Utopia Redux

UTOPIA REDUX 2016 MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE PROJECT CATALOGUE Presenting

ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN CONDITIONS ARCHITECTURE AND HIGH PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGY ARCHITECTURE AND SOCIAL AGENCY ARCHITECTURE AND HOUSING

“The metamodern figure of utopia, as it appeared across the arts in the 2000s, represents, then, at least two aspects of the metamodern structure of feeling. We hope to have shown, first, that we witness a utopian turn in the arts that stands for the re-emergence and multiplication of utopian desires of all sorts in contemporary culture. To our mind, artists today are once more taking to reimagining utopia primarily because they are faced with a radically unstable and uncertain world, where political systems and power relations are diffuse and unpredictable, financial security a rare privilege and ecological problems – sometimes quite literally – clog the horizon.”

Van Der Akker & Vermeulen “Utopia, Sort of: A Case Study in Metamodernism”

UTOPIA REDUX Dutch theorists Van der Akker and Vermeulen argue that

relegated to the margins of history in the wake of the

trope of utopia has re-emerged across the contemporary

extended critiques of the utopian character of modern

arts in recent years, in tandem with a reinvigorated

architecture by leading theorists including Tafuri,

sense of empathy, constructive engagement and a

Jameson and Jencks.

renewed appreciation of narrative. The utopian turn it is argued, is an integral component of the millennium shift

In recent years however, a number of architectural critics

from postmodernism to“metamodernism”, a sensibility

have contributed to a growing interest in postwar utopian

marked by a pragmatic idealism situated in societal

movements and their legacy, including the radical

responses to global warming, political upheaval and

propositions of the Japanese Metabolists, Archigram and

violence and the digital revolution.

Superstudio. These movements established an agenda that still endures to this day through their redefinition of

Derived from the Greek ou-topos meaning “not place”

architecture’s relationship with technology, politics and

or literally “nowhere”, the term utopia was first coined

economics.

by writer Thomas More in 1516 to describe an imaginary island characterized by the greatest degree of perfection

The 2016 Master of Architecture Graduation Studio

in its social, legal and political structures and systems.

is situated within this context and explicitly seeks

The concept of utopia has been a recurring theme in

a reassessment, reconceptualization and critique

architecture since this time, marked by experimentation

of utopian desires, focusing on architecture and its

and interrogation of architecture’s ideological and

relationship with the spatial and material dimensions of

societal purpose. In the late 1970s however, utopia

food, hyperdensity, resilience and dwelling.

as a focus of architectural discourse and practice was

CONTENT Message from the Dean

1

Message from the Director of Architecture

3

Message from the Studio Convenor

5

Architecture and Urban Condition

Architecture and High Performance Technology

Eat City

HypAS: Hyperdensity Architecture

Sharing Sydney

11

- Michelle De Jong

Floating Market Square

15 19 23 27 31 35 39 43 47 51

- Wenda Xu

87

Activating the Water front: Inhabited Piers

91

Child-Friendly High-Rise

95

Agri + Culture

99

Marketing Growing Tower

103

Densifying Glebe Island Bridge

107

- Lloyd Ramsay

55

- Busheng Wang

Urban Food Innovation Hub

Vernon Wellness Precinct

- Xiaoxu Luo (Sylvia)

- Alyce Thompson

Urban Aquaculture

83

- Jun Yi Loh

- Zhiyuan Sun

Quay Market

A Makers Place

- Li Chi Lim

- Yi Ren

A Green Sponge for a Water-resilient City

79

- Ignat Labzine

- Mohammad Nasr

Blackwattle Bay Eco-farming Marketplace

Ver tical Suburb

- Benjamin Knowles

- Alexandra Merenkova

What Time is this Place?

75

- Rachael Drayton

- Seng Poh Liong

Cultural Water Precinct

The Ver tical Vernacular

- Hon Cheung Chung (Horrus)

- Bingqing Liao

The Urban Estuary

71

- Xin Pei Chong

- Mau Yan Kwok (Judy)

Civic Marketplace

i-Density - Joshua Bell

- Jonothan Kibble

The Food Innovation Campus+Market

67

- Martin Patrick Barr

- Vivienne Hinschen

Communal Harvest

The Lookout

School of Digital Ar ts. Pyrmont

111

- Milad Sadeghi

59

Hyper-Acitivity

115

- Fuat Sezgin

The Bicycle-Friendly Community

119

- Xiaolong Sun

Sharing is Beaufiful

123

- Yan Xie

Sustainable Hyperdensity Transit Hub - Chui Ting Pansy Yau

127

Architecture and Social Agency

Architecture and Housing

Resilient City, Resilient Neighbourhood

Interpreting Housing - Innovations for Dwelling

St Canice - Resilience

135

- Daniel Rogaz

St. Canice

139 143 147 151 155 159 163 167 171

Urban Engawa

235

Encounter a Broadway Life

239

Urban Biophilia

243

Live / Work

247

Flexible and Adaptable Housing

251

- Yvonne Kha

175

- Michael Masi

Social Intergrity in Borderless Architecture

231

- Diana Mingyuan Yang

- Hui Liu (Sandy)

Saint Canice, Building Change in Our Community

Vibrant Community

- Alyse Hyman

- Jacqueline Lindeman

Social Integration and Consolidation

227

- Siyue Zhang (Phoebe)

- Thanh Le (Hayden)

The Kingscross Commune

The Common Ground

- Miguel Suarez Olmos

- Ying Tung Lau (Dodo)

Colours for The Soul

223

- Yuzhuang Lin (Katherine)

- Ashwin Kuruvilla

Community Food Centre

Adaptable Housingt

- Haiyun Lan (Yuki)

- Yunjing Guan (Christine)

St. Canice Centre for Rehabilitation

219

- Darman Johnny Khatari

- Lan Anh Do

In Which We See Ourselves

Divercity - Paul Jewiss

- Anqi Deng

People - Pattern - Place ..

215

- James Hargrave

- Christopher Day

St. Canice Collective Community

Space Between

Balmain Headlands

255

- Laura Raiss

179

- Setareh Mohammadpour

St. Canice’s Project

183

- Kylie Pan

Patina

187

- Alana Peddie

Voice for the Voiceless

191

- Teresa Yie Sheng Peng

St. Canice; A Parish Without Borders

195

- Jerome Saad

StC

199

- Timothy Smith

Resilient Individual for Resilient Neighbourhood 203 - Iraj Thapa

Social Return of St. Canice - Chaopu Yang

207

Special Thanks

263

Professor Helen Lochhead Dean, UNSW Built Environment

Message From The Dean Congratulations to our 2016 class on completing your

challenges facing our cities – solutions that, today,

Master of Architecture at UNSW Built Environment. We

have yet to be imagined. In your future pursuits, I urge

warmly welcome to our alumni community.

you to keep following your individual passions while

Our Master of Architecture program, taught by internationally recognised academics, renowned professors of practice and award–winning visiting

welcoming multi-disciplinary collaboration. This will produce authentic, multi-layered designs that stand the test of time in a quickly changing world.

architects, provides a firm foundation to launch your

We look forward to hearing about your future endeavours

professional careers. All contribute to the shared Built

and the impacts they have on the communities that use

Environment vision, to design and build sustainable,

your projects. Please update us with your news and

liveable cities. As a graduate, you will be equipped as

updates throughout your career at BEalumni@unsw.

an agile professional prepared for a global career.

edu.au. I also invite you to join our LinkedIn group

The pages that follow are an inspiring and creative compilation of your work during the course of your studies. Each year, our students create projects that understand, respond to, and enhance specific sociocultural and economic contexts. It results in a portfolio of work that tells many interwoven stories. When viewed

(UNSW Built Environment) to maintain connections with your peers and other UNSW Built Environment alumni as you move into the next steps of your career. We are also grateful to our alumni who support future students with scholarships, prizes, internships and mentoring programs.

together, they provide glimpses into our world – and the

It is a real delight to support and celebrate our

potential to improve it with clear design articulation and

graduates’ achievements and I look forward to seeing

innovative ideas that challenge the status quo.

how you choose to shape your future. Thank you for the

Some of you hold a degree focused solely on the study of architecture and others may have chosen a

energy and passion you have devoted to your degree at UNSW. I wish you all the very best.

specialisation in high performance technology, housing, urban conditions, or social agency. Together, you and your future colleagues will contribute to architectural design and place-making solutions to many of the

2

Prof. Xing Ruan Director of Architecture

Message From The Director of Architecture Musings on Specialisation and All-round Education Works included in the 2016 Master of Architecture Graduation Studio catalogue are of particular significance, for they mark the implementation of the new curriculum, where the students have choices to pursue a particular direction in architecture with in-depth study

But before I continue with more of what might be easily dismissed as nostalgia of a remote past of little relevance, I shall remind the reader of a surprising kindred spirit of Confucius in our age. Einstein, indisputably a rational and scientific modern mortal, too detests a specialist as “a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person”.

through design studio and a suite of associated supporting courses. The

In addition to the division of labour in Adam Smith’s modern economy,

four identified “streams”, as we call them, are: urban conditions, social

the necessity of specialisation nonetheless is justified by the severe

agency, high performance technology and housing. This distinctive

limitation of an individual’s life span, and, in the case of most of us

character of UNSW Architecture however should not be mistaken for a

ordinary mortals, intelligence. In order to make any meaningful and

narrow specialist education in this professional degree.

tangible contribution to our collective intelligence and knowledge

The ills of specialist education go against the nature of architectural education, which by nature is “inter-disciplinary”. The overuse of this expression by the managerial class as a buzzword has rendered it quite meaningless. What exactly are the ills of narrow specialist training in a technical fashion? And what exactly is the meaning of disciplinecrossing and boundary-connecting education?

