| ELECTIVE DESCRIPTION
Recent advancements in material technologies and computational design have propelled a deeper exploration into the intricate relationship between pattern and skin within architectural contexts. This elective examines the principles of skin geometry, challenging students to investigate how patterns can be intricately woven into architectural surfaces to create dynamic and hierarchical structures. Emphasising hands-on learning, the course culminates in the creation of a façade, showcasing innovative architectural skin designs.
Tom Wiscombe’s concept of a tattoo, where meshes flow smoothly and adaptively over masses, serves as a foundational idea for this course. Wiscombe describes these as objects on objects—discrete entities embedded onto surfaces rather than emerging organically from them (Wiscombe, 2006). In contrast, this elective aims to blur the boundaries of scale, focusing on eccentric parts that synthesise generative design with the material and structural integrity of the underlying form. The resulting patterns establish an ambiguous yet harmonious relationship between these elements.
Pier Luigi Nervi used these principles to architectural components, redefining them as bespoke elements, each with unique design criteria and expression, ranging from columns to entire roof shells. His Isostatic Slabs serve as a seminal example of designs that are both structurally performative and highly detailed. These slabs demonstrate that design expression can be developed in a multitude of ornate ways while still embodying robust structural principles.
The symbiotic relationship between skin and pattern not only enhances the aesthetic qualities of geometries but also incorporates diverse ideologies of formation. This intricate interplay adds character and improves the performance of supplementary systems within the geometries, investigating how skin and structure interact and complement each other in complex formation processes, where elements do not exist as discrete entities but rather supplement one another.
Throughout the semester, students will develop workflows that facilitate feedback between diverse algorithms using the VFX program, Houdini. This approach allows for the exploration of amalgamation and transitions between various systems, capturing formal complexity. Leveraging the power of VFX physics engine simulations, the elective envisions architecture in innovative ways, transcending mere hybrid or collage creation to achieve a high level of transitional design possibilities.
The core of the elective involves the conceptualisation and design of a façade that exemplifies the intricate relationship between pattern and skin in architecture. Students will integrate patterns into the facade skin geometry, utilising the design principles and digital tools learned throughout the course. The project development phase includes prototyping and the fabrication of 3D-printed components, enabling students to bring their visionary designs to life.
| PRE-REQUISITES
Completion of Communications 3 or an equivalent level of experience with Grasshopper and Rhino is required. No prior experience with Houdini, ZBrush, or coding is necessary; however, a willingness to engage with various new 3D tools is essential.
| GROUP (2-3) FRAMEWORK FROM WEEK 2-12
Multimodal AI Design Synthesis
Prof Dr Alisa Andrasek https://linktr.ee/nDarchitecture
ELECTIVE Tuesdays 2- 5 PM / 100.05.005
This class is structured as an architectural design competition and simultaneous research into rapidly evolving tools of generative AI.
Students will work in teams. We will look into prefabricated timber construction and multiresolution modular building blocks as a substrate of construction logic for novel architectural solutions. Work will evolve through all phases of the competition. Rather than relying on any particular tool, students will develop technological and design fluency with generative AI to expand intuitive design search within a virtually infinite pool of possibilities. Multimodal AI models will include Natural Language procession (NLP) with Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT for crafting rich and fresh narratives for speculative and immersive scenarios and integration of architecture into a larger contextual, social, cultural and ecological fabric, and Diffusion models such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion and its enhancers such as LORA and ControlNet to develop design solutions. Prior technological proficiency is desirable.
