RMIT Architecture & Urban Design Major Project Catalogue Semester 1 2021 by RMIT Architecture

RMIT Architecture Major Project Catalogue Semester 1 2021 11

Major Project Catalogue, Semester 1 , 2021 Prof. Vivian Mitsogianni Ian Nazareth

Designed and Produced by Ian Nazareth Jiacan Tan Jingtong Zhao Audrey Adams Ekaterina Rumiantceva

Copyright © 2021 by RMIT University All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of RMIT University

RMIT Architecture Major Project Catalogue Semester 1 2021

Contents Introduction, Professor Vivian Mitsogianni...06 What is Major Project?...07 DaShiLar Creepers, Longge Zhang... 08 Cognitive Assemblies, Jitesh Sapra... 10 See You in the In-Between, Chris Buchhorn... 12 Given, Even, Jack Murray ... 14 Drawn Home, Kari Vitalich... 16 The Collection, Yuqi Song... 18 Promise Ring, Matthew Tibballs ... 20 Deadly Dull, Aimee Howard... 22 Symbiotic Architecture, Akash Vazirani... 24 Glitch In the Epoch, Deborah Morris... 26 Great Sinners, Great Cathedrals, Jean Viljoen... 28 Gleaning The Discipline, Bryn Murrell... 30 Oversight, Mietta Mullaly... 32 Proponents, Connor Hanna... 34 re.tTag, Isobel Moy... 36 Artem Promovemus Una, Toby Richardson... 38 The Gap Dance, Hannah Zhu... 40 HERO WITH THREE FACES, Hao Wu... 42 There is a crack, a crack in everything That's how the light gets in, Isabella Cohen... 44 Deformation Tectonics, Paarija Saxena... 46 Reinventing of Unfinished Buildings, Sida Feng... 48 Hotham Estate: A new phase for public housing renewal, Thomas Lemon... 50 Skyscraper Suburb, Tianhao Wang... 52 PublicGood, Greta McMillan... 54 Bio-smart city, Li Li... 56 Fiesta, Lorenzo Borja... 58 Undermined, Overwritten: Memories of the Capitol, Rebecca DiNapoli... 60 (adapt)N, Darren Shi Yang Soh... 62 Artem Promovemus Una, Toby Richardson... 64 Anxious Architecture, Joel Hiller... 66 City X - Experimental Cities, Sammy Kudret... 68 Portrait of a country town, Tara Ashleigh Hoornweg... 70 Architecture Also, Annika Lammers... 72 Walk in “Tableaus”, Zixuan Zhao... 74 Economy of Means, James Cosgrave... 76

Zero Carbon City, Tongyang Xu... 78 Something Somewhere, Wen Bin Liau... 80 Living In A Bubble, Xuanyun Song... 82 POST-EARTHQUAKE SEEDS, Qianbin Xu.... 84 QR City, Samuel Campbell... 86 In Transit, Tiffany Wing Sam Yu... 88 The Persistence of Memory, Maryanne Waiting ... 90 A UNIVERSAL BODY; for living in, Sirini Chrismarie Fernando... 92 Grow in Difference, Yueyu Tang... 94 Lost in Translation, Yuhan Xie... 96 Capture the Truth, Zhejun Wang... 98 New Lifestyle Street, Jasper Fisher... 100 Adaptive reuse on courtyard house, Jing Wu... 102 Just About Architecture, Joshua Batterton ... 104 Mine Mine Mine, Liam Kuhnell... 106 Again, see the village, Yukuan Zhao... 108 The Mist, Shaocheng Xing ... 110 Island Melbourne, Yucheng Feng... 112 Womin(d)jeka, Kitrawee Rudeejaruswan... 116 Quarantine Revolution, Nan Yang... 118 Co-co Living, Yiying Wang... 120 Living In A Bubble, Xuanyun Song... 122 Re-Express The Culture & Local Characteristics, Shuran Jia... 124 0 Waste Island, Zhipeng Lin... 126 Edge Community... 128 Imprint, Nour El-Leissy... 130 5 min city, Weiteng Zhuang... 132 New Campus Plaza, Xianyi Meng... 134 Supervisors Semester 1, 2021... 136 Students Semester 1, 2021...137

Introduction

It has been an extraordinary semester for RMIT Architecture Major Project students who have demonstrated perseverance, resilience, dedication and generosity as they sought to contribute new ideas and venturous propositions to their discipline and to an increasingly complex world. This semester’s Major Project students completed their fifth year of architectural study in the midst of a global pandemic and with many studying remotely. Their resilience and agility needs to acknowledged and applauded.

The Major Project Medals The Anne Butler Memorial Medal, endowed in honour of an outstanding emerging practitioner, is awarded to a Major Project that exemplifies the goals of Major Project.

Architecture schools should be concerned with experimentation that challenges the apparent self-evident certainties and accepted orthodoxies of the discipline (in its expanded definition), the underlying assumptions about what architecture is and can contain, and what it should do next. Architecture schools need to ensure that their graduates have all the professional competencies that are required for professional practice and registration, but Architecture schools should also lead the struggle to challenge the default conventions of the discipline. The architecture school should strive to point towards possible futures not yet evident within existing understandings of the discipline and wider cultural/political terrains.

The Peter Corrigan Medal celebrates the project that is most critical, political and culturally engaged. It is awarded to a student with a strong independent vision in honour of Professor Peter Corrigan who taught successive generations of architects at RMIT for over 40 years.

Architecture is about ideas. It is part of a wider cultural sphere and a way of thinking about the world in a broader sense. Knowledge and learning in architecture do not finish in the academy but require continued learning and a level of receptive agility from the architect, throughout the architect’s life. The rapidly changing economic and cultural conditions in the extended fields that architects engage with necessitate this, requiring, but also opening up possibilities for, new types of knowledge, fields of engagement and practices.

The Antonia Bruns Medal, endowed to recall Antonia’s interest in the relation between film and architecture, is awarded to a Major Project that investigates the relationship between architectural representation, association and perception.

The architecture student’s graduating Major Project – a capstone for the formal design degree – should not merely demonstrate the competence and skill they acquired in the course. These are base expectations on entry into the graduating semester. The graduating project is an opportunity to speculate through the work and to develop ideas that will serve as catalysts for future, lifelong investigations.

The Leon van Schaik 25th Anniversary Peer Assessed Major Project Award celebrates Prof. Leon van Schaik’s arrival as Head of Architecture at RMIT 28 years ago. It is decided by all Major Project voting for what they view as the most adventurous and future-embracing project of the semester.

The project should lay bare considered attitudes, brave speculations and leaps of faith, pursuing these with rigour and depth. We would hope that the projects are ambitious, brave and contain propositions relevant to their time. We would hope that students experiment – in whatever form this might take – and engage with difficult questions, contributing not merely to areas that are well explored, but to what is yet to come. Experimentation though, in the graduating project, as well as in the design studio, comes with the risk of failure. But failure can be cathartic – it is an essential possibility tied to innovation. At RMIT Architecture we understand well the ethos and importance of experimentation and we have longstanding processes to reward it, importantly through our grading and moderation processes. In the RMIT architecture programs, we call this venturous ideas-led design practice. ‘To be venturous is to be brave and take risks. What we hope is happening here is that students are learning to establish their own explorations which they can constantly reconsider and navigate through future conditions that may not resemble present understandings of practice. Competencies and experimentation can happily co-exist. We aim to educate students to engage with architecture’s specific characteristics unapologetically, and to not be afraid of its complex, uncertain and liquid nature. We aim to prepare our graduates to engage in and contribute to a broader world of ideas and to eventually challenge our ability to judge with new, challenging and meaningful propositions. This semester we saw some astonishing and brave projects and propositions from a student body deeply concerned with making a positive impact on the world around them and with contributing new ideas to their discipline. We look forward to following our students’ careers as they join our global community of practice and to seeing how the ideas seeded here are pursued and advanced.

Professor Vivian Mitsogianni Associate Dean and Head of RMIT Architecture RMIT University

For an expanded version of this text see Mitsogianni, V. (2015). Failure can be cathartic! The design studio - speculating on three themes In:

Studio Futures: Changing trajectories in architectural education, Uro Publications, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 25-31

What is Major Project? In Major Project, students are expected to formulate an architectural research question and develop an articulate and well-argued architectural position through the execution of a major architectural design project.

RMIT Architecture values ambitious, adventurous projects; those that demonstrate new and pertinent architectural ideas or show how established ideas can be developed or transformed to offer deeper understandings. The best major projects take risks and attempt to see architecture anew. Major Project should form the beginning of an exploration of architectural ideas that can set the agenda for the first ten years of original and insightful architectural practice. The nature of the project is not set, and the scope of the brief and site is established by the student in consultation with their supervisor as the most appropriate and potentially fruitful vehicle for testing and developing their particular area of architectural investigation. Typically, major projects proceed in a similar way to design studios – with the difference being that students themselves set their brief and topic of investigation. The research question and architectural project will often develop in parallel and it is expected that the precise question and focus of the project will be discovered and clarified through the act of designing. This process is iterative and develops through weekly sessions. Projects are also formally reviewed at two public mid semester reviews before the final presentation. Major Projects have ranged from strategic urban and landscape interventions with metropolitan implications, through to detailed explorations of building form, materiality, structure and inhabitation; to detailed experimentation in the processes and procedures of architectural production. It is expected that Major Projects will develop a particular and specific area of interest that has grown during a student’s studies, rather than merely complete a generic and competent design. Often these specific interests will develop in relation to those of supervisors – we encourage students to work closely with their supervisors to build on mutual areas of expertise and interest. It is understood that major projects will differ in scope, scale, kinds of representation produced and degree of resolution; with these factors depending on the nature of the architectural question and accompanying brief. Emphasis should be placed on producing a coherent and complete project, where proposition, brief, scale, degree of resolution and representation work together to provide a balanced, convincing and focused expression of architectural thought. There is no expectation that Major Project be ‘comprehensive’ in scope. Rather, the aim of the subject is to establish, through the completion of a major design work in a rigorous manner, a well-argued architectural experiment that has the potential and richness to engender future explorations and that will sustain the student for the next ten years of their architectural practice. A high level of skill and a demonstrated knowledge of existing architectural ideas is an important component of a successful major project, however the goal should not be to demonstrate a professional level of accepted best practice. Rather it is an opportunity to demonstrate new kinds of knowledge and ideas through architectural form. _Excerpt from Major Project Briefing Notes 2020

DaShiLar Creepers Longge Zhang Supervisors: Tim Pyke

The Dashilar is a remnant of Beijing’s old city, sitting adjacent to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City - physically close, yet materially distant from the centre of power. Here the turmoil of China’s recent history is marked into its fabric, the lived history of the now mostly elderly residents. Through collectivization, reform and opening up the boundary between public and private has become blurred, resulting in many contradictions between the residents and government. To survive the residents used abandoned or cheap materials to build extra space and adapt the Siheyuan house type. However, for safety reasons and the ‘protection’ the traditional Hutong style, the Beijing Municipal Government has completely banned all forms of additional structure, removing these historical marks from after 1949, to return the Dashilar, externally to what it was at the end of the Qing Dynasty. If these marks are erased, the lived culture and experience of Beijing’s old city life atmosphere will disappear forever. Dashilar Creepers co-opts the bottom-up organic building that constitutes the unique Hutong architectural form. Infrastructure to facilitate the continued existence of the elderly is inserted into the gaps, extending and adapting the nature of the Dashilar, further blurring the boundary between private and public space to bring new vitality to the Dashilar area, balancing the contradictions between government policy and the lived experiences of the residents.