The answer, though almost lost in the mists of time, lies in the wisdom of all-round education in the humanist tradition. The most vivid illustration comes from Confucius some 2500 years ago:

production, especially in the case of the vast inter-disciplinary field of architecture as both a profession and a body of knowledge, an in-depth study of a particular area and having it tested through the natural site of integration in a design studio should be seen as a response to the increasingly contested problem of specialisation versus all-round education.

Like any prologue to a book, it is my hope that this particular context under which the works in this catalogue were produced will provide the reader with some tools to understand and cast perceptive judgement on the student work. It is also against this background that I offer my

A disciple asks Confucius: “Master, can you teach me gardening?”

warmest congratulations to the students on their wide ranging scope

The Master replies: “You had better go and ask an old gardener.” The

and the depth of their pursuit in their graduation project. Needless to

obedient disciple leaves to find an old gardener. “What a moron!” says

say, none of which would have happened without the ablest steering by

the Master to his other disciples. Early in Analects, the Master already

the course convenor Dr Russell Rodrigo and his team for this pioneering

laments: “A man is not a pot!” Confucius, it seems, refers to the ethos of

venture.

all-round liberal education: a cultivated man, or woman, is not a utensil with a single use.

4

Dr. Russell Rodrigo Course Convenor

Message From The Studio Convenor Welcome to Utopia Redux, a celebration of the work

The projects seek a reconceptualization and critique of

of the 2016 graduands in the Master of Architecture

utopian desires through the lens of architecture and its

program, Faculty of Built Environment UNSW Australia.

relationship with the spatial and material dimensions of

This graduation catalogue and exhibition represents the

food, hyperdensity, resilience and dwelling. The spectrum

culmination of our students’ studies and offers a snapshot

of architectural approaches demonstrate our students’

of the creative and technical abilities they have gained over

capacity to respond creatively and responsibly to the

their architectural education.

challenges of contemporary practice.

The Master of Architecture program provides a framework

Congratulations to all our 2016 graduands. You have

where the contemporary city can be imagined, debated and

successfully completed a demanding two-year Master

tested. This is particularly true of the graduating year of

of Architecture program. The quality, confidence and

the program which provides the educational framework for

intellectual rigour demonstrated in your graduation

developing students’ ability to articulate their individual

projects offers an indication of the emerging talent that will

architectural interests. The year-long final design project

contribute to the design of our built environments in the

commences in Semester 1 where emphasis is placed

future.

on research, analysis and the precise framing of an architectural proposal. In Semester 2, students focus on the design development of an architectural project presented at an ambitious level of programmatic, spatial, material, environmental and technological integration and resolution.

We aim for a broad range of projects, from those grounded in contemporary architectural practice through to more speculative projects.

Throughout the year the studio community benefitted from the supportive and creative input of practicing and academic architects, prominent guests, community activists and other interested parties.

6

Architecture and Urban Conditions EAT CITY

Studio Leader

RUSSELL RODRIGO KATARINA VRDOLJAK

Blackwattle Bay

“We fantasize about food in galleries, museums and in movie theatres. We also indulge ourselves by flicking through mouth-watering recipes in bookshops and public libraries, or on the internet in the comfort of our homes. Food habits and practices represent a central element of civilisation and the culture of cities, intellectual greed or sensual nourishment, the relationship between life and art, and media share much common ground in food. Bizarre, unethical or sustainable, food ultimately promotes dilution of cultural boundaries, and restores the primal link between urban inhabitants and their sustenance.”

C.J. Lim, “Food City”

Over the centuries, food has had a significant impact on the built environment. The birth and maturation of cities are directly linked to the development of systems of food production such that these systems would shape the governance, religion, education, transport, health and foreign affairs of urban existence. Food is just as significant in its relationship to the city now as it was then, even though the economies of post-industrial societies have relegated it to the periphery, both materially and ideologically.

Food is an intrinsic and defining aspect of a city’s identity. Its smells, textures and tastes manifest a city’s cultural heritage,define its social habits and bring vitality and conviviality to its streets. Food historian Howard Marshall notes, “Like dialect and architecture, food traditions are a main component in the intricate and impulsive system that joins culture and geography into regional character.” Cuisine, like architecture, is a function of the genius loci, the spirit of the place.

The French term terroir (literally the taste of the earth) that typifies so many wines and foodstuffs is the most

immediate manifestation of this gastronomic specificity.

The rituals of food production, dining, the design of meals and the processes of cookery have the potential to form and inform a distinctly expressive architecture that is able to articulate the spatial and performative relationship between food and architecture.

The relationship between food, architecture and the city is both complex and substantive. Much of the built environment is designed around food - producing, storing, transporting, selling, serving and eating it. The relationship between food and the city is characterised by a dense network of connections and interactions at both the private and public realms. Food crosses, changes and influences space at the scale of the body, the dwelling, the street, the city, the region and the nation. These relationships operate as educational, economic, social and nutritional mechanisms that affect, in both positive and negative ways, the health of individuals, communities and cities. Food is therefore a matter of design.

8

Studio Leaders

Russell Rodrigo Katarina Vrdojak Students

Michelle De Jong

Mohammad Nasr

Vivienne Hinschen

Yi Ren

Jonathon Kibble

Zhiyuan Sun

Judy Mau Yan Kwok

Alyce Thompson

Bingqing Liao

Busheng Wang

Seng Poh Liong

Wenda Xu

Alexandra Merenkova

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ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN CONDITIONS

Michelle De Jong

Sharing Sydney How can the typology of the marketplace be reimagined as part of Sydney’s sharing economy?

My project aims to address problems and issues with the current food system by proposing a new method of dealing with food wastage. The project explores how the typology of the marketplace can reimagined as part of Sydney’s sharing economy.

Despite the overall successes of the current food system, there remain problems. The developed world has surplus food while in the the developing world, one billion people go hungry.

Huge amounts of food goes to waste, indicating that the current food system has flaws. Resources are not being used efficiently and current patterns of production and consumption can be improved.

There are also negative impacts on the environment. For example, huge amounts of fossil fuels are required for food production, which then goes to waste. It is worthwhile to rethink and improve the global food system and find solutions to waste. Some waste is inevitable, which raises the question, what is the best thing to do with it?

A sharing economy helps address the issue of waste. In a sharing economy, waste has value with waste becoming a resource in the wrong time and place. With efficient sharing, currently wasted resources are reallocated to where they are valued if not needed.

Blackwattle Bay and Wentworth Park will be transformed into Sydney’s new and constantly activated food and sharing hub, connecting all kinds of people, from all over Sydney, to participate in and benefit from shared life.

The intent of the project is to create an environment that encourages the connection of people to engage in peer-topeer interactions. Masterplan moves are about creating an environment that encourages connection.

ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN CONDITIONS

View of Share Hub from above

View of facade and opening screens

Concept Masterplan

12

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Detail of exhbition space

Detail of Sharing Spine

Detail at Perimeter of building

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Detail of Childcare Centre

View of Central Courtyard from above

Interior View

14

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Vivienne Hinschen

Floating Market Square By drawing on water as the medium, how can we rethink the marketplace as a fluid civic experience?

The vision for “Floating Market Square” builds on the typology of the traditional bazaar and the understanding of the passageway, the meeting place and the relationship of the individual and their varying personal experiences. The intimate bodies of water between the wharves form an interactive threshold which continuously transforms throughout the day due to tidal changes and the type of activities taking place. The passageways were established from the distinct arches of Wentworth Park Bridge and extend across Blackwattle Bay, strengthening both the physical and visual connections to the harbour. Thus creating the foundations for the floating market squares. The architectural forms of both the Floating Markets and the new Sydney Fish Market are a combination of the traditional bazaar and pazars and also the typical wharf warehouses known to Sydney.

By incorporating permanent and temporary spaces surrounded by water squares the individual is encouraged to explore the interchangeable programs within the floating markets. The passageways and water squares will oscillate between periods of expansion and compression, allowing the individual to constantly shift between experiences of congestion and fluidity within the semi-public domain. These spaces would have the capacity for local grocers and produce, up and coming small businesses, cafes and bars as well as opportunities for large cultural events such as Chinese New Year, and New Years Eve. The new Sydney Fish Market also is an iconic building that provides an enticing and interactive retail experience which focuses on promoting the relationship between producer and consumer. It is divided into four major precincts – The Auction and Retail Precincts, the Dining Precinct and the Seafood School. Each of the precincts are dictated by the concept of the urban meeting place, social gathering and water connection. The retail spaces depict a new understanding of how food transfers, changes and influences an intimate space within an intense public domain. Each of the retail spaces possess a distinct type of produce, distinguishable by material density and the intensity of aromas and colours. The Dining Precinct has a similar experiential approach achieved through the reflectivity of water and light. The new Sydney Fish Market aspires to create a different personal experiential encounter for each individual.

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Bay Entrance

Masterplan

16

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Retail Entrance

Retail Entrance

Exotic Retail

Shelfish Retail

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Floating Market Squares

Sashimi Retail

Auction Floor

Section Model

Section Model

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Jonathon Kibble

Communal Harvest How can the marketplace be conceived as a means of communal cultivation, utilising food production to harvest a sense of place for the residents and as a demonstration of a model for community sustainability paired with a renewed food market?

One of the greatest challenges facing the sustainability and growth of the city is the capacity to feed its everincreasing population. The current model of providing food is dependent on the importation of goods from agricultural hinterland by a corporate duopoly, severing the connection urban dwellers have with systems of food production. This physical and ideological divide continues to widen as the remaining peri-agricultural fringe to the city is consumed by urban sprawl and the capacity to grow local produce is diminished.

The proposal for the revived bays market seeks to demonstrate the potential of urban agriculture as a basis for a sustainable local food system, while enhancing a sense of place and community for the local population. The masterplan seeks to improve the connectivity of the public realm between Wentworth Park and the eastern foreshore of Blackwattle Bay through a spine of communal and market buildings. Aligned to Wattle St, this intervention possesses a distinct urban character allowing the new activity to be framed in the landscape. This intention gives form to the building proposal, defining its permeability and treatment of volumes, and the programme of a new community centred market place.

