SEMESTER 1 | 2021
MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE DESIGN ELECTIVES ALL ELECTIVES ARE ONLINE UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE
Advanced Fabrication Research is part of a group of studios and electives run this semester that are aligned with the RMIT Architecture| Tectonic Formations Lab, which will collaborate through combined reviews and symposia. Students will be exploring the robotic fabrication of : Clay Infused Mycelium, Rigid Flexible Reinforcement , Fibre Tailoring, Concrete Sacrificial Formworks and a Suspension 3D Printing Process within a Gel Matrix. Students will be divided into groups in order to explore a selected robotic fabrication technique. Classes will be conducted both on campus within the RMIT workshops and online. Virtual reviews will be conducted every other week in order to examine and critique each prototype. Students are required to access the RMIT workshops independently in order to develop each technique. No experience with algorithmic and robotic tools is required, however a willingness to engage in these tools and highly iterative processes is essential.
ADVANCED FABRICATION RESEARCH ELECTIVE NATALIE ALIMA + HESAM MOHAMED THURSDAY 1PM
LIFE ON MARS
Ai-ASSISTED DESIGN SEARCH
Prof Alis a A n d ra sek K EYWORD S: PO ST PL ANETARY /DI STR I B UTE D / EXPO N E N TI A L / PA R A L L E L /AUTOM AT I ON / M AC H I N E LEAR N I N G/AI / DATAISM /COMPL EXITY / HIGH RES O LUTI O N / CO M PUTATI O N A L PH YS I CS / PAT T ER N R ECOGN I T I ON
Architecture is increasingly enriched with information, introducing big data into design processes. Through computational processes for the first time in history we are rendering invisible visible. In this context, “pattern recognising” possible designs out of sea of data is increasingly opaque to unassisted human cognition. We will investigate Ai-assisted design search, developing student’s sensibility for aesthetics emerging from this newfound condition. This elective will speculate about future cities on Mars as complex systems problem, seeding life-supportive infrastructures first, upon which human settlements can emerge. Interaction between energy, machines, geology, and atmosphere, will be conceptually explored, for designing context sensitive infrastructures for energy generation, automated construction, protection from radiation and other life supportive functions. Later stages might include transferring design strategies developed for Mars to those on Earth, such as high density/low coverage architectures for extreme environments, distribution of green biomass, and Ai-based infrastructural systems. Computational workflow will consist of training and deployment of artificial neural networks that enables synthesis of urban textures found in existing cities on Earth and NASA images of Mars landscapes. Prior coding knowledge is not required, students will be given pre written software/code and work will be undertaken in teams. It is highly recommended if you are undertaking the masters studios nD Architecture by Alisa Andrasek & Joshua Lye to undertake this elective.
Elective Dates Semester 1 - 2021 Weekly Session (Week 1 - 2)
Intensive Period
Thursday 4th March - 10AM - 2PM Thursday 11 March - 10AM - 2PM
Monday 5th April - Friday 9th April - 10AM - 4PM (1 hour lunch break) Final Presentation Monday 12th April - 5PM - 9PM
www.alisaandrasek.com
| UROBOROS
| Marc Gibson | 9:30am - 12:30pm | Wednesday | Online Class | | Outline Uroboros centres around the idea of inheritance through iterative analysis and optimization. Students will create, refine, and position a digital toolset that interfaces bottom up algorithmic generation of geometry, procedural rationalization, and top down intervention through modelling. The first half of the semester will tackle the fundamentals of building solvers to test large numbers of solutions to find targeted outcomes. Students will form groups to build a series of tools that solve a speculative design problem such as: Form optimization (curvature, load analysis), façade panelization or circulation wayfinding. The outcomes will be controlled, analysed and represented through dynamic dashboards designed by students. Please note that you will be learning how to Code in C# in this elective - There is no expectation of prior experience in coding. The first few weeks will have exercises that will focus on building your knowledge on the fundamentals of coding, data structure and how to write an algorithm. | Prerequesits Students are expected to have completed Communications 3 (Grasshopper & Mesh modelling). No prior coding experience required. | Evaluation Students will be assessed on their design, visual communication and comprehension of data structure to control layered parametric procedures. Individual folios are to be submitted at the conclusion of this subject. | Core Techniques
| Topology Generation
| Develop Algorithmic Systems
| Genetic Solvers & ML Panel Clustering
| Exhibition Page
| Automated Documentation
| Fundamentals of Coding C#
| Interactive Dashboards [Winforms]
| Class Overview Video
Clients
101
Understanding the small scale property developer In this elective students will learn the basics of how owneroccupiers and small scale developers subdivide small scale inner urban sites for development. Students will learn how to find sites and how to asses a their suitability for subdivision. Each student will develop a built form envelope that takes in to account the planning constraints of building height, setbacks, crossovers, parking, heritage, neighbourhood character, cultural heritage, council contributions, construction costs, utility costs, design costs, marketing costs, taxation structures, sale prices and agent commissions. Students will learn about the development process, how to establish title boundaries,
how to process adverse possession claims, and how to structure the development financing. Students will be run their project through a mock local government planning process including pre-planning meetings, dealing with council planners, the public display and objection process and the Victorian Civil Administrative Tribunal (VCAT). The elective will also brush on how to design for the right type of builder, how to chose a builder, and triggers of the unionising of sites. The ultimate output of the elective for each student will be a series of drawings suitable for a planning application and a development flow chart.
This elective will run online Wednesdays 2.30 > 5.30pm Tutor: Dr Jan van Schaik: practising architect at MvS Architects, a researcher and senior lecturer at RMIT Architecture & Urban Design, and a creative and cultural industries strategist at Future Tense. Contact: jan.vanschaik@rmit.edu.au
SUPERTIGHT DATA R M I T M a s t e r of Architecture Elective seminar 2021 with Graham Crist Tuesday 12pm + online
The Supertight project is a speculation on hyper density in cities and the benefits of living more closely. It draws heavily on the models of Asian Cities, as well as the known ecological benefits of smaller footprints. The Making Tight project planned for Melbourne Design Week is a current development of that project, and connects to this seminar project. This seminar will research data on the city, providing hard data for the possibilities and realities of a supertight city. The transformation of the city toward tightness is partly social but also technological and greatly exaggerated by the covid pandemic. We consider changes to workplaces; shopping; food production; manufacture; leisure – the technologies that are compressing and dispersing these. Just as the city becomes socially distanced, it has the potential to become physically tighter. We might ask for example: What if, 50% of worked at home? What if 50% of all shopping was online? What if 50% of cars were replaced by bikes? What if all our food was produce in the city? Such speculative questions are based on real trends growing from current technologies; with potential for real impacts on cities.
We will build a comprehensive data model of tight Melbourne and map its form. Each of you will participate in gathering this information and producing a great map of greater, tighter Melbourne. We aim to tell the story of a real, future tight city. In the process you will acquire knowledge on how cities work, develop skills in working with quantitative urban data, and skills in describing this data graphically, in a compelling way. The seminar will run at 12pm on Tuesday- in an online format, and be supplemented informally with face to face meetings, wherever possible. For questions contact graham.crist@rmit.edu.au
Image: Flagrant Délit, Madelon Vriesendorp, 1975
MICROMEGA CITY Vicky Lam RMIT ARCHITECTURE ELECTIVE Tuesdays 1:30 pm - 4:30 pm starting week 2. Intensive week at week 6. In MicroMega City we will explore the role architectural mapping and digital animating processes as a model for intensive analysis and narrative understanding of our built environment. This is a communications and urban research elective that explores how we tell stories about the city using architectural representation, urban mapping, and film making techniques. Student will work in groups to make a final animation/ film. URBAN RESEARCH Students will work in groups to build a body of research of various urban condiditons that result in unique behaviours, communal interactions, and peculiar formal relationships around the suburb of HAWHTORN WEST, specifically the area tangled between the Metro Rail Line, the Yarra River, and Hawrhorn Main Drain that result in meandering pedestrian paths, overpasses and cul-de-sacs. ANIMATION AND FILMING TECHNIQUES Students will be taught film making techniques including After Effects to bring their research to life. We will use film production pipeline from storyboarding to prodcution design to produce each film. An intensive AfterEffeccts workshop will be conducted by Quan Tran at WEEK 6. PRECEDENT STUDIES We will explore precedents of visualisations of urban transformation such as Kon Wajiro, Drawing Architecture Studio, Liam Younbg, Super Studio, Mario Gandelsonas, Work AC, Archigram, Archizoom, Madelon Vriesendorp. Students will be working in groups throughout the semester : 1 Class Presentation of Precedent Study and Site Research Drawings at Mid semester 2 Aftereffects and Green Screen Workshop in WEEK 6 3 Produce a 1-2 min film due in WEEK 12 4 Contribute to a publication of the collective research 5 Individual Folio Submission at the end of semster
Ornamental Operations Elective Leader: Brent Allpress Tuesday 9.30-12.30 am “Cultural evolution is equivalent to the removal of ornament from articles of everyday use.” – Adolf Loos “The new decoration is orthopaedic”. – Le Corbusier “Featurism is not simply a decorative technique, it starts in concepts and extends upwards through the parts to the numerous trimmings. It may be defined as the subordination of the essential whole and the accentuation of selected separate features.” – Robin Boyd “The anguish of the beautiful that shines through the fragility of ornament is atopian: displacing more than could any nudity.” – Franco Rella Ornament haunts architectural discourse and practice. Theories of the ornamental within the canon cross and interrupt the central texts of the architectural tradition, both constructing and dividing them with unresolved uncertainties. Modernist theory negated the supplementary role of applied ornament. Modernist practices however involved radical ornamental operations employing abstract spatial surfaces as semiautonomous systems. The representational role of ornament in contemporary architecture remains complex and contested. This elective provides a framework for investigating the complexities of the legacy of the Modernist prescription against the ornamental. It provides an opportunity to reconsider and revise postmodern accounts of the role of ornament. Recent non-standard digital technologies that revise modernist economies of standardization also shift the debate on the role of figuration beyond representation and communication towards architectural actions. Critical readings will be made of key architectural texts on ornament. Modernist, postmodernist and contemporary precedent projects will be analysed involving questions of ornament. The Elective will examine a thematic series of ornamental operations and actions including framing, masquerade, grotesquery, interlacing, prosthesis, negation, marginalia, backgrounding and mediation. The late-Classical theorist Boethius argued the role of ornament was to mediate transitions in state from conditions of tension to resolution. Related counter-compositional strategies will be explored. This is a design project and practices focused History and Theory Elective that integrates theoretical reading and critical discursive writing with representational analysis and speculative project based design studies. This Elective provides a vehicle for research into significant architectural precedent and practices, provoking a critical and creative response that focuses on qualitative and performative design operations and outcomes.
FIRMWARE./ IAN NAZARETH DAVID SCHWARZMAN
Image Credit: Melbourne Functional Mix (David Schwarzman, Ian Nazareth)
SEMESTER 1 2021 TUESDAYS 14.00 - 17.00, LOCATION: ONLINE Firmware is a design- research excursion on the city, approaching digital interfaces as physical environments. Firmware, draws reference to a particular class of computer software that provides a standardized operating environment for the device's more complex operations. Without firmware, a hardware device would be non-functional. This analogy is deployed to focus on the relationship between virtual applications, digital realms and physical spaces in the city, as well as the implications they have on the temporal and permanent patterns of occupation, spaces, typologies etc. It seeks to establish a platform through which virtual (and even real-time) data can be juxtaposed from multiple sources and spatialised.
This project is empowered by a process of data scrapping – whereby geo-referenced information and data from web-based Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) can be extracted into design environments. Here raw information is co-referenced. The platform is thus a conduit between APIs and computer aided design application (Rhinoceros 3D) through an algorithmic visual programming language (Grasshopper). The focus is to hybridise disparate datasets from public services and private entities who have a vested interest in the city. This convergence offers architects and urban designers an insight into behaviours of cities and networks, all captured through decentralised systems. These can record and reveal patterns and offer new ways of engaging with the city. Using metropolitan Melbourne as a prototype, we will analyse and speculate about the future of the city.The course is structured through a series of analytical and critical investigations and design-research projects and you will work in teams.
CONRAD HAMANN IAN NAZARETH
Image: Cities as Industry (Ian Nazareth, Rosemary Heyworth)
SEMESTER 1 2021 WEDNESDAYS 12.00 - 15.00 LOCATION: ONLINE
Urbanism: History and Theory introduces you to the key ideas, precedents and theoretical discourse in urban design, both current and historical. It provides a critical understanding of the discipline and an intellectual framework through which you can establish a position on future urban design practice. Seminal texts, key practitioners, exemplary projects and speculative proposals are curated to highlight critical issues in urbanism historically and currently. These issues include: design process and urban morphology; economic and political frameworks; technological, industrial and infrastructural development; and socio-political policies in design. Course content provides you with a comprehensive overview of urban design practice and a detailed understanding of the mechanisms producing and affecting urban space. Examples from local and international contexts are presented.