Cognitive Assemblies Jitesh Sapra Supervisor: Dr. Roland Snooks

The project deals with the study of tectonics and emergent architecture with a focus on fabrication strategies for complex design ideas. It broadens the horizons of the research-based approach from extraordinary design synthesis to robotic manufacturing processes and encourages a dialogue between them. It is a framework / genotype with goal-oriented agent behaviours, tectonics, mathematics of voxels, fabrication strategies etc. The algorithms follow a “bottom-up” approach where the system grows and evolves up to the event of an emergent and self-organized behaviour, obeying the simple rule about the interactions of an agent-based system. The overall idea tries to bring both the human designer and the machine (Artificial Intelligence) in a symbiotic relationship. The intent of the designer is partly captured in the generative algorithm as behaviours and partly in evaluation encoded in the designer’s intuition. The AI algorithm acts as an extended mind to the designer and helps optimise complex and repetitive design tasks. Through a constant interaction between the top -down and bottom strategies, the proposal seeks to produce an adaptive and responsive architecture.

See You in the In-Between Chris Buchhorn Supervisor: Emma Jackson

While the suburbs provide desirable qualities like privacy, space and individuality, they congruently present a sheltered, dewy-eyed view of the world, developing an isolated suburban sensibility through a common experience, developed on a ruthless attitude towards context and landscape as to establish new borders of segregated territories, often in a blurred mass of uniform buildings. So, what if we challenge this accepted condition of now? What if Architecture extended these narrow borderlines and was persuaded to loop into an articulated in-between realm. This project questions what limitations we place on ourselves, and the agency afforded to societal behaviours and abilities to change by adhering to a cartesian logic of absolute boundaries. It seeks to challenge these established urban hierarchies and explore the uncomfortable negotiations of urban thresholds and challenge the current models of its framework. It aims to walk the lines of boundary and enclosure, inside and outside, for an architecture that is not absolute that responds to its contextual conditions of now and when. Where outcomes can be broken up to reveal unexpected opportunities, shifting from traditional modes of intervention, and to decolonise a system that privileges the right angle above all else.

Anne Butler Memorial Medal Semester 1, 2021 Supervisor Statement In a scene from Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee advises, “don’t concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all that heavenly glory”. With the extreme focus and contemplation of a Kung Fu master, Chris’s project liberates the suburb from its orthogonal corset, and allows the previously unseen in-between to have its way. Cadastral boundaries are distracted by the low ground, and in this cunning diversion, a better mode of occupation sneaks in. Chris’s project is a heartfelt, optimistic offering, through architecture, to the Australian suburb, and our deeper past; it summons the heavenly glory from all the places we have mismanaged, ignored, and underestimated. _Emma Jackson

SEE YOU IN THE IN-BETWEEN AN ARCHITECTURE OF PLACE AND THE THRESHOLDS THAT DEFINE IT / A BRIEF MANIFESTO WHAT / WHY? Architecture is personal. It requires we put our stake in the ground. Architecture should not be ignorant of its condition. Architecture should be seeking to question the established urban hierarchies and for the ‘better’. This critique stems from a dissatisfaction with the system that maintains the status quo, for that which is still cannot become without change. My work suggests that from what is broken offers new opportunity. Asking ‘what if?’ as a way of questioning the accepted conditions of now. Architecture should then seek to challenge the validity of established order and arrangements and in those moments of vulnerability, in a process that can involve, the aesthetic and vocabulary reveals suggests a deeper truth for change. That all manoeuvres should have meaning and validity. That each intervention is accompanied by a careful consideration of ‘why’.

FRAGMENTS

Societies assemble themselves according to relationships, as is Architecture. Our cities should be read as a habitat of diversity with ‘opposed relationships and conflicting interests.’ Fragments represent the collection of architectural artefacts, rituals and identities that make up place and represent how we assign value. Observational techniques allow these conditions to be uncovered to afford a greater understanding of situation, allowing new value hierarchies to be established or amplified. To understand architectural negotiations that acknowledges need and difference, requiring an investigation of context (place) and context (meaning).

DISPLACEMENT

‘Displacement is liberating.’ That in the disorientation of the familiar, an alternative reading to place, a reset, a new translation for the urban and architectural conditions and a new point of departure. It is not a method of pure destabilisation for the sake of disorder. No, I am referring to the magnitude to the change and the direction driving such interventions. This is a process that involves suspending judgement, reading the results in the tea leaves and at times, requiring a leap of faith and to act on hunches for new opportunities.

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Given, Even Jack Murray Supervisor: Dr. Michael Spooner

Given, Even is a project that has been completed. Given, Even is a project to be looked at for at least fifteen minutes from a distance of three to five metres.  Given, Even is a project interested in the ability of architecture to hold multiple personal readings. Given, Even is a project that is a codex.  Given, Even is a project that questions the idea of singularity in a Major Project. Given, Even is a project investigating the work of Marcel Duchamp through a sustained architectural inquiry into Sean Godsell. Given, Even is a project that is titled after an elision of Duchamp’s ‘The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even’ and ‘Given’ or ‘Étant donnés”, his final enigma in Philadelphia. Given, Even is a project investigating the work of Sean Godsell through a sustained architectural inquiry into Marcel Duchamp. Given, Even is a project that offers something of fiat value to the discipline. Given, Even is a project that designs an art gallery to house its own provenance. Given, Even is a project that chases its own consequences, one week to the next. Given, Even is a project that erases its footsteps as it goes. Given, Even is a project based in anxiety-induced fever that it won’t be enough. Given, Even is a project that has not been completed.

Peter Corrigan Medal Semester 1, 2021 & Leon van Schaik Peer-Assessed Major Project Medal Semester 1, 2021 Supervisor Statement Jack’s project carries his faith in architecture, in Major Project, in himself, and in the many others he has carried with him on his expedition. The project flees the wardrobe of Godsell’s Kew House and is caught bare in a field that Jack discovers in the reflection of Duchamp’s Large Glass. Incessantly reconstructing the initial momentum of the absconded project, Jack finds that every subsequent trajectory must cross this glassy field. As his weekly incantations faded away fragments of his plot to escape were brought together in a sprawling box cut from a hill, described so the Yarra River can draw the horizon from every window. Jack is more Ismael than Ahab and so the project is infused with impulse, with the weekly pandemonium of majoring. Architecture, Jack argues, is reflected in the image of a daydreaming monk who sits in his cell, thinking of what to say to God. _Michael Spooner

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Drawn Home Kari Vitalich Supervisor: Dr. Michael Spooner

The Fitzroy Gardens awaits the return of objects collected, stolen, forgotten, doubted, or misunderstood. The garden is marked by mislaid artefacts: a home from elsewhere, the memory of plaster replicas, infrastructure never realised, and the Indigenous landscape that once was. The garden describes the problem of repatriated objects that can find no end point to their journey, unable to recover a home, and that maintain in perpetuity what is lost.  And so they lie in response.    A collection of buildings is held within this troubled landscape. A storeroom dedicated to holding an infinite sum of cultural narratives, an archive awaiting the returning gifts, an institution that preserves and develops cultural integrity, and the display collecting catalogues of the imagination.  The architecture of each building was an attempt to return what was forgotten, to hold the sum of all the artefacts, so that they may lie in repose against one another.      This project is caught in the memory of a tiny island between Croatia, Italy and Australia. On the fridge in my grandmother’s kitchen hangs a supermarket list which exposes the difficulty of finding yourself between homes: “bata za kek, kokenac, natmeg, raz, sesmi sid”

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The Collection Yuqi Song Supervisor: Ian Nazareth

How long is the life of a building, and how is its value defined? The Collection Project is an act of collecting from the memory of the city and acting on the existing architectural space, to make it become a collection which belongs to the future. The purpose of the discussion is to interrogate the notion of an enduring architecture and provide a new reading idea to redefine the meaning of value of architecture from the perspective of internal quality. The collected diagrams which are extracted from the city's history and people's collective memory is the language of the place, the miniature units of people's living habits, which will be used as a propelling factor to reorganize the existing spatial structure. The space itself is a realistic carrier of use information and tangible narrative. By introducing the building as an experiential exhibition, the three symbolic Songlines are intertwined to form a spatial network that tells the past and future of the region together.

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Promise Ring  Matthew Tibballs  Supervisor: Dr. Emma Jackson Prologue: the Doncaster rail - a century-long assurance for a train-line to the city centre which never eventuated. Enter the suburban rail loop, a “city-shaping” government project promising to connect the outer suburbs through a ring around the city. This project lays down the red carpet for a centreless city with the premise that the anticipation of a reality yet to come (if at all) is sufficient to get the ball rolling. A definitive civic centre is not put forward, but rather a methodology for the unravelling of new centres which rise triumphant from the backdraft of what will inevitably be another failed promise. Architecture is employed as a staging device for irritating in the ‘meanwhile’ through a combative marriage to the long game. From this, three strategies are proposed to contribute to a growing, incremental place: The Retrofit(s): a renegotiation of each future station’s adjacencies through small-scale incisions within the existing suburban fabric, treating minor acts like tree-planting and adaptive-reuse as weak but necessary signals in the vortex of anticipation. The Placeholder(s): a tentative taxonomy of ad-hoc temporary armatures deployed as a land-grab for the public realm. These are enabling works introduced under the pretence of temporary use but through duration and strategic placement become anchors, informal public spaces, and sporadic monuments for growing suburbs. The Build(s): a speculation into the content and ‘rooms’ to be provided for the suburban civic life to thrive through the reinterpretation of the prior scenarios – a shell for an evolving centre over time. What we do in the waiting room directs this project. A state of play where cumulative acts of premature gratification and predictive squatting offer substance to a defiantly impatient architecture; one which pre-empts disappointment by turning the suburbs inwards to celebrate their own centres in the nearby tomorrow and the distant after.

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Deadly Dull Aimee Howard Supervisor: Loren Adams & Peter Brew It is widely accepted that histories are curated by those in power, and that all forms of governance often benefit those who make them. The project is recognizing that this instrument extends itself to architecture as a constructed disciplinary matrix, reinforcing and repeating certain ideals. It is likely that such instruments dissect architecture as formal aesthetic units, which are then distributed as a combination of constructed rules and judgements. Using Natural Language Processing the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ architect face off against each other, performing simulated dissensus, that results in another option. It is presumed by the profession that the individual is a spokesperson for the profession and vice versa. The issue then, is the willingness or capacity of the profession to accept difference within a regulated system that is upheld by that which is considered normal and successful. We can recognise our professional claims to inclusivity but realistically we do not have the means to achieve this using our current repetitive instrument. This project is anticipating the need for a method and conceptual framework for ‘difference’, recognising that the method cannot be understood as the thing that already exists.

