RMIT Architecture Design Thesis Major Project Catalogue, Semester 2, 2010

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rmit architecture

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major projects

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Welcome to the Major Project Catalogue for second semester 2010, a publication from the RMIT Architecture Program. This catalogue represents the work of all students undertaking their final design project as part of the Masters of Architecture, and is the culmination of five years of study leading to eventual qualification as an architect.

This semester has offered us all an opportunity to reflect on the Master of Architecture Program at RMIT - it is three years since the new 3+2 Bachelor + Masters program structure was introduced, replacing the previous 5 year Bachelor in Architecture. What is rewarding is that the diversity, range and quality of projects continues to expand as students, asked to formulate their own architectural question, position and project, have reacted in a myriad of ways. We have an ever increasing range of external practitioners joining our staff to tutor and guide students, hand-picked and selected by students as they approach their final semester. Students are self-curating pathways to their major project which bring to bear an eclectic and diverse array of origins: their previous design studio experiences at RMIT; their own developing design specialisms; and concerns for the territory in which they wish to operate in their emerging career. Projects are grappling with both the self-reflective concerns of individual authorship, as well as the collectively reflective and broader concerns of the city, the context and the profession. This seems like a good place to be.

Over this period we have implemented a succession of Major Project Exhibitions in Building 45 as part of our new strategy for immediately celebrating and disseminating the student’s outcomes.

The Major Project Exhibition and Catalogue have been delivered at a fast and furious pace, hot on the heels of the final presentations.

This has driven a new sense of occasion and convivial recognition for each graduating cohort which has included all students. For the future we plan to complement this catalogue by producing an additional retrospective publication which presents exemplary selective major projects in a more comprehensive and reflective way.

We look forward to the future. In the meantime, congratulations to all students, and to the staff, practitioners and tutors who have supported them!

Melanie Dodd & Nigel Bertram

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Aimi Aziz Tipping Point

The tipping point project speculates on a new building type for residential use that is proposed for a new development on North Wharf Pier, Docklands, and has potential for forming a more diverse community than the dominant tower models. The project strategy is to rotate the vertical stacking tower

that is only connected by lift, to a horizontal arrangement that sits parallel on the linear platform of the site.

With this transformation the apartment units become vertically arranged, but a new horizontal community street is introduced for the residents to promote a better social engagement, making

former strangers neighbors.

Air shafts, curved roofs, elevated green decks and an open ground level are designed to bring in light, views and life to the building in order to make it functional and active. This project proposes a speculative turning point, connecting people, water, greenery and building.

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major project supervisor

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paul dash

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Azhani Abd. Manaf Made in China-Town

This project seeks to examine the possibility of creating a new building typology for Chinatown to meet the looming population increase of 2030 estimated to be an addition of 14,300 sq metres per city block. It seeks to respond to the pressing need of residential space yet maintain the intricate interstitial/gap

spaces of the blocks. The project identifies potential sites within Chinatown possessing a combination of attributes i.e. flank walls to extrude from, existing staircases to piggyback for vertical access, or low roof forms to straddle.

The project thus seeks to develop an architectural language to respond to the

constrained building envelope and to reveal this new opportunity of making a new Chinatown ground floor levels above ground.

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major project supervisor

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mel dodd & saNd helsel

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Nurulafida Indriasari Abdul Hamid Subversion: Un-Gentrify

This project protests against gentrification as a homogenizing agent of city and attempts to subvert this increasingly inevitable condition by promoting public housing estates as a site of urban subversion and resistance. Un-Gentrify introduces onto the Carlton public housing site a revival

of a warehouse typology progressively eliminated from inner suburbs from the 1960s. Emulating the types disused space awaiting intervention, previously abundant in these suburbs, now converted to residential apartments; these bands of warehouses make available spatial opportunities

to urban pioneers/creative workers, capable of injecting culture and character back into the mono-functional site. This proposition see public housing sites as ongoing indispensable elements, re-qualifying the site for valuable use countering the allure of gentrification.

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major project supervisor

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BeN milBourNe

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Nik Kellina Bakti Ahmad Shazilly Urban Recovery

This project, located outside of Kuala Lumpur CBD Malaysia, involves the revitalization of an urban site that currently holds five blocks of 17 storey disused council housing.

Challenging the local authorities plan to demolish the existing buildings and transform the site into a shopping

complex, this project proposes alternatively to redevelop the existing buildings such that they have a diverse and generous arrangement of apartments, community space all with improved ventilation and circulation.

Critically, the design involves the complete redesign of the ground floor plane

such that it forms an active public space accommodating a variety of programs and activities whilst connecting the site back to the city and public infrastructure.

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major project supervisor

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mel dodd & aNNa johNsoN

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Solveig Almo Grieving Remotely

This project sets out to accommodate the remote griever - a place to facilitate the everyday and ritual acts of mourning, to house a distant funeral, to visit a grave by proxy. The project is situated in Yarra Bend Park, a bush-land park precinct contained by the bends of the Yarra River.

each other as, with the aim The project, a columof making death a part of barium where one can go to everyday life. store a relic of a loved one, is nestled behind confining thresholds, but shares its siting and access with the everyday park user. The often closed realm of the deceased overlaps the day to day world of the living. The two realms dependably co-exist with

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major project supervisor

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mel dodd & richard Black

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Elchanan Brown The Missing Cube

This project critiques, restores and extends Sir Roy Ground’s ‘unfinished’ Art Precinct in Melbourne.

