ARCHITECTURE DESIGN ELECTIVES COMPRISE A SUITE OF VERTICALLY INTEGRATED COURSES OFFERED ACROSS THE BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN AND THE MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE PROGRAMS.
ARCHITECTURE DESIGN ELECTIVES DRAW ON KEY AREAS OF ARCHITECTURE HISTORY AND THEORY, COMMUNICATIONS, TECHNOLOGY, AND DESIGN, AND FROM INTERDISCIPLINARY COMBINATIONS WITH THE MASTER OF URBAN DESIGN AS WELL AS DESIGN PROJECTS OFFERED ACROSS THE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN PROGRAMS.
THE EMPHASIS OF THE ELECTIVES ARE THE APPLICATION AND SYNTHESIS OF NEW SKILLS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF YOUR PRACTICE AND KNOWLEDGE OF ARCHITECTURE.
AUGMENTED MATERIALITY
MIXED REALITY ASSITED PROTOTYPING
ARCHITECTURE ELECTIVE SEMESTER 2, 2025
IGOR PANTIC (Studio Igor Pantic Ltd.)
Commencing in Week 4
Week 4-12 (online),Tuesdays 2-5PM
Week 13-14 (in person) Intensive - Tuesdays 2-5PM and Friday 5-8PM
// Description
This seminar explores how Mixed Reality (MR) technologies can be used to guide physical making in architectural design, bridging the gap between digital modelling and hands-on fabrication. Students will work in teams to develop and prototype hybrid material systems - assemblies that sit at the intersection of the architectural and the experimental. These systems may draw from traditional materials and construction logic, but will be fabricated using MR overlays that replace conventional drawings with holographic instructions. The course emphasises making as a design method: the semester begins with a series of iterative material tests, through which each team will examine the properties, behaviours, and forming strategies of their chosen material system. These early experiments will inform the development of a fabrication workflow combining digital design (in Rhino/Grasshopper) with MR-assisted assembly using Fologram.
By the end of the semester, each group will produce a 1:1 physical prototype (~1m³) that demonstrates a refined material strategy and an operational MR-guided fabrication process. Students will learn to calibrate MR environments, translate digital geometry into buildable components, and assess the limitations and advantages of MR compared to conventional representation methods.
The seminar does not require prior experience with MR tools - introductory sessions will be provided, and design freedom is encouraged. While Grasshopper and Fologram form the technical core, students are welcome to develop their design models using other tools, as long as the fabrication workflow is integrated through MR.
This elective is well-suited for students interested in fabrication-aware design, embodied workflows, and collaborative prototyping using advanced technologies grounded in real material constraints. Projects will be conducted in groups of 3–4 students. Material costs will depend on the system chosen and will be discussed in the first class.
In addition to the final prototype, students will submit a collective documentation portfolio that includes process drawings, fabrication sequences, workflow diagrams, and material observations. An individual reflective statement will support critical engagement with the methodology.
// About the instructor
Igor Pantic is an architectural designer and researcher based in London and Bangkok, and the founder of Studio Igor Pantic Ltd. His work merges computational design, digital fabrication, immersive MR/VR, and generative AI to explore their impact on architecture. Specialising in automation, including robotic fabrication, advanced materials, and Mixed Reality, he spent nine years as a Lecturer at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, leading research on MR-assisted fabrication. Igor has taught internationally and previously worked at Zaha Hadid Architects. His notable projects include the award-winning “Steampunk Pavilion” for the 2019 Tallinn Architecture Biennale, which demonstrated the pioneering use of Mixed Reality in construction, and the Serbian Pavilion at 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.
www.igorpantic.net / IG @sixthofmarch
Character
This is Master of Architecture elective that uses embodied carbon modelling as a design and advocacy tool for adaptive reuse. In an era of escalating climate demands, this elective will test how software (tools like EPIC and basic LCA calculators) can help us quantify and argue for the environmental value of retention. Among a growing field of tools, we’ll focus on carbon modelling as our primary method of assessment. No prior experience required.
Each student will select an existing (or recently erased) building and examine its reuse potential through environmental, spatial, social, economic, and regulatory lenses. You’ll work with a suite of real-world tools used by architects and policymakers, including EPIC, HERCON heritage criteria, and planning overlays.
Rather than proposing full redesigns, you’ll develop a strategic intervention that demonstrates measurable carbon savings and alongside other qualitative gains.
This is an elective about mapping value (quantitatively and narratively) and positioning architecture as both a technical and cultural act of retention.
Laptops with Rhino 7/grasshopper required. No previous knowledge required.
Wednesdays
9.00am - 12.00pm
Buildings
Drawing Attention
Elective Leader: Claire Scorpo
Day & Time: Wednesday 9 – 1pm
Open to: Bachelor + Masters students
Delivery: Face-to-face (with site visits)
Estimated Cost: Students may need to travel to local Mornington Peninsula sites (shared transport encouraged); material costs for model making (approx. $50–80)
Drawing Attention is an elective focused on buildings that are at risk of being lost in communities on the periphery of Melbourne. Many of these projects may not be the iconic heritage project, but instead the more modest projects of which the cultural, social, or historical worth is overlooked.