Antonia Bruns Medal Semester 1, 2021 Supervisor Statement Aimee’s project offers a model for conceptualising difference and diversity in the discipline of architecture through a ficto-critical reimagining of her remote, West Australian hometown, Geraldton. For Aimee, text – from utopian manifestos to heritage regulations – is the fundamental medium through which disciplinary knowledge of ‘the ideal’ is constructed, disseminated, and enforced. Taking issue with the lack of diversity in the suite of characters who are authorised to speak on her behalf, Aimee deploys a bespoke natural language processing (NLP) ‘bot to create a simulated dialogue with 12 quintessentially ‘good’ architects, theorists, and historians. Inserting herself into the conversation as an unreliable narrator and objectively ‘bad actor’, she then disrupts the self-referential cadence of ‘her boys’ with a data set compiled from a series of poorly-remembered anecdotes from her childhood in Geraldton. The result is a new, whimsical, and radically nostalgic polemic from which she is able to cheekily serve up an alternative aesthetic ‘ideal’ for Geraldton. Here, Aimee presents herself as frail and unreliable, but not downtrodden. Rather than offering a scathing indictment of a broken system, Aimee playfully gifts us model of architecture within which ‘other’ voices – including hers – are not only heard but celebrated. _Loren Adams & Peter Brew

Symbiotic Architecture Akash Vazirani Supervisors: Prof. Tom Kovac

Symbiotic architecture is a concept that aspires to create a self-sustaining habitation framework for our future cities based on a circular economic model. To meet the change to remote working in society, a new Co-Living planning model was designed using ma wan island in Hong Kong as its first test site, without the tight borders between distinct zones present in traditional models. The city was developed utilizing an agent-based modelling system inspired by the natural development mechanisms of organisms such as physarum polycephalum, which react to data from current site analysis models and AI. The findings of the algorithm were analysed after optimization to determine appropriate zones for human settlement and a feasible connectivity network between these zones. The goal of the concept was to create a city with few points of touch with the earth, resulting in a floating metropolis on lush vegetation cover. The city is built using an extensive template of materials derived from the waste collected from the surrounding area. Micro algae bio- reactor façade panels fabricated using additive manufacturing techniques provide for the city's energy needs, forming a symbiotic link between carbon positive species like Humans and carbon negative species like algae.

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Glitch In the Epoch Deborah Morris Supervisor: Anna Johnson

In 2001, inside the walls of Melbourne’s GPO, a computer terminal short-circuited and resulted in the inner lining of its recent retail fit-out burning to the ground. The shell remained. With the post-Anthropocene creeping up on humanity, I have teamed up with the guilty-as-charged computer – only this time it has taken the more innocent role of ‘naturebot’; a collaborative AI system.  Throughout the entirety of this project together, we schemed, debated and presented ideas to each other on what we can do with the Melbourne GPO – more respectfully this time.  We both agreed to revise this historical piece to be the cities landmark public space, where the proximity between nature and human is adjusted and interactions revised. How can we currently call an over-manicured garden bed and a cold steel seat public space? Is it really a public space if you do not consider our native flora and fauna? This method of subverting the current architectural process releases partial design authorship from the human while taking a step away from the repetitive cycle architects have been stuck in for years – architectural human centrism. Our project presents a Glitch in the Epoch – pigeon spikes are not welcome.

Great Sinners, Great Cathedrals Jean Viljoen Supervisor: Andre Bonnice & Jean-Marie Spencer Starting from the simple table they are named after, banks became one of the most splendid building types as they sought to reassure depositors. Today they are on the verge of disappearing altogether. As a credit union, the project is about the collective ownership of an institutional building and acts as an architecture of exchange that questions the role of finance and institutional architecture in relation to the city. The nature of this transactional relationship emphasises institutional expression through the architecture as a series of transactional negotiations that play out across site. These exchanges are lenses for responding to paradigm shifts, engaging the public through transparency, the legacy of bank typologies, and the role of institutional architecture in the city. Funding the city is not just a monetary figure but also how the built fabric provides spaces that are responsive to societal needs. The project reintroduces institutional architecture that funds the city for legacy while celebrating the act of the individual engaging with it. Moreover, the project explores how an institute’s legacy outlives its occupants, and that legacy is not about the longevity of a single building but rather about what that building provides for its existing and future occupancy.

Gleaning The Discipline Bryn Murrell Supervisor: Dr. Michael Spooner

Where can the value be found in the valueless? What about those things that architecture hates to deal with – the ugly, the empty, the useless. Is there an architecture that can find joy in those things, that can fossick the bones of the old and the dead and come out with something beautiful? These are the things this project seeks to address, through conceptual frameworks laid out by Helene Frichot, Zoe Sofia and Jane Bennett. The project is as much about the method of gleaning, as it is the architectural product of it. Gleaning is a process by which the critical distance of architecture is collapsed, the architect operating with their back bent, and their eyes on the ground. I have gleaned the former ABC site in Elsternwick, in search of vital things. I have found them, I think, and have put them into something new. This project sits at the intersection of memory, heritage, and operative drawing. Apprehended through the eyes of Bruce, a 92-year-old who has lived across it for his and its whole life, the new ABC building is a theatre, a workshop, an office, a paddock. If nothing else, I hope he’d like it.

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Oversight Mietta Mullaly Supervisor: Dr. Peter Brew

There are things that we think we are doing and there are things that we are also doing, so do we really know what we do? This project is about redefining Architecture; a subject that informs us what we do and is one that is formed by us. I’ve designed ways to think about Architecture to account for the things that we also do, the things we overlook - the oversights. ‘Oversight’ is also the act of overseeing, and this project is about the role of the Architect. It questions how we see ourselves and asks what more we could be doing if we were willing to see things differently. Using the device of a ‘misread’ or ‘misconception’ as a way of accessing these ideas, the project takes the form of a fictional renovation to the Architects Institute Building.

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Proponents Connor Hanna Supervisor: Dr. Peter Brew

We like to think that each development we stumble upon is a unique circumstance, a possibility to affect something, conjure up some good in this world. But what if this “unique” circumstance was not so unique? This project begins with a seemingly deluded premise, but one that is taken as consensus from disciplines outside of architecture: that our underlying economic system predicates the shape and form of our city, and it has a hyper-political agenda that leaves its occupants disenfranchised. The architecture of this project then is seemingly just as deluded – it is the design of a new system – one that exists for and meets the ends of those who exist within it; it accounts for the idiosyncrasy of these communities and the natural world that surrounds them. Forensically, it tracks immaterial relationships between seemingly disparate elements of the built environment, from the streetscape to the building, to the suburb to that of the city. It simulates the omnipresence of the current system and its manifestation in material and spatial form. In doing so, it seeks to extend our disciplinary realm of inquiry and influence, not merely as individuals capable only of conjuring objects but a collective discipline made up of individual proponents for change.

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re.tTag Isobel Moy Supervisor: Prof. Mark Jacques & Dean Boothroyd

“Shopping buildings don’t age: they die young.” - Harvard Guide to Shopping Target is moving online. The discount department store can’t compete with the convenience of the Internet. So, what is the future of retail? And what happens to the vacant space? re.tTag becomes Northland Shopping Centre’s greatest asset. The design of both an efficient waste service and a flexible retail architecture - assembled from what Target left behind. An authentic and transparent circular economy celebrating adjacencies between waste collection, upcycling, design, manufacture, and point-of-sale. Net positive consumerism, exhibited in an analogous architecture. The future of retail is radically recycled. Formerly single-use and disconnected from context, the project breaches the boundaries of Target’s big-box store to become an inviting suburban anchor – constantly in-flux and capable of evolving and expanding over time. A nod to Victor Gruen’s original ambitions, re.tTag is a scalable unit of urban planning where commodified urbanism, residential opportunities, and “pay to play” recreation attracts the shopper back into physical retail. re.tTag is a super-saturated architecture which leverages off the infrastructure of the shopping centre to sponsor civic life, enable climate action and to speculate on a more resilient city.

Artem Promovemus Una  Toby Richardson Supervisor: Dr. Michael Spooner

‘We Advance the Art Together’ This project looks to the franchise model of Domino’s Pizza and applies it to the Australian Institute of Architects (AIA). It was inspired by the founder of Domino’s who brought together the largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright artifacts in the Prairie-style franchise headquarters. A franchise is an opportunity to hold a single identity across multiple sites. The decentralisation of the AIA allows for its charter to be acknowledged by smaller collectives of architects. Within each enclave is held an occasion for debate and conjecture. The project stands across three sites once home to a Domino’s franchise. Each is an architectural centre specific to the surrounding local on the high street, in an inner-suburb, and in the city. The three sites together reflect the growth of the franchise and attend to the different opportunities to advocate on behalf of the discipline and for those who can invest in it.

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The Gap Dance Hannah Zhu Supervisor: Dr. Peter Brew

If the end goal of architecture is life, how can life be built before it is lived? Architecture exists in so far as its subjects participate. Its subject can be an individual, a dumpster, the contours of a landscape, or even a line of flood water. The architect is a good narrator, someone who reads the gaps between these lives. This is a dance of the gap across three sites in Melbourne, Australia. In Carlton, the subjects move at a fast pace. By correlating the already-existing things onsite, the programs of a home emerge in a service lane: the shower, the toilet, the bed, the kitchen, and the bike store. Here, architecture is already. In Kew, the slow and ecological landscape is the author. Architecture only comes near completion as we patiently wait for a-hundred-year flood. The line of water participates in the forming of the bike path, the burial, and the wedding. Here, architecture is always. In the city centre, we resume at our usual speed. How to be an architect when the subjects of architecture are both fast and slow? How does architecture take part in the scope of life that is both volatile and infinite? This is what ‘The Gap Dance’ is about. "

HERO WITH THREE FACES Hao Wu Supervisor: Ian Nazareth

Is there a universal answer to solve ideology disputes? Is there even an answer?Hero with three faces looks into how architecturerepresents this ambiguous monumentality,based on the political and religious conflict issuein tibet, the project grasp certain existingelements and analyse them, define them, tag them andbuild them. With three sites firstly located, the other two thenbeing monumentalism and projected back,plug in to Lhasa Railway station again and this superinfrastructure consists of a stall marketwhich is a challenge from civil to religious power. A temple sits on top of Lhasa railway station as thesuppression from religion took back itscontrol power again. A nature reserve wetland which looks into how to buildarchitecture from a brand newideology which reverses the role of civil and government. With three different faces expressed side by side,the focus then being revealed of notlooking for a solution, but creating a reversed elementto make it even.