The food market proposes a new model whereby the stalls have the capacity to harvest their own crop on site to eliminate the consumption of resources in transporting goods. This publicly reintroduces and demonstrates the ability for urban agriculture to function within a distinctly urban setting. In addition to the garden marketplace, the proposal suggests a kindergarten, demonstrative urban farm, public exhibition spaces, slow food dining and communal food exchange framed around the activity of local food production. A new model of communal building is intended, creating interactive urban spaces that serve to promote knowledge and practices of urban agriculture while transforming the functionality of the conventional market to serve the city.

ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN CONDITIONS

Approach from Bridge Road

Masterplan

Ground Floor Plan

20

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Approach from Wattle Street

Food Marketplace

Section

Kindergarten

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Site Model

Section Model

22

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Mau Yan Kwok (Judy)

The Food Innovation Campus + Market How can architecture be a catalyst for a culture of multidisciplinary food innovation that improves food resilience and nutrition security?

Sharing the common vision with the Bay Precinct Transformation Plan, this project aims to create an innovation campus that gathers public and knowledge-intensive industries. The Bays Precinct will become a campus for creativity and innovation in research, education and tourism. The innovation campus + market seeks to explore the potential of architecture to be a catalyst for a culture of food innovation that facilitates food resilience and nutrition security, through a focus on strategies of spatial encounter and interaction.

In order to promote spatial encounter and interaction, this proposal enhances the connectivity in the area by extending Wentworth Park to the foreshore of Blackwattle Bay to reconnect Pyrmont area and Glebe area. The area is interwoven with an open and intersected journey through water-active zones, markets, innovative campus and communal spaces. To further promote the connectivity on site, this project proposes a comprehensive transport system with a ferry terminal, bus stops and a light rail station. Thus, the connectivity enhancement in horizontal plane is achieved by the masterplan.

On the other hand, the connectivity in vertical plane is achieved by the building which serves as an innovative platform to promote the exchange of knowledge and change of encounters between the food researchers and public. The design suggests two researcher-based area (digital farming lab and farming technologies lab) and a collaborative area in-between, which is spatially and structurally designed to allow maximum visual connections.

The interaction becomes more visible by protruding all meeting spaces in the research area from the building.

In addition, the proposal offers a public kitchen, innovative nutrition centre and digital farming experience zone, etc. All of these introduce a new definition of research building by creating a campus for everyone from different disciplines to participate in food innovation, where allows greater potential for knowledge and experience to be shared and the opportunity for innovation to occur.

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Facade

Masterplan

24

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Collaborative Area

Food Square + Food Innovation Campus

Forum Space

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Interior - 8 am

Interior - 12 pm

Interior - 3 pm

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Bingqing Liao

Civic Marketplace How can the urban market place be re-imagined as central to Sydney’s civic life?

Today’s public market is a place to shopping food, to sit and eat a meal, or to have a unique educational or culinary experience. Can it contain all of these things? Is it a place that can foster connections not only at the point of purchase, but also foster social connections as well as connections within the food system between producer and consumers?

Markets spark urban revitalization, foster community diversity and improve public health. Civic spaces are an extension of the community. When they work well, they serve as a stage for our public lives. If they function in their true civic role, they can be the settings where celebrations are held, where social and economic exchanges take place and where cultures mix.

The project proposes a civic network by creating a water park, a market place and a sports centre, to provide places for people’s civic life in the extraordinary harbour foreshore precinct, Get the city and neighborhoods have thriving civic spaces, residents have a strong sense of community.

The overall master plan for the project is to activate the harbour foreshore, the Wentworth Park and make connection between fleet, public domain and light rail arrival. By following this idea, the building proposed as a “Y” shape and divergent for two flow line from LRT station on the centre of Wentworth Park to the harbour. At the same time, all of the places has been created between the two building flow line became civic place, to provide civic activities such as urban farming park, kid playing garden outdoor café and different kind of swimming and diving pools.

The strategy for the facade comprises a double skin and multi skins, where in the inner wall is formed by a sealed enclosure using a curtain wall system, whereas the outer wall is made use of low-e glass. The centre wall is provides perforated aluminum sunscreen shulters to resist solar radiation.

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Perspective

Masterplan

28

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Floor Plans

Exterior View

West Elevation

ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN CONDITIONS

Open Marketplace

Site Model

Detail Model

Section

30

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Seng Poh Liong

The Urban Estuary How can the typology of fish market be rethought in terms of Sydney’s food security?

Food security is an emerging global issue that is defines as the physical and economical access to food to meet the dietary needs of the increasing population. The current model of providing adequate and nutritious food is hindered by the pluralistic food culture created by the convenience if fast food, severing the connection between consumers with food production. This ideological separation not only will cause malnutrition among the urban dwellers but also affecting the sustainable economic and environment development of the city.

The proposal seeks to re-imagine the 21st century urban fish market in the context of Sydney’s future food security through a focus on sustainable food agriculture, at the same time serving as a hub between producers and consumers. Through exploration of an estuary, the masterplan seeks to improve the connectivity between Wentworth Park and Blackwattle Bay through a chain of linear, communal activities including as public bath, aquaponic pockets and a market square. Located on the existing fish market site, the intervention possesses a sinuous linear form in response to the urban fabric, creating an estuary of activities along the foreshore. The idea this sinuous form serves as a transition element between the urban fabric of Prymount and blackwattle bay.

The Urban Estuary proposes a new model whereby sustainable food cultivation is celebrated throughout the building, providing accessibility to fresh and nutritious food. This hub serves as a platform to introduce and promote the knowledge of aquaponic food production within an urban setting. Key functions include an aquaponic market, interactive workshop, wholesale market, retails, and demonstration kitchen as well as exhibition spaces framed around the fresh and nutritious food production. The proposal seeks to not only provide access to fresh nutritious food but also serves as an interactive public landmark that promote and practices sustainable food cultivation in Sydney.

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Sectional Perspective

Exploded Axonometric

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from Exhibition Space to Wholesale Market

Aquaponics Market

Urban Scale

Public Realm

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Site Model

Section Model

Spatical Experience

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Alexandra Merenkova

Cultural Water Precinct In response to urbanisation growth and its effect on the increase in water demand, how can a marketplace precinct contribute to the Sydney 2030 sustainability plan, providing a platform for a selfsufficient, renewable water system and raise public awareness?

In response to the following question, the masterplan proposal aims to create a cultural precinct, making water its central design catalyst. Located on the edge of Wentworth Park and facing the Blackwattle Bay, the site offers not only an opportunity for architectural expression, but it also provides an opportunity to incorporate primary storm water retention stream and water sensitive urban design.

The masterplan consists of three main elements. A central platform, running along the existing stormwater stream, serves as a major collection and storage vessel. Water Collecting Towers are located along the platform, with several oval “pool-like� features expressing its primary function and serving as a public gathering spaces. An Innovation and Science Center is located on the eastern side of the platform facing Wattle Street. The building seeks to promote education and research to enhance the ability of future building to fully rely on sustainable energy sources. A Marketplace Centre is Located on the other side of the platform and opening towards Wentworth park.

The water collecting towers on the central platform are glazed umbrellas-like ribbed structures that allow natural light into the main building. The water is captured within the platform and gradually released into the harbour, decreasing the runoff rates and mitigating floods.

Each building is also designed to collect and reuse water through the use of similar water towers and a series of louvred water-collecting system along the facade. The materiality of the building seeks to promote lightness and transparency, with fully glazed facade wrapped around the main structure in a delicate way, covered only with the above mentioned ribbed louvres.

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Masterplan

36

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Floor Plan

Perspective

Platform View

Tower View

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Site Model

Conceptual Model

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Mohammad Nasr

What Time is this Place?

How can the 21st-century public marketplace be re-imagined through place-making strategies of urban and natural temporality?

Considering the market places as one of the most engaging urban spaces for public in the current century, my project “What time is this place?’ will explore the re-imagining of the 21st-century public marketplace through place-making strategies of urban and natural temporality. It does this through three conceptual frames: The human life rhythms, temporal attributes of nature and the sense of flow.

The proposal for the revitalized bays market aims to amplify the liveliness of the public realm `by defining a new journey for people’s commute between the green spaces of Wentworth Park and eastern foreshore of Blackwattle Bay. In order to generate a flexible public space, and to make each of its components autonomous, the site landscape was split up into smaller fragments and zones and filled up with a range of specifically designed urban furniture in order to create reconfigurable sub-zones that can maintain the whole space activated during different times as well as attracting different groups of people for variable purposes.

The marketplace building is formed aligned with the axis from the light rail station to the ferry terminal in order to make the building an attractive destination with a stronger inviting sense for the people commuting between the transports nodes. The building consists of two wings on sides which employ the flexible programs of retail and educational as well as food halls. The central canopy space, as a part of the people’s journey, works as a facilitator and a service provider for the public and represents an interactive public space which intentionally reflects the temporal features such as tidal and solar changes. The organic built form Merges with the green landscape on the Northern part which is used to grow flowers as a part of the market’s commercial purposes and to incorporate the temporal beauty of nature into the designed public space.

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Floral Landscape

Central Canopy Space

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Flower Market

Foodhall

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Masterplan

Canopy Space Circulation

Second Floor

Ground Level

Third Floor

First Floor

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Yi Ren

Blackwattle Bay Eco-farming Marketplace How can the urban marketplace be reimagined as an intrinsic part of a sustainable urban food system?

This project reimagines the urban marketplace as an intrinsic part of a sustainable urban food system. By integrating permaculture with the marketplace and associated housing programs, the project forms a self-sustained ecosystem that allows people to interact with farm activities and food processes and reconnect with nature. The place works as an immense organism with “living” structures and portable “cells” that can be changed by seasons and activity needs. Investigations were undertaken on two scales: the urban fabric and architecture tectonics levels.