As we move into an age of environmental consciousness and the nature-architecture dichotomy dissolves in favor of emerging ideologies of interconnectedness, it may no longer be appropriate to perpetuate the notion that our buildings are impervious and separate from the environments in which they are sited. This has given rise to an emerging field of architectural design that experiments with new ecological aesthetics and a desire for architecture that expresses building enmeshment with the environment. The seminar will explore these ideas through the design and representation of a façade detail that speculates on conditions of permissible weathering, degradation, and inhabitation of our built environment by non-human entities. In support of this task, students will learn the surrounding theoretical context by studying key texts from Bennet , Kallipoliti, Mostafavi, and Leatherbarrow that focus on weathering, ruination, and contemporary ecological ideas. Through case studies, students will gain an understanding of where and why these various effects occur in the built environment at present and how they might be controlled and designed. The seminar will develop proposals using procedural modeling workflows in Houdini FX, allowing students to integrate computational intelligence through weather simulation and geometric analysis.
Objectives
•Obtain a general understanding of the theoretical context in topics such as ecological thought, weathering and ruination.
•Understand through analysis, the environmental, material and geometric conditions that create different forms of weathering in architecture by means of a case study.
•Learn the basics of procedural 3d modelling workflows in Houdini FX to produce a facade detail that intentionally creates effects of weathering.
Structure
1.Research: Beginning with a series of lectures & discussions around selected texts about ecology, weathering and ruination, Students will be provided with a theoretical framework for the class. This will be combined with introductory software tutorials in Houdini FX, enabling students to understand procedural modeling workflows and their intrinsic value. Lastly, students will undertake a case study of a building detail in Melbourne, photographing its weathering and producing a façade analysis drawing about why and where these effects occur.
2.Proposal: Students will then design a façade detail that promotes weathering effects in a controlled and determinate way based on understanding the case study conditions. This façade will be produced primarily in Houdini FX but can integrate other software of the students choosing.
Format
The class will mostly be run via Zoom online Wednesday 9.30-12.30. (in person w/c Aug 12th)
Deliverables
The final deliverables will be the production of a before and after rendering of the facade, and a diagrammatic drawing that illustrates to the viewer where these weathering qualities have emerged and why.
Tutor: Barry Wark
Fig1&2: Example of befofre and after rendering of a facade detail by Dillion Day & Regina Gonano
CALC THAT !
tutor | caitlyn parry wednesday 9:30-12:30
CalcThat! researches carbon life cycle assessment and calculator tools.
It will explore current digital tools that enable carbon life cycle analysis to be made as a tool during the actual design process. It will be using mainly grasshopper.
Students will develop a research log book exploring the digital tools as well as the development of an LCA calculator available for all RMIT architecture students to potentially use in the their Design Studio
How do we communicate ideas about cities? How can speculations on cities made through urban design move beyond the masterplan and beyond policies, to make the imagined city vivid and compelling?
TUTORS
Javier Arpa Fernández with RMIT Architecture Associate Professors Graham Crist and John Doyle
How do we communicate ideas about cities? How can speculations on cities made through urban design move beyond the masterplan and beyond policies, to make the imagined city vivid and compelling? This seminar, led by Javier Arpa Fernández explores the tools for designers to describe cities which do not yet exist, but which urgently need to be described. The power of exhibiting and publishing as a means to make big urban ideas visible, to participate in big urban conversations and to model urban scenarios will be tested through projects in urban design. The seminar will be in mixed mode (face to face and online) and also include intensive workshop sessions. These will be led by Javier with the support of Graham Crist and John Doyle.
PROPOSED TIMELINE
Week 6 - Week 12 - Thursdays, 5pm Online Week 14 - Monay, Intensive Face to Face Workshop, All Day Week 16 - Exhibition Design and Hanging
Javier Arpa Fernández is an academic, author, curator, and researcher in architecture and urbanism. He holds a Master of Science in Architecture from Delft University of Technology, specializing in urban design, research, and dissemination.
Javier is currently the Head of the “Building Audiences” Group, a newly established lab, and the Curator of Public Programs at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at Delft University of Technology. He previously served as the Research and Education Coordinator at The Why Factory, a global think tank and research institute within the same faculty. Javier has been Editor-in-Chief at MVRDV and was the Deputy Editor of Domus magazine in Milan in 2019.