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There is a crack, a crack in everything That's how the light gets in Isabella Cohen Supervisor: Emma Jackson

The past year has allowed us to view the city in a new light. Images of the empty streetscape highlights what is there and prompts the question: What if the footpath and street infrastructure ‘worked’ harder? This project looks at the space on the street where the buildings are not. I have operated on the intersection of Bourke and Swanston Street, employing this area as my testing lab. This intersection is potentially the heart of the city and yet there is an absence of identity and place. This project addresses the importance of the corner block, through reclaiming it as a public territory that is intrinsic to the footpath. This redistribution of value means that advertising and materialism are no longer leading the civic purpose. Instead, a deeper meaning and connection is the dominant driver of this architecture. If street infrastructure could be as pluralistic as the buildings around it, I believe that there could be a more meaningful and delightful development to the city. Although Bourke Street is a shopping Mall, the footpath does not need to reflect that. This thesis aims to connect people to the urban and stop the detraction and dissociating experience of commercial advertising.

Bourke St looking East

Swanston St looking North

Bourke St looking West

Bourke St

There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in

Amalgamating: Breaking down the separation between building and street. A freedom for the street to push into the buildings and vice versa.

Bourke St

Swanston St

Bits: Treating street amenities as architecture. Toilets, street lamps, signage, waste disposal and bollards.

Swanston St Swanston St Interface:

Bourke St

The shopfront’s relationship to the street. How can this crucial interface create a sense of place?

Deformation Tectonics Paarija Saxena Supervisor: Dr. Roland Snooks

This project is a reflection of an architecture student attempting to capture the spontaneity and emergent behaviour of materials and fabrication techniques. Architecture and material are inextricably linked. Deformation Tectonics is a study of a specific type of material tectonics and its related design strategies. Trying to understand the capabilities of 4D printing for architectural systems. The research is divided into 3 parts – Material Tectonics, Digital Fabrication, and Construction. First being Material Tectonics, my initial study focused on the deformations that occur when basic 2d patterns are 3D-printed with a shape memory polymer on different stretchy fabrics, investigating the fabrics’ heat resistance, stretchability, and interaction with filaments. Digital Fabrication - The gathered findings are utilized to create a digital physics simulation that replicates the real time deformations and might be utilized for form finding at the architectural scale. This programmable deformation can help with the conceptualization of dynamic formations. The Final Step is Construction – Testing 4d printing structures on bigger architectural systems and detailing out the construction details and possible joineries for such systems. The result sits at the intersection of robotic 4d printing as a negotiation between digital simulations and physical materiality. Where design happens in between emergent form development and attaining an ordered structural stability only through the local interaction. "

Reinventing of Unfinished Buildings Sida Feng Supervisors: Alisa Andrasek

High-rise construction in China is a recent phenomenon – construction spurred dramatically in the 1990s. Large scale housing projects can be witnessed in a village, town, or megacity of almost every province. However, many studies have proved that property development in China is largely oversupplied and overvalued. The imbalance, in fact, led to the formation of “the property bubble” in China. What followed are a large number of unfinished residential buildings. Inadequate government supervision and the slowdown of economic development have made this “ghost structure” a common problem in China’s urbanization. Many high-rise residential buildings have been suspended or abandoned due to the shortage of funds, leaving an indelible effect on the urban environment that should be a vibrant new home. Plus, the serious air pollution problem in northern China are making some people’s living environment to face challenges. This project relies on the existing structure of the abandoned construction, focusing on improving air quality and reinventing the unfinished building to a comfortable living and working place for everyone. The reconfigurable feature lets the whole system to respond to new problems and requirements in the future.

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Hotham Estate: A new phase for public housing renewal Thomas Lemon Supervisor: Peter Brew

The most valuable asset in public housing renewal is the community – both culturally and economically. In the current model of public housing redevelopment in Victoria - housing, services, and infrastructures are built elsewhere over a long period of time before tenants are relocated, the land is sold to developers, the housing is demolished, and mostly private housing is built on the original site. The problems with this are obvious – high set-up costs, a displaced community and two new communities created - both with complex needs. In this proposal, improved housing is built on-site with the community in-place. A multi-phase project is then gradually undertaken to redevelop the site. The outcome is a stronger community with better infrastructure to prosper now and into the future, as well as much lower holistic project costs. The development of sellable commercial floor space accounts for the rest of the budget and, compared to private housing, has the potential to harbour a mutually beneficial relationship for the residents. To further improve their outcomes, the housing is designed to cater for the diverse needs and challenges of the culturally diverse and often vulnerable population in public housing.

Skyscraper Suburb Tianhao Wang Supervisor: Dr. Anna Johnson

The concept, experience, and form of suburbia have changed markedly in response to pandemics and population growth. The various lengths and intensities of lockdown during pandemics have exposed the deficiencies of contemporary suburban life and given us reason to rethink the suburb again. Compared to current models of suburban development, the project is thinking about the typology as almost like a vertical residential block coming to the suburb as a model for the post pandemic. Rendering architecture as a natural “pattern of everyday life”. By exploring design strategies that generate architectural outcomes from collage, the project reframes the analysis of modern Australian suburbia.

PublicGood Greta McMillan Supervisor: Simone Koch

As an architect our obligation goes beyond the client, we have an obligation to the public and the city. If we considered every project as public, no matter who the client or what the incentive was – how would the existence of our cities change? This project interrogates how we can address commercial developments with more generosity and care. The increasing privatisation of our cities means that low prices and fast construction are premia, with a lack of value placed on longevity and public amenity. The critique of current “award-winning projects” revealed that the consideration of the public domain is not a high priority to the institute or locally acclaimed architects. The observations from these studies formed new exemplar examples of how we can design consciously through large- and smallscaled interventions. Interventions that can be embedded in our architecture to ensure the product is a public good. The project manifests itself in the Woolworths on Smith Street but does not exclusively react to it. It has the potential and should be implemented across our city and suburbs to make good design accessible to everyone and prove that civic endeavour is possible in all projects.

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Bio-smart city Li Li Supervisors: Prof. Tom Kovac

Bio-Smart City is a biological future city project. It responds to the unequal relationship between humans and species in the city of Xiong’an and proposed a future city of mutualism between humans and nature. The project is located in Xiong’an at the boundary of wetlands and residential areas, and there is a significant imbalance between human and ecological habitats. The concept of Bio-smart city is Mutualism pattern. The project proposes the development goals of a sustainable future city and the specific ecological environment of Xiong’an. Bio-smart city uses the minimal path principle to create an urban system that uses the most efficient linear urban network to reduce the effect on ecology. As the bio-smart city grows, encroached biological habitats are restored and expanded to achieve the concept of establishing mutualism between species and humans.

Fiesta Lorenzo Borja Supervisor: Patrick Macasaet

Throughout history, boundaries have been treated as means of a divider to protect the people within their territories. This brought a negative side effect of separating communities and thus potentially resulting in conflict. This project focuses on the exploration and reinterrogation of boundaries and trying to question whether if a boundary can be a place of interaction rather than just a dividing element for separating communities. Can a boundary line be stretched into a 3D space where people from different communities gather together and interact? Fiesta is an exploration of this idea using Cotabato, one of the conflicted areas in the southern part of the Philippines as a context and merge different groups of people together through celebrating each of their cultures. A bridge that not only serves as an infrastructure for transport, but also a festive integration of coalesced communities. What a great way to mingle with other people than to celebrate with food and music cultures. Several experimentations on strategies were used to achieve this cultural exchange. The form, design language, and program arrangement were consequences dictated by the strategy explorations, cultural references, and procedural approach to reimagine the definition of boundaries.

Undermined, Overwritten: Memories of the Capitol Rebecca DiNapoli Supervisor:  Anna Jankovic

While the digital information repository continues to be heralded as the answer to preservation and accessibility, this over-writing of the physical is precipitating a disconnection with our collective memories contained within the National Archives. Digitisation is a tool exploited by a government that desires to sequester its records from public access; a government that is no longer held to account. Intricate histories are converted into a series of hard drives stored in uninhabited server rooms; any messiness is deleted, along with the remnants of our past that won’t fit into the series of 1s and 0s. This project presents a building that combines public physical archives, digital data repository, media centre, and cultural institution. Positioned opposite the parliament, it seeks to reclaim the prominence that the ‘Capitol’ signified in the Griffin’s plan for Canberra – a city crown – a place for the people to recall and recompose memory. Here, the digital is made subservient and recast simply as a preservation device. This project suggests that it is through architecture and the physical domain that the ineffable digital cloud can be grounded and made navigable, tangible and publicly legible once again - allowing us to touch our history without fearing its erasure.

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Tayla’s Lakes Tayla Walker  Supervisor: Prof. Mark Jacques & Dean Boothroyd What happens when the urban growth boundary becomes fixed - when the population continues to increase? Outer city suburb design is a model full of weak points and when most of these suburbs are considered less desirable than their inner-city counterparts you wonder how this model has faced relatively little change and continues to be deployed as Melbourne grows. Taylors Lakes, a suburb hugging part of the growth boundary and the gateway to the growth corridor of the west. The suburban street scape, a complicated relationship between the public realm of the street and the private of the home. Within these existing conditions lies another method of planning with focus on retention – retention of place, retention of nostalgia. This project is not a masterplan but rather a master-place, derived through the lived experience unique to this suburb. It questions how far Taylors Lakes can be pushed before it’s unrecognisable and identifies a system for allowing density and supporting it whilst simultaneously increasing the liveability status of the suburb. The framework questions the conventional method of suburb design and master planning by addressing the issue of urban growth using civic amenity and the grand adjustment of the boundary to the suburb edge.

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(adapt)N  Darren Shi Yang Soh Supervisor: Dr. John Doyle

(adapt)N speculates the adaptivity of the low rise of our city. Unpredictable, disruptive events that create medium to long term challenges for our city gives value to this project. Be it public health, economic, environmental shocks that put our city out of its relevance and affected its capability to be used at its maximum potential. These are the uncertain challenges that this project aims to address.  This project questions existing planning law and permitting processes that limit the city to the idea of adaptation. It proposes converting our city block into mixed-use corporate ownership. Shifting procurement processes, allowing the city to be viable of adaptation over time.  The result is a city that is viable to be adapted into more use case scenarios. A sustainable economy where fabrics are constantly edited, space used are changeable between classifications and cultural memories overlapped. Instead of being demolished and built anew, it is re-planned and redesigned which creates its architectural quality when it is adapted over time.  (adapt)N rethinks the relationship between space, forms and functions. It is an ethically environmental, economical and architectural proposition.

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Anxious Architecture Joel Hiller Supervisor: Simone Koch

Consider the following research question: is there a valid architectural strategy irrespective to individual brief requirements as it acknowledges the greater significance of context? To add clarity, ‘architectural strategy’ and ‘idea’ are used interchangeably. Within the chapter Codes of Misconduct of book Architecture Depends, author Jeremy Till argues that the role of the architect should stem beyond the typical architect and client relationship1. According to Till, the architect should situate an architecture in response to future foreseeable social problems2 and as Till underlines (2009,183) ‘…always in the service of the other’3. Till (2009, 182) further elaborates with an example ‘Designing to address the cause and effect of climate change is necessarily a long-term issue.’4 Ultimately this project is about designing a new housing estate model by rearranging standardised components in an attempt to uncover an inherent architecture. By developing the typology through a series of iterations, at what point is the ubiquitous housing estate no longer recognisable and instead, it is considered an architecture of value. 1 Till, Jeremy. 2009. Architecture Depends: Codes of Misconduct. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: The MIT Press 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid.