The proposal rectifies problems that Ground’s scheme both intentionally and unintentionally could never have anticipated. Poor circulation, bad connectivity and a vacant site are

addressed embracing the Victorian Government’s proposal for a Sturt Street Cultural spine and a new home for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. The new facility defines new levels that connect St Kilda Road to Sturt Street and a new building houses a Black Box theatre, a 500 seat

Recital Hall for Chamber music, rehearsal rooms, recording studios, MSO admin and function space. The new MSO and podium will become a keystone that completes and preserves the Art Precinct giving Melbournians and visitors an enhanced cultural destination.

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major project supervisor

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martYN hook

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Fiona Bryant Preserving Sites of Painful Memory

During WWII, the Japanese Imperial Army “Unit 731� established a biological weapon testing facility that encompassed the entire industrial precinct of Pingfang in Northern China.

Currently, the precinct is culturally rife with reservation of deep anti-Japanese sentiment for the serious

damage that the country had caused in the past. The value of the lives of the individuals that were lost can be reconstructed through a procession. The construction of a memorial, cemetery and museum can afford the local Chinese to practice ritual within a sequence of spaces.

The inauguration of death in a physical form is integral to the human psyche to comprehend loss. This is an architectural answer to the absence and displacement of culture.

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sueaNNe Ware & louis sauer

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Melanie Buettikofer Stronghold for the Community Arts Footscray

This project encourages a re-examination of the self through the idea of the new civic in Footscray. Engulfed by multi-storey residential development in a previ-

ously industrial area, and at the coalface of Melbourne gentrification; the project speculates how an extension to the existing Arts Centre will positively affect the future community. The catalyst is the real requirement for a Women’s Circus.

The extended program supports the metaphor of social

circus…a place that encourages positive risk-taking, physically and emotionally; in a safe and supportive environment. It is a place for both disenfranchised people and mainstream society, encouraging personal artistic expression, a sense of belonging and empowerment through the creative arts.

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The 19th Century’s crisis of public life.. involuntary disclosure of character, defense through withdrawal and..silence. …Obsessions with selfhood.

-Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man

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major project supervisor

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martYN hook

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Yee Lyn Chai Garden in the City

The desire to bring gardens into the metropolis has a long and rich history. This project uses the potential of urban agriculture to disperse gardens at a range of scales and experiences within a student housing development. Sited close to Victoria Market, it becomes a display model of home gardening

and of a productive garden experience in the city. Using the landscape of the ‘canyon’ as a paradigm, the architecture becomes a terraced cliff dwelling overlooking a ‘lush urban gorge’.

This project not only provides fresh produce, but a rich and diverse experience of gardening. Inner

city living limits engagement and connection to natural environments. This project engages the desire to tend and care for gardens and plants and in doing so questions how ‘garden’ can be brought into the city in a large scale and literally productive manner.

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mel dodd & aNNa johNsoN

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Jason Chongue Waste Value

Waste value is a proposal for a transient living unit – or ‘architectural organism’ – that emerged through an exploration of three primary concerns: environmental pollution, architecture as an organism and speculative utopias in architecture.

Waste value enacts a productive collision of house and

garbage truck. Retaining its function of garbage collection, it also functions as a mobile home, aiming to reconfigure domestic spatial experience into a truckhouse-organism in which movements of waste and pollution become inherent to a pattern of living.

This architectural organ-

ism, much like the living body, processes material and brings to life the act of recycling.

Each Waste value unit is part of a functional social network, proposing a way of living as part of larger system of such ‘architectural organisms’. While speculating upon a radical possibility for living.

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pia edNie-BroWN

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Bo David Chu Vertical HuTong

This project proposes that high density developments in the inner areas of rapidly expanding Chinese cities need not be at the expense of the existing urban fabric and architecture. This is tested in a super development sited in Beijing’s ShiShaHai area.

This area is characterised

by HuTongs who’s spatial

compositions and traditional houses, courtyards and laneways represent significant cultural and historical value for Beijing.

The main move is the proposition of a “Vertical HuTong” around which multiple programs are arranged. Access to this new type is through the existing

HuTongs which the type is designed to exist within, and maintain a relationship to.

The retail, commercial, community and service components of the Vertical HuTong HuTong weave through its residential fabric emulating the patterns of the original HuTongs.

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major project supervisor

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jaN vaN schaik

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Danielle Douglas Latrobe City Public Sheds

This project is a network of twelve community hubs that are distributed across the towns of Latrobe City in eastern regional Victoria.

Attaching themselves to the existing public transport network, these hubs are lightweight insertions into their towns that tap in to the existing programs and facilities

that surround them, acting as a support to what is already there and providing them with a new distributed focus.

Each hub contains a network of flexible work spaces and public facilities, shortterm offices, workshop and seminar rooms, a community kitchen, childcare and library, and are part of a series.

Left partially unfinished, open span, and shed-like, the hub is a raw canvas accommodating the community’s input and, allowing them to make transformations.

These buildings are living rooms and sheds for their towns, platforms for interaction, open to customisation offering a grand public room.

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major project supervisor

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graham crist

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Fannie Florence Coburg Centre

The project, located between Sydney Rd and Coburg Oval, questions the role of development and densification with respect to neighborhood character and local suburban architectural typologies.

Through a series of mappings familiar architectural components and suburban programs were identified in-

cluding architectural gesture and type, laneway experiences and spatial occupation.

The building becomes a composite of these components, providing flexible live/ work apartments, retail units and public spaces. Extending from the retail frontage to a sports stand for the oval, the project mediates the abrupt

thresholds of the existing site and looks at a hybridized architectural form with a range of activity centre functions.

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major project supervisor

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mel dodd aNd aNNa johNsoN

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Raphael Fantl Yarra River Sheds: Melbourne Bath House

This project is a bath house located between Alexandra Gardens and the southern bank of the Yarra River.

Melbourne currently has two distinct types of water leisure amenities: recreational swimming pools and boutique day spas.