The seminar is available to Master of Architecture students (arch1338, arch1339, arch1340 ) and forms part of the Master of Urban design Studio 5 ( arch1341)
Javier has taught at Harvard, Columbia GSAPP, Penn University, ENSA-Belleville and ENSAVersailles (France), and IE University (Spain). He curated the 2015exhibition “Paris Habitat” at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal in Paris and authored the monograph “Paris Habitat: One Hundred Years of City, One Hundred Years of Life.” In 2013, he co-organized the conference “The City That Never Was” in collaboration with the Architectural League of New York. Javier is currently conducting the research project “Africa: An Atlas of Speculative Urbanization” at the University of Pennsylvania. He co-curated the exhibition “African Speculations” at the Kuala Lumpur Architecture Festival in July 2017, Architekturgalerie München in 2018, and Politecnico di Milano in February 2019.
Javier was also the Editor-in-Chief for a+t research group, one of Europe’s leading publishers in architecture and urban design, where he coauthored the “Density,” “Hybrids,” “In Common,” “Civilities,” and “Strategies” series.
Wire cut bricks are manufactured through the process of extrusion. A largely neglected question however is what other opportunities does extrusion o er in manufacturing other building components. Similarly industrial extrusion have relied on simple steel die plates to generate extruded forms. What opportunities does 3d printing o er in creating more complex die forms when coupled with ceramic extrusion. How does tacit know-ledge and theoretical material understanding impact the challenges of this type of design research? The elective will commence with a broad introduction to ceramics in architecture particularly as they are used in contemporary architecture.
The rst project, tile production, will introduce students to the principles and practices of plastic clay extrusion and the properties of clays. Starting with digital modelling, questions of modularity, and how wire slicing might be combined with extrusion to create novel forms will be explored. A key question will be how does materiality inform and /or modify digitally generated ideas? The rst project will conclude experimentation into the complex eld of colouring and glazing ceramics. Having established a good foundation of the extrusion process and a basic understanding of the properties of clay the second project will challenge the student to consider material and process in relationship to a façade application. Façade is used here broadly and may include any element with a relationship to a buildings façade such as brise-soleil, cladding etc. The outcome of this project will be a sample section of a façade assembly. In second project students will consider problems of architectural detail in developing their façade elements. No group work.
When : Thursday 9:15 - 1:15
Where : B45 Wet area room 045.01-010
Weeks : 1 - 10
Tutor : John Cherrey
Bachelors & Masters Students
Prerequisites : curiosity
extrusion
Edge Case:
new Patterns for Green Fields
This elective will explore how Melbourne currently expands at its edges and why it takes its present form. With this understanding, we will propose plausible alternatives.
We will adopt a structural approach, viewing urban form as the result of spatial, regulatory, historical, material, and economic conditions. Together, these factors shape the built environment we see in our cities. Our focus will be on causal factors and quantitative descriptions rather than qualitative appraisals or descriptions of effects.
Most architectural and related discourse on development patterns centers on values-theatre (inner suburbs) and propriety (middle suburbs) in established areas (urban acupuncture in the missing middle, anyone?). Meanwhile, the suburban development juggernaut consumes vast tracts of land at the city's edge, often neglected by architects due to the lack of engagement for traditional tools.
In this elective, we will study areas such as Tarneit, Wyndham Vale, Rockbank, Cobblebank, Caroline Springs, and Aintree. We will develop and deploy research techniques to understand and reveal the urban forces at work. Some techniques will focus on creating analytic metrics and graphical tools to represent the best quantitative information describing the city (similar to the a+t books on density and urban data maps). Please apply if interested in detailed archival research and producing elegant drawings.
Other techniques will involve accessing Graphical Information Systems (GIS) databases and other data sources, so those interested in data and coding are encouraged to apply. Additionally, we will examine the regulatory documents that dictate permissible construction, so those interested in understanding and analysing these rules are welcome to join. Everyone will work closely to establish new knowledge from existing information.