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City X - Experimental Cities Sammy Kudret Supervisor: Tom Kovac

With the current shift from the physical environment to the virtual, there is a growing need to break down the current city planning regulations and adapt to a new dynamic way of living. City X Experimental Cities explores how computation and algorithmic designing can assist in coming up with new ways and methods of designing the urban environment. City X concentrates on future cities and explores how digital tools can assist with responding to environmental conditions, and how human and non-human living conditions shape our future cities.

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M AJO R PR O JEC T SEM ESTER 1 2021 TO M KO VAC SAM M Y KU D R ET

Portrait of a country town Tara Hoornweg Supervisor: Christine Phillips

The significant need for purposeful and appealing public spaces in regional towns has emerged as a key component in defining civic relevancy. There is therefore a need for the agency of architecture within these settings to have the ability to attract interactions and conversations as the spark to re-energise and reinvigorate communities. In this project a series of small yet carefully grounded architectural interventions are intended to entrench themselves within the selected riverside site, sympathetically yet provocatively to excite the power to creatively respond to and gender a connection to place. By acknowledging that every place has its own unique and specific narrative then the process and realisation of a new framework evokes a range of possibilities. Single large interventions masquerading as a meaningful solution for the entire community has had a history of inadequacy. Here on the Mitchell River, an area which has had a strong undercurrent of both indigenous cultural stories and remnants of its past colonial heritage this project articulates and positions researched locally sourced design choices which have been interwoven into the natural surroundings and community to present a more inclusive and varied understanding of how a variety of architectural interventions can stimulate regional relevancy.

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Architecture Also

Annika Lammers Supervisor: Simone Koch

This project investigates what architecture is and what architecture is also. This project is about redistributing the value in architecture. The value is in the process. The architecture is the process. I am interested in uncovering a network that sits within a place. The architecture being the nodes, existing – but not in isolation. The synthesis between the built form, process, and my considerations is the built outcome. What does it mean to be sick? Not healthy. What does it mean to be healthy? Not sick. This binary simplification of the way we see health needs to extend itself. The major project manifests in a hospital, but not as we currently know it. This proposition exposes the inherent simplicity of all we require and looks closely at how much of the existing circumstance we can commandeer to fulfill the brief. The process uses the hand- built to reiterate the idea of the material shaping the process, the process informing the architecture which then informs the Architect. A book by Emanuel Cheraskin stated that “every new idea goes through three phases: ridicule, discussion and general acceptance”. By doing this project, it now occupies a place within the discursive realm. Situating itself within the discipline with the objective of shifting our understanding of what architecture is and what architecture is also.

Architecture Also

The value is in the process.

This project will be discussed through my process, that is as an integrated whole. My process was established in the first five weeks of major project. The process uses the hand-built to reiterate the idea of the material shaping the process, the process informing the architecture which then informs the architect.

This architecture looks closely at the existing and how much of the existing circumstance we can commandeer to fulfill the brief. I will discuss the instances that appear throughout my project to illustrate how I’ve taken the areas of interest to me and placed them in a much bigger conversation. What I consider to be architecture and what you should consider to be architecture also.

What I consider to be architecture and what you should consider to be architecture also.

This project manifests in a hospital, but not as we currently know it. The hospital, a known and undisputed civic place, necessarily formal, necessarily complex in its multiple paths of circulation, acts as a device for observations to be made of, and for a subjective conception to be cast upon.

This proposition exposes the inherent simplicity of all we require.

What does it mean to be sick? Not healthy. What does it mean to be healthy? Not sick. This binary simplification of the way we see health need extend itself. This proposition exposes the inherent simplicity of all we require. It all starts with a few simple things. We need good quality food and organic produce, sunlight for vitamin d, exercise for good physical and mental health, fresh water and air and meaningful connections with the people around us. A hand-built thought object was created from week’s one to four. Week one, a publication. Week two, a hanging mobile. Week three, a waste terrazzo tile. Week four, a light fitting.

This portion of the project manifested itself in Tom’s coffee shop. The coffee shop, comfortably intuitive, familiar to most established the testing ground for an idea that the place could by anything, but this could not be anywhere. I proposed that any space was capable of the framework, but no other space can replicate the connections that are formed within a place. It was at this point that the project which positioned itself within Tom’s Coffee Shop was projected into a much larger context, a hospital.

Material shaping the process, the process informing the architecture which then informs the architect. The thought object in the instance of the hospital is the awning. The awning becomes a typology for a new public health architecture. I will discuss how the awning shifts and engages the exact circumstance to reposition our perception of how we view health. The awning originated from Dom’s Nonna’s house. He visits his Nonna every couple of weeks only to come home with a truck load of hand-picked organic produce and pockets full of figs.

The awning, distinctive of a past time, a recognisable icon for all.

The awning, distinctive of a past time, a recognisable icon for all, sits comfortably on the front façade of Dom’s Nonna’s. What started as a simple metaphor of when ‘the awning is down, fresh produce is available’ developed into the iconic awning becoming the signifier for a new integrated public health architecture that populates our surrounds.

You can see it out the front of the Brunswick Baths.

You can see it out the front of Brunswick Baths. An awning striped flag flapping next to the Moreland city council flag gets the attention of those in need of a swim. Their outdoor pool remains to be one of the few saltwater pools located in the inner city. Once in, a glimpse of the awning on the bottom of the swimming pool reminds you to settle into the space, taking a few longer breaths. One in ten post boxes are wrapped to suggest that the occasional act of generosity isn’t enough, and we need to embody thoughtfulness through everything we do. Not turning to form as the answer but providing a 50c stamp highlights the inherent simplicity of remembering to connect with our loved ones, giving ourselves just as much fulfillment as the one receiving the message on the other end.

Small reminders peppered throughout the La Trobe Reading Room suggests a slowing down of the city. An invitation for one to take an unknown book off the shelf, perhaps instigating a new-found interest, outside of study and work.

The undoing of a hospital brief and a reconfiguring of it in the form of an awning in various circumstances highlights a shift in the way we view health. Reiterating the idea of the material shaping the process, the process informing the architecture which then informs the architect.

Hand-built thought objects.

I want to go into more detail about the hand-built objects and how they play a significant role in establishing another mode of practicing. I will explain these objects starting with the book and will then describe the process behind the making. The book.

What started as an investigation into the question of what architecture is and what architecture is also, manifested itself in the form of a publication. I identified the elements in architecture that continued to appear in the AIA Awards from 1989-2020. I categorised, abstracted and reassembled these elements in an attempt to suggest that innovation in this context follows a certain trajectory. When flicking through the book, I was inspired only to the extent of the available outcomes. There was no consideration of a layering that extended to my own milieu.

Finding out that concrete consisted of three parts aggregate, two parts sand and one part cement was new to me. The feedback in response to my research was “here we have an observation, so what is the proposition?”. It made me consider if something could still be architecture if all of these elements were reassembled in a way that was unfamiliar.

From observation to proposition, I made a hanging mobile. The mobile was created from brass scraps from a metal yard that were reimagined. The piece is able to intersect with itself and transform the space from within, evolving over time. The mobile is infinitely mutable, changing constantly. A question that arose during this exploration was, ‘how do aspects of architecture that we see as fixed, become dynamic? Tom’s coffee shop was a perfect way to explore this. You can see on the top left corner of the panel that Tom has a bench where he lays his elbow when he takes a break. Noticing this idiosyncrasy, I transformed the bench to accommodate this small gesture, creating a groove where his elbow leans. I propose that architecture should respond to the people that interact with it. The waste terrazzo tile.

The waste terrazzo tile pays homage to the idea of meeting over coffee. Using the tiles as plinths to place a coffee cup on. This hand-built item reiterates the idea of the material shaping the process, the process informing the architecture which then informs the architect. The process behind the making was as follows.

The tiles were picked up from Max and Al’s bathroom renovation in Coburg as well as me knocking on a building site door two houses down asking if they had any waste material. Then came the 30-minute conversation with Steve, who was responsible for the concrete seating outside of Tom’s. Finding out that concrete consisted of three parts aggregate, two parts sand and one part cement was new to me. Making the molds for the tiles, I needed a circular saw. My friend Harry, who is a jeweler, has a studio in Brunswick. I borrowed the circ saw and some screws and made my mold, blunting a few screws in the process. A trip to Fulton’s in Alphintgton at the crack of dawn supplied

me with sample bags of aggregate and sand. At this point I was thinking of putting used coffee grounds in the terrazzo, the guys at Fulton’s directed me next door to reground, a small business that collects used coffee grounds for composting, worm farms and making soap. I not only left with aggregate and sand but a big bag of coffee grounds. I was fortunate enough to snag some chicken wire whilst at dinner that night, the final thing in preparation for the casting.

Design should be of a space, not on it. Changing into some overalls, lent to me by my dad’s oldest childhood friend, I got to work. Placing the tiles at the bottom of the mold, mixing up the concrete to a consistency that I had no idea was going to work, I poured it in, sandwiched chicken wire in between and set it aside. Left with hands that were mildly burning. A day before taking apart the mold, I walked two doors down to where they’re doing the renovation, with the concrete mold in hand and asked the concreter if he thought it looked dry. Without realising, I entered yet another 20-minute conversation about concrete and left with a fluoro green solution, likened to ‘sugar water’ which I learnt was what was used to expose the top of concrete. This process is the architecture;the most significant and meaningful aspect of my major project. The matrix of people, conversation, material, knowledge, manipulation and emotion encapsulates why and what I’m doing. Allowing the information, experience and knowledge that has been gathered to act as a narrative which informs the process of making, then informing the architecture and finally informing me, as the architect. I propose architecture’s order to be inspire, do, consider. The light. The light fitting uses clay is from my friend’s parent’s property in Limestone. It is an example of being inspired by the surrounding, that is, responding to the environment as it is and taking cues from it rather than circumscribing what exists so to assert one’s own design on the space. This project understands design to be of a space rather than on it.

The awning. The one-to-one awning was explored at a one-to-one scale through the making of a seat turned swing. The awning is relevant to the architecture because rather than seeking out materials that conform to the idea, the material informs the idea. Instead of predicting the space through interpretation of what we think that space is, it questions the notion of “why aren’t we inspired by the space? And why don’t we learn to be within”.

Annika Lammers

This was born out of my considerations regarding the AIA awards in which we see pieces of architecture judged straight after their completion. I imagined if the built forms were judged ten years after their completion. How much more would an architect build upon the design, in response to, inspired by and so to facilitate the genuine interaction between the built form and the people occupying it.