This design proposes an alternative model of a bath-

ing facility which focuses on aquatic leisure therapy to meet the community’s increasing awareness of holistic health and wellbeing.

This design explores ideas of intimacy and peripheral space in architecture in three levels: Context, Typology and Materiality. These levels informed the design method

of reinterpreting the adjacent rowing sheds through a series of light weight pseudo weatherboard structures.

The expansive jetty connects the design to the river in an effort to restore the historically intimate relationship between Melbournian bathers and the river.

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BreNdaN joNes

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Damien Forbes Seeing ‘Yesterdays’ Tomorrow

If there was a place that spoke to you would you go there? If it called you in and said ‘This is a story of our country’s history, present and future’ - would you be intrigued? Would you follow its path and ponder on where life has taken you today?

Would you allow this place to show you its dream we

all share of a united future where everyone is celebrated and united? This is a place of joy, where children laugh and couples dance in the sunset, where fishermen sit to catch their taking, where families share lunch in the park and tourists explore. This is a place for all to enjoy, to learn, to meditate and to be joyful.

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Christopher Gilbert An Industrial Urban Ecology

This thesis proposes that an ecological understanding of large industry presents the potential for the development of a new urban type.

This is manifest as a linear life style city interwoven with the industrial landscape of a steel mill in Lianyungang, China.

The steel mill appears both as a backdrop to the larger urban plan for this new city type and as an integral part of the architectural instances within.

These comprise a public bathhouse using excess industrial heat, an enigmatic urban park which produces local rain as it desalinates

water for the steel plant, an inward facing industrial city housing block and an urban orchard planted in disused molten steel shuttles which rock back and forth in the prevailing wind.

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jaN vaN schaik

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Liam Gleeson Dense-City

It’s estimated that by the year 2020 petrol will cost a staggering $6.00 a litre, the average car using a tank of petrol per week will therefore cost over $18,000 per year to run - a figure that does not resonate with a sustainable or economically viable future.

The project begins with an alternative model for Melbourne’s CBD that is car-free. Sited on a parcel of reclaimed road on Exhibition Street, the proposed high density mixed-use building is a palimpsest of its surrounding context, where form emerges from a series of strict design rules that

addresses issues of urban sprawl, the facilitation of urban agriculture, optimization of existing light penetration whilst maintaining the rich and varied fabric of the vertical city.

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major project supervisor

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mel dodd & aNNa johNsoN

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Haslett Grounds Maritime Energy Centre of Australia

Investigating new relationships between essential industry and civic space, the project imagines a wave energy and desalination facility utilising Carnegie’s ‘CETO’ undersea technology and Wavegen LIMPIT turbines.

Where utilities are traditionally hidden, this thesis proposes and explores an ac-

tive public engagement with the working industrial facility which forms the seed for renewing an unused port site in Warrnambool. Embracing past and current ocean activity, the resulting building proposes a new center for maritime education and engagement, providing facilities for swimming, diving, exhibi-

tion and education.

Moving from a monumental statement of its presence to an under sea aquarium, the project provides for a wide audience, weaving an ambiguous line between civic space and industrial facility to create an accessible architecture for the prosperous future of the city and beyond.

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BreNdaN joNes

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Christopher Haddad Agrarian City

This project thesis proposes that by reverse engineering the spatial relationships between people and their habitat in rural China and applying these as design principles to an urban development, a type of architecture that is symbolically meaningful and spatially relevant to a recently ur-

banised demographic can be developed. This has been tested through a mixed use development in the southern coastal area of Lianyngang, China.

Through the understanding of the village as a series of sites connected by a path the project creates a series of informally clustered hous-

ing blocks within the urban fabric each clustered around points along a route which is manifest as courtyards and streets.

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Megan Hendy Adaptive Production

40 years ago the media and architects alike turned their attentions to utopian agricultural visions in response to looming threats of environmental and economic collapse. Today, this focus has returned. Drawing on the utopias of 40 years ago, this project locates itself 40 years into the future, attempting to

utilize utopian optimism to map a viable (non-utopian) evolution of food production.

Adaptive production proposes an accessible and localised food network incorporating public transport infrastructure. The scheme stems from a current Food Hubs program, utilising an aquaponics growing system, and

places itself in Melbourne’s denser, future urban fabric.

An adaptive greenhouse-skin envelopes existing transport corridors, revitalising currently under-used land. This skin nurtures an elevated growing space that feeds into the public amenities of public transport infrastructured consumption.

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major project supervisor

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pia edNie-BroWN

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Marcia Hrchan The Everyday: Transport Revival

Located along the Werribee train line the site extends 31.7 km from the city. Due to urban development as a direct result of population increase within the western suburbs, the scheme proposes alternative solutions to the growing pressures within the transport corridor.

As a response to the lack of public infrastructure along the train line, the principle design concern was to provide civic spaces that allow for efficient use of the vacant land encompassing the train station. Each Station on the line is explored in terms of their existing architectural character, urbanism, social

engagement, art, popular culture, politics, strategy, sustainability and order.

Through methods of analytical engagement, the appropriation of amenities reflecting ‘the everyday’ have been implemented from a small to medium scale.

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major project supervisor

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BreNdaN joNes

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Gwyllim Jahn Machine Translations

Sited on the edge between the grid and the Docklands, this project takes, as it’s pretext, an attempt to address

some of shortcomings of the ‘traditional’ tower/podium typology which are seeing it being superseded by the anti-urban mono-cultural behemoths of the docklands.

This project ‘unboxes’ a familiar architecture that, in its allegiance to both concealment and expression works through the trope of

the ‘mask’. Boolean conditions, structural dichotomies, camouflage, the contemporary notion of the ‘wanderer,’ and the active production of residual spaces are all components of a new west edge urbanity.