SEMESTER 1 | 2021
MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE ELECTIVE BASED RESEARCH ASSISTANTS
Exhibition Assistants Needed Approximately 10 exhibition assistants are required to undertake an intensive research assistant engagement from the start of week 1 until 15th April 2021. Successful applicants will contribute to the ‘Making Tight’ exhibition to be held at RMIT Design Hub Gallery as a component of NGV Melbourne Design Week 2021. The exhibition is a curated show exploring design led approaches to reintroducing processes of making and production into dense urban environments. The exhibition includes site specific installations and research produced by designers and architects in Melbourne, Brisbane and Seoul. Students will assist by through the preparation of physical models to be exhibited, the set up and installation of exhibits, the preparation of didactics and wayfinding systems, the preparation of printed components of the exhibits and the invigilation of the exhibit. All assistant’s involvement will be credited in the exhibition and published material. The project will be led at RMIT by John Doyle and Graham Crist. This opportunity is only available for 10 students, and will not be available via the balloting form. If you are interested in joining the elective please contact us directly at john.doyle@rmit.edu.au or graham.crist@rmit.edu.au
Architecture
& Urban Design
Knitting Architecture
as part of the NGV “Sampling the Future” exhibition 4 students are needed to work with Leanne Zilka (architecture) and Jenny Underwood (textile design) on an installation to be exhibited at the NGV as part of the Sampling The Future exhibition to be held in August. The work involves developing digital simulations of knitted structures based on the limitations of the 3d knitting machines based in the Brunswick Campus, resolving some of the fabrication details to do with supporting the knit and shared conversations around the fabrication and how it sits in the space. The elective is for 1 semester Students interested should have competent rendering and digital modeling skills and an interest in alternative fabrication techniques and approaches. Students will be required to keep a portfolio of work for assessment at the conclusion of the elective. You will be working on level 9 of the design hub or in the Brunswick Knitting Lab with visits to the NGV gallery to view the space. online/face to face Meeting times will be set up in week 1. Please send through an email to leanne.zilka@rmit.edu.au if you are interested. You must be able to enrol in an elective if you area interested. You will receive credit for ARCH1338,1339, 1240 or ARCH1491, 1492. image by Georgia McCole - research elective student 2,2021
Urban Futures Office The Megaproject (Season 2)
In the urban age, cities will continue to expand and intensify, to host more of society and its shared interests. Major urban projects are the primary response by federal governments and planning commissions to contend with metropolitan pressures. Cities around the world especially in Asia and Australia have witnessed significant transformation of their infrastructure and built fabric through such megaprojects. Despite ranking very highly on liveability indexes, Australian cities face challenges, with models for condensed urbanism. The sheer scale and complexity mean that global, national and local interests are interwoven and intensified at a singular moment. The risk and uncertainty for all interests is tangible and hence outcomes are largely shaped by political and economic cycles, rather than long-term resilience of local economies and communities. The Urban Futures Office is an ongoing project and partnership between RMIT University and Hayball led by Ian Nazareth (Program Manager, Master of Urban Design, RMIT), Ann Lau (Director, Hayball) and Wei Yap Ooi (Principal, Hayball). The aim of this project is to facilitate a knowledge transfer to implement effective design-led urban governance in Megaprojects and to delaminate the layers and procedural nature of delivering such projects.
We seek four enthusiastic Research Assistants to work with us on developing research and analysis, drawing and publishing content that will contribute to the ongoing project and partnership. You will work directly with project team and introduced to a local and global network of industry partners. Through this elective we seek to explore the agency of design and design-led approaches as a catalyst for social, political and economic transformation. The project will focus on investment in cities through a design-focused approach from models of planning, procurement and management of city assets. The project will address design in relation to governance. We will meet online weekly, commencing in Week 1 of Semester. Tuesdays, 10.00-12.00. Please email Ian Nazareth (ian.nazareth@rmit.edu.au) directly to express your interest in this elective. Semester 1, 2021
GRADUATE EXHIBITION ASSISTANTS
SEMESTER 1 2021
The Architecture Program requires 6 enthusiastic assistants to help with the organisation of the Semester 2 2020 End of Semester and Major Project Exhibition. You will work closely with the Exhibition Coordinator in the design and curation of the exhibition, graphic design of posters and PR materials, website, Major Project Catalogue and other items that go to make a succesful event. The majority of the work will be in the second half of semester, but you will be required to assist with organisation throughout the semester. There will be a crunch period in the week prior to the event, please confirm your availability over Week 13, Week 15, Week 16 and Week 17 prior to enrolling in the elective. The team is limited to 6 people only. You will receive credit towards an elective for your time. This is not availabe through electives balloting. If you are interested please contact the Exhibition Co-ordinator Ian Nazareth (ian.nazareth@rmit.edu.au) directly.