Working with sites across the Mornington Peninsula, students will engage with structures that are disused, underutilised, or slated for demolition, many of which carry significant stories, memories, and community value. In many cases, these buildings are deemed too hard to work with — too compromised, too outdated, or too inconvenient. As a result, they are often replaced with generic catalogue solutions, or nothing at all, erasing not only their material character but also the embedded moments of public, personal, and material significance they once held
This elective teaches students to document with care, treating documentation as a form of architectural research through drawing, mapping, and model making. In doing so, they bring attention and value to what might otherwise be overlooked or forgotten.
Students will work in small groups to conduct field visits, prepare detailed measured drawings and photographic records, and produce a detialed set of architectural outputs: site mappings, orthographic drawings (plans, sections, axonometrics), and finely crafted physical models.
The semester’s work will culminate in a collective catalogue and exhibition that serves as both archive and provocation. Drawing attention to these buildings as a form of advocacy.
Enroll in this elective if you would like to:
- Develop skills in observing and documenting buildings
- Translate research into rich mappings
- Draw detailed and crafted linework drawings
- Build beautiful physical models
- Have the potential to imapat the fate of these modest yet importnat buildings.
Finding Voice
Architecture Elective Semester 2, 2025
Tuesdays 2.30pm to 5.30pm Fridays 1.00pm to 4.00pm
Week 2 to Week 7 only
Outline
In this subject you will redo the final presentation from your last design studio.
You’ll revisit and critically examine the work you did to understand it more deeply.
You’ll reframe the argument you made, restructure the slides you used to present it, redo the diagrams you drew to explain it, and rewrite the words you spoke about it.
You’ll strengthen your short-form and medium-form writing, presentation skills, listening and comprehension, public speaking, graphic communication, interpersonal skills, and English language proficiency.
Jan van Schaik
Your tutor is an architect, artist, and strategist based in Melbourne.
He runs MvS Architects, teaches and researches at RMIT Architecture & Urban Design, and is design director at the creative-sector consultancy Future Tense.
Jan is the founder of the performance series +Concepts and the creator of two series of artworks: Lost Tablets and The Red Box.
Most importantly, you’ll gain greater insight into—and confidence in—your own work.
You’ll learn practical techniques for more effective visual, verbal, and written communication, and discover how to use body language and other basic dramatic techniques to enhance your presentations.
Underlying all these techniques is the goal of helping you find an authentic voice that is unique to both you and your work.
Note: this elective runs in intensive mode to keep your ideas active and evolving in your conscious mind.
He is a practiced writer, speaker, and public performer, with over a decade of experience teaching bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD candidates how to write and speak about their work.
More information at janvanschaik.com
Forms of Culture Elective
Forms of Culture
Elective: Mapping the Cultural Economies
in the Asia Pacific
Melbourne and Greater Bay Area China
IG:@formsofculture
Tutors: Vicky Lam & Tidus Shing
Week 2-12
Tuesdays 6 pm - 9 pm
Room: 100.04.006
1 additional workshop in week 6 Friday time / location TBC
Forms of Culture: Mapping the Cultural Economies of the Asia-Pacific is an elective that will examine architecture’s role in shaping various cultural economies across Melbourne, China’s Greater Bay Area. Students will conduct guided research and produce a collective catalogue of buildings with drawings and animation.
Students will work in pairs to research and document selection of cultural buildings from each city layered with analyses of their roles within cultural economies. Students will produce highly detailed axonometric drawings, diagrams, written research and animations using After Effects.
The collective effort of the studio will produce a Catalogue of drawings and animations that map architectural systems, rent disparities, financial structures, and demographic flows, offering both qualitative and quantitative metrics.
Through cataloguing and comparison, the catalogue challenges the notion of cultural institutions as neutral entities, examining their entanglement with history, power, and capital, while shedding light the architecture of cultural production in an era of increasing commodification and urban transformation. Forms of Culture is a research platform led by Vicky Lam and Lauren Garner. Outcomes from this Elective will contribute to research papers, exhibitions, presentations with cited credits to student contributors. The research will contribute to source material for Forms of Culture Travelling Studio in Jan-Feb 2026. Instagram:@formsofculture
WEEK 2-5
Task 1: CATALOGUE Cultural Building Research and Documentation (working in pairs)
Each pair to research and document a precedent in Melbourne and one in China
Axometric, plans, sections, diagrams, written research and metrics
WEEK 6- 8 Task 2: ANIMATED
Produce a
Latent Tectonics: Designing the Becoming
Course Leader: Prof. Dr. Alisa Andrasek, Zeke Zhang
Architectural form is usually presented as a finished “object.” This class flips that script: we treat architecture as an evolving behaviour—a latent field of potentials that can be iterated, hybridised, and mutated long before any resolution is fixed. We ask: “How can architects choreograph the conditions of becoming rather than merely deliver finished forms?”
Working from a site-captured photo-and-video set of iconic architectural locations in Melbourne, students will assemble a focused dataset, run prompt probes in Midjourney, and fine-tune through diffusion models. This process will aim to capture the source architecture’s features/character/ identity. The trained LoRAs act as the project’s genetic code, so every iteration can be traced back to the architectural source’s morphology, pattern, materiality.