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Behind all the masks lie ‘dark’ and unconscious streams that cannot be dissociated from the pleasure of architecture. The mask may exalt appearances. Yet by its very presence, it says that, in the background, there is ‘something else’.

-Bernard Tschumi

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major project supervisor

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paul miNifie & tim schork

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Simon Jeppesen 18 Strategies for 1500 people

This project is a changing singularity. Stretching from Brunswick to Newport it provides housing and infrastructure in response for Melbourne’s booming population. Precedents and typologies are applied and modified to suit the particularities of the site as it changes.

An example of this is the ‘Ha Ha Wall’ typology. A Ha Ha is fence with a ditch on one side. This enables the wall to be functionally taller, without being visually taller.

In Brunswick this strategy is applied to housing as a way to triple the density of a street without exceeding the established building height.

The project then changes 18 times as it moves along the line, borrowing from projects including Le Corbusier’s Plan Obus and the Korean Demilitarised Zone.

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major project supervisor

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BreNdaN joNes

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John Kachami Civic Service

This project speculates that service stations have an inherent civic quality which can be better capitalised upon through careful design of them and their immediate urban surrounds.

Given the omnipresence of service stations across any city I have tested this in three distinct projects. These are: a

city site where program has been added to supplement existing infrastructure as suburban which I have redesigned as a civic precinct to establish a community centre and a roadside rest stop where I have added amenity to an underutilised yet highly trafficked area.

These projects seek to define types which strike a balance between commercial architecture and civic amenity using programs which are often considered wholly commercial to create a franchised civic architecture.

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major project supervisor

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jaN vaN schaik

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Chelsea Koh Transforming the Big Box

The Australian shopping centre is typically a large homogenous box with a sea of asphalt car parking all around. The focus is internal, consumer and profit driven with very little urban, social or environmental contribution to the community.

This project seeks to address these issues and

has taken Knox Shopping Centre as a site for testing.

Community and recreational activities have been added in two different ways: The unused space between the car park and the shopping centre faรงade is permanently activated with a vertical community square containing workshop

spaces, rock-climbing, event and community meeting spaces. In contrast to the grey box shopping centre walls; vertical greenery, coloured panels and timber stairs and infrastructure are used.

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major project supervisor

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melissa Bright

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Ashini Kulatunge Urban Interior

‘Urban Interior’ generates a dialogue between exterior and interior, solid and permeable, existing and new at a scale of an urban block in Collingwood, Melbourne.

The project is a formal response to the site in which the existing buildings are framed as an ‘urban external wall’ which envelopes the

new design as its interior.

The two complimentary structures generate internalexternal spaces which begin to emphasise the public/private tension from its core to the surrounding context.

The new textile community will be inserted in the Gipps precinct as a secondary strategy, which embraces

the textile history of the district. The project attempts to reintroduce the ‘lost’ industry to the local society through providing collaborative spaces for students and practitioners of textile design as well as intergrating pockets of public space and program throughout the site.

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gretcheN WilkiNs

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Xiang Li Carol Art Factory

From the perspective of architectural adaptive reuse, this project concerns the rebirth and transformation of an important industrial building complex in the modern history of Nanjing, the Chenguang Machinery Factory.

As a response to energy-saving and cultural continuity, this project pro-

poses to transfer the factory to an art school, bridging the gap between industrial regions, public space and arts/cultural space in Nanjing.

The project is conceived as a conversion; the old building, a single story factory, has been transformed into a series of new day lit spaces.

To preserve the unique char-

acter of the old factory and to accentuate the industrial qualities of this massive void, the truss roof structure is adapted to accommodate new interior systems, providing double height studios, public courtyards and flexible spaces, a continuous ramp links the interior and exterior spaces throughout.

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gretcheN WilkiNs

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Bronwyn Litera Capturing Kodak

This project begins with an adaptive reuse of an old industrial Kodak Factory building located in Coburg.

Reprogramming the building with a film and photography complex and community Aquatics Centre allows for the strategic insertion of new elements whilst revealing and restoring the old.

This collision of programs and materials aims to reveal the architecture of this iconic building whilst responding to the local context. The project extends across a park, divided by paving, follies and buildings: traces of the old and fragments of new. Programs overlap and intersect by extracting from the exist-

ing and the insertions of new.

Light and transparent, these new insertions contrast with the weight and solidarity of the existing, whilst internally volumes of programs and circulation gantries appear to float inside the existing shell.

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existing shell

voids / extractions

program / insertions

language / circulation

major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 57

mel dodd & aNNa johNsoN

page 57

08/11/2010 10:00:52

Pooya Malek Mohammad Democratic Architecture: Free Iran

This project is an addition to the existing national library of Iran and it aims to provide the spaces needed by contemporary libraries in the ‘Age of Information’. It also acts as a “Dialogue Centre” that brings the people together and enables them to exchange their points of view.

The model of ancient Persian coffee houses, the “space” that Iranians have used for thousands of years, allowing them to speak their minds away from the eyes and ears of the authoritarian governments, has informed the design of the library.

The main attribute needed by a building to be called

“Democratic” is the method that building is organised, not necessarily the way it has been designed; although the programme associated with that space plays a major role in the equation.

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major project supervisor

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paul dash

page 59

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Lucy Maplestone Greening Mount Gambier

This project works with the intentions and strategies of Habitat 141, a large conservation project by Greening Australia. The scheme takes advantage of a disused train line in the Mount Gambier region to become a biodiversity corridor and a rail trail to improve ecology in the region. The concept of

conservation being integrated with architecture and urbanism is tested in the city’s central vacant railyards, which the biodiversity corridor continues through. To make this viable, the entire site is activated with dispersed civic, tourist, sporting, retail and residential programs to create a new

city centre area. The idea of returning the vacant land to parklands is persistent throughout the project, with all buildings designed as an extension of the park.