At the urban scale, based on a study of local street patterns and existing site features, the site fabric is redefined into a new grid system. Harbour water is reintroduced into Wentworth Park along the historic alignment of the creek line in order to enrich the soil for farming. To solve the problems of current food systems, permaculture is introduced into the urban marketplace. Special seasonal self-picking market are located in the middle green corridor and also at the waterfront, where the farm patches changes in different seasons. Existing natural features are retained and used to provide the outdoor market with natural shading.

At the building level, inspired by the city pattern and the precedent of Metabolist architecture, this project is designed to evolve over time. A bridge-like structure with portable cells is designed to meet the needs of both permaculture operation and human activities. The module sizes are variable, and their claddings are changeable.

After the collective framework is defined by the architect, the function will be determined by the users.

The markets are at ground level underneath the bridge-like structure. Workshops, retail outlets, and restaurants are located in the upper-level modules. The top floor, with direct access to sunlight, is for residential uses and greenhouse farming. Materials for the structural system have a clear hierarchy: reinforced concrete for the megacolumns, steel for bridge trusses, and lightweight steel and timber for the portable modules. They gradually change from heavy to lightweight, from less changeable to variable.

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Masterplan

Diagrams

Section

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Exploded Axonometric

Interior

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Concept Model

Concept Model

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Zhiyuan Sun

A Green Sponge for a Water-resilient City: Sydney Fish Market How can we reimagine the fish market though a focus on water collection and purification?

Water is a limited resource and must be managed both for immediate needs and for long-term economic and environmental sustainability. With the effects of climate change, and increasing demands for water, sound policies are required to ensure a sustainable supply of water for present and future generations. When looking closely into the site, one of the most serious issues is the contaminated storm water which has been discharged to the bay directly, action can be taken to capture and recycle storm water onsite.

This masterplan intends to reimagine the fish market(building and surrounding landscape) as a water sensitive urban design(WSUD) through strategies of constructed wetland, rain garden and integration of architecture and landscape. Though the process of water purification, what has been created is a set of revolutionary green corridors.

The fish market is the heart of this proposal. It has been split into two building blocks to accommodate whole sale and auction hall. The space is activated by arranging seafood retail and restaurants along the edge. It is the roof canopy which acts as the rain collector and main structure that being the starting point of other design strategy. For instance, materials are carefully selected to differentiate structure and other building elements. Vertical shading is chosen to highlight the roof structure. By arranging different function below the roof canopy, this building can be viewed as a series of small buildings that being contained in a large one. Together with the landscape, the whole design tries to illustrate how to adopt strategic and feasible approach following the storm water management indicators on the balanced green space, biological and hydraulic space integration.

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Masterplan

Night View

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Exterior

Ground Floor Plan

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Concept Model

Interior View

Section

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Alyce Thompson

Quay Market How can we re-imagine a 21st Century public marketplace as an intrinsic part of a Harbour City?

The recent resurgence of the market place is arguably essential to a community’s social integration and place making. Food has become a seed for activity and is one of our most basic needs. As consumers are seeking to reconnect with suppliers of the food industry, there is now a desire to make markets economically sustainable centers of community life. Market places can succeed almost anywhere; on both land and water. Waterfronts are brought to life not only by the views they offer, but with the food and activity they provide. A harmonious relationship between the market place and waterfront would create intrinsic value in the way a place could be transformed and redefined.

Located in Blackwattle Bay, Sydney, The Bays Precinct offers a key waterfront with the Southern Hemisphere’s largest fish market. Reminiscent of Sydney’s history as a working harbour, the master plan seeks to improve the connectivity between the public realm and the water’s edge via the traditional mechanisms and construction of a finger wharf. The intervention to interlock the land and water aims to serve the harbour as a main food and transportation hub for the city.

Quay Market re-imagines a 21st century public marketplace which captures Sydney’s sense of place as a Harbour City through water based amenity and infrastructure. The incorporation of food distribution, through floating pontoons and barges, reflects the nature of a floating market. It aims to serve Sydney with a new experience to provide fresh produce to the water’s edge. This new model emphasises the need for storage and amenities and allows for a 24 hour working wharf. Within the building’s own public domain, it seeks to blur the thresholds between land and water and proposes a mix of civic spaces including permanent and temporary markets, education within a cooking school, open bars and restaurants as well as public exhibition and function spaces which revolve around local food production. The iconic structure of Quay Market reflects the historical nature of an operable wharf which has been transformed to provide a new functional market for the ever growing city.

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Quay Market Exterior

Masterplan

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Food Distribution Map

Ground Floor Exploded Axonometric

First Floor Exploded Axonometric

Floating Market

Floating Market and Storage

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Concept Model

Circulation and Spatial Strategy

Second Floor Exploded Axonometric

Storage and Loading Area

Interior View

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Busheng Wang

Urban Aquaculture Reimagine an innovative food production system using the strategy of Urban Aquaculture, with an aim of promoting fish food eating and farming.

Under great pressure of providing enough protein/meat in the world today the livestock farming-fishery production system becomes less and less capable of meeting the vast need without doing harm to the fragile farmlands.

When turning the vision from the earth to the ocean, it has been argued that fish farming may be the only and most efficient solution to adequate meat/protein food for our everyday consumption. As a hypothetical answer to the crisis, the project reimagines an innovative food production system using the strategy of urban aquaculture, with an aim of promoting fish food farming and dining.

The master plan is inspired by the continuous character of the urban grey water distribution system which performs as a fertilizer of the aquaculture system. A series of expanding pathways forms corridors, walls, further the open spaces in between and the canopy market zone, along with the voids and semi-enclosed fish farms dominates the style of the scheme. The Aqua Farm, as the proposed fish farm system that actually grows out of the traditional cofferdam aquaculture system, spreads on the nearshore zone of the bay water and acts as a very important extension of the fish market on the site to form the attraction of the outdoor landscape. They can be regarded to be a pile of cofferdams, which appears to be the pathways above water, incompletely separating the bay water and the mud flats to make them possible for different kinds of fish food farming.

Seeking the spatial possibilities in the composition of these walls/pathways, the new food market attempts to provide diversified dining and shopping experience in the framework of the given theme. On the one hand, the buildings connects the foreshore and the inner site as part of the pathway/wall structure, whilst the layout of the functions also follows the unique and linear pattern to enhance the sense of continuous movement of the space.

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Masterplan

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Masterplan

Exterior View

Section

Elevation

Detail Section

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Interior View

Section Model

Site Model

Elevation

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Wenda Xu

Urban Food Innovation Hub How can we re-imagine the contemporary public marketplace as an intrinsic part of Sydney’s urban ecology?

This is the urban century. For the first time, the majority of people live in towns and cities. While urbanisation can be viewed as a feature of economic growth and developmental progress, it also causes the loss and degradation of natural habitats; reducing in ecosystem services and increases levels of pollution. Simultaneously, the radical growth of urbanisation causes urban sprawl and rising land prices which affect urban agriculture significantly. If we continue down the path we’re on, Sydney stands to lose approximately 60% of its total food production by 2031.

All of these problems make me to rethink the way of urban food production. Are there new urban food production methods to reshape urban ecosystem that could solve the food crisis, reduce the impact on the natural environment, as well as maintain a high quality of life for humans?

This project aims to explore a new, replicable urban food production system for both local residents and visitors.

This will include four major components: a fish market, a market place, a digital farming (research centre) and an urban wetland. This new resilient system will help to produce local fresh food and build up a recreational and sustainable environment where everyone can participate and acknowledge our relationship with nature. It will also facilitate innovations and accommodate changing lifestyles.

The key design decisions in this project are: the urban setting of the building along the Bay district and the internal spatial shaping as “Space Landscape.” The building design follows the wetland’s pattern in terms of forms and hierarchy, and continues topography and landscape into the buildings to define forms, programs, spaces and experiences. Landscape is a media that blends the wetland and city fabric into a series of unique buildings and continuous high quality public domain which integrate the urban recreations and urban green spaces.

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Exterior View

Masterplan

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Sections

View from Blackwattle Bay

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Interior View

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Architecture and High Performance Technology Hyp:AS HYPERDENSITY ARCHITECTURE

Studio Leader

PHILIP OLDFIELD IVAN IP

Pyrmont

“There is much more to our current place in architectural history than symbol and iconography. Rather than symbol, the specifics of each environmental condition, culture, lifestyle and the tools and methods we use to build should be the basis for a new kind of high-rise building that would inherently ‘add value’ but also transform cities.”

Jeanne Gang, Studio Gang Architects, Chicago

Current trends in global population and urbanisation are widely known, but worth revisiting; by 2050, less than 35 years from now, the world’s urban population will stand at over six billion – almost double what it is today, with the United Nations suggesting such growth will result in 193,107 new people being added to world’s cities every day. If multiplied, this is the equivalent to a brand-new Sydney being needed every three weeks for decades to come! While much of this growth is occurring in the developing world, Sydney itself is not immune. Its own population is forecast to grow from 4.3m to 7.26m by 2050 leaving the city with the choice of either ‘growing up’ and building taller and denser buildings, or ‘growing out’ and continuing suburban spread. It is surely the former which is the more appealing and sustainable direction to follow. But what kind of densities and typologies should we be building to accommodate this growth? While the low-rise, high density of European cities such as Paris and Barcelona is lauded as walkable, humane and sustainable, the high-rise hyperdensity of Asia is derided as anti-environmental, congested, socially segregated and rapidly expanding at any cost. Bigger, and especially taller, has become synonymous with ‘worse’, both in terms of environmental and social performance.

But does this have to be the case? Can bigger be okay?

Or even better?

Take a look at our current stock of high-rise architecture and it’s not hard to see why so many consider the typology unsustainable. Internationally, tall building design is dominated by two themes; weird and wonderful skyscraper shapes designed to ‘stand-out’ and be ‘iconic’, or mono-functional boxes the result of the repetition of an efficient floor-plate stacked vertically.