Using lightweight LoRA training or prompt-weighted embeddings in tools such as Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, or ComfyUI, students will develop a bespoke tectonic language. They will then map two abstract qualities such as density / openness, porosity / solidity, or fold / unfold through controlled latent interpolations.
Traditional desk crits are upgraded by an LLM-mediated self-critique loop. At regular intervals each team scripts a dialogue with ChatGPT, assigning it the convergent character via selected architects, philosophers, and scientists, then submits their evolving imagery to this synthetic panel. The language model’s probing questions, counter-arguments, and theoretical provocations become an integral layer of feedback, enabling students to articulate intent, expose weak assumptions, and re-encode insights back into the next design cycle.
Students will photograph selected sites in Melbourne. Stable Diffusion (running through ComfyUI) for LoRA training and latent interpolation, Midjourney for supplementary prompt generation, and an LLM (e.g., ChatGPT) as a live critique and iteration aid.
Students work in teams of 3. Basic Rhino modelling skills are required. Generative AI skills are not required but strongly encouraged. Student will need Midjourney subscriptions.
Time & Location: Thu 14:00-17:00 | 100.10.001
Ornamental Operations EXPO
Elective Leader: Brent Allpress (RMIT)
Wednesday 9.00-12 00 pm
Rm 100.06.04
PARTNERED WITH: University of Innsbruck Department of Experimental Architecture
Upcycled: Printed Timber Modular Exhibition Systems
Elective Leader: Prof. Marjan Colletti (REX|LAB Innsbruck; Bartlett UCL)
REX|LAB Upcycled Elective Innsbruck Students: This project challenges students to design and prototype a modular exhibition system that merges large-scale 3D-printed components with upcycled timber and timber-waste materials, providing a versatile, sustainable solution for both indoor applications (e.g., trade fairs) and outdoor settings (e.g., Expos and Biennales). The systems must integrate sustainable design strategies, emphasise material efficiency and ecology, and utilise advanced digital fabrication techniques in alignment with the principles of the circular economy. This results in the fabrication of a demountable 1:1 material system outcome.
“The anguish of the beautiful that shines through the fragility of ornament is atopian: displacing more than could any nudity.” – Franco Rella
Ornamental Operations EXPO RMIT Students: This elective is linked with a REX|LAB Elective program. RMIT Students will engage with an open range of Ornamental Operations, responding to a series of thematic theoretical, historical, spatial, qualitative, experiential, representational, material, technological, fabrication, digital, AI, and design practice concerns that test the role of ornament. Ornamental actions include framing, masquerade, grotesquery, interlacing, prosthesis, negation, marginalia, backgrounding and mediation Weekly thematic topics on the role of ornament are supported by recorded lectures, extensive readings and project precedent resources. Responses are trialed through weekly project-based investigations, with modular exhibition systems/architectural expo pavilions and propositional manifestos as the provisional design research vehicle. Weekly tutorials review these project responses and accompanying discursive writing. A final Ornamental Operations Expo Pavilion Project and Manifesto or Exegesis consolidates the semesters work along with a portfolio of project investigations, writing and collaborations.
Expo pavilions (architectures in and as exhibitions) have long served as creative and experimental platforms in architectural history. The Ornamental Operations EXPO elective tests the legacy of the Modernist prescription against the ornamental, reconsidering and revising accounts of the role of ornament in post-digital practice where both the emergent and anachronistic are contested. Non-standard digital technologies modulate prefabrication shifting the representational role of ornament towards performative actions. Boethius argues the role of ornament was to mediate transitions in state from conditions of tension to resolution to tension in iterative cycles. Related countercompositional strategies will be explored.
RMIT Students will explore speculative propositions, practices, workflows and prototypes informed by the REX|LAB student elective program.
REX|LAB and RMIT Student Elective work will be showcased at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale Sessions Forum Workshop and through the CityX Virtual Exhibition platform.
RMIT University Architecture
Bachelor/Master Elective History and Theory Stream Semester 2 2025 Thursday 9am-12pm: B100.10.001
Richard Black
How are the concepts of nature, our relationships to nature, being rethought through various exhibitions, texts and creative practices?
Rewilding Architecture
Overview
Writer Robert Macfarlane tells us that the ‘idea of the Anthropocene repeatedly strikes us dumb. In the complexity of its structures and the range of its scales within time and space – from nanometric to the planetary, from picoseconds to aeons – the Anthropocene confronts us with huge challenges. How to interpret, or even refer to it? Its energies are interactive, its properties emergent and its structures withdrawn. We find speaking of the Anthropocene, even speaking in the Anthropocene, difficult. It is, perhaps best imagined as an epoch of loss – of species, places and people – for which we are seeking a language of grief and, even harder to find, a language of hope’ (Macfarlane, Underland, p364). The reality of climate change has provoked a critical reflection on architecture and demands an urgent rethink of our relationship to nature, in all its forms, and for its status in the architectural profession. This elective explores these issues, and more: specifically, what are the implications for architecture and its design knowledges in an era of environmental collapse? Underlying this is a belief that design has a critical role to play, and that the essence of design knowledges and processes can assist in navigating a new relationship to nature whilst considering dramatic shifts of the traditional frameworks of what constitutes architecture. So then, what can architects do to promote a new, more radical, but still sympathetic, understanding of nature?