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major project supervisor

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m. Baracco & l. Wright

page 61

08/11/2010 10:01:57

Stephanie McNamara The Living Tongue

With the death of every language, there is an irreversible loss of culture and knowledge. This project creates an accessible interface for the art of language; a destination for documentation and revitalisation.

The type of the generic cultural centre serves as a backdrop, a place of inhabita-

tion, for a series of language vaults that archive recordings, text, digital media, and art collected from around the globe.

The project takes place on the fray of Southbank’s cultural spine, where the intersection of meandering and arterial sets the scene for an experiment in blurring the

boundaries between what is traditionally regarded as storage, display and circulation.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 63

v. mitsogiaNNi & m. raggatt

page 63

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Amy Melrose Superelevation

Superelevation manages the environmental impact of seasonal holidaymakers and day trip tourists to Kennettt River, a popular stop along the Great Ocean Road.

While preserving and revegetating the landscape that has drawn visitors in the first place, this project facilitates greater access, affordably ac-

commodating more people. It also provides infrastructural conduit for water storage and recycling - reserves for bushfire threat and sewage treatment, respectively. It is a kind of “soft fortification�, built from monolithic wood sections, harvested in the hinterland.

Architecture and infra-

structure become entwined with, in this case, facilities such as a cafĂŠ/general store, a backpacker hostel, cabins, and a life saving club. It has potential to become an identifying attraction in itself.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 65

pamela mcgirr

page 65

08/11/2010 10:02:15

Muhammad Imraan Mohd Annuar Interstitial Greenscape Intervention

Located in Mildura, this project investigates the potential of architectural and urban interventions in encouraging awareness of and involvement with the rehabilitation/ conservation of the natural environment as one of the most essential conditions for sustainability.

A visitor centre with facilities for a mix of public, community, educational and research activities (including spaces related to the project of natural rehabilitation Habitat 141 by Greening Australia, and various research undertaken by Sunraysa Tafe students in the fields of horticulture/ir-

rigation and management of land and water), is proposed within the central civic/ commercial precinct, so as to opportunistically address and relate to the intensity of activities, circulation and everyday life that informs the existing site.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 67

m. Baracco & l. Wright

page 67

08/11/2010 10:02:20

Nur Haidar Mohd Khorie Seed Development

This project questions the role of architecture as a medium of regeneration and revitalization in central Dandenong, capable of contributing toward employment and training, and seeking to make substantial improvements to safety and security.

Located between the train station and little India,

the project consists of an employment and training incubator that integrates with retail, childcare and library to reinforce public and active qualities to a precinct which is currently seen as dangerous and unsightly.

The building response to its cultural context and interlaces with the existing

urban territory. It provides thresholds and gaps internally that allows direct circulation to the heart of the building where the main public space reveals the richness of culture in the design.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 69

mel dodd & aNNa johNsoN

page 69

08/11/2010 10:02:24

Jamilia Mohd Marsin Sustain & Densify: Frontyard House

This project supports urban densification through the infilling of the existing fabric and the consolidation of open/green spaces to rehabilitate biodiversity and guarantee an ecological balance between the infrastructural and natural presences of our cities.

The ‘Frontyard House’

model is tested in the case-study area of Craigieburn, on the north fringe of Melbourne. New opportunities are provided by an environment-friendly design approach for the densification of frontyard areas: from the urban transformation and activation of the street landscape through intensifi-

cation of architecture, nature and related activities; to the redefinition of the open and built spaces of each residential block; to the flexibility in occupation resulting from sustainable residential subdivisions; to the shift in the use of the backyard areas, potentially suitable for community urban farming.

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house’s characteristic

oppurtunity space

proposed occupancy

EMPTY LOT HOUSE

FENCE HOUSE

MULTI HOUSE

GARDEN HOUSE

CORNERHOUSE

GARAGE HOUSE

IN BETWEEN HOUSE

major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 71

m. Baracco & l. Wright

page 71

08/11/2010 10:02:26

Andrew Yung Han Ng Re:Unite D’Habitation

This project performs as the new Ronald McDonald House which provides personal spaces and communal gardens spaces juxtaposed between each other, while allowing residents to interact with other residents, also provides a home away from home. Communal gardens located within close proxim-

ity to apartments spread around both upper and lower levels, providing a close connection to the apartments, thus further opportunities for neighboring units to mingle with other residents.

The inhabitable corridors to each apartment create a blur threshold between private spaces to the public

corridors, creating opportunities for more interaction between residents of neighboring units. This blurriness is carried on to the ground floor creating various degrees of privacy for the communal areas. Individual play spaces act as one giant play area, with ladders that link them up randomly.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 73

peter BreW

page 73

08/11/2010 10:02:39

Anna Nguyen Modus Vivendi

In a city where the built environment overshadows and strips away the senses of man and his relationship with space, Modus Vivendi has been placed as an interruption in the urban fabric, revealing a Satori; a sudden indescribable intuitive enlightenment .

The therapeutic mecha-

nism challenges the industrial mammoth jungle of concrete and glass, relieving and revitalizing its people from their senseless surrounds. With spaces of interaction and social integration, you can feel the warm welcome through the glowing reflection of an emporium wedged within the grid of the city.

Modus Vivendi provides a place of repose with generative therapy to help us cope with the built environment of the city.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 75

BeN statkus & eugeNe chieNg

page 75

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Semu Ntulume Museum Living

My major project thesis proposes that the housemuseum type, as manifest in the Lyons house/museum, could be extrapolated to a multi- residential- museum building type and tests this on a proposal located at the corner of Victoria and Mackenzie Street.

The project, which includes Mackenzie street seeks to create a composition of residential units, student accommodation, exhibition and gallery spaces, to form a building type that can be lived in and at the same time, exhibit a collection of art works in spaces spread across three mid-rise buildings. The

proposal forms a north facing precinct along Victoria Street that directly engages with the public through a facade that integral to the project’s function.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 77

jaN vaN schaik

page 77

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Gab Olah Exhausted

This project is interested in how civic architecture can reinvigorate parts of the city and how collective memory can be used to design the non-generic. It presents an alternative to the tabula rasa of the Generic City, which sees the presence of history as undesirable and a hindrance to performance.

ates a need for recreation.

Growth in an urban The two exist in a complienvironment is a matter of evolution rather than erasure. mentary relationship.

On the site of the former Melbourne City Power Station a new university building is proposed. Its interior is eroded and contains a public bathing facility. By nature, the university generates an exhaustion, which then cre-

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 79

viviaN mitsogiaNNi

page 79

08/11/2010 10:02:44

Simon D Palmer Rediscovery of Slowness

Glen Huntly station’s level crossing has been condemned for its congestion and there is overwhelming insistence for a costly level separation.

Slow down here, what of an architecture that embraces this intrinsically flawed circumstance? The rail square that serves three train lines, two tram lines and a main

commercial strip requires the trains to slow to a walking pace as they meander over the lines. This project aims to utilize this ecology of urban assemblage and expand the nearby University For The Third Age building.

A system of rules informs the projects structure and the program contends with

contrasting scales of the human and train. The building becomes a reflection of the passing of time and movement.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 81

BarNaBY BeNNett

page 81

08/11/2010 10:02:47

Danielle Peck N.O. Six Metre Datum

Five years have passed since the water level climbed above four meters in New Orleans, setting an ominous datum above roof lines; and the Lower Ninth Ward community is still waiting. What happens while they wait?

While neighbourhoods await recovery, schools await new walls and homes new roofs:

what happens in the meantime? This project attempts to reconcile speculative urban design with life on the ground. It engages visions of a new terrain with the specific materiality of local phenomena; the reconstruction of the familiar in an unfamiliar landscape. I have focussed on the need for

civic space to accompany the individual rebuilding efforts as a way to invigorate the community and their need to gather, discuss and envision; a delicate balance between territory and local, vulnerability and resilience, politics and place.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 83

mel dodd

page 83

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Brahman Perera Bicycle Habitat future mixed development

Old De

site of

fence

develo Site pment

Canning

Street

Canning St Tram #57 & #82 Highpoint Shopping Centre ad

ad Ro

pste

Ham

Gor ord do don n St reet

10 minute cycle intervals

Ash le

y St

ree

t

River storage Pavillion

Maribyrnong River

Barkly Stre

et

Napier

Street

Footscray Station

Docklands Precinct

Footscr ay Road Docklan ds Highwa y

Swanson Dock Road

Western Link Citylink

River

g oads

s:

rcial

Current infrastructures and amenities for cyclists in Melbourne remain underdeveloped, in particular for the cycling commuter. Through a series of infrastructural developments and improved cycling commuter amenities an architectural approach can be made to the ‘bicycle habitat’ of Melbourne. The design

focuses on augmenting and adding to a cycle route that extends from the Melbourne CBD to Maribyrnong, an area of impending development approximately 10km from the city.

Bicycle habitat creates a new dispersed infrastructure to aid the cycling commuter and provides amenities that

promote cycling as a viable and increasingly common and acceptable mode of transport. Linked to existing public transport networks, the new amenity hubs propose a reciprocal relationship between the bicycle habitat system and its adjacencies and context in a sympathetic way.

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semester 2, 2010

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 85

h. frichot & l.zilka

page 85

08/11/2010 10:03:16

Xiaozhou Qin Australian Technical Management College

This project focuses on the roles of residential colleges and student housing for overseas students within the city of Melbourne, and attempts to address the persistent feelings of loneliness and dislocation that characterise the experience of international students. Australian Technical Management

College (ATMC) is an IT and Business training institution located in Franklin Street, near the edge of the Hoddle grid. Compared to the residential colleges of Melbourne University, which have generous provision of open space or complexes like Unilodge around RMIT’s city campus, which have

access to cultural, retail and transport infrastructures, ATMC benefits most from the nearby Queen Victoria Market and surrounding laneways. As a result, it will integrate Melbourne’s laneway cultures and Asian courtyard culture into a micro-campus through linkages of public and retail space.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 87

l. cirillo & N. Bertram

page 87

08/11/2010 10:03:18

Danielle Rosman Exploring the Suburban Periphery

In the neatly controlled world of contemporary suburban estates and within the undefined peripheral spaces there remains potential for unusual poetics, for an occupation with the opportunity to enhance the characteristic atmospheres of place. In these sites, located at the edges of infrastructure and

residences, of farming land and house lies the potential to develop a particular (sub) urban identity in the midst of homogeneous repetition.

This project creates a new typology from the insertion of miscellaneous programmes of the suburban backyard and recently supplanted land uses of the area

into the practical requirements for separation from traffic noise – the sound wall.

Proposed is an architectural framework upon which a collective atmosphere of individualised spaces could accumulate to allow access to these spaces and programmes not typically available.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 89

aNNa johNsoN

page 89

08/11/2010 10:03:21

Raphael Schlesinger Spectacle of Sporting Architecture

Located on Lakeside Oval, in Albert Park, this project revolves around the idea of spectacle in sport and its manifestation in a TV/video environment as direct contrast to attending an event.

An analysis of crane camera movement locates the spectator as close as possible to the sporting action, this study

coupled with the mapping of public and private key moments on the site resulted in a series of ribbons that manifest themselves into architectural forms.

Each ribbon has a different objective; one for exterior spectacle (the fan), another for interior spectacle (the player), pursuing

engagement with media and structure. The project suggests that the future of Australian sport lies in the nexus between the experience of the event and the built contribution its facility may make to its community.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 91

martYN hook

page 91

08/11/2010 10:03:23

Claire Scorpo Composing Boort

This is a rural town with two counter-melodies. White piped agricultural ornament adorns the town like spartan lacework, making much of little. A floodplain of ghosts; dead trees reveal a forest that is there no more, with its fringes a testament to the indigenous life that once flourished here. Boort is a

place of cultural, historical and environmental significance.

A new forest is emerging and treasured artifacts are returning. The rural economy is diversifying. The town currently has a dispersed duplication of services. The urban strategy is to consolidate the civic and community

infrastructure, enhancing accessibility and amplifying the intensity of activities.

The new school provides shared community facilities.

The adjacent indigenous cultural centre mediates access to a forest walk that affirms the cultural, ecological and recreational significance of this unique environment.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 93

B. allpress & p. sampaio

page 93

08/11/2010 10:03:26

Michael Sharp Adaptation and Mitigation in Kira Kira

This project proposes an urban densification scheme for Kira Kira, a rapidly urbanising small town in the Solomon Islands set to double its population in ten years.

Through thorough consideration of land use, circulation and service routes, housing lots, local

culture and village places, a bottom up, community managed scheme is proposed, allowing for a doubling of the population with minimal disruption to the social and natural environments of Kira Kira.

Strategically placed low tech water collection, composting and sanitation

stations allow the community to grow at a rate dictated by local needs. A ‘sweat equity’ approach is proposed where homeowners build their houses with prefabricated components and elemental infill panels, making housing affordable, personalised and safe from cyclones and earthquakes.

rmit architecture

major projects

semester 2, 2010

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 95

louis sauer

page 95

08/11/2010 10:03:29

Phoebe Wai Ting, So Urban Mobility

The Shenzhen-Hong Kong border marks the intricate relationship between mainland China and the once colonial city. The buffer zone lying all along the border is almost deserted except for the inter-cities infrastructure.

The modern cityscape of Shenzhen, a rapid-growing city located immediately

north of the border, contrasts the unfilled Frontier Closed Area and rural landscape in the northern New Territories of Hong Kong.

The border physically distinguishes the two cities, yet the inter-cities infrastructure indicates the inseparability between them. With the vast, non-stop movements in both

directions, the infrastructure becomes an architectural prototype for urban mobility, transition and inter-connectivity, and the border becomes a zone subjected to great expansion.

The intention for the project is to investigate the architectural potential of the overlapped peripheries.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 97

viviaN mitsogiaNNi

page 97

08/11/2010 10:03:32

Pia Socias Urban Park

In response to current proposals to place high-density developments in areas of Coburg which are both environmentally fragile and poorly serviced, this project seeks to demonstrate how major densification can be more appropriately placed, simultaneously providing significant quantities of

housing stock in – or rather above – established service and transport hubs while re-activating and adding to the amenity of these urbancentres.

This project proposes a series of multi-use towers perched above existing retail infrastructure of the Coburg Market – thus reducing

the land footprint to zero.

The area devoted to parking, currently a single-use wasteland dividing transport, retail and public amenities, is simultaneously transformed into a sequence of elevated green open spaces, a defacto “front-garden” for residents to share with existing users of the urban-centre.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 99

m. Baracco & l. Wright

page 99

08/11/2010 10:03:34

Dorian Su Huat Teoh The Integrated Urban Market

Preston market is currently planned as an outer suburban shopping centre not integrated with its surroundings. It is isolated from High Street, train station and bus routes, an island in a sea of car parks.

The project aims to integrate Preston market with its urban surroundings and

the community. I propose a mixed-use development: residential and student apartments, retail developments and market. The interior and exterior of the market is to be integrated with clear visual linkages, pedestrian connections, an open central hub, active street frontages, better links with public trans-

port and by borrowing from the surrounding aesthetic language of central Preston.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 101

marcus White

page 101

08/11/2010 10:03:37

Sara Tonini Revitalising the Ned Kelly Mythology in Glenrowan

In the small country town of Glenrowan, where once a man named Ned Kelly fought for ‘justice and liberty’, the mythology of an outlaw had been lost in the reality of tacky commercialism and distortion of the truth. This project proposes to utilise the Kelly Gang legend to reinvent a town providing

a heritage walk, tourist and research facility that engages the actual sites of the Kelly siege. The intention is that an approach that layers experience of the town and its relationship to the mythology can provide a basis for urban renewal.

A motel, library and collection of follies at each

historic site become tools to revitalise the mythology of Ned Kelly stitched together through the exploration of the town’s history and existing character to give Glenrowan a bold presence and strong significance.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 103

martYN hook

page 103

08/11/2010 10:03:40

Laura Ulph The Transient Town

This proposition sited in Queenscliff on the Bellarine Peninsula, responds to the challenge of reconciling development pressures faced by small coastal towns including the promotion of tourism and economic growth whilst preserving local social, historical and cultural identity. Due to the

high concentration of holiday properties and critically for this project, the hosting of three major events including the Queenscliff Music Festival - Queenscliff experiences extreme seasonal fluctuations in population. Acknowledging and celebrating this spectacle of metamorphosis, new key buildings and infra-

structure pieces strategically address the local needs of Queenscliff residents as well as those of the temporary resident and tourist. A series of programs – permanent and temporary plug-in elements - implemented over three scales allow each site to be transformed depending on the time of year and event.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 105

mel dodd & aNNa johNsoN

page 105

08/11/2010 10:04:13

Gary Walker Plastic Resistance

After the introduction of VSU, the cultural and political purity of student unions is being inundated with consumerism. I am proposing a new student union building for RMIT which reflects this new paradigm in both its program and architectural expression.