Both are more often than not totally reliant on airconditioning and clad in continuous curtain-walling, regardless of orientation or sunpath. The result is a generation of buildings that are failing to respond to the climate, culture and context of the city they are built within. In Sydney, the current boom in tall building construction seems to be fuelled by mono-functional towers that too often offer little back to the city in terms

of programme or civic value. Accommodating mostly one and two bedroom units, such towers also provide little opportunities for families. Thus, while young people move in, the migration to the suburban home becomes a formality when children arrive on the scene and this continuous flux provides little chance for communities to thrive. But the tall building and hyperdense architecture in general can offer so much more than this. The past couple of decades have seen increasing innovation, providing challenging new opportunities for live, work, play and even death in the hyperdense and high-rise realm; from the community parks, skygardens and running track linking seven towers at the 26th and 50th floor of the Pinnacle@Duxton in Singapore, to the Memorial Necrópole Ecumênica in Santos which houses 14,000 burial spaces in a 14 storey vertical cemetery (set to be extended vertically up to 40 storeys), the tall building is no longer limited by the air-conditioned glass box of the past (and too often present). Yet this is just the beginning; significant opportunities still exist for the exploration of what types of architecture should manifest in future high-rise and hyperdense environments, what programmes can be fulfilled, and lifestyles generated.

This studio explores the issues outlined above through the research and design of hyperdense and high-rise architecture on sites in Pyrmont, Sydney - Australia’s most densely populated region. As a unit, we are interested in the architecture of intensity, activity, verticality and compactness. Emphasis is placed on hybrid programmes, and innovative ways of stacking and combining functions, along with developing complex buildings that respond to the climate, culture and context of their location. Passive environmental design and low-carbon servicing strategies are explored, while all projects are expected to take an attitude towards civic responsibility – creating public and social spaces at ground, and potentially even at height.

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Studio Leaders

Phillip Oldfield Ivan Ip Students

Martin Barr

Jun Yi Loh

Joshua Bell

Xiaoxu Luo

Xin Pei Chong

Lloyd Ramsay

Hon Cheung Chung

Milad Sadeghi

Rachael Drayton

Fuat Sezgin

Benjamin Knowles

Xiaolong Sun

Ignat Labazine

Yan Xie

Li Chi Lim

Chui Ting Yau

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Martin Patrick Barr

The Lookout Reinterpreting Paradise Quarry for Hyperdensity

The emphasises being on “PLACELESSNESS” a sense of belonging, a sense of community, a sense of wanting to be from that place. This is the main driver for my research, other important drivers for the design, was to create a universal development that caters for all ages. The research that followed was that of being of place, a sense of belonging, which lead me to venture down an avenue full of historical facts.

I looked at the material build up, the history, and of the actual elements themselves, in order to further understand the make-up of Pyrmont and the genius loci, and to use this charm that already exists to create an environment that is desirable to live.

I proposed an architecture that reveals the strata, the uniqueness of the colouring, and the scarred landscape that help form the beautifully carved sandstone building throughout the city and greater suburbs. An architecture that reveal the strata, to celebrated the uniqueness of layers hidden within the region.

What I found the most interesting is that the quarrying of the sandstone, known as the ‘Yellow Block’, was the prime element in making Sydney the place it is today. How the quarrying unwillingly segregated areas, forcing man-made communities, by restricting access to certain parts of the peninsula. The social fabric that makes up community is heavy influenced by manmade environments.

Just like the materials make up the built environment, the occupants make up the social environment. If we can produce architecture that responds to place and responds to people, then there is no reason why all elements can’t live successfully as one, like somewhat of an ecosystem, a community of human beings living in conjunction with the non-living components of their environment.

ARCHITECTURE AND HIGH PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGY

The volume of the building was determined by the strata of the land, like an extension of the contours wrapping themselves around the building like the contours wraps the land

The emphasises on the “PLACELESSNESS” a sense of belonging, a sense of community, of wanting to be from that place. This is the main driver for my research, on the previous scheme I felt that the place wasn’t celebrated enough…so I used the contours to inform the shear wall aesthetic and flip them vertically, this allowed me to lift the building, and let the landscape meander back to the foreshore like its once natural raw state.

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The word “RAW” helped inform the mood of the proposal and its brutalist appearance.

I felt that to help experience the sandstone environment, I needed to expose it and expose it in places where the most pedestrian traffic would occur… at the entries. By making the lift core and the sky bridge lightweight materials, the exposure to the setting is unavoidable

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Amphitheatre

1:1000 Model

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Joshua Bell

i-Density How can we provide a platform for identity and ownership in hyper-dense architectural strategies?

“standardisation is built into our culture, and furthered by manufacturing’s indifference to local factors. . . building should convert the communities view of the world into physical reality...in the end there is complete affinity between the individual and the community, between thinking and place” - (Pallasmaa, J. 1982) Architecture today tends to be focused on making a single statement for a building, rather than expressing the individuality and uniqueness of its occupants. This is especially true in high density housing, where the extrapolation of standardised floorplates and façade leaves the individual with little opportunity to express themselves. This project aims to overcome this, be exploring the critical ways in which buildings can express the identity of both their place, and the people who reside within.

The masterplan seeks to densify and transform a quiet, heritage-dotted block in central Pyrmont. By creating visual attractors through two towers, with active facades, the public are drawn towards two transport nodes at either end of the masterplan. The common garden of the existing terraces has made way for a new urban “mews” full of flexible, polyvalent spaces for public and resident interaction. The heritage elements in this scheme have been integrated and invigorated to revive the historical potency of Pyrmont.

The building itself takes the form of one of the residential towers within the scheme. The design embraces prefabrication as a technological strategy to creatively provide individual expression and adaptable lifestyles at high densities. A hybrid steel and concrete frame provides a permanent structure into which prefabricated wall panels can be inserted, adapted and updated over-time, allowing for occupants to customise their space, creating a dynamic architecture. Materiality is inspired by mapping the surrounding urban context, tying the building into its locality whilst creating a new archetype and social attractor.

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Building Growth

Masterplan

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Ground Context - Connection and Lifestyle

Interior Walkway

Apartment - Before and After Adaptation

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Bay Study Model Interior

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Xin Pei Chong

The Vertical Vernacular:

Reinterpreting Terrace Housing for Hyperdensity How we can create hyperdense architecture inspired by local vernacular that is able to amalgamate both community and place to its design?

Pyrmont is a place filled with the memories of its past, from the urban scars of its sandstone quarries to the heritage buildings of its former industrial life. A typology key to this character is the terrace, built originally as mass housing for local workers, but even today standing out as one of the dominant building types in the area. For many, the terrace house is the ideal home - while being modular, each terrace carries its own individuality, being able to reflect the personality of its occupants through the colour, craft and adaptation of its form and façade over time.

Taking this as inspiration, this project aims to reinterpret the qualities of the terrace house for a new type of high-rise architecture – responding to Pyrmont’s history and culture, but also the need for high density housing to accommodate the city’s dramatically growing future population. The aim is to overcome the high-rise failings of the past, and create a tall building architecture that is adaptable to future change, customisable to individuals’ preferences, but that also provides communal amenities to facilitate and support the idea of living collectively as a community.

Key to this reinterpretation is harnessing prefabricated technologies. Each unit can be personalised to suit the needs of its occupants, through customisable prefab façade panels. But more than this, the layout of units allows for verandas and balconies to be ‘filled in’, to create additional rooms, thus accommodating growing families. The defensible front garden of the terrace has been reinterpreted to create raised balconies over-looking communal green spaces, providing both protected space, and places for neighbours to interact and socialise. Environmentally, lessons of exposed thermal mass and natural ventilation are gleaned from the vernacular too, and embraced within this high-rise design.

ARCHITECTURE AND HIGH PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGY The Vertical Vernacular

The Communal Interaction within Building

View Along Harris Street

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The Adaptable Facade System

Partial Residential Plan

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Hon Cheung Chung (Horrus)

Vertical Suburb How can suburban qualities be incorporated into hyperdensity?

It’s widely recognised that the suburban model of the 20th Century is unsustainable. Sydney has embraced this horizontal suburban growth throughout much of its recent history, facilitating a loss of biodiversity, huge commuting times, and a growing carbon footprint. In response, high density urban living is becoming more popular, but demographics tell us that young singles and couples living in the city often move out to the suburbs when children appear on the scene. The suburban dream of the stand-alone house, large yard and front garden still prevails. With this in mind, this project seeks to explore the spatial and lifestyle qualities of suburban living, and capture these within an urban high-rise typology.

Three main components of suburban living have been captured in the design. Backyards and green space form a huge appeal to suburban living, yet it would be impossible to impose this ratio of private green space in a tower. To overcome this, the design is broken down into four-storey ‘vertical villages’ with each sharing a large garden space.

To make this economically viable, the area of this garden is determined by the equivalent area of balconies the units would receive according to the Sydney Apartment Design Guide. Occupants sacrifice a small private balcony, and see a large shared garden in return.

The front garden typically acts as a defensible space in the suburban realm. This is captured in this project as an outdoor dining space for each unit, raised for privacy, and providing overlooking protection to the community gardens. In terms of materiality, the brickwork of the suburbs is reinterpreted as a series of terracotta fins on the façade, providing a visual link back to the suburbs. The arrangement of these fins is influenced by studies of view, aesthetics and shade from the east and west façade.

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Garden 1 View

Interior View

Relationship with the Garden

Garden 2

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Cross Section

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Building vs. Urban Context

Model of Garden Module

Site Model

Facade model

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Rachael Drayton

A Makers Place How can we activate and diversity Pyrmont, at a micro and macro scale?

The intent of the Makers Place is to bring together students, professionals and the community through an interest in the creative arts, at a micro and macro scale.

The masterplan creates a new urban link through the heart of Pyrmont, connecting Pyrmont Bridge with the North West of the peninsular, tying together the city and the Bays Precinct. Along this new avenue a series of art installations, activities, workshops and pockets of additional density are created, to attract and accommodate a wider variety of people to the area.