I now imagine a public health architecture in ten years time. I now imagine a public health architecture in ten years-time. Could we transform what I perceive to be a linear process from concept design to built outcome into a process that is cyclical? This cyclical process would, like the awning, see a space continue to be molded and layered beyond the point that we deem as complete. The concept of a hand over would be abolished. Shifting the value and attention toward the upkeep and maintenance of public health architecture would do just that, upkeep and maintain public health. The process behind the making of the swing was as follows: I got my hands on an awning in Gisborne. An early start to fit in a walk near Macedon meant that we were there by 9am. Lugging the awnings into my little i20, we spotted a for sale sign across the road, a house selling chicken and duck eggs. We met Jenny. A fifty (or so) year old woman, kindly letting us in and in no time showing us her centrifuge operation for making honey, gifting us blue duck eggs, presenting her current Master of Fine Arts proposal and lastly inviting us to her final exhibition on September 1st. We then dropped into the local Gisborne butcher, buying a free range chook and learning of their 40-year family-owned business. Voicing my concerns on the way home, about how I was going to build this chair, my friend Harry who was in the back seat mentioned he had a sewing awl. I dropped him home in return for the tool. Wrapping myself in this awning, whilst attempting to sew and then flip it inside out, had me nearly in tears. Not to mention the attempts to hang it up in a tree to photograph the awning in a ‘circumstance’.

Consistently attempting to move from my small-scale coffee intervention, presented at week five, to a larger scale civic space sent me in to a questioning of why I was doing what I was doing. It was at this point I attended the funeral of my mum’s business partner, who she described as a gp practicing conventional medicine in an unconventional way, I found myself unknowingly speaking to the person who founded the national institute of integrative medicine that I reached out to long before starting my major project, to see if I could chat to their research team about merging my interest in both health and architecture. What ended up with a two-hour long conversation with Avni about many things, including the impact that architecture can have on health, left me with an answer of the importance of this project. For the last week and a half, I have been considering my project. This project was in essence, ‘completed’ two weeks ago as the fabric panel was sent to print. I have used this time to continue to layer upon the project, manipulate, illustrate, map and create a publication. The publication delivering me back to where I first began this project, with the book.

This process came from mebut isnolongermyown. Finding myself positioned with where I began and reintegrating my learnings back into this project shows that this process came from me but is no longer my own. The proposition in use, is, in of itself, form for a mode of practice rather than a personal project. It extends itself far beyond me, beyond this major project and places itself in a much larger conversation within the profession. It proposes another way of practicing and reminds one that we are humans in the world before we are architects and that we should act accordingly. A book that I read recently by Emanuel Cheraskin stated in the introduction that “every new idea goes through three phases: ridicule, discussion and general acceptance”. By doing this project it now occupies a place within the discursive realm. Situating itself within the discipline with the objective of shifting our understanding of what architecture is and what architecture is also.

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Walk in “Tableaus” Zixuan Zhao Supervisor: Patrick Macasaet

Rather than designing buildings from functional proposes, the project considers space from “actions it witnesses”, using performance nature as a structure to speculate and curate spatial relations around historical and cultural environments, city behaviours and activities. Architecture as a way of recording, creating and acting in the city, providing experiences of memories and culture collections from citizen views. Using a collection method of actions in daily life of local surroundings, discovering from site history and local culture, as “actors” which act in architecture design process in the project. Plots of performance making audience scenarios, to think performance as an art way that display multiple action phases. The way of considering architecture space through sequences in juxtaposed and conflicting action phases to arrange and act as city performance. The project uses a critique vision of what architecture does in the city to give a new sense of communities in traditional surroundings around by modern city life. As a way to have new understanding of action possibilities in public space inside community, and reconsider in position of traditional areas in historical cities.

Economy of Means James Cosgrave Supervisor: Simone Koch

Less bound up in the fanciful and more interested in the prosaic, my project addresses the current housing crisis in Victoria, seeking to reassert the architect as a figure capable of meaningful social change. Categorised into elements and spaces, collectively the proposed architectural language aims to provide the maximum through the minimum of resources. With the increasing privatisation and demolition of inner-city public housing blocks, less affluent demographics are banished to the outer suburbs of the city, alienated both geographically and socially. The housing is therefore conceived as a model to be deployed across 3 scales - the outer suburbs, the inner suburbs and the CBD, reflecting the argument that affordable housing should be available to anyone, anywhere. Underpinning both the urban and architectural concept is a proposed financial model that aims to remove the home, that is to say, architecture from its current position as an instrument of capital accumulation. As Carol Willis notes, Form follows Finance, and so my proposed architectural logic is inextricable from the ideology of a co-operative Community Land Trust. From the financial structure to the banality of the everyday, from the letterbox to the downpipe, and from the outer suburbs to the inner city, each scale is as important as the next, making the project a bricolage without hierarchy. A model that in time can serve as an exemplar of design for the common good prevailing over private gain.

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Zero Carbon City Tongyang Xu Supervisor: Prof. Tom Kovac

The Zero Carbon City is aimed to create an ecological environment city which analysed and adjusted systematically by an artificially intelligent system. Greenhouse gases and carbon emissions are the key issues which is going to be dealt with by the new city system. The system will be including a city infrastructure transportation system and microalgae purification system. Systems linked different density living environments and purifies the city atmosphere. In the design, the Elevated city form is showing the key idea of the design. The whole city would be an environment, which is increasing the value of the human living in the urban environment. Is not just the concrete city with no life. Human living space are going to be vertical. And multi-living zone are going to the top of the city. This will create another big volume for different species between the city-system structures.

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M A J OR P ROJ E CT S E M E S TE R 1 2 0 2 1 TOM K OVA C TONGYA NG X U

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Something Somewhere Wen Bin Liau Supervisor: A/Prof. Graham Crist

This project explores the ways of seeing architectural objects, fragments, and questions the part-towhole relationship. Looking at abandoned buildings and the ones that are facing the risk of being demolished, this project is concerned with the possibilities of displacement. Removing these found objects from their origins and bringing them into a new context aim to extend their lives with new meanings. In reference to Marcel Duchamp’s work, Fountain, it questions the status of these objects if they fall into the categories of junk, treasure, or commodity. Through blurring the boundaries, I intended to study the fascination with objects in the context of architecture. The proposed building allows the found objects and materials to be collected, sorted, valued, catalogued, stored, and then recycled. It explores the role of space in not only fulfilling the functions but also affecting the perception of objects and how people use the space.

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Window Type – MP Synopsis Anastasia Horomidis Supervisor: Andre Bonnice & Jean-Marie Spencer Rivalled only by clocks as perfect timekeepers, windows are our portal between the internal and external. They have, like many other architectural elements, fallen prey to mass production and standardisation of the generic. The window has morphed into an unrecognisable and seemingly undisturbed sheet of glass, flawless. This offers little to the spaces internally and, as those outside attempt a glimpse of a building’s inner workings, they are only able to see themselves and their community in the reflection.     What have we lost to the ‘junk space’ of generic modernisation and industrialisation? Should we not, at least when faced with a window, be able to see some remnant of design consideration in such an integral architectural domain. We might realise, when we can no longer replace what we have destroyed, that glass is only part of a window and that the whole is incomparably greater than its parts.      Brushed up, clashing, and asserting a position, these windows represent various augmented interactions between the generic façade, slab and ceiling which are otherwise absent from a typical curtain wall application. The windows are the enabler for social exchanges, quiet moments, grand connections, tactile cues, and occupational enclosures. As the uncanny is explored through scale, position, materiality, and function, each window quietly reveals itself as a character of an entirely new description.

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POST-EARTHQUAKE SEEDS Qianbin Xu Supervisor: Prof. Alisa Andrasek

This project explored the idea of industry 4.0 and prefabricated timber components to help the rapid reconstruction of post-earthquake areas, targeting the development of new urban clusters for the recent earthquake devastated town of Petrinja Croatia. Applying sustainable building materials cross laminated timber and the traditional Chinese interlocking joints, it offers significant carbon capture and lighter earthquake resilient structures. This project will be able to provide the solution of re-inhabitation by introducing new lifestyles reflecting co-living and co-working and high-quality living conditions. Meanwhile, prefabricated timber components can be reconfigured to adapt to future changes.

QR City Samuel Campbell Supervisor: Danielle Peck & Sam Hunter Our newfound need to track public movements creating an emerging breed of smart public infrastructure. Connected through the internet of things, it creates a shift in design prerogatives, urban design and architecture towards creating a system which is interconnected, reactive and most importantly reliant upon the collection of individual private data in the name of public welfare. The project explores the ramifications of this new connectedness on the individual creating the data which the system itself relies upon. Contained within the new dilapidated State Library of Victoria, now data centre, the project questions power structures and autonomy of individuals through various takes on Classicism.

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In Transit Tiffany Yu Supervisor: Ian Nazareth

Time flows inconsistently - it is neither linear nor absolute. The way we experience the passing of time in our minds changes constantly throughout just one day; its pace fluctuates with our daily moods and activities. Living within the age of the internet, this discrepancy continues to grow with the possibility of being here and now and being somewhere else simultaneously. We all operate within our own time zones. There is not one single time and there is a different rhythm in every different place.  The city is read and mapped through the lens of flowing time zones – the movement of the occupants and the narrative of archaeological artefacts unearthed from below. This map establishes a model to generate a series of systems and volumetric connections to excavate City Square with. The project seeks to restore city square as a central node; embedding civic life within the new Town Hall station. The station is no longer only transitional, but a destination to rediscover stories of the past, encounters with the unfamiliar while capturing and mediating the continuous flux of the city.

The Persistence of Memory Maryanne Waiting Supervisor: Vicky Lam

This project seeks to define and explore the relationship between architecture and rituals. How can the architecture facilitate rituals, or alter existing ones through built form? Architecture is determined by habit and tradition, and as buildings are so assimilated into our experiences, they become consumed by the value of its rituals. What decrees a sacred space, and what defines the profane? Situated on Batman Park and amongst a viaduct forever in limbo, the project turns a dead space into a space for the dead – and the living. It challenges the familiarity of the city through the exploration of the known and the expected, into the unknown and the unexpected. Rituals, through repetition and persistence, are given a meaning and a myth – actions are performed to affect an object and prescribe value through the message that it utters. Through a new reading of the site and altered performances of everyday rituals, the proximity and transmutation of the profane into something ‘other’ allows for a provocation of our assumptions and expectations of a space.

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A UNIVERSAL BODY; for living in Sirini Chrismarie Fernando Supervisors: Dr. John Doyle & Paul van Herk

The womb is a universal vessel; the organ that first provides, nourishes and shelters human life. Viewing the city as a single grotesque body, my major project speculates a new universality through a model of Universal Basic Housing. It forms new social conditions both architectural and human, with an infinitely diverse provision of domestic space. I investigate through history in search for an alternate universality. What are the alternate trajectories that hold for the city if history was erased up to Pre Neolithic times? How would this affect housing? What would it be to abolish the social welfare program and provide basic housing and household needs to the population? A single grotesque body which is purely internalized and composed of entirely the domestic space. The body is strange but familiar. Romanticized. It is infinitely diverse, the new urban organs provide different possibilities and permeation of social conditions. It enables the occupants to participate in public life, idiosyncratic behaviour in its function. The Universal body is the transformation of architecture to a new relevance, an alternate universality which rebuilds the city, succeeded by the making of architecture that enables rather than exists. It is a body for living in.

A UNIVERSAL BODY;

for living in

93 93 Sirini Chrismarie Fernando s3438857

Grow in Difference Yueyu Tang Supervisor: Dr. Jan van Schaik

Grow in Difference means the hybrid growth of culture, society and space. The ""urban renewal"" aimed at improving the quality of life has tended to go one step further by removing the rich layers of historic neighbourhoods and the mix of urban life, and replacing them with a global, commercial standard. The gentrification of the city is creating an urban malaise of social division and boredom. In the face of this reality, the project calls for a diversified ""symbiotic"" urban model. The project root is the recognition and tolerance of different origins, different states, and different values at the cultural, social, and spatial levels, is a rebellion against mainstream cultural centrism. The project will explore how to reimagine, reuse, and reconstruct existing urban village spaces and buildings. The propose of the project is still to help NANTOU grow up and blend into the metropolis and might become the popular space to go. Accommodate more interesting programs, using local context to propose a different living style to the city.

YOUTH CENTER FASHION SHOP APARTMENT

LIBRARY CLUB APARTMENT

RESTAURANT HAIR SALON

Lost in Translation Yuhan Xie Supervisor: Danielle Peck & Sam Hunter

Heritage has been misused and mistranslated in the era of demolishing faster than we can preserve. This results in a discontinuity, whereby architectural discourse experiences progress and heritage thinking lags behind. To recognize evolving heritage, the role of an ‘adversary’ for a heritage renovation has been assumed by my project; a new mechanism of ‘translation’ is generated and tested. It expands upon the meaning and essence of (in)tangible inheritances on site, while negotiating and enhancing tension between contemporary built forms and history. Translation is neither preservation nor conservation. It re-appropriates, highlights and expands upon heritage built-form by continually (re)fabricating and acknowledging that reanimated heritage stays relevant. Sitting quietly on the corner of Gertrude and Nicholson Streets lies the former Cable Tram Engine House. Built in 1886, it currently has no interaction with its adjacencies, little appreciation of its past use and no forward looking future. A Centre for Fabrication, to be occupied by advocates of history is proposed here. Upon deep-listening to the site, new contending voices are interwoven, providing more opportunities for translating on a spectrum. Hence, interaction between architecture and urban environment increases and diversifies. The resulting built form is intentionally fluid; important structures, revealed in the process, take hierarchical precedence. I have tested this working methodology on this site in order to try and develop a process that I felt captured a plurality of representation and enabled us to see old buildings as useful, relevant structures with both a past, present and future. They are not monuments, to be turned-on, or to be embalmed. Too often the approach is either one of tabula rasa, or guarded sentimentality. I’m interested in the in-between - with careful yet bold intervention we can re-use our built environment without erasing place. The Centre for Fabrication teaches the skills needed to do so. Fabrication, once heritage’s gravest supposed vice, becomes a virtue. The Centre for Fabrication teaches the skills needed to do so. Fabrication, once heritage’s gravest supposed vice, becomes a virtue.

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Capture the Truth Zhejun Wang Supervisor: Adam Pustola

Due to changes in information structure and economic uncertainty, we have entered the post-truth era, where people appeal to emotions and beliefs rather than facts. False information and unfounded conspiracy theories are rampant, and critical thinking is easily overwhelmed by a flood of opinions and primitive emotions. This project is about truth and untruth and it aims to introduce a moment of reflection for the public by rebuilding the State Library of Victoria, and encourage people to see the world with reasoning and critical thinking, then 'by doubting we are led to question, by questioning we arrive at the truth'.

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New Lifestyle Street Jasper Fisher Supervisor: Dr. Leanne Zilka

We are laying witness to some of the most fundamental shifts to the academic landscape in generations. There is a blurring between the didactic institutional facilities we utilize for study and the dwellings we otherwise take residence in. At the same time, our cities are urbanizing, educational facilities are needing to expand vertically and, on another front, residential affordability for young people is growing more out of reach and becoming less and less unappealing. New Lifestyle Street is a reaction to these changes. The project converges academic and lifestyle spaces into the one architectural condition to halve the spatial resources required by students. In doing so it creates a single space that thoughtfully reconciles our changing lifestyle needs with our altering attitudes towards pedagogies. This mashing of architectural typologies is choreographed to break down the spatial separation between young people with sweeping horizontality and interconnection if its vibrant spaces all while encouraging students to take greater ownership of their campus that while looking like a university building is no longer characterized by transient occupation, breathing new life into university resources that may otherwise become less and less relevant.

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Adaptive reuse on courtyard house Jing Wu Supervisor: Dr. Anna Johnson

This project is about a series of programs that focus on updating the existing courtyard in Beijing and providing some new typologies to create the future community. What should hutong become? Does rebuild mean to destroy another hutong again? I am trying to reflect on the development of courtyards in the past decades and create a better community for the future. Based on the vernacular elements and structure, this project is rebuilding the existing courtyard house, adding more functions to improve the community vitality. Key words: Respect the culture, Service for today, Evolution for the future.

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Just About Architecture Joshua Batterton Supervisor: Danielle Peck & Sam Hunter

This project is predicated on the understanding that indigenous culture is disproportionately unrepresented within the built environment. The tired, cliché response of the Architect as conduit for the synthesis of designing by listening to an indigenous client, subtly disguises systems of class and race segregation that understand the role of the professional as one belonging only to the dominant culture. There are 12000 registered Architects in Australia, less than ten of whom are indigenous. If the profession accurately represented the population, we would have 396 indigenous Architects. The proposal seeks to understand how we enable a more diverse Architectural profession through the genesis of the Just About Architecture School, a program for people existing in marginalised communities to practice understandings of architecture from their own unique cultural lens. Notions of Architecture, just about, are explored through a series of design build studio projects that propagate an understanding to the community that architecture has meaning and value beyond what may conventionally be understood. Located on Gertrude St, Fitzroy, the project explores what it means for the practice of architecture to exist on the high street and how we as architects may shift from proposing appropriation to enabling appropriate proposition.

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Mine Mine Mine Liam Kuhnell Supervisor: Alisa Andrasek

This project takes place on land where once, through systematic planning and intimate knowledge of the country, the landscape was designed through cultivation techniques resulting not only sustainable, but abundant and renewable necessities. 247,000km of land, proposed to be one of the world’s largest open cut mines, this collection of mines will more than double Australia’s annual coal exports resulting in this region in Queensland to rank in as the world’s seventh largest fossil fuel polluter. The end product jobs, money, energy and devastation- followed by rehabilitation which makes it all okay... right? With the UN calling for the world to stop using coal within the electricity sector and for wealthier nations to cease in order to meet global warming goals. Mine, mine, mine! Is a project that looks to clean renewable energy within an infrastructural project to not only give back to the environment but attempt to make up for past global negligence. Taking advantage of technology in order to capture, store and use clean energy but also capture carbon already within the atmosphere and store it safely resulting in negative emissions. The project speculates an energy factory on what would be thought of as a stupid scale, but I beg to differ. The project speculate an energy factory on what would be though of as a stupid scale, but I beg to differ.

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Again, see the village Yukuan Zhao Supervisor: Anna Johnson

How can architecture contribute to maintaining local cultural diversity in rural China? As well as respond to the competing influence of globalization and retaining the local culture? And how do we re-understand the relationship between “rural” and “city”?    The main purpose of this project is to investigate Chinese villages in a state of transition, exploring the key problems, and evolve design methods and strategies for the future difficulties faced by China’s rural development. Intervene in the Yanjing village through programs at different scales, becomes a new billboard for the village, and speculate ahead the future scenario in this village, which China's rural areas will become one of the most coveted places to live in the country.

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The Mist Shaocheng Xing Supervisor: Alisa Andrasek

The project is a public structure and part of the landscape of the wetland park in Shenyang nearby the Hun River with a labyrinthine interior space which aims to provide a unique user experience while propagates the culture of the mother river and showcase the ecological system of the riverside. The building itself borrows the natural hydraulic power of the Hun River to form a special indoor ecological garden, and the meandering stream that flows through underground also guides the visitor to explore the space. The organic pattern on top of the building uses a solar energy collection system and brings an idiosyncratic light and shadow experience. The Tyndall effect happens between the humid underground water vapor cloud, and the natural warm light from the top makes the user feel like living in a fairyland above the clouds, intricate and meditative.

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Island Melbourne Yucheng Feng Supervisor: Adam Pustola

The rising sea level seems far away from us, however, according to the government, Port Melbourne will lose around 40% of its land if we do nothing for that. The landscapes and buildings that carry our memories will be inundated by the future floods that are yet to come. My project aims to protect the history of Port Melbourne and create a new adaptive resilience system. In my project, you will see the future city view, like a floating Sandridge station or the Linear Park in the mists. One interesting thing is that Port Melbourne started from a sandy and swampy land, people are building more and more buildings on it and finally we lose some of them and the lands turns back to the swamp again.

3 Swallow And Ariell Factory

5 J. Kitchen & Sons Factory

4 Town Hall

2 Sandridge Railway Station

6 Sandridge Railway

1 Station Pier

10 The Light House Plaza

7 West Gateway Bridge

8 Boeing Factory Market

9 Webb Dock Terminal

Maps

European Settlement

Indigenous landscape

1835-1951

Growing Industrial

After Industrial

Boeing Factory Market

Station Pier Terminal

West Gateway Platform

1851-1980s

1980 to 2021

Flooded Map

2021 to 2120

View

The Light House

Sandridge Railway Park

Diagram Resilience System

Transportation

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Informal Surgery

Deepankar D. Sharma Supervisor: A/Prof. Graham Crist

Informal Surgery is a design experiment to dissect and examine an informal settlement in India, aiming to surgically add a series of architectural objects such as Sanitation Facilities reminiscing “Baoli” - Indian Stepwells, Residential Units recalling “Haveli” - Traditional Mansion, Smoke Infrastructures following the traditional construction methods and Public Spaces inspired by “Baithak” - A Communal Space. The purpose of this is to enhance the environment for the residents of Kumbharwada - the potters’ settlement in Dharavi, to thrive and prosper. An eager endeavour is made to not merely address the issues at the site but to formulate an environment that the residents rejoice and relish. The aim is to address the 3 S’s identified at site post-examination, that are space, sanitation and smoke. This is conducted by coupling the examined incremental principles at site with the formulated rules for the urban insertions. The design experiment culminates with a proposal which is an intermediate alternative between the existing informal settlement and the state’s proposal for total clearance of the informal settlement. “When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. But when I’m finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it’s wrong.” - Buckminster Fuller

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Womin(d)jeka Kitrawee Rudeejaruswan Supervisor: Christine Phillips

Architecture plays a major role in creating memories of a place. However, urban development in Australian cities post settlement blanketed Indigenous lands with their values, placed layers of concrete, steel and glass over the Country with little understanding of its relation toward people. It is not just the built environment that has become a vessel of memories, but also the water, land and sky that contain the memories and connection we have to this place. But much of the current built environment honours the memories of other places far away, with different climates, plants, cultures, and animal species overriding over the land. This has led to a layered tapestry of memories from places elsewhere, but in doing so, has also obliterated any links to our First nations peoples and cultures. This major project is a project of reconciliation, an architecture which wrestles with multiple layers of history and memories of place. Using the Immigration Museum of Victoria as a testing ground, it proposes an architecture which celebrates the knowledge and cultures of both Aboriginal and non-Indigenous people. This site is significantly crucial for both immigrants and First Nations peoples.

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Quarantine Revolution Nan Yang Supervisor: Vicky Lam

"Quarantine Revolution" is a project seeking a hybrid-flexible design program and revolute the current quarantine facilities. It explores the spatial design opportunities associated with Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton's idea of a purpose-built quarantine facility for welfare issues. Victoria is urging a higherquality quarantine facility for the city to accept more people to come back and cope with the issues mentioned by infectious disease experts, 'many hotels are unsuitable for quarantining because of poor ventilation and those purpose-built facilities in the bush would be preferable.' We can argue that people need purpose-built quarantine facilities, hotels do not work. We also need a place that can be pleased and must be an absolute quarantine. The proposal of Quarantine Revolution becomes a future, a different kind of hotel program that people enjoy these 14 days since arriving at the airport from overseas. The whole project is also seeking the potential of turning into other facilities after the pandemic finishes. The experiments of this concept will be tested within the project to maximum the architectural thinking of 'flexibility'.

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Co-co Living Yiying Wang Supervisor: A/Prof. Graham Crist

The idea of this project is to increase social interaction within residential dwelling to achieve a collective sense of belonging. The target is for anyone who appreciates the culture of collection living with providing 137 homes and communal space. The project re-think and re-define to the most development that focuses on singular units instead of seeing the whole as one building with many rooms. Using various scales of privacy, compatible with reasonable public spaces while ensuring privacy, creating a semi-private transitional space, and promoting the formation of a sense of community. All rooms are designed by serval modules with same size, brings characteristic as a model of community housing for equals.

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Living In A Bubble Xuanyun Song Supervisors: A/Prof. Graham Crist

‘A building is like a soap bubble’- Le Corbusier. ‘The very condition of architectural form is to separate and to be separated’- Pier Vittorio. The project, which is located in Melbourne CBD, is a narrative of surveillance and future lifestyles. Living In A Bubble is a fun park that explores how to provide leisure space for Melbourne people under the age of surveillance, isolation, social distancing and virtual social media. So, what is an architecture and future lifestyle where different pandemics are now normal? The stress of estrangement and isolation - Due to the COVID - 19, the recent social distancing might be here to stay for a long time. And, the digital communication networks have exposed anxieties, paranoia, and the distortion of interactions. These are on top of workplace pressures. This is a place to release these stresses -while staying outside, and isolated. Full surveillance and zero privacy - Melbourne CBD is a space of total exposure - a physical equivalent of the space of Facebook, a friendly version of the city filled with CCTV cameras. So, it is a space where the lack of privacy is accepted as part of being public.

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Re-Express The Culture & Local Characteristics Shuran Jia Supervisor: Dr. Leanne Zilka

The city has grown extremely rapidly and still growing rapidly, designers and the city have turned their back on what spaces work for people. The purpose of the project is to explore the space of local character. Which kind of space is more welcome in practical use. Many architects emphasize their own ideas and personalities, resulting in buildings that do not serve the public well. Too much emphasis on form leads to the loss of the actual functionality of the building. This project selected a shopping centre with the above-mentioned problems and rebuilt it according to the lifestyle and habits of the local people. The contrast between the old and the new elements can be seen in the building. Spaces that are more in line with local people's lives have been added to the site. The function and form of the site and the building were re-planned and re-designed. The living habits of local residents have been considered more.

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0 Waste Island Zhipeng Lin Supervisor: Dr. Leanne Zilka

My project is called 0 Waste Island. Mainly paying attention to the problems of waste disposal and landfill situations in China, Wuxi. Wuxi is a city with rapid economic development in recent years. Like many fast-growing cities, Wuxi faces many problems. The shortage of urban land, the rapid generation of waste, the aging of the population and so on.  It is clear that unless we rethink our built environment, our cities will become increasingly unsustainable, unaffordable and socially unequal. To improve this situation and make people aware of the importance of good waste separation, recycling and disposal. I propose to use the process of waste landfill to create a new island and build a 0-waste community on this island. This community can produce all their own food and energy – a self-sufficiency model that aims to deal with current issues of Wuxi, from the food and water crisis to the rise of CO2 emissions.  The 0 Waste Island looks at how we can create new realities that promote a sense of wellbeing and turn the spaces we inhabit into healthier and happier places, all while being more affordable and efficient for people living there.

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Edge Community Zhicheng Hou Supervisor: Dr. Jan van Schaik

"Edge" does not represent a clear boundary, but uncertainty. The rising sea level is the result of nature's response to the "war" on the edge. And this project aims to respond to the topic with speculative architectural language. The rising sea level aroused several environmental uncertainties to the marginal zone, which led to the gradual destruction of the structure of the city. However, the transformation of the environment is a slow process. Therefore, the project will be formulated in short-term and long-term design strategies to tackle with this process. In order to respond to the changes in the short term, maximising the adaptability of the community becomes the major concern. First, respond to the disaster caused by environmental changes with designated structure. Second, assist the community to reach a balance point between urban structure and the future urban development prospect with highly adaptable design. Besides, as the community adapted to the current urban structure, it would eventually grow regarding the changes and needs to achieve the goal of sustainability in the long-term design. Moreover, the methodology of modular design also enhances the adaptability and flexibility of the community, allowing it to grow and adapt to the future environment and hence attain sustainable development.

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Imprint Nour El-leissy Supervisor: Ian Nazareth

The project explores the relationship between the architect and the built environment and how this shapes public health. The critique on the analysis of healthy suburbs sees a new way of rethinking the impact architects have on urban public health. Unlike traditional methods of designing, the project explores how we can use forms similar to those found in hostile and defensive architecture to redefine how we interact with spaces which deteriorate our health. The process is to redesign fragments in these high-risk buffer space to control the access and behaviour of people in these spaces. This is explored through using existing fragments of the space and an architectural vocabulary inspired by using defensive forms. This mobile and modular scale set design takes an adaptable approach for maximum flexibility and adaptability. As a result, we begin to question our role as architects, can we justify breaking the architects act if we agree that it will result in the overall good of the public? Do we aim to rewrite the architects act or in this scenario accept that we are no longer architects but rather designers who aim to challenge the traditions of design for the overall good of the public health?

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5 min city Weiteng Zhuang Supervisors: Dr. Jan van Schaik

The intention of the project is to explore how new factory and housing typologies and small-scaled public activity areas can help us construct a conceptual 5-minute urban model, by initiating a specific architectural design project for production and living spaces represented by the factory and housing complex. From the perspective of architecture, how to coordinate the relationship between various factories, residential buildings and office buildings, and use the building structure to ""isolate"" some polluting factories, and at the same time explore how agriculture and industry can enrich the lives of urban residents. 5 minutes’ walk to complete most of the city needs. Buildings are often related to the external environment, but due to the need to design corresponding factories, the design of the building with the least impact on the urban environment (the most enclosed building) is considered.

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New Campus Plaza Xianyi Meng Supervisor: A/Prof. Graham Crist

The main focus of this project is on the meaning of the campus square, which should not be just an open space, but should also have a closer connection with the students' life because, for most people, the campus square is often a transit point between home and the teaching building. The project is located on the campus of the University of Melbourne, close to MSD and student union house. According to the future policy, we will look for the functions of the surrounding buildings that are missing in the student life, to establish a series of functional buildings, as the continuation of the surrounding buildings, and enrich the nature of the site, redefining the definition of the campus square. In addition, the use of the surrounding buildings to form a virtual ""wall"", so that the internal square can become a more independent and open space, bringing a more relaxed atmosphere for students.

new campus plaza shops

workshops

hotel exhibition

office

lecture

bar

studying room

--- 1 e c i f of --2 --- 3 m r o a o b ing r y stud re --- 4 u lect --- 5 6 l hote shops -k wor --- 7 8 s shop ition --b i exh

9 --- temporary market 10 --- the Long Corridor 11 --- grassland area 12 --- landscape chair

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Supervisors Semester 1, 2021 Major Project Coordinator Amy Muir Major Project Moderation Panel Prof. Vivian Mitsogianni A/Prof. Paul Minifie Rodney Eggleston Dr. John Doyle Amy Muir Major Project Supervisors Adam Pustola Prof. Alisa Andrasek Andre Bonnice Anna Jankovic Dr. Anna Johnson Dr. Christine Phillips Danielle Peck Dean Boothroyd Dr. Emma Jackson A/Prof. Graham Crist Ian Nazareth Dr. Jan van Schaik Jean-Marie Spencer Dr. John Doyle Dr. Leanne Zilka Loren Adams Prof. Mark Jacques Dr. Michael Spooner Patrick Macasaet Paul van Herk Dr. Peter Brew A/Prof. Roland Snooks Samuel Hunter Simone Koch Tim Pyke Prof. Tom Kovac Vicky Lam

Students Semester 1, 2021 Aimee Clare Howard

Samuel Campbell

Akash Vazirani

Shaocheng Xing

Anastasia Horomidis

Shuran Jia

Annika Lammers

Sida Feng

Bryn McAlister Murrell

Sirini Chrismarie Fernando

Christopher James Buchhorn

Tara Ashleigh Hoornweg

Connor Hanna

Tayla Jade Walker

Darren Shi Yang Soh

Thomas Dylan Lemon

Deborah Morris

Tianhao Wang

Deepankar Dass Sharma

Tiffany Wing Sam Yu

Greta Ellen McMillan

Toby Edward Richardson

Hannah Jade Zhu

Tongyang Xu

Hao Wu

Weiteng Zhuang

Isabella Zara Cohen

Wen Bin Liau

Isobel Natalie Moy

Xianyi Meng

Jack Stanley Murray

Xuanyun Song

James Paul Francis Cosgrave

Yiying Wang

Jasper Fisher

Yucheng Feng

Jean Leon Viljoen

Yueyu Tang

Jing Wu

Yuhan Xie

Jitesh Sapra

Yukuan Zhao

Joel Alexander Hiller

Yuqi Song

Joshua Beau Batterton

Zhejun Wang

Kari Vitalich

Zhicheng Hou

Kitrawee Rudeejaruswan

Zhipeng Lin

Li Li

Zixuan Zhao

Liam Kuhnell Longge Zhang Lorenzo Borja Maryanne Grace Waiting Matthew Tibballs Mietta Clare Mullaly Nan Yang Nour El-Leissy Paarija Saxena Qianbin Xu Rebecca Imogen DiNapoli Sammy Kudret