From this new understanding, we will propose a set of new prototypical designs, akin to the NSW government's New Housing Pattern Book competition. These designs will form strategies and patterns for a new suburban development model.
The output of this elective will be a chaptered book, with small groups of students authoring each chapter. Various guests will be invited to speak and contribute throughout the semester.
Semester 2, 2024
Wednesday 9:30 - 12:30
tutor: Paul Minifie
On The Domicile: Elective Outline
RMIT Architecture Elective Semester 2 2024
Tutors Dr Peter Brew
Wednesday Mornings at 9.00
Elective Context:
The aim of this elective is to look at how we look at Housing. To recognise the nature of its ‘problematic’ and to become familiar with concepts and models of research that allow us to recognise and address the problem.
The Elective is structured as a Research project looking at Wicked problem
The hard core of the semester will be the review of a significant unpublishjed research project undertaken in the 1980s at the University of Melbourne by Terry Sawyer which documented the development of “flats” in Melbourne from the late 19c to the second world war (c 1939).
The Intent is to expand on this work in ways in a way that will changes the discussion and practice of Architects with respect to the problem of housing. The central question revolves around the question of access to this work, This may be theoretical , as in how we think about it, but also a question of format and context, is the work accessible via a modification to the code, how it is understood or by being available , through guides and public access etc ,
Conceptual Agenda; While we broadly accept there being a disconnect between societies need of housing ( our demands) and the ‘housing market ( Supply) it is too often an problem that remains ‘unaddressed’, Broadly it is a the sort of problem problem that in the late 1960s was identified by systems analyst and management consultants on the west coast of the USA who identified them as being Wicked. A method to solve these problems was first enunciated at about the same time if not earlier but on the East cost of the USA by Imre Lakatos who proposed ‘the research Project’ Rittel and Webber's 1973 formulation of wicked problems in social policy planning specified ten characteristics:[4][5]
1. There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem.
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but better or worse.
4. There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem.
5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a "one-shot operation"; because there is no opportunity to learn by trial and error, every attempt counts significantly.
6. Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan.
7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
8. Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem.
9. The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem's resolution.
10. The social planner has no right to be wrong (i.e., planners are liable for the consequences of the actions they generate).
Roy Grounds Moonbrai Flats 1940-41 Toorak
ARCHITECTURE DESIGN ELECTIVES WITH MASTER OF URBAN
DESIGN
BALLOTING POSTERS
k(NO)w NEW CITIES
WEDNESDAY(S) 9.30-12.30, 100.06.003 ECO URBAN PRACTICES : IS A ZERO CARBON NEW CITY REALLY POSSIBLE?
GRAHAM CRIST AND IAN NAZARETH
A principle reverberating through the canon of architecture and urban design is the fallacy to start afresh, to escape geography, or policy or demographics. To build from scratch, something from nothing, terrain vague, terra nullius, and greenfield. The pursuit of newness, of novelty. While this is steeped in the modernist tradition that necessitated rebuilding urban areas, it both precedes and succeeds it. The economics and poetics of ‘the city’ is often inconsistent with its logistical, infrastructural and ecological footprints.
Administrative capitals shift and move, and new commercial metropolises emerge. From Brasilia and Chandigarh to Canberra, many significant urban plans have been dreamt up from aether in the past century. By the middle of the 1900s there were fewer than 100 cities with a population of 1 million. In 2024, that number is approcahing 600. The Line in Saudi Arabia is one of a long list of cities being willed into existence by complex geopolitical and neoliberal forces, with drastic and contradictory social, cultural and environmental issues.
We understand cities to be necessary and unequivocal. Their form, location and principles though are uncertain. The tools, instruments and approaches of traditional design and planning are inundated by the complexity of contemporaneity. How do we imagine the future of cities and urbanism as questions of post-carbonisation and sustainability become more immediate and acute? How do we approach existing and emergent contexts, land-use, scale, mobility, density and form? How do we stage and phase these plans to evolve – to accommodate new patterns of use?
New techniques, new approaches? Growth? Volatility? and perhaps decline?
In the spirit of conflicting and contradictory forces, we will conceptualise new urban forms. We will draw and critique it. We will take the post-carbon questions and apply them at the scale of a city. The seminar is focussed on the nexus between architecture, urbanism, the organisation of cities and its staged liberation from carbon. We seek to better understand new energy and the new possibilities for production and spatial organisation, that challenge the orthodoxies of planning and designing urban form - cities, suburbs, precincts, and architecture.
Eco Urban Practices extends attitudes and approaches to understanding, describing and speculating about an urbanism that responds to a particular ecological pressure, placed in the broader context of discussion of sustainability, liveability, mobility, transformation and counterfactual propositions for the city. 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.
PRACTICE RESEARCH PLACEMENTS BALLOTING POSTERS
There are a limited number of Practice Research Placements Positions available. This smester the patricipating practice is MGS Architects. This is a balloted elective inclulded in the form.
Space, the material of architecture
Presented by Eli Giannini
MGS Architects
Manton Lane Melbourne
RMIT Architecture
Practice Based Research Semester II 2024
Weekly meeting time will be negotiated to suit availability
‘Space Reader‘ aims to catalogue the characteristics of built spaces as a guide to students and architects in practice. How has architectural space evolved in time? What opportunities does the advent of artificial intelligence and other computational tools offer the study and evolution of architectural space?
SPAC READER
ELECTIVE BASED RESEARCH ASSISTANTS (EBRA) POSTERS
There are a limited number of Elective Based Research Assistant (EBRA) Positions available - for which you do not need to ballot via the ballot form - refer to the poster, and contact the relevant tutor to lodge an expression of interest.
SPECULATIVE URBANISM LABORATORY
Approximately 5 research assistant positions are available to work with the Speculative Urbanism Laboratory.
The Speculative Urbanism Laboratory [aka Supertight Architecture Urbanism Lab] is a newly formed research lab within RMIT Architecture that explores ways of radically rethinking cities through architecture and urban design. The lab uses design processes to model and test the implications of economic and social forces on urban development and to speculate on the form that these forces can take.
This semester we will be undertaking a series of projects including:
- The develop of a low carbon-high density housing prototype for Melbourne’s growth areas. We are working with researchers from the School of Property, Construction & Project Management on life cycle analysis of design prototypes. We aim to demonstrate that high density housing is both desirable, but has substantial sustainability benefits. Students involved in this project will work on digital modelling, drawing, diagramming, energy / carbon analysis (using grasshopper), and rendering / animation & production. This would suit students with strong Revit, Rhino, Grashopper, Enscape and other production skills.
- The development of a short film exploring and exhibiting the research of the lab, and outcomes of the Master of Urban Design research studios. This will involve storyboarding, filming, interviewing, editing along with some basic animation, effects and video production. This would suit students with an interest in urban architectural documentary film making, filming, editing and animation.
Both projects will build upon work completed by students in semester 1 2024.
Students involved will be credited in all publications, and included on all lab materials.
The Speculative Urbanism Laboratory is led by John Doyle, Graham Crist with Ian Nazareth and others.
These positions will not be listed on the electives balloting form. If you are interested in joining the team please email john. doyle@rmit.edu.au and/or graham.crist@rmit.edu.au
GRADUATE EXHIBITION ASSISTANTS
SEMESTER 2 2024
The Architecture Program requires 4 enthusiastic assistants to help with the organisation of the Semester 2 2024 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.
The team is limited to 4 people only. You will receive credit towards an elective for your time. This is not available through electives balloting. If you are interested please contact the Exhibition Co-ordinator Lauren Garner (lauren.garner@rmit.edu.au) directly You are required to confirm a place prior to the close of balloting.