The project itself is sited at a major junction on this urban link on Harris Street, acting as a nodal point for the region. A chic industrial architecture hosts a multitude of programmes, including public exhibition spaces, co-work facilities, artists’ studios and a school, to encourage creativity and collaboration between different demographic groups. Tying the architecture together is the “Creative Commons” a public link that runs through the heart of the site, strengthening the new urban artery. This semi-indoor / semi-outdoor space houses exhibitions and forms the circulation spine to the hybrid mat-building surrounding it, bounding together its various people and activities.

By extending a pedestrian link straight through the site, not only will more people engage with the program of the Makers Place, but it will also enable the process of making, crafting and displaying art to activate Pyrmont’s pedestrian experience.

The primary building programme is a school, which promotes the inclusion of art and making within its curriculum through project-based learning and professional mentoring programs. The school, alongside the hybrid mix of programmes creates a vitality and intensity to the site, while the addition of a residential tower provides extra density.

A Makers Place is a space for crafting, presenting and learning from one and other; a 24-hour facility with a character and spirit that can be used to celebrate and activate Pyrmont.

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Commons Connection

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Harris Street Elevation

Commons Section

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Axis Intention

Masterplan

Facade Model

Facade Section

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Benjamin Knowles

Vernon Wellness Precinct The future densification of our built environment needs to question the appropriateness of physical form specific to context - ensuring to maintain human scale and urban generosity in order to promote sustainable wellness

The exponential growth of populations is resulting in hybrid-densification becoming a more relevant focus in the future planning of our urban environments. With an intrinsic approach to density surrounding physical form, our urban environments are becoming spatially isolated, dismissive and introverted no longer recognising human scale.

The intent of this project therefore questions density, proposing that we should begin considering it in terms of function rather than physical form. Recognising trends throughout all industries, particularly health & wellness of more fragmented & layered functional models which seamlessly integrate diverse hybrid programs with our urban fabrics to create new typologies.

Proposing a sustainable wellness precinct for the north eastern headland of Pyrmont, this argument and approach has been explored at a variety of scales. The master plan, recognising the unique urban morphology of Pyrmont aims to create through a sculptural gesture to the broader context a precinct which combines health, education & public awareness programs seamlessly together. While the focus of the project, a Specialist Oncology Institute explores wellness architecturally through the arrangement of program & services, balance of public & private space, structural articulation, environmental services, physical and psychological connection to the natural environment, and material palate. In detail for example, utilising Australian hardwood as the primary structural material due to its low embodied energy & psychological connection to health recovery, with copper detailing utilised for its antibacterial properties. The result, a holistic and sustainable approach to the hybrid densification of our urban environments that reinstates human scale while promoting health and wellness.

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Public Domain

Ground Floor Plan

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Sectional Model

Typical Section

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Internal Courtyard

Facade Detail

Harbour Interface

Collaboration Space

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Rooftop Plan

Ignat Labazine

Activating the Waterfront: Inhabited Piers The peninsula of Pyrmont has been rebuilt several times across its history through the mechanisms of ‘subtraction’ and ‘addition’. Subtraction has formed Pyrmont’s past, with the quarries of ‘Paradise’, ‘Purgatory’ and ‘Hellhole’ carving out its dramatic topography, with the scars of this industrial heritage still strewn across its landmass today.

Addition has occurred both horizontally, in terms of land reclamation to the east, and vertically, in the form of new mono-functional residential towers of today. Yet, very little of this dramatic history is reflected in Pyrmont’s built environment along its western edge. Here the waterfront has become isolated from the land by the Western Distributor, cutting off access and activity from the waterfront, creating a dead-space. The question is how can we activate the waterfront along Pyrmont’s western edge, reconnecting it with the land, reflecting its topographical past, but also creating the density a growing Sydney so desperately needs?

To respond to this, my proposal explores the opportunity for a series of inhabited piers along Pyrmont’s west, tying the water back to the land, integrating water-based programmes and infrastructure, and celebrating Pyrmont’s topographical history. The piers are aligned with existing urban axes, extending these out into the water, and breaking the boundary set by the Western Distributor. The northern most pier takes the form of a dramatic folding insitu-concrete structure, echoing the stratified and laminated topography of the land. Hung within are lightweight multi-storey timber-clad boxes accommodating residential and office spaces, suspended from the concrete ceiling above. Sandwiched above and below are generous public realms, connecting land and water. At ground this encompasses water-based programmes such as dragon boat racing, floating public pools, and a water taxi stop.

On the roof, a viewing deck starts out at the cliffs to Pyrmont’s north, before stepping up further and further to the end of the pier, providing a dramatic lookout, allowing users to look back and reflect on Pyrmont’s topography and history.

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Detailed Office Space Section

Detailed Residential Section

Short Section

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View Approaching Pier

Residents Walking to Their Apartments

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Walking by Water Activities

Viewat the End of Journey

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Li Chi Lim

Child-Friendly High-Rise What would child-friendly hyperdense architecture be like?

It is well known that compared to suburban sprawl, high density urban living can have many sustainability advantages. Yet while urban living is appealing to many families with children, our current stock of hyperdensity and high-rise architecture seems to offer little to this demographic – with the majority accommodating mostly 1 or 2-bedroom apartments, with few of the services and spaces that families need or desire. What’s worse, many empirical studies suggest living in typical tall buildings can be detrimental for children, that their social relations are more impersonal, and they may even have fewer friends than those that reside in low-rise housing. No wonder then, that for many families the detached house on the suburban street remains the dream. This project aims to overcome these concerns through the creation of a child-friendly high-rise. In particular it looks at how hyperdense architecture can foster the most important activity for children – play!

The masterplan is based in central Pyrmont, and consists of a north-facing multi-storey school, with a residential tower behind. An existing light-rail station is sunk beneath the site, in an open canyon, limiting opportunities for play spaces at ground. As such, the project takes inspiration from the concept of a children’s treehouse, and lifts spaces of play, interaction and activity into the sky. In particular, the design reimagines the sterile central corridor seen in most towers, and opens this up into a series of multi-floor play spaces linking all apartments, providing slides, pods and quiet study areas for children. The arrangement of the residential units each side facilitates informal surveillance from parents, and also provides opportunities for cross ventilation of all units.

In response to adjacent heritage buildings, and the local streetscape, face bricks are used as the primary building material, providing an element of domesticity and restraint against the spaces of fun and play. Nevertheless, the project explores playfulness in elevation by adjusting the porosity of the hit-and-miss brickwork to respond to views, aesthetics and for solar shading.

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Concept Diagrams

Children’s Space

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Plan

Section

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Models

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Jun Yi Loh

Agri Culture +

How can we encompass vertical farming within hyperdensity?

To accommodate a growing urban population, we need greater land and resources for agriculture. But, traditional agricultural practices can contribute to environmental degradation through a loss of biodiversity from land clearance, the use of pesticides, and the significant carbon footprint of transporting food from rural to urban areas.

One solution to overcome this is the idea of vertical farming, where food is grown in high-rise factories within the city, limiting the need for land and transportation. However, many vertical farm proposals are little more than growing machines, designed to achieve the maximum economic yield, with little in terms of social benefits to the neighbourhood. This project aims to overcome these challenges by proposing a hybrid vertical farm, market and residential community in Pyrmont, Sydney. Rather than considering the vertical farm as a ‘machine’, the design presents opportunities for urban farming, growing and cooking to be a key driver for social sustainability and community, challenging the sterile high-rise environments of the past.

Urbanistically, the design presents a new vision for Sydney’s fish market. A new open-air waterfront market is masterplanned, influenced by the tightknit street patterns of medieval market towns. A series of towers rise from the market providing high-density living intertwined with growing and communal eating spaces. The form is broken down into vertical villages, with each having access to hydroponic façade-integrated growing spaces, shared kitchens and group dining spaces. The celebration of growing and greenery is designed to also provide psychological and physiological benefits for the occupants & local community based on the ideas of biophilia.

Environmentally, a mesh façade provides a degree of protection from the wind, but allows for the natural ventilation of internal spaces. Each village accommodates its own closed-loop water filtration system, while waste from the plant cuttings is harvested to a fuel biogas anaerobic digestion plant, providing an energy supply for the district.

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‘The Marketplace’

Growing

Cooking

Eating

Selling

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Groundfloor Plan

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‘The Communal Core’

Plan

Long Section

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Façade Axonometric

Xiaoxu Luo Sylvia

Market Growing Tower How can we make hyperdense living attractive and amenable to the growing elderly population?

Australia, like much of the world, is facing a growing aging population, with over 65’s jumping from 3.5 million people today, to closer to 6 million by 2030. Research has shown that the vast majority of these residents will begin their retirement in the suburbs, often with less access to the vitality, culture, public transit and support mechanisms of denser urban areas. The question is then, how can we make hyperdense living attractive and amenable to this growing elderly population?

This project aims to answer this question through the design of a hybrid high-rise building, accommodating residential units, growing spaces, a market and sports centre on a small site in central Pyrmont. Rather than design an exclusive tower for retirees, the proposal is made up of half smaller units for the elderly, and half larger units for families all mixed-in together, creating a vibrant and diverse vertical city. All the units share balconies within an undulating double-skin façade, which acts as a growing space for the building. Inspired by the ‘vegetable patch’ the façade provides a vertical space for families and the elderly to grow their own fruit and vegetables using a hydroponic system. Any excess can be sold at the market below, providing additional income for retirees. The façade also acts as an environmental filter for the building; providing a solar buffer in the winter for free heating, but being openable to facilitate natural ventilation in the summer months. In addition, rainwater harvesting and photovoltaic panels are integrated into the façade’s technical design.

