RMIT Master of Architecture Studio Posters, 2016 Semester 1

RMIT ARCHITECTURE MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE DESIGN STUDIO BALLOTING POSTERS SEM 1 2016

The control tower is synonymous with boarders – air, sea and an appendage to the robust enclosure defined as the gaol.

The studio will explore the notion of ‘control’ within architecture and the formal implications which result from the utilitarian nature of its associated programs.

Surveillance, observation, monitoring, protection, exposure, singular, utilitarian, robust – how do these conditions inform an approach to architecture? How might these conditions alter and shift when combined with varying civic programs?

The school, the law court, the bunker, the fire station. The studio will explore the civic condition associated with these building types and how the ‘control’ tower informs a new approach to the varying typologies.

Students will be engaged with model making, rigorous site, program and precedent analysis reviewing the role of the civic gesture verses that of the observation ‘tower’ synonymous with the definition of control/observation/surveillance.

Sections, sections, sections.

MA Design Studio S1 2016

Urban Environment – Medium Scale

CONTROL

Tuesday 6.00PM-10.00PM

AMY MUIR

CATALYTIC STRUCTURES TOKYO TRAVELLING STUDIO JOHN DOYLE

Tokyo is a world unto itself. It’s sheer scale and complexity defies comprehension. Generations of architects and urbanists from Japan and abroad have devoted themselves to documenting the megacity and exploring its potential to generate future architectures.

Against the backdrop of preparations for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, this studio will engage with a specific site within the inner ring of Tokyo’s 12 special wards and develop a series of design responses based around the brief of a mixed use complex that engages with the underlying urban, economic, infrastructural and cultural systems that organise the city.

The studio will be based around a two week intensive workshop to be held in Tokyo at Tokyo Institute of Technology’s Midorigaoka Campus. The workshop will include students from Tokyo Tech, as well as exchange students from international universities.

In developing a response students will be expected to familiarise themselves with the urban ‘behaviours’ of Tokyo, and consider how these forces might begin to feed back into the design process. The studio will speculate on how the careful analysis of a city, in this case Tokyo, can be used to inform or trigger an urban or architectural design process. More broadly, the studio will examine design technique, both digital and analogue as a means of operating transient or fluid site conditions. It will introduce students to nomadic or international practice and remote site analysis, with a particular focus on inexplicit and systems based readings of the city, as well as the experience of working on location, collaborating with colleagues from different back grounds, utilising different skill sets and integrating this rapidly into prototyped responses.

In reading the city the studio will focus specifically on the material culture of the site and its context. Students will be expected to develop a taxonomy of urban or architectural ‘elements’ - chunks of the city that form archaeological artefacts, with specific set histories, constraints and opportunities that define them in relation to the key urban issues described above. Buildings, urban formations, furniture and all built form have qualities that are observable, highly particular and not generalizable without the loss of specificity. Students will be asked to engage directly with this material as a generative source and explore how the city might be considered as a rheological landscape, open for editing in a continual process of draft production.

In this light the final project for the workshop and the studio can be viewed as a ‘Catalytic Agent’ - exploring how architecture can play an ‘infrastructural’ role through the organistion of built form. Architectural form will be interrogated, both as a physical outcome that structures and enables patterns of occupation and inhabitation, and as a device that enables the production of further iterations of architectural form itself. How can the addition of architecture to the city change the way the city functions? How can architectural form be used tactically to effect the urban field? What kind of new architectural forms & types emerge from the intervention of this project in the city.....

NOTE: THIS STUDIO INVOLVES INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL Melbourne Studio Component Wednesday Evenings

The involuntary prisoners of architecture…

How should Architecture live behind the walls of Pentridge Prison?

Studio tutors: Jonothan Cowle & Chris Hayton

Room: 045.01.005C Studio Times: Tuesday 5:50pm

The architecture of crime or community? • A catalyst for redemption or regeneration?

• Correctional or Institutional living? • If these walls could talk • Redemption, reuse and regeneration • A recipe for good behaviour • 25 to life • The great escape • Renegotiated memory

After gaining some insights into the

•

a depot

history, culture and the organisation

•

a caretaker’s cottage

of territory of the Wathaurong between

•

a car park

Werribee & the You Yangs, students

•

a seed bank

will set out to describe a series of

•

a First Peoples’ gathering place

speculative projects at a range of

•

a Restaurant

scales which will explore the destiny

•

a processing centre

of Wathaurong Culture and its imminent

•

a fence

collision with Melbourne's ever

•

a Grassland Research Institute

expansive urban growth boundary.

A Sites will be selected from As well as attempting to identify

within, as well as on the periphery

current considerations of an Indigenous

of, the Western Grassland Reserve,

Architecture, the studio will adopt

a 1500ha reserve with Special

and adapt Manuel Delanda’s assemblage

Environmental and Compulsory

theories as a means of entering into

Acquisition Overlays. Students

the complexities inherent in the

will be spending some time on the

contested ground around concepts of

Western Victorian Volcanic Plains

indigeneity.

listening to...

Xtra!

#1

Creeping normalityto the way a major change can

lity refers Creeping norma if it happens slowly, normal situation be regarded as be accepted as the ents, when it would period. in unnoticed increm single step or short it took place in a objectionable if

The underground station IS a public building.

What is the architecture of below?

Can you patch a hole in the City?

What can the NEW underground train line be?

What are the possibilities of an ALTERNATE City?

An-OTHER condition?

Utopia on the tracks?

THE UNDERGROUND MOVEMENT ARM OFFICE. TUESDAYS FROM 6.

FORD

Studio Outline Upper Pool Tutor SIMONE KOCH

FORD will operations at its Campbellfield site this year. This is a further sign of the long term trend in the demise of local manufacturing in the global market. Arguably Australia’s high input cost makes us uncompetitive against the emerging economies. We are interested in the flip side of this, which is to identify and accommodate on the soon to be vacant Campbellfield site the new and emerging industries that are currently driving those input costs. With industry established, we’ll transform the site into a model for suburban development, through the add‐hoc accrual of built form and landscape.

1: 100,000 1: 10,000 1: 200

1: 50

SITE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE CITY (TRAIN LINE) SITE IN IMMEDIATE CONTEXT (FOREST RESTORATION) POPULATED SITE (WEEKLY DESIGNS: FACTORY/SHOWROOM, ARTIST STUDIO, TRAIN STATION, HOUSING, SCHOOLS, POWER STATION, SHOPS, FARM, TRAM STOPS) INCLUDING REVIEW AND REITERATION DETAILED INVESTIGATION OF SELECTED DESIGNS

THE HITCHHIKER Gene Hitchhiking is an evolutionary mechanism involving the transfer of traits, themselves not under natural selection, between individuals.

Following on from the FLOW studio, The Hitchhiker will explore evolution in architectural and urban terms, where the city is understood as an emergent system and ‘new’ constituent elements are introduced as mutations or evolutions of existing conditions. In this context biological species are analogous to architectural/urban type, where experiments in typological deformation explore how existing urban or architectural types can be ‘evolved’ via mutation, hybridisation or grafting in response to emergent demands.

BEN MILBOURNE

These ideas will be tested through the lens of the Victorian Government’s Value Capture program, where ‘new’ sites created by the Rail Level Crossing Elimination program are leveraged for property development. These sites, often within areas of the city that have demonstrated high levels of community activism against increased density – present intriguing challenges to conventional notions of context.

Urban voids, a type of engineered tabular rasa –located within a network of existing urban relationships and historical occupation. Operating at the scale of the mega-structure while necessarily negotiating local and existing conditions.

The Hitchhiker studio will test existing building types and precedents, exploring hybrids and new evolutions that address these contradictions.

TUESDAYS, 9:30-1:30PM

Image: Pratricia Piccinini, Prone, 2011

AMBIGUOUS UTOPIAS Semester 1, 2016, RMIT Master of Architecture Studio

IAN NAZARETH

‘Ambiguous Utopias’ investigates urban sites of scalable potential that can accommodate transition. These spaces are conceivably laboratories and incubators for innovation and change, facilitating new typologies of programs and dynamic scales and intensities of projects. They present unique scenarios within complex urban conditions, and an opportunity to explore transformations between gradual and absolute.

The city is not static, but continually evolving. Its rapid transformation into intangible domains conveys an indefinite description and vague definition of its complexity. The city is more elusive than ever before.

The impact of rapid urbanisation, is the decentralisation of industrial programs, infrastructures and resources, all of which are pushed out even further from the central city. These shifts also release large sites within the city, sites embedded within the city’s infrastructure. The role of architecture and urban design often falls within this restless territory, negotiating uncertain industrial, political and economic cycles.

The studio challenges the ‘removal of industrial and replacement with residential’ paradigm, in favour of one that proposes a model of urbanism that can be created out of these activities in common.

The proposed E-Gate suburb in Melbourne is the largest remaining undeveloped site under the State Government. Intended to be developed as an inner-urban community of 10,000 residents, the site will be considered a testing ground for projects and processes. E Gate will be imagined as a productive urban precinct of ‘some’ description.

Existing typologies, exemplars and precedent of urban development will be scrutinised, contested and appropriated. The resultant urbanism will have the requisite components: industry, recreation, landscape and housing; but of a different order, aesthetic, scale and relationship.

The studio does not fetishize an idealised condition or sterile landscapes, but rather, critically re-engages with the speculative basis and communication of utopian ideas. It attempts to redefine design objectives and methods within architecture and urban design, and hence provoke a renewal.

‘Ambiguous Utopias’ solicits pre-emptive strategies and operating models that might shape the urban fabric, stimulating a version of the city that is open to experimental and opportunistic forms. It is a staging ground for resilient and responsive urbanisms. ‘Ambiguous Utopias’ will embrace the messy, contradictory, combinatory, uncertain, improbable and fantastical.

Tuesdays, 18:00 - 22:00, Location: 45.01.005B

The Studio title ‘Ambiguous Utopias’ is adapted from ‘An Ambiguous Utopia’ , the subtitle of Ursula K. Le Guin seminal science fiction novel ‘The Dispossessed’ Image: Viewing the World of Tomorrow, Futurama, 1939

3220/ CH1

INTENSIVE DESIGN STUDIO 6 WEEKS, BEGINNING MAY 2ND 2 CLASSES PER WEEK - MON + THURS, 6-10PM DESIGN HUB, LV 7 WAREHOUSE (END SPACE).

TUTOR: DANIELLE PECK Postcode 3000 - possibly ‘one of the most effective programs in terms of changing the look and feel of the city’ Rob Adams.

Geelong, a port city located on Corio Bay and the Barwon River, 75kms south-west of the Victorian capital, Melbourne. It is the second largest city in the state with an estimated urban population of approximately 185,000. In the mid 1800’s it became the port for the wool industry of the Western District. Since then it grew to become the largest manufacturing centre in Australia. Although the district has seen a sharp decline in heavy manufacturing, it is still experiencing steady growth and is positioning itself as an emerging leader of health, education and advanced manufacturing. It is however in danger of becoming a ‘generic city’.

Previous studio’s have studied Geelong’s waterfront condition, the fringe suburban sprawl, and the emerging cultural precinct. This semester, the studio will shift its focus to the beating heart of the city...the CBD. Students will work in groups, each being allocated 1 city block and investigate existing public spaces, identify types and map the terrain. The critical research that is developed in the first weeks of the studio will inform the selection of a site with potential to support new civic life.

Working individually, each student will then be tasked with designing a new Council House building, where the Mayor, and his/her 12 ward councillors will hold their weekly meeting. The building will be required to be inserted into the existing fabric, and concurrently, students will re conceive of the city block around them to reflect the cultural and political content of their new Council House building.

Students will be asked to imagine a Council House that can act as a new urban core that provides cultural and intellectual stimulation. Thus the design task is to conceive of a building that can act as a common framework - with mixed-use spaces, workplaces and communal facilities.

The new district that is therefore created should be defined by the form and function of its public space, accommodate future growth, and stimulate an urban renaissance within the City of Geelong.

HemAir

the SAIGON STUDIO 2016

can we imagine a new kind of vertical city?

Graham Crist (RMIT M. Architecture) + Hoanh Tran & Archie Pizzini Master of Urban DesignStudio (MC193)

Gretchen Wilkins

(RMIT M. Urban Design)

HTA + Pizzini Architecture, HCMC Vietnam

Master of Architecture Studio (MC163)

6pm Tuesday Design Hub Level 5 WORKSHOP in Ho Chi Minh City March 24 - April 5 Two things are remarkable about Ho Chi Minh City.One is the amazing culture of tiny lanes (HEMS) which spatialise a rich sociable life and intense use of urban space.The other is the explosion of high rise development, and the adoption of western model of large footprint curtain wall towers.These two models seem to be in conflict-the tower rapidly eating away the HEMS.It seems futile to be nostalgic and hope to preserve an authentic version of the old form of city. We could look at the possibility of this HEM city infecting the tower; or merging the two urban models.

So: How can the spatial forms of the Vietnamese street inform the the tower?

Can this create a genuinely new type of urban environment?

These questions give us the opportunity to study two urban forms. Very tall buildings, and Sai gon streets and lanes.Very close observation of each, understanding how these models work will give us the tools to operate with their complexity and invent new forms of city.

PETER BREW MASTERS ARCHITECTECTURE DESIGN STUDIO WEDNESDAY NIGHT THE INTENTION IS TO ENTER AND SUBMIT TO THIS CURRENT COMPETITIONREF http://www.eleven-magazine.com/?competition=san-francisco-2016 SUBMISSION TO THE COMPETITION OF 2 A2 SHEETS WILL BE IN WEEK 10 AFTER WHICH WE WILL DEVELOP A SINGLE PROJECT IN DETAIL

Focus Today, we live in a techno-social society. This competition asks: can new technologies act as urban-revitalizers, can they pave the way for a new model of inner-city urbanism, and can they minimize the negative effects of gentrification?

Futuristic urban proposals like the Google Mountain View campus are showing us alternative lifestyles which are more ‘free’, connected, and ecological.

Can this energy be turned into a Regenerative strategy to target existing problem areas within our contemporary cities?

This leads us to three fundamental questions. Focusing on the San Francisco’s notorious Tenderloin, we ask: 1) Can the Tenderloin – one of the most problematic urban areas in the USA – be transformed into a global model-district of excellence?

2) Can this inspire a new concept of Regeneration that embodies our contemporary world and our values?

3) Can it go from being a socially isolated island of distress to becoming connected to its city and in doing so become the center of a new 21st century urban paradigm?

San Francisco is a city of contrasts: exciting new waves of urban possibilities exist side by side with the seamlessly forgotten urban wasteland of the Tenderloin.

This is the premises for our challenge.

The objective of this competition is to imagine a regeneration strategy for the Tenderloin and in doing so, design a new model of how inner-city areas could be in the future.

GTV9 studio will accommodate the sharing economy into the architecture and the public

GTV9 PASSIVEHAUS SHARE ECONOMY URBAN HOUSING MIXED USE RICHMOND TUTOR IVAN RIJAVEC Studios Wednesday 6-10pm Bldg 45D

PRECIS THIS STUDIO WILL DEVELOP DESIGNS TO ACCOMMODATE THE SHARING ECONOMY IN THE ARCHITECTURE AND THE PUBLIC REALM OF THE MASSIVE LENDLEASE GTV9 DEVELOPMENT IN RICHMOND. THE DESIGN WILL RESPOND TO LENDLEASE'S OUTLINE BRIEF WHICH WILL BE FURTHER DEVELOPED AND TENDERED IN LATE MARCH OR EARLY APRIL PROVIDING STUDENTS THE OPPORTUNITY FOR A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS BETWEEN THEIR WORK AND THAT OF THE SUCCESSFUL TENDERERS WHEN THEIR CONCEPTS ARE MADE PUBLIC. STUDIO GTV9 WILL INVESTIGATE THE DESIGN OF PRECINCTS THAT ENCOURAGE AFFORDABILITY AND THE SOCIALLY COHESIVE ASPECTS OF COLLABORATIVE CONSUMPTION. RESEARCH WILL BE INFORMED BY THE STOLLER, TWILL STUDIO CONDUCTED AT UTS IN 2015 WHERE SOCIAL AND ARCHITECTURAL PROGRAMS FOR A SHARE ECONOMY WERE RESEARCHED AND DEVELOPED FOR INNER URBAN SYDNEY. THIS INFORMATION WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE TO PARTICIPATING STUDENTS FOR REINTERPRETATION AND APPLICATION TO THE GTV9 URBAN CONTEXT IN RICHMOND. THE STUDIO WILL COMMENCE WITH GROUP WORK IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE SEMESTER, SHARING RESEARCH AND DEVELOPING SITE SPECIFIC STRATEGIES FOR THE SHARING ECONOMY. GROUPS OF SAY THREE STUDENTS WILL BE REQUIRED TO TRANSLATE THEIR RESEARCH INTO SCHEMATIC PROPOSALS FROM THE OUTSET, PROVIDING TRANSLATIONS OF THEIR SOURCE MATERIALS WITH SKETCH PROPOSALS SPECIFIC TO GTV9. STUDENTS WILL BE GIVEN THE OPTION TO CONTINUE TO WORK IN TEAMS, CHANGE TEAMS OR WORK ALONE AS THE STUDIO PROGRESSES. THIS STUDIO WILL SUIT SELF-DIRECTED STUDENTS WHO ARE COLLABORATIVE IN THEIR APPROACH AND WHO HAVE CONFIDENCE IN THE TRANSFORMATIVE POSSIBILITIES OF ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN. IN THE SPIRIT OF THE SHARING ECONOMY WE EXPECT STUDENTS TO COLLABORATE WITH EACH OTHER TO SHAPE THE TRAJECTORY OF THE OVERALL STUDIO. THE STUDIO EMPHASIS WILL BE ON TRANSLATING RESEARCH INTO ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN, BY WAY OF PROGRESSIVE SCHEMATIC INTERPRETATIONS THAT CLARIFY ARCHITECTURAL AND URBAN DESIGN STRATEGIES. WORK WILL BE ASSESSED ON THE QUALITY OF THE DESIGN NOT THE “WEIGHT” OF FOLIOS. OUR FIRST TASK WILL BE TO MASTERPLAN THE SITE TRANSLATING THE “SHARING ECONOMY,” “COLLABORATIVE CONSUMPTION,” AND OTHER TERMS INTO ARCHITECTURAL IDEAS WITH CONCEPTUAL SKETCHES AND 3D'S SHOWING HOW THE THIS TRANSLATES INTO ARCHITECTURAL AND URBAN FORM, I.E. IN CONTRADISTINCTION TO DIAGRAMMING. THIS STUDIO PAIRS WITH A MIRROR MSD:ARCHITECTURE STUDIO RUN BY TUTORS IVAN RIJAVEC WITH A SEASONED PROPERTY DEVELOPER JASON TWILL ENSURING A DYNAMIC MIX OF ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN INNOVATION AND RADICAL INTERVENTION BY WAY OF PROPERTY ACUMEN AND COMMERCIAL VISION. RMIT AND MSD STUDENTS WILL BE AFFORDED THE RARE OPPORTUNITY TO ATTEND EACH OTHERS CRITS AS A CONSEQUENCE. I FULLY EXPECT THE THIS STUDIO TO DEVELOP RADICAL, VISIONARY, AND COMMERCIALLY ASTUTE BUILDINGS AND PLACES THAT EMBODY THE WISDOM OF THE SHARING ECONOMY. OUTCOMES STUDENTS WILL DESIGN THE BUILDINGS AND PUBLIC SPACES FOR THE GTV9 SITE IN RESPONSE TO ITS SPECIFIC URBAN CONTEXT AND A DEVELOPMENT PRO FORMA PREPARED BY LENDLEASE. THEIR DESIGNS WILL RESPOND TO A SHARING ECONOMY INFORMED BY UTS RESEARCH THAT WILL BE REINTERPRETED FOR THE GTV9 SITE. STUDENTS WILL DEVELOP A COMPREHENSIVE ARCHITECTURAL RESPONSE AND DOCUMENT IT IN PLANS, SECTIONS, ELEVATIONS, RENDERINGS, AND MODELS. THE EMPHASIS WILL BE ON CUTTING EDGE ARCHITECTURAL INTERPRETATION OF THE BUILDINGS AND PUBLIC REALM SHAPED BY THE IMPERATIVES OF THE SHARING ECONOMY.

gwyllim Jahn wednesdays 5:30pm 8.12.41

“Chindōgu (珍道具?) is the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that, on the face of it, seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem. However, anyone actually attempting to use one of these inventions would find that it causes so many new problems that effectively it has no utility whatsoever.”

Robochindogu is a Masters design studio that will invent robotic behaviours and ingenious everyday gadgets to allow processes of designing and making to occur simultaneously. We will explore tools and approaches that while having effectively no utility whatsoever for solving deterministic design problems (such as those of structure, efficiency or order) may present significant opportunities for formal discovery, wonderment, effect, poesis and delight. The studio will introduce the idea of designing in material, and explores the limits of design control, utility and authorship when working with increasingly complex and automated systems of design production. Robochindogu resists the conception of design as cerebral and pure thought in favour of messy approaches that embrace the volatility, unpredictability and heterogeneity of physical material and processes of formation. A selection of case studies carried out in the early part of semester will demonstrate the disciplines current fascination with material driven approaches to architectural formation and obstinately question notions of ‘craftsmanship’, ‘autonomy’, ‘agency’, ‘tools’ and ‘performance’ in architectural practice and production.

Robochindogu is the first studio at RMIT to provide students with 24 hour access and training on a UR10 industrial robot. This machine is capable of being run in ‘real-time’, allowing the robot to react to changes that it can perceive and consequently exert some agency within a process of fabrication. Real time control capabilities obfuscate the notion of a design model, as design changes can be made on the fly rather than needing to be anticipated prior to construction. By exploring real-time fabrication approaches we will discover that existing digital modelling tools are ill suited to describing the complexity of material behaviour, and the studio will explore the limit to which generative design approaches can be carried out in situ, working with physical material as the elements of computation.

The studio will conduct regular esquisses that develop increasingly sophisticated abilities of robotic reaction and perception. These studies will be supported by time in workshops focusing on tool building, physical prototyping, material observation and robotic fabrication. It is important to note that the studio will not be concerned with accuracy, repeatability, consistency, standardisation or any other modernist ideas of engineering quality. You do not

need to be a computer scientist or robotics expert to take this studio, you only need to ethos of a tinkerer. This polemical position opens up opportunities for laypersons (such as architects) to become enigmatic master builders, responsible for the design of design-tools as well as their intents and purpose.

Outcomes The first half of the semester will be spent developing bespoke systems for material (un)control. These systems will serve to generate a suite of 1:1 physical prototypes of architectural objects, culminating in a specific expression and formal language through which students can claim some design authorship and present at mid semester. The second half of the studio will develop schemes for small scale architectural propositions resolved to a high degree of detail and partially fabricated at 1:1.

Key Precedent Ball Nogues, Gramazio Kohler, Achim Menges, Francois Roche, Kokkugia, Adam Fure, Casey Rehm, The Bartlett Wonderlab, Daniel Widrig, Gilles Retsin, Neri Oxman

to g n i com ST EA IBEE R R WE

WATCH THIS SPACE This studio is the next in a series of four previous ones that have looked at the production of urban form in Melbourne’s outer suburbs and greenfield development land parcels. This collective project aims to engage with the Government apparatus for coaxing development on the ‘fringe’ - handing over the focus and definition of new towns to commercial developers and their cabal of poorly equipped consultant teams. The results of this approach seem to have jettisoned the lessons of the city in favour of development bereft of place, mainly through the subjugation of the public realm into a role of decoration – a role accepted by both architects and landscapers alike.

The program: This studio will produce a scheme for an employment precinct on Melbourne’s outer fringe. We will question the business-as-usual outcomes of the business park type - a single-use program, inhabited only by the workers of the buildings and set in a landscape conceived to convey corporate calm and manners. Students will be encouraged to conscript foreign components, identified from the city, as forces to disrupt this suburban gloss.

On one hand, ‘Watch This Space’ will look to reclaim the urban void between buildings and employ this space as the dominant figure and frame by which the orthodox primacy of the singular architectural object can be judged.

On the other, ‘Watch This Space’ will reconnect social observation and empirical research to the design act in the belief that dynamic human interactions and the physical appropriation of space are far more intriguing and far more civic than the static characteristics of the architectural form.

Studio Leaders: Dean Boothroyd and Mark Jacques Tuesday Evening 5:30pm. Room 008.12.041 original images by Hannah Humphries and Martin Rowland

Same-Same but Different AGENDA // Same-Same

but Different

Tom Verebes & Cameron Newnham

“Modern Industry had therefore itself to take in hand the machine, its characteristic instrument of production, and to construct machines by machines.”

— Karl Marx, Capital, vol I, 1848 Architecture, as with most creative industries, is undergoing an important transition in industrial paradigm, from mass production to mass customization. In this studio, we will search to clarify the latent consequences of Post-Fordism, through the tools of computational design and fabrication. Given the discipline’s ongoing indulgent obsessions with marvelous massing, exuberant envelopes, funky façades, and fabulous furniture, this studio also queries the larger scale repercussions of non-standard fabrication for urbanism. Of all the robust ontologies and methodologies targeting heterogeneity in architecture, there remains an gap in the theorization of distinctiveness and specificity in urbanism, and for that matter, of a general theory of Difference in Total Design.

SITE & BRIEF // Bao’An, Shenzhen, China We’ll confront the current post-industrial urban condition of Shenzhen, a former fishing village cum factory town north of the boundary with Hong Kong, rapidly being reinvented as a high tech hub, with a growing community of financial and creative industries. As a site for the studio’s speculations and propositions, we’ll work on the Bao’An Development District, largely a blank, tabula-rasa territory in the west of Shenzhen, strategically located along the shore of the Pearl River, between Shekou and Shenzhen International Airport.

METHODS & OUTCOMES // Patternbook As a means with which to challenge the perpetuation of Fordist models of repetitious design production, this studio will focus on variegated, mathematically generated patterns, with which to target heterogeneous and differentiated design outcomes. In a series of introductory workshops, students will work haptically and playfully, yet with keen rigour, with the aim to generate intensive and extensive geometric orders in lines and surfaces, gradient and colour fields. The initial toolbox of self-similar, deeply structured patterns will be applied towards a multi scalar design approach between urbanism and building systems. Initial weekly workshops for 5 weeks, from week 5, will build individual students’ skills Rhino, GH, and other plug-ins. Multi-scalar design outcomes will then be developed in a intensive collaborative studio design environment, in teams of 3 students, working to apply the abstract spatial organizational toolbox at 3 scales simultaneously, in large format drawings and prototypes.

•• Urban Urban Design Design of of 3-5 3-5 Megablocks Megablocks in in Bao’An Bao’An •• Architectural Architectural Series Series in in 1 1 Megablock Megablock •• Sets Sets of of Differentiated Differentiated Building Building Systems Systems

Initial Workshops:

Week 5-9;Tuesday Evenings, Room 45.D

Intensive Studio mode: 9 May-7 June

© OCEAN CN, Umekita Second Development Area, Osaka, 2014 ‘ ‘© Highland Park Ford Plant, Detroit, MI, USA, 1909 ‘ © “Nike” 2016 line of shoes, http://nike.com ‘

R E S I L I E N T

E N V I R O N M E N T S GENOA

I M P E R I A I T A L Y

TRAVELLING STUDIO SEMESTER 1 2016 TUTORS: JONATHAN WARE + MAURO BARACCO MASTERS OF ARCHITECTURE + LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

ARCHITECTURAL THINKING AND CLIMATE CHANGE/URBAN RESILIENCE This design studio encourages a role for architects through which these should operate

IMPERIA

as strategic figures aiming to integrate complex systems, competing needs and seemingly polarised aims, therefore leading to innovative and provocative combinations of program, siting, and

built form where outcomes can be far reaching, addressing issues beyond the traditional domain of the building and/or individual object. How and where people live, work, produce their food, share community activities, participate

NICE

into the world from their specific places and how these solutions interact with the natural environment must be re-thought to combine sustainable social and environmental solutions. These issues land at the feet of traditional concerns of architecture: land use and urbanisation, big and small systems and relationships. What role can architecture play?

THE LABORATORY This studio will place architectural design in a leading position to develop design based solutions to climate change and urban resilience by considering the traditional concerns of land use and urbanisation anew. It will investigate the role and effects of ‘urban renewal’ applied to urban environments that are currently in highly sensitive situations regarding urban, architectural and ecological degradation. The studio case study site will be located in north-west Italy, and will be explored through urban, landscape and infrastructural projects aiming to transform current stagnant conditions into a whole of innovative integrated resilient urban/ architectural/landscape/infrastructural and economic environments. The projects encouraged by this studio will seek out and create opportunities for positive transformation in a diversity of urban and peri-urban sites that have been severed from their context by infrastructure, that are undergoing wholesale urban transformation, that have been vacated by industry, that have suffered environmental degradation, that are at risk to the impacts of climate change and that are under valued and under utilized. The studio will also address biological and technological systems, designing and arranging these into vibrant and livable urban habitats. In particular, the aim of the studio is to focus on urban visions for the elected case-study that include the following integrated projects: - reuse/reprogramming of infrastructures and disused industrial spaces, and/or left-over open spaces; - re-landscaping and re-vegetation strategies of existing open spaces; - consolidation and reprogramming of left-over and incomplete spaces and buildings; - transformation and/or new design aiming to cross-programming and integration of built and open space.

An exhibition of the projects, their publication on a website and related public presentation/symposium may be organized in collaboration with industry and government partners from the case-study site. Students will be required to draw, map and design in an ‘inclusive’ and ‘comprehensive’ way, that is: with no sense of hierarchy between landscape, architectural, urban, infrastructural and interior scales/elements, as well as through testing processes informed by the simultaneous application of small, medium and large scales. The projects will be inclined to establish critical relationships with their immediate and territorial contexts rather than to produce isolated and individual interventions.

SITE VISIT: IMPERIA, ITALY Students will participate in a 2 week field trip + studio workshop (collaborating with students from Milan Polytechnic) in the town of Imperia, Italy as well as surrounding provincial medieval townships. The studio will resume 2 weeks later in Melbourne, allowing time for a tour of late modernist architecture in Milan + your own travel and recommended site visits.

WK 1 + 2 MARCH 16th - 23rd MARCH 24th - APRIL 4th APRIL 5th - 6th WK 6 - 12 JULY

STUDIO RMIT (background research + preparation) WORKSHOP IMPERIA, ITALY TRAVEL WORKSHOP + TOUR MILAN, ITALY STUDIO RMIT (project development + consolidation) SELECTED WORKS EXHIBITED AT VENICE BIENNALE

Dementia

Studio

How can architectural design best contribute to the impact of dementia on an individual? What might our cities be like if they catered for a population with dementia? How might we navigate urban space differently with dementia?

What can the effects of dementia teach us about the design of the built environment?

Anthony Clarke Tuesdays 9:30am - 1:30pm Building 8, Level 11, Room 008.11.058

Tutor : Time : Where: ??????? :

Simon Drysdale Wednesday 6pm Building 8 A case study in disruptive innovation.

6 pack+neo tudor+k (1000) pop (ulation)

K * P * I Empire Street, Footscray

All together now!:

I love a sunburnt city, A city of sweeping planes, Of ragged mountain angles, Of droughts and flooding reins.

I love her loose horizons, I love her dual- ‘c’, Her beauty and her error The wide brown city for me!

The

Art Game Vault

A gAlleRy, A ToMb, A poDIUM, A Tv STATIon AnD An ART coMpAcToR DeSIgneD ARoUnD A gAMe engIneeReD To cReATe A MeDIA SpecTAcle AnD bRoADen The SpecTAToR bASe of conTeMpoRARy ART THE ART GAME VAULT is a museum, stadium, art compactor and art-tomb all built in to one.

The Game is a ladder based competition where teams made up of artists, curators and institutions compete in a public competition in a gallery designed to support contemporary arts practices but also to facilitate spectacle for spectators - both in person and via media broadcast.

To amplify the emotional engagement of the audience risk and loss and tragedy are built in to the contest. Losing competitors in the first round have their work entombed for one year. In the second round, losing teams have their work

Colosseum Caspar van Wittel 1707

entombed for three years, and in the final round the losing team has their work destroyed in a public ceremony - the very same public ceremony in which the winning team is awarded a prize.

All team members are paid to compete, and sponsors are afforded highly visible representation in the Game and its surrounds to help raise funds for participant remuneration.

Students will gain an understanding of the functionality of all building types studies, and gain experience in type-mixing as a design technique and also as a method of critique.

Two independent teams of judges each make a determination at each stage: a team of art experts and a team of lay-people. The ultimate decision is made by coin toss - in a public ceremony.

The studio will undertake typological studies of tombs, stadiums amphitheatres, television studios, awards podiums , museums and art galleries and mash these together around a carefully thought out program, functional brief and spatial diagram structured around the game, its participants and its audience.

Students will require and active and sophisticated sense of irony and an earnest eagerness to digest and discuss the weekly reading list.

The Game is replayed each year, and the entombed works are revealed in public de-tombing ceremonies which function as introductory spectacles of each annual iteration of the game.

Where:

8:12:38

When:

tuesdays, 5:30 pm

The Art Vault Game will involve a number of visits to tombs, stadiums, television studios and art

tutor:

dr Jan van schaik

galleries, including MONA in Tasmania and the AGNSW in New South Wales

Dr Jan van Schaik is a registered architect, a lecturer and researcher at RMIT University, and a director of MvS Architects - please visit mvsarchitects.com.au for more information.