MIXED STUDIO

The studio project required the design of three small dwellings and a kiosk on a lot in Georgina Street, Newtown, adjacent to Hollis Park. The main design task was to develop an architectural proposal that provided the inhabitants with high levels of environmental control by making available a wide range of options across three kinds of human situations – social interactions and separations, activities, and thermal experiences – and that was a positive contribution to the life and built fabric of the site. Three characteristics of the site were studied: topography, the urban fabric and climate. Precedent studies of multi-unit housing projects were a major part of the design investigation.

Seven sets of spatial relationships critical in providing multi-unit housing inhabitants with control over their environments provided a framework for the investigation of the human situations, the site and the precedents, and for the students’ design developments: the distribution of the major types of spaces of social control – public, communal, household, individual; the distribution of these space types in relation to the larger urban fabric; the distribution of these space types in relation to the topography of the site; the distribution of the space types, the urban fabric and the topography in relation to the sun and prevailing winds; the location of pedestrian and vehicular movements within and between the space types and the site; the opening and closing of the boundaries within and between the space types and the site; the open and closed relationships between shared and individually controlled spaces with each dwelling, and their relationships with the other space types.