As the façade nears the ground it juts out to form the roof to a multi-level fruit and vegetable market, which will compliment Pyrmont’s nearby Fish Market. Its undulating form is inspired by the elegant iron-framed roofs that span the historic markets of the past. An adjacent train station is urbanistically aligned to the ground floor plan, providing clear access and social mobility for the residents.

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Harris Street Perspective

Section

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Balcony Garden as ‘Sky Street’

Entrance From Light Rail Station

Entrance To Produce Market

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Mosterplan

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Lloyd Ramsay

Densifying Glebe Island Bridge How can hyper-density connect rather than isolate?

Bridges have always played a major role in shaping Sydney’s cityscape, fuelling its connectivity, productivity and growth. The first Glebe Island Bridge opened in 1862 linking the CBD with Balmain, although it was replaced in 1903 with the Glebe Island Swing Bridge that we see today. Unfortunately, this is now decommissioned, limiting access around the Bays precinct. My proposal aims to reinvent the Old Glebe Island Bridge to provide greater connectivity in the Sydney Bays region. It will close the pedestrian and cycle link around the bay, improving access and amenity for local residents and commuters. But more than this, I propose an inhabited bridge, providing additional density to the city by utilising unused space, above and below existing infrastructure.

The Old Glebe Island Bridge is preserved in the design, utilising the road as a service and loading zone with limited parking for residents, with the ‘swing section’ repurposed to incorporate a café and dragon boat house. Access is provided by ramps at both the Pyrmont and Glebe end, while a water promenade also extends to the new dragon boat house, marina and park. The passage of boats is maintained through the centre operable bridge section, raised on tracks to a maximum height of 27m above sea level, matching the Anzac Bridge allowance.

The bridge itself is a shared pedestrian and cycle way, lined with modules of accommodation. At ground level, these are used as community workshops and studios and shops with residential provision above. The design embraces off-site modular construction; the structure consists of concrete pylons and beams with a lightweight steel grid above into which prefabricated modules can be inserted. The modules would be constructed in a factory at Botany, and shipped by boat to site, where they are lifted into place by a permanent crane. Owners can specify their own module design, including a selection of layouts and finishes. What’s more, the steel framework allows for modules to be repositioned, relocated, extended and adapted over time, creating a dynamic elevation that will evolve over the years. The bridge’s proximity with the water also benefits the use of tidal turbines for clean energy generation.

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Aerial View from Glebe Island

Sectional Perspective of Inhabited Bridge

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Masterplan and Section

Facade Study

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Framework and Modules

Sydney - A City of Bridges

Reconnecting The Bay

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Milad Sadeghi

School of Digital Arts, Pyrmont The arts and culture can make a considerable and necessary contribution to the well-being of communities. They are powerful tools with which to engage communities in various levels of change. They are means to public dialogue, contribute to the development of a community’s creative learning and can create healthy communities capable of action. This project emerged from recognition of a lack of arts and cultural facilities in Pyrmont, especially along its northern edge, contributing to a lack of vibrancy along the public spaces of the north foreshore. The creation of a new arts facility, in conjunction with a residential tower, was planned to play a role in attracting businesses and communities to the area, and increasing the density and intensity of use along the foreshore.

Inspired by Vivid Sydney, the focus of the project developed into a School of the Digital Arts. The masterplan consists of two buildings; the school itself projects out into the water’s edge, with a residential tower to the west.

Between the two a new public space is created, which acts as an ‘urban cinema’; a racked landscape steps down to the water, acting as seating where the public can sit and watch the latest student work, or movies on a Friday night, projected onto the Art School wall. The wall itself is a double-skin of polycarbonate, designed to glow with the vibrancy of activity within at night. Integrated within are a series of 360 degree dual projection screens which allow students to present their work to their peers inside, and the public space outside simultaneously. Yet, the building doesn’t just talk to the adjacent plaza; the projections would be visible from across the Sydney Bays precinct, allowing residents of Glebe, or those crossing the Anzac Bridge to see the art on show. The building thus ties the fragmented nature of the Bays Precinct together, visually, across the water.

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View of projection wall from Glebe Island

Cinematic activation of shoreline and public engagement

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Site Plan

Visual connection from the Anzac Bridge

Projection of student work across the street

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1:50 Exploration of faรงade material and tectonic

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Fuat Sezgin

Hyper-Activity How do you design hyperdense architecture in which the occupants become the spectators of sporting activities?

‘Sports on the ground, sports in the sky, sports inside and sports in the façade, sports everywhere! How do you design hyperdense architecture in which the occupants become the spectators of sporting activities’ This was the inspiring statement from semester one. It focused on the integration of sports and fitness to the day to day activities of the occupants. A rock climbing wall alongside the glazed lift shaft, a diving board off the lift foyer, a running track along the facade and a view of a football match from your office desk.

As the design developed, I took the idea of ‘spectator’ and applied it to the architecture. I focused on the tectonics of the design and how different elements could be co-ordinated to produce a coherent and legible structure. Series of area detail studies have been carried out to resolve junction details, visual lines, materials and finishes.

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Context model

Podium building West Facade

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Ground Floor Plan

Podium Building East Facade

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Lift Lobby Section

Fire Stair Section 1

Fire Stair Plan

Fire Stair Section 2

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XiaoLong Sun

The Bicycle-Friendly Community What a Pyrmont would look like if it were friendly for cyclists and bicycles?

This is the start point for the bicycle-friendly Community.

This project will be designed for the bicycle riders.

No matter they just use the bike for commuting, or they select the bike as their first option in daily life, such as shopping and recreations.

Inspired by the popular ideas about the bicycle highway from European countries, the bicycle ramps in the Anzac bridge will be designed to extend and connect to Sydney CBD directly to improve the riding environment for the cyclists. The steep climbing ramp will be dismantled by this extension design.

Moreover, in order to respond to related demand services from the dramatically increasing number of bicycles and cyclists. The idea of a complex functions of a bicycle centre is meaningful. Cyclists may easy to get these different services with their bikes. The bicycle culture office and company may encourage their employees to use the bikes as their first option for commuting and the good services would be supplied for the end of the trip(easy and enough space parking, change and shower room, etc).

For the residential part, it may be a new bicycle culture community. Every dwellers at least own one bike. The bike is the first option for their commuting and recreations. Furthermore, in order to encourage and strengthen links between the dwellers and the their bikes, they would be encouraged to ride the bike home and park their bikes in front of their apartments in the front garden. The tower atrium with bicycle ramp would be the special and unique experience for the dwellers and cyclists.

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Urban Perspective

View to Bicycle Centre

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Bay Axonometric

View to Tower Atrium

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Bicycle Centre Atrium

View from Blackwattle Bay

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Yan Xie

Sharing is Beautiful How can we create a more vibrant and connected lifestyle for young people living in apartments in the future?

Today Sydney house prices cost on average 12-times the average annual income – a ratio that is simply unaffordable to many. A 20% deposit on a median-priced house in Sydney is $204,400. If a young city worker saves $100 a week, then this deposit will take him/her 26.8 years in total (or 23.2 years if he/she skips avocado on toast once a week!). The challenge of funding affordable housing is likely to keep many millennials on the rental market for a long time. Also, much of our high density housing stock is spatially quite inefficient; most apartments are empty during the day, most bedrooms are only used for 8-hours sleep, and balconies are rarely ever used! The repetitive stacking of the same one-bedroom apartments over and over, connected only by dark corridors, can be isolating for many residents, with little opportunity for community or interaction. The question is how can we make better use of the spaces in our high-density housing? Can we create a more vibrant and connected lifestyle for young people living in apartments in the future?

This project aims to answer these questions by proposing a high density mixed-use community bound together by ideas of Sharing. The proposal uses sharing as an architectural mechanism to promote better spaces, greater community and greater affordability in high-density housing. Thus, rather than seven young people all having a one-bedroom apartment, with an individual living room and kitchen, they share a large apartment with individual bedrooms, but a dramatic double-level living space. In family apartments, gardens are shared between units. This theme is carried through to the urban scale, with the whole community sharing a raised central courtyard with facilities to share books, music, movies, sports, bicycles and GoGet cars with other 1,200 residents.

The project explores the ideas of the ‘introvert’ and ‘extrovert’ in housing, challenging what we pre-conceive to be private, semi-private and public.

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Sectional Perspective

Shared Unit Perspective

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Public Domain

Site Model

Detailed Unit Model

Long Section

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Pansy Yau

Sustainable Hyperdensity Transit Hub How can we promote sustainable transport?

While Sydney is regularity ranked highly in terms of its environmental attributes, cultural diversity and liveability, compared to other global cities it performs less well in terms of accessibility and transport infrastructure. Yet, one of the main benefits of hyperdensity is when it is aligned with public transportation, limiting our car dependency, promoting walkability and reducing a city’s carbon footprint.

With this in mind, this project aims to create a sustainable hyperdense transit hub for Pyrmont. The design consists of a new inhabited pier acting as a water taxi stop and cultural avenue linked to the Sydney Fish Market light rail station. This integration o¬¬¬f transit is envisioned to spark a cluster of new high-rise buildings in the area, all benefitting from direct access to public transportation. Influenced by Philip Vivian’s design for clusters of supertall buildings around transit stops throughout Sydney, this integration of transit and skyscraper clusters is masterplanned across Pyrmont, providing a new urban vision of transit-orientated density for the region.

The building itself is designed to reimagine the existing Fish Market light rail station as a new destination in the city – a grand transit interchange that provides direct links to the waterfront, and the city. Above this sits a mixeduse high-rise building, accommodating offices, public facilities at height, and residential apartments. The building celebrates travel by expressing its vertical transportation, with glass elevators, escalators and stairs highlighting movement within a transparent façade. Skybridges at height provide additional connectivity, linking adjacent towers and allow for greater access and interaction between residents and office workers alike, which has a great potential to transform the fish market light rail station into a hyperdense transport hub.