Lodged in BSM’s Brutal-

ist concrete block slabs, the union building seeks to revitalize them through colonization, extending the Bowen Lane spine into their courtyards and linking them with Swanston Street through three over scaled cave-like entrances.

Its architecture reconciles commerce and cultural

critique within a single container, expressing the dichotomy on its digital billboard facade.

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 107

j. staughtoN & t. stYaNt-BroWNe

page 107

08/11/2010 10:04:24

Angela Woda It’s Turtles All The Way Down

Architects have the ability to project themselves beyond the representations of space they create. We are taught to inhabit the impossible spaces of our imaginations, lest we fall victim to the peril of the ordinary. The recognition of the difference between paper space and real space is a powerful position. Models

and drawings are traces of architectural concepts. They bridge the gap between the realized and the illusive.

It’s through recognising the curiosities of the impossible that new light can be shed on the attainable and all of its irresistible possibilities.

A front door into the spatial knowledge of Melbourne is

proposed, taking the form of an architectural archive.

This new Culture House of Architecture is like a cabinet of wonders and a babushka doll. This project explores the creative possibilities and spatial consequences if we divulge the world of architecture; its processes, mysteries and magnificent potential.

rmit architecture

major projects

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 109

t. schork & d.WilliamsoN

page 109

08/11/2010 10:04:27

Selene Wong Pragmatic Utopia

Derived from the emergent context of global conditions, the design is a productive urban system that is customised to the local context. The project proposes a change in direction from the contemporary development models, with a direct response to the landscape. Its ambition takes two central proposition of

‘place making’ and ‘sustainability’, a dialogue between the ‘nature’ and the ‘city’, coupled with an extended ecological agenda that takes forces in the architectural elements and within the design.

The urban scheme activates the curiosity to explore a multitude of hybrid programs and spatial articulation

which sympathises with the lives of the occupants to make a place diversely functional. A speculative typology that connects social spaces and re-establish the disappearing informal clusters of urban fringe communities, in a much denser urban setting.

rmit architecture

major projects

semester 2, 2010

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 111

gretcheN WilkiNs

page 111

08/11/2010 10:04:30

Garry Yeoh N.I.M.B.Y.

N.I.M.B.Y investigates how density can be introduced to Melbourne’s sprawl suburbs within the constraints of the existing urban design paradigm.

Current planning initiatives designate the site of Dandenong as central node based on TOD principles.

The project investigates the

suburban areas beyond the 400m TOD radius not addressed by current initiatives.

The project attempts to illustrate how a restructuring of zoning areas, modifications in Rescode and streamlining the planning process, act as incentives to aid in increasing the overall dwellings per hectare within a suburban area.

This is achieved by using the above three planning tools to influence the development of typologies that result in a greater density yield, whist balancing neighborhood character.

rmit architecture

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semester 2, 2010

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major project supervisor

rmitarch-majorcat-s2-2010.indd 113

marcus White

page 113

08/11/2010 10:04:33

Brooke Hong Wei Zhao Vertical Hutong in Beijing

Hutong are old alleyways and courtyard houses which once covered all of Beijing city. With the rapid urban development of Beijing many people have moved to high-rise apartments and this hutong area is now becoming extinct. It is a unique form of urbanism as a closedsystem neighborhood, very

dense with humanity on the street and accreted courtyard dwellings. However it is also difficult to adapt because of restrictions of that cannot meet the requirements of a modern city.

This project introduces a new type of residential building which combines the advantages of both high-rise

apartment buildings and the hutong lifestyle. Vertical Hutong is about shifting the hutong type from plan into section. In this way it changes residents’ movement from horizontality to verticality and in the same time still maintains the flexibility and informality of hutong culture.

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major project supervisor

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gretcheN WilkiNs

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David Zito Cultural Container

The project is a response to the increasing density of Melbourne. As the cities and suburbs become denser it is important that we do not forget to put aside some dedicated areas for parks, music and culture. The project seeks to create its own context, mark its territory and achieve the grand scale

deals with its new context, of civic architecture, walling off the site to create a thresh- creating a park, harbour and music/market/festival venue. old between the commercial and cultural aspects of the Docklands.

The proposal is a result of “pushing� the dirt of the site around to create the wall and then acting upon the wall to create architecture with a sense of immediacy that

rmit architecture

major projects

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joNo coWle & peter Bickle

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RMIT Architecture Program Major Projects Semester 2, 2010 Catalogue Program Director Melanie Dodd Major Project Coordinator Nigel Bertram Template Design Chase & Galley Production & Coordination Stuart Harrison Printing PMI Corporation, Fitzroy

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The Architecture Program wishes to thank Thomas and Eva Butler for their continuing support of the Anne Butler Memorial Medal, an annual award for outstanding Major Projects in design.

The Program thanks the Bruns family for their continuing support of the Antonia Bruns Medal, an award for a Major Project which illustrates an exemplary investigation in the areas of architecture and film, architectural representation and visual perception.

Exhibition: RMIT Building 45 33 Lygon Street, Carlton, Victoria Opening Friday 12th November 2010 6pm Open to Public 15th-26th November 2010 11am-3pm Mon-Sat www.architecture.rmit.edu.au

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