The syllabus is structured around a critical review of communities of practice within the field - across architecture and urbanism, and other related disciplines tracing lineages of ideas emerging over the past 30 years to the present – to make an assessment of the discourse. These include built and unbuilt works by artists, architects, landscape architects, as well as various forms of writing - a range of material that is broad and yet focussed, crossing disciplinary boundaries from ecology, urbanism, art and architecture, exploring ways in which an engagement with nature in its various forms is being reimagined as a response to the pressing issues of economic and environmental decline. Several years ago, architect and critic Alan Colquhoun summarised the contemporary situation: ‘Today the west is wealthy and promotes mass consumerism. Its aesthetics is based on extravagance and desire’ (Colquhoun AA Files 67, p146) - a thread running through this semester will be a critique of such excess and a questioning of architecture, its role and its design processes in these uncertain times – as well as a bringing into focus a greater awareness of a socially, ethically and politically aware creative practices: a new regime of care.
The seemster begins with a review of several recent (and not so recent) exhibitions and their curatorial themes: Radical Nature - Art and Architecture for a Changing planet 1969-2009. Curator: Francesco Manacorda, Barbican Art Gallery, London. Broken Nature: design takes on human survival, Milan XX11 Triennale, 2019. Curator: Paola Antonelli, Ala Tannir, Laura Maeram and Erica Petrillo. Critical Care Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet, Architekturzentrum Vienna 2019. Curator: Angelika Fitz and Elke Kransny Repair Architecture actively engaging with the repair of the places it is part of. Australian Institute of Architects Australian Pavilion 2018. Curators: Baracco + Wright Architects in collaboration with Linda Tegg First Nations texts/lectures, and Finding Country, curator Kevin Obrien (Venice 2012)
Semester structure/assessment tasks
Wks 1 - 6 Archive: beginning with the exhibitions above, and supported by additional key texts, films, documentaries, art works, architectural works, urbanism and reference material (available on the Rewilding Architecture Onedrive) – this archive forms the base material for a structured review of selected discourses. What are the significant ideas, practices and projects? What are the key ideas and themes that can be drawn out of this pre-existing material? How can you navigate a new relationship between architecture and nature? Across the first six weeks, you will make 3 tutorial presentations (working in teams of 3).
Wks 7-12 Urban Nature: Maribyrnong River Drawing + Text: As author of The Call of the Reed Warbler, Charles Massy reminds us, “It takes time and patience to gain Australian ecological literacy: to learn to read the landscape…humans must adapt to this ancient land and its climate and biota, not the other way around.” Across the second half of the semester, your role shifts from that of critic, into the role of designer/artist, and the application of knowledge gained in the first half of the semester, into a drawn study of the Maribyrnong River and its wider catchment – a site between nature and the city. It requires you to consider an ethics of care for the natural environment and what this means for an architect in the era of the climate catastrophe and for this we can learn from ecologists. Those like Charles Massy and others such as Donald Worster’s ideas to ‘Think Like a River,’ and recently the granting of legal personhood of the Whanganui River, New Zealand – where a river has been recognised as a legal person, and then from our First Nations peoples and their care for Country. From this context, this assignment requires you to work from an intimate scale, undertaking on-site fieldwork, combined with researching of map collections, texts, cultural works, and pictorial collections – to construct an understanding of the Maribyrnong River. This will include its plan form, topography, environmental histories, flood events, biodiversity, flora and fauna, traditional owners and impacts of settler colonialism and urbanism – a river as a living dynamic system. Exposure to various cross disciplinary drawing practices will help inform this process, transforming your site knowledge into a mapping of the river as the culmination of this elective.
Dr Richard Black is a registered architect, educator, author and Associate Professor with RMIT School of Architecture and Urban Design. His teaching, design practice and research activities explore overlaps and adjacencies between architecture, landscape and urbanism. With Anna Johnson he has co-authored several publications, most notably Living in the Landscape, Urban Sanctuary, Neeson Murcutt Neille: Setting Architecture, all by Thames and Hudson; and in 2017 they established an architectural practice based in Castlemaine. Richard’s mapping of the Murray River floods, fieldwork and associated design projects, have been acquired by the Centre for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, USA. Richard’s design projects have been nationally and internationally recognised through exhibition and publication. He obtained his B.Arch (first class honours) from Curtin University (WA) 1987 and has completed post-graduate study (1991) under Sir Peter Cook at the Städelschule Art Academy, Frankfurt, Germany. He completed an M.Arch (Research) in 1998 and a PhD (2009) both at RMIT University.
FORMALHAUT Kuhprojekt, Vogelsberg, Hessen, 1986
In a world where we unconsciously acknowledge the resources that are required to remove waste from our environments, water treatment becomes one of the largest pieces of infrastructure that is shrouded from our every day.
This elective will be reviewing a key environmental typology for the treatment of wastewater through a lens of investigation and advocacy.
Students will be testing various constraints and opportunities through careful mapping, diagramming, drawing plan/section/elevation and investigating the typology through precedent studies and research at varying scales. The results of the elective will be documented and communicated through a series of books.
The work that is being produced in the elective on a weekly basis, will incrementally be used to inform the work produced in the Bachelor of Architecture Design Studio PRESENT. A conversation will evolve between the two.
The elective will also incorporate a site visit to the Western Treatment Plant.This will be held on a Thursday mroning in the first half of the semester. Students will need to make their own travel arrangements to attend - car pooling is encouraged.
Students will be working initially in small groups and then as individuals to produce the work throughout the semester. Students will be required to print drawings each week to discuss in class.
Students who undertake this elective will bring with them a keen interest in the careful and detailed production of research through drawing and advocacy.
The work that is produced in the elective contributes to the ongoing research undertaken by MUIR and Finding Infinity. Outcomes from the elective will contribute to research papers and presentations with cited credits to student contributors.
BACHELOR + MASTERS STUDENTS
WEDNESDAY 9AM-12PM
AMY MUIR
Xtra!
ARCHITECTURE Elective 2025 Sem 2
URBAN VILLAS research
Lecturer Dr PETER BREW
Thursday Morning 11.00-2.00
This seminar explores the idea of the architectural subject through an investigation into housing types, albeit one that is yet to be defined . and therein lies the challenge, to bring into existence and classify a new architectural type. Alain Badiou in Philosophy and the event recognises the subject in this way
...to hear something that wasn’t heard or to see something that wasn’t seen. The subject, for its part, is the real of this Idea. In other words, what renders this Idea possible is the works’ existence. The real of this Idea is, strictly speaking, the subject of this sequence, what orients it, what makes it exist, what causes it to be real.
Classification follows discovery or an invention, though much of what is classified as new or deemed a discovery already existed but had not been noticed, or seen in a certain way. The subtext of this seminar is that there are an abundance of good and interesting models for medium density housing in established suburbs that we could draw on as precedents to address the current urban and social problems, Developments that are established well used and often recognised as significant locally and or to architects that would not be permitted under the current planning rules and culture, without a recognised status or classification we have no recourse to an abundance of Suburban Alternatives
To do this we must consider how we would access these, by naming them by defining a type by creating a subject
Butler’s mansionette style seems to value the grouping of circulatory halls and services together. There is a of open plan - rooms are conventionally boxed and tucked away into their allocated zones, and can only be experienced singularly. The linear hallway refuses to be flexible in its function, thought spatially offers the purpose of both circulation and interior break. It is a buffer between two spaces, both relevant and irrelevant in the program.
1.Explore the concept of the subject in philosophy ( written text nominally 3000 words)
2.Study and document a range of potential prototypical examples of our subject (studies of existing buildings plans elevation sections diagrams )
The habitable rooms in each flat are intrinsically a "social product" - in some plans, the sitting and dining rooms must be crossed to gain access to other program. An occupant is thus forced to traverse through socially vivid zones, meaning they become accustomed and even inclined to entering these spaces. Butler also addresses the domestic conundrum of maintaining a connectivity with outdoor and indoor space.
Build a case for them and present them as instances of class of things 3000 words
Prepare an exhibition and combined studio publication.
“Toinhabittheworldinembodiedwaysmeansthatwemustalsoinhabitouressentialsociality,sincethe contingeniciesofcorporeallifearehowandwhywearedrawnintorelationsoftheinterdependencewith others.Nooneeversingularlyinhabitsabodybecauseembodimentisnot,asitmightseem,astateof beingaself-sufficientthing.Itsexistenceisinseparablefromandcanonlybeconstitutedassuchwithina matrixofcontactandconnectivitythatcanproveeithersustainingordetrimental,dependingonthequality of the bonds.”
This will be part of a larger project that will engage with similar studies from Monash and Melbourne universities which will bring into the seminar discussions about research and models of research.
Hence in Butler's design exists a fine party wall, communal lawn, curated landscaped link to the street front and balconies/terraces. One flat is not self-sufficient; it exists in correlation with its neighbours. The ease of connectivity encourages a codependent theme of living, despite the demands of a capitalistic lifestyle. Moreover, the singular flat plan responds to the subtle changes in its adjacent residence, its fabric becoming flexible and allows interconnectdness through moments such as opposite entries accessed from one path, or the strategic placement of windows to allows for visual and even spatial attachment to the world outside.
1 Bates, Stephen, and Jonathan Sergison. “Feeling at Home.” Essay. In Feeling at Home: Finding Common Ground in Six Urban
ing Projects in Europe, 39–47. Sergison Bates architects, 2012. 2 Kaestle, Anne, Schürch, Dan, Balland, Ludovic, Dechmann, Nele, Adam, Hubertus, and Duplex Architekten, Architect. Duplex Archi
tects : Rethinking. 2021. 3 Waggoner, M., 2018. Unhoused. United States: Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, pp.90-111.
Studley Flats
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YULENDJ
Building knowledge: A library for the RMIT Design Hub
Led
by Christine Phillips, co-leader of the RMIT AUD Yulendj Weelam Lab
Class times: Wednesdays 9.00am - 12pm
Yulendj—meaning knowledge in the Boon Wurrung and Woi Wurrung languages—reminds us that libraries are far more than storehouses of books. They are vessels of culture, markers of identity, and places where thinking gathers form.
So what does it mean that the RMIT Design Hub—our very temple of design—has no library?
Among RMIT’s greatest hidden treasures is the rare and remarkable architecture book collection of the late Professor Peter Corrigan—one of the most significant of its kind globally, generously bequeathed to the university. Yet it sits largely untouched, unseen by the very students and staff it was meant to provoke and inspire.
This elective imagines what it would take to right this absence. What if the Design Hub housed a library—a living one? One that brings Corrigan’s books (and the RMIT library’s wider design collection) into the light? Where might such a library dwell within or around the current structure? Where should it be placed? How should it look? How might it extend and transform the building itself? This is not just an exercise in logistics—it is a provocation: How do we build for knowledge?
In this elective, students will be required to:
• collectively and indivually discover and explore the library as a type
• collectively and indivually assess the logistics of the RMIT library’s Peter Corrigan collection & broader architecture & design collection
• in pairs, design a new library for the collection to be located within and around the RMIT Design Hub
Through this process, students will develop historical and precedent research and design skills and will be required to work individually, in pairs and as a class.
ARCHITECTURE DESIGN ELECTIVES WITH MASTER OF URBAN
DESIGN
BALLOTING POSTERS
What are the ecological implications of big planning policies? What would cities look like if they followed these rules?
We will take public planning documents and test them through design and modelling. What would a city look like if it followed a policy and how would its carbon footprint be affected?
The built environment is arguably less the outcome of singular acts of design than of the slow accretion of codes, guidelines, policies, and certifications – each a diagram masquerading as a solution. From Melbourne’s BADS to Sydney’s SEPP 65, from New York’s Active Design Guidelines to Paris’s Resilience Strategy, every city is thick with protocols that claim to produce ‘better’ urban futures by reducing complexity to rules, setbacks, ratios, and indexes.
These frameworks render the city legible as a science of building – something to be measured, monitored, and regulated. They prescribe walkability, daylight, ventilation, building heights, and distances, treating urban space as protocols and spreadsheet more than as a living social, cultural, or ecological systems. Design itself becomes a form of compliance – good design reduced to the mechanical satisfaction of minimum requirements and standards. Consensus about what is ‘good’ is no longer the outcome of cultural or civic debate but of technical benchmarking. Check boxes, points and stars.
And yet, over the next two decades, some 120 billion square metres of new development – along with their embodied carbon will be locked in under the weight of these very standards and goals. As architects and urban designers, we are both expected and obligated to integrate these codes as shorthand for quality. But will these policies yield cities that are resilient, sustainable, regenerative – or merely reproducible? Are we designing genuine transformation – or just more of the same?
This semester’s Eco Urban Practices course will critically dissect the invisible operations of architectural urbanism. We will mine their diagrams, decode their logics, and interrogate their spatial consequences through design propositions and speculative modelling at multiple scales. By comparing global frameworks and projecting their impact on existing urban conditions, we will understand the limits, contradictions, and unexamined assumptions embedded in these regulatory scripts, and ask whether alternative futures can be imagined and designed through them or beyond them.
GRAHAM CRIST & IAN NAZARETH
Wednesdays, 9-12, 100.06.003
PRACTICE RESEARCH PLACEMENTS BALLOTING POSTER
There are a limited number of Practice Research Placements Positions available. This smester the patricipating practice is PMA Architects. This is not a balloted elective. Contact Course Coordinator (Ian Nazareth) with your expression of interest.
PRACTICE RESEARCH
ELECTIVE Diagramming a PhD
Paul Morgan (Paul Morgan Architects) Semester 2, 2025
Paul Morgan Architects have been operating for more than twenty-eight years producing experimental houses and architecture for the public realm. In that time, Paul built on a consistent design process through the life of the practice: materialising a concept into tectonic form to achieve proof-of-concept, transforming prototypes into architecture.
Paul is currently undertaking a PhD at RMIT in the Reflection on Practice stream.
Practice
Research Elective (PRE) overview
The elective will require a student to assist Paul Morgan in diagramming the Community of Practice component of the exegesis as part of his Reflection on Practice PhD.
The PRE student will assist Paul in developing unique diagramming of the Community of
Practice, assisting Paul in explaining through diagrams how the research program is situated in relationship to exemplary creative works, practices, appropriate readings and references.
Skills required, and to be developed through the semester include: graphics and communication; organizing knowledge; some research into architects and design history, publications including Transition magazine, as well as other design/ art/ culture magazines including: Tension; Pataphysics; Crowd; Art & Text.
Your outputs include diagramming via the Adobe suite:
• Architectural community of practice: Local and global architects who have influenced the design approaches of the practice
• Design/ art/ culture magazines community of practice: the ecosystem of publications in the 80s and 90s
• Research map of movements and issues underpinning the design ideation of the practice
Paul Morgan is experienced as both an academic and a practitioner, so you will be mentored through theoretical content (text/ drawings) and realised experimental projects (built form) produced by the practice.
You will study / produce for a component of the time embedded in the physical practice in Melbourne’s CBD experiencing an architectural studio environment.
The student will work directly with Paul Morgan, with weekly meetings from Week 1 - Week 12, including regular time spent in the PMA studio. You will produce a portfolio capturing the work and processes over the semester and receive a grade credit toward an Architecture Design Elective of 12 credit points.
ELECTIVE BASED RESEARCH ASSISTANTS (EBRA) POSTERS
There are a limited number of Elective Based Research Assistant (EBRA) Positions available - for which you do not need to ballot via the ballot form - refer to the poster, and contact the relevant tutor to lodge an expression of interest.
Image top: MIMAWISMS by Vei Tan that seek to take viewers through oblique narratives and surreal landscapes by questioning the everyday through the merging of contemporary mixed media and techniques of animations, films, world-building, imageries and narratives.
HOW TO BUILD A WORLD:
A Future Dictionary of Architectural Worldmaking Elective Based Research Assistance (EBRA)
This EBRA elective is seeking one self-motivated student research assistant to contribute to a creative research-led project developing a taxonomy of architectural worldmaking.
The RMIT Architecture & Urban Design Immersive Futures Lab explores the potentials of gaming technologies and immersive media for architectural design.
Our interdisciplinary approach explores gaming environments and technologies to develop new immersive and real-time design processes, visualisations, applications and pedagogies. We posit that understanding possible “now, near, and future” visions and realities, require innovative hybrid methods for making, curating, engaging, and imagining our cultural and built environments.
Students will reflect on past and ongoing work within the RMIT A&UD Immersive Futures Lab and as well as interdisciplinary external sources to extract methods, tools, and conceptual strategies that shape speculative architectural environments and worlds. Drawing inspiration from precedents like OMA’s Elements of Architecture and the Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture, the RA will help build a Future Dictionary - a design guide and creative publication documenting the logics of worldmaking.
Outcomes will contribute to the foundation of a creative toolkit, future exhibition, or interactive artefact that supports speculative design pedagogy and immersive practice.
Students will develop skills in research synthesis, speculative design frameworks, and visualspatial storytelling. The elective will involve regular development sessions within the RMIT Immersive Futures Lab, with opportunities to contribute to future public outputs.
Students will be required to complete a Student Participation Agreement form.
This research and development will heavily involve the use of Unreal Engine 5.6+. Laptops are required with Unreal Engine 5.6+ recommended hardware requirements.
All research work will be undertaken within the RMIT A&UD Immersive Futures Lab on level 9-RMIT Design Hub with regular collaborations with Vei Tan. Regular meetings and times to be negotiated between the collective.
This is not a balloted elective. If you are interested, please email Patrick Macasaet directly with why you are interested — patrick.macasaet@rmit.edu.au
Image top: Storytellers Vei Tan alongside Cienan
wove a speculative narrative live, while the world of Future Naarm: First Light was projected on Federation Square’s facade through real-time gameplay. Presented at Melbourne Design Ween 2025 ‘On Route’ event hosted by Architectus. Image: Architectus
CIVICIMMERSIVE
Elective Based Research Assistance (EBRA)
This elective seeks up to three self-motivated student research assistants to assist the RMIT A&UD Immersive Futures Lab in collaboration with the RMIT City North Activation Project and a host of industry collaborators. Students will work in parallel with the RMIT Master of Architecture design studio ‘Continuums Data Being: RMIT City North’.
The RMIT Architecture & Urban Design Immersive Futures Lab explores the potentials of gaming technologies and immersive media for architectural design.
Our interdisciplinary approach explores gaming environments and technologies to develop new immersive and real-time design processes, visualisations, applications and pedagogies. We posit that understanding possible “now, near, and future” visions and realities, require innovative hybrid methods for making, curating, engaging, and imagining our cultural and built environments.
Students will develop skills on designing, coordinating, delivering and engaging a series of civic-immersive public events throughout the semester, situated in the City North precinct.
Students will assist in the development of three civicpedagogical activations, which aim to bring architectural thinking and discourse into the public realm - extending the studio to the street. The events will explore immersive design methods, collaborative processes, and spatial storytelling, including dialogue with First Nations collaborators across each event.
The elective will also begin prototyping a gaming-based public engagement environment, translating spatial ideas into interactive digital forms. This is an opportunity to test speculative design outcomes through realtime civic engagement.
Students will develop skills in immersive event design, civic engagement strategies, and the integration of public programming within spatial practice and gaming environments.
Students will be required to complete a Student Participation Agreement form.
This research and development will heavily involve the use of Unreal Engine 5.6+. Laptops are required with Unreal Engine 5.6+ recommended hardware requirements. All research work will be undertaken within the RMIT A&UD Immersive Futures Lab on level 9-RMIT Design Hub. Regular meetings and times to be negotiated between the collective.
This is not a balloted elective. If you are interested, please email Patrick Macasaet directly with why you are interested — patrick.macasaet@rmit.edu.au
Muir,
PUBLICATION ASSISTANT
One student is required to assist on the development of the next RMIT Architecture MAJOR book.
Two students are required to assist in the development of the next RMIT Architecture MAJOR book.
The book will catalogue emerging ideas from the RMIT Architecture Major Project cohort from 2022-2024.
The book will catalogue ideas from the RMIT Architecture Major Project cohort from 2022-2024.
The selected student must have strong skills with Adobe Indesign and an eye for graphic design and layout.
The selected students must have strong skills with Adobe Indesign and an eye for graphic design and layout.
The students will assist the editorial team in organising files and preparing draft layouts of the project sections of the book.
The student will assist the editorial team in organising files, and preparing draft layouts of the project sections of the book.
The roles will run from Week 1 to Week 12. During this period you must be available to spend 1 day a week working in Building 100 with the editorial team. The work undertaken in this role will be included in the credits of the book.
The role will be intensive from Week 6 to Week 12. During this period you must be available to spend 2 days a week working in the Design Hub with the editorial team. The work undertaken in this role will be included in the credits of the book.
The position will not be listed on the electives balloting form.
The position will not be listed on the electives balloting form. If you are interested please email thomas.muratore@ rmit.edu.au - please include a 2 page folio of your work as a PDF.
If you are interested please email thomas.muratore@rmit.edu.au - please include a 2 page folio of your work as a PDF.
‘SUP – The Super Urban Podcast is a discussion series on cities, hosted by Christine Phillips, Graham Crist, and Ian Nazareth. It is a project of the Super Urban Lab, a multidisciplinary research cluster within RMIT University’s School of Architecture & Urban Design that explores future scenarios for buildings and cities through experimental and applied design practice.
We are seeking one enthusiastic research assistant to join the Super Urban Lab team in Semester 2, 2025, to support the ongoing development and production of the podcast.
The role will involve conducting background research on topics and themes, assisting with the creation of collateral and promotional materials, preparing show notes, and providing general project support. This is an opportunity to gain hands-on experience in architectural and urban research, media production and management, while contributing to a platform that builds public discourse on cities both locally and internationally.
We are looking for a research assistant who is passionate about architecture and urban research and interested in media and communications, and willing to engage with a variety of critical, creative and organisational tasks. Prior experience in podcasting or content creation is beneficial but not essential.
This Elective Based Research Assistant position will not be listed on the elective balloting form. To apply, please contact both Graham Crist (graham.crist@rmit.edu.au) and Ian Nazareth (ian.nazareth@rmit.edu.au) to express your interest.
The podcast is produced with the support of the Alastair Swayn Foundation and RMIT’s School of Architecture & Urban Design.
Exhibition Assistant Role
Help bring the end-of-semester architecture exhibition to life.
We’re looking for 8 motivated students to assist with the preparation and delivery of the end-of-semester architecture exhibition.
This is a research assistance role that will involve a mix of curatorial, graphic, and hands-on tasks.
Key responsibilities include:
– Exhibition graphics and label production
– Catalogue and publication support (Major Project)
– Assisting with the overall curatorial direction
– Admin and coordination in the lead-up to install
– Physical install and moving Major Project work into the gallery
Dates and times to be discussed, but availability in the weeks leading up to the exhibition and during install is essential.
If you’re interested in behind-the-scenes exhibition work, this is a great opportunity to contribute to the architectural culture of the school.
Governance Internal Economies
Funding
Structures of Support
Patterns of use
Gentrification / Market Forces / Rent
Forms of Culture
Private/NGO/Trust/Institution
Forms of Culture
Internal Form
Circulation modes, Porosity, Density
Heritage
Preservation, Memory, Past Use
Urban Form
Vertical Stack, Campus, Courtyard, Context
Creative Practictioner
Retail, Small Business, Artists Owner
Research Assistant Role: Research Publication
A Survey of Cultural Buildings and Their Economies Melbourne,
Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City
1–2 Master of Architecture or Design students to assist in designing the catalogue format for a long-term research project documenting adaptive reuse cultural buildings across the Asia-Pacific region. This will be an editorial and design-led inquiry into how we communicate architecture through image, text, and structure. The goal is to develop a clear, compelling, and adaptable format that will shape future publications, exhibitions, and research outputs.
Role responsibilities include:
Prototyping layout systems and typographic styles
Testing visual formats across case studies
Researching publication precedents
Producing design templates and sample spreads
Collaborating on the structure and rhythm of the catalogue
Contributing to visual and editorial decisions
Time commitment:
1 full day per week (8 hours) for 8 weeks. Studio-based at RMIT, with some flexibility. We’re seeking students with strong graphic sensibility, excellent InDesign skills, and an interest in reuse, publishing, and architectural communication. This role is ideal for someone who enjoys designing systems, not just outcomes, and who wants to be part of a longer-term research and publishing effort. To apply: Send a short EOI (max. 200 words) to lauren.garner@rmit.edu.au