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Concept Image

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Arriving the Ferry Pier

Proposed Ferry Pier

Fish Market Light Rail Station

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Site Model in the Vision of 2050

Long Section from the Proposed Ferry Pier to Building

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Architecture and Social Agency RESILIENT CITY, RESILIENT NEIGHBOURHOOD Studio Leader

DAVID SANDERSON MARK SZCZERBICKI SAM RIGOLI

St Canice Parish, Kings Cross

A resilient city is comprised of resilient neighborhoods.

This studio will engage with these issues through

A resilient neighborhood is one where individuals,

working on a real project - the redevelopment of St

communities,institutions and businesses, linking to

Canice Parish. The site, located in a dense area of Kings

wider systems, survive, adapt and transform, no matter

Cross, currently comprises a church, refugee centre,

what kind of chronic stresses and acute shocks they

soup kitchen, community group meetings, rooftop

experience.

garden, asylum seekers’ accommodation and offices.

Resilience is important because we live in unprecedented times. Cities around the world are growing at around one million people per week, mostly

The parish is located in a fast-gentrifying area of Sydney that is still home to some of the most vulnerable people in the city.

in poorer countries ill-prepared for the challenge.

The studio will work concurrently at two levels. At the

Climate change is resulting in more flooding and

practical level with studio will problem solve issues of

weather extremes, making urban floods the most

siting, space, light, form and access. At the strategic

expensive form of disaster. Globally, forced population

level the studio will consider and question wider

movements are at the highest since the Second World

societal and structural issues such as policy and the

War, with most displaced people and refugees living

relevance of urban interventions at a time of rapid urban

in cities. And, while cities possess huge wealth and

change.

opportunity, they are also home to hundreds of millions of people trapped in poverty, marginalisation and social exclusion.

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Studio Leaders

David Sanderson Mark Szczerbicki Sam Rigoli Students

Daniel Bogaz

Michael Masi

Christopher Day

Setareh Mohammadpour

Anqi Deng

Kylie Pan

Lan Anh Do

Alana Peddie

Yunjing Guan

Teresa Yie Sheng Peng

Ashwin Kuruvilla

Jerome Saad

Ying Tung Dodo Lau

Timothy Smith

Thanh Le

Iraj Thapa

Jacqueline Lindeman

Chaopu Yang

Hui Liu

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Daniel Bogaz

St Canice - Resilience

This projects aims to provide resilience for the surrounding community by installing a centre for urban agriculture and a cycling mechanic workshop.

The urban agriculture facility will aim to instill resilience by producing food, investigating food production for urban settings and providing opportunities for local residents to purchase and contribute to locally grown food. Facilities will include practical areas, rooftop terraces and education rooms. Many of these rooms and areas could also be used by other groups in the community such as AA or yoga or mothers groups etc.

The cycling mechanical workshop aims to provide a community hub around what will become an essential transport mode by providing a retail source of bikes and servicing of bikes. It also aims to provide engagement with the community by providing a physical space for bike corral’s for the community and education facilities for a Cycling mechanical curriculum. The locaiton of the cyclery is at the western most point of the site as this is visible from a major cycling thoroughfare on bayswater rd.

The primary objective of these programs is to provide a platform for the parish of St Canice to interact with its surrounding community to establish and foster networks. By providing education and training to individuals, selfsufficiency can be achieved. It is with these networks and with this education where resilience can be established for the individual and by extension for the community.

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Street Perspective

Street Perspective

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Site Plan

Street Elevation

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Plaza Plan

Image Annotation

Bike 50

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Christopher Day

St. Canice How do we design for opposites?

Observing the complex web of lives which exist within a community is crucial when considering the role of architecture within society. In Kings Cross, this web of complex interactions is defined by life’s juxtapositions transience verses permanence, rich verses poor, the introvert verses the extrovert. Architecture is the perfect link to connect these figures.

Assuming the cliché that ‘opposites attract’ can be applied to an architectural response, it is interesting to explore how a building is able to provide a series of harmonious spaces through balancing the patterns of the surrounding physical context with the contrasting personalities of the people who inhabit it. This is found in the ‘Scarpa-esque’ architectural detail which adorns many of the once low cost art-deco apartments of Kings Cross, Rushcutters Bay and Elizabeth Bay. While clearly part of a recognisable era of design, these well crafted details individualise buildings so that they become an intrinsic and necessary part of the streetscape, as well as being moulded to the people who inhabit them.

At St. Canice, the Soup Kitchen, Church and associated community, services such as Alcoholics Anonymous are all so crucial to the sites placement within the broader context. Yet its economic deficit means that its future is uncertain, and thus it is not resilient.

In developing an architectural response to this, my aim has been to reinterpret and improve the current functions of St. Canice so that it becomes more sturdy in the future. I have taken cues from 1930’s post war architecture which adorns the surrounding streets, in order to bring the site into a contemporary setting where people from all walks of life are able to coincide successfully and, hopefully, free of hierarchy.

St. Canice will be a place for all people to live or visit; work or play; engage or escape.

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St Canice

Restaurant

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Reflection Courtyard

The Engaging Plaza

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Ground Plan

Plaza Plan

Solid verses Transparent in the Parish Office

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Anqi Deng

St Canice Collective Community How to reinforce subjective memories and collective experiences in contemporary parish community?

Having developed several services out of love and faith, St Canice church plays a diverse role for the parish, the community and people, especially for those individuals in need. However, the complex is made up of fragments of land added to the entity from time to time, lacking planning and organization. The fragmented and disordered spatial arrangement has limited its capacity and inevitably turned parts of the site into a seemingly unwelcome, locked-up place, incapacitating any further public and social interactions or individual experience. This restrains the subjective experience and collective traditions the church could offer.

My proposal starts from resolving the disconnected land fragments by recognizing the essence of existing program and exploring new possibilities for St Canice’s role in the community. The new soup kitchen takes the advantage of the steep slope on the site, forming a platform in front of the existing church. With a two-storey neighbourhood centre emerging from the top, the complex addresses the status of the existing church, reclaiming and reinforcing St Canice’s identity as public and social place. The building adopts a glazed curtain wall to the exposed façade on the ground floor, thin marble for the neighbourhood centre with redwood on the sloped roof to increase visual accessibility while ensure internal privacy at the same time. The translucent façade also turns the block into a light box at night when activities take place. New apartment consists of two types of living: the shared low-rent housing inherits the communal living style of the original apartment and offers maximum opportunity for residents’ customization; and the market-price unit provides financial support for the whole complex’s maintenance.

By creating spaces in various scales on two levels on site, from public and social to intimate meditating space, each place is filled with subjective memories and experiences, and also emerges and overlaps interconnections between different parts.

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View from platform

View from central courtyard for meeting, gathering and activities

Light box at night

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Elevation from Roslyn Street

Elevation from Roslyn Gadens

Longitudinal Section through Neighbourhood Center

Cross Section

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Food Centre Skylight Detail

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Lan Anh Do

People - Pattern - Place..

The many Stories of St Canice What does it mean to design for people?

What makes people connect and identify themselves with a place?

What does it mean to design for people?

What makes people connect and identify themselves with a place?

These are the questions that particularly concerned me when approaching the St Canice project. At St Canice I soon realized that it is a very distinct and special place, a fascinating place that welcomes people from all walks of life.

The people may have different purposes and involvements with the place; however, there is something about St Canice that connects them with each other and with the place. Through my interaction with St Canice, I found it is this certain set of patterns of events happening days in days out that gradually create the culture and the identity of St Canice. I felt strongly for this connection between the place and its people and decided that it is imperative to keep these patterns at the centre of my scheme. As the project developed further, I realized that the pattern is not only in the people and the daily activities of St Canice but also presents in the place, particularly the church.

I tried to develop my scheme from and around these patterns I have seen at the place and woven them in with the new interventions so that the existing life of the place and its people is not disturbed but enhance and flourish. Each of the buildings and theirs outdoor space is designed with the people and how they would carry out their patterns in mind. There are also many little pockets floating around for those who seek quiet contemplation. In a place that is so communal and public, I believe such small spaces helps the people grow a more intimate and personal bond with the place.

The new spaces are not meant to inspire awe or curiosity but simply set a better stage for the activities to happen.

The buildings got their forms from the reminiscent arches of the church, which is also a pattern of St Canice, but, other than that content to be a white canvas that the life of St Canice with its many shades and texture reflects upon.

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View of the Soup Kitchen

Axonometric of Overall Scheme

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Street View

Section through Community Centre and Garden Centre

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View of the Front Pockets

Level 2 Floor Plan

View of Glass House of Garden Centre

Level 1 Floor Plan

Level 0 Floor Plan

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Yunjing Guan (Christine)

In Which We See Ourselves How do we address loneliness in architecture?

Kings Cross is on its way to gentrification. Gentrification could bring in order but could also potentially replace the current unique culture. The chaos of Kings Cross is neither reminiscent nor respectful. What people are nostalgic about of Kings Cross is its freedom - freedom that tolerates and respects differing ideologies.

Freedom and independence are considered as two sides of a coin. Respect generates not only from external environment but also from internal self-cultivation. External interference can only be provided to a certain extent.

Essentially, only the person herself is responsible for her own self.

This design seeks for the answer from an individual perspective. The contrasting nature of human is that it is social as well as individual. Staying connected with society or being known by someone is essential for one’s self being, as the image of oneself is the reflection of the perceived image from others. At the same time, people tend to act differently to distinguish themselves from others in order to confirm their identity. The risk of being unique is that it might not be well perceived, as the means we use to express ourselves is always limited.

There is always a part of ourselves that is left not understood by the others. Ultimately, we will have to find our own way to resist loneliness and be independent.

The architecture responds to this proposition in two juxtaposed ways: social and solitary. Although the social space creates opportunities for people to meet, it does not erase disparity. Self-satisfaction obtained from social life is very limited and temporary. The social space allows people to have relief from their eternal struggle with loneliness, and the architecture seeks to ease a measure of their fear and anxiety temporarily. Meanwhile, the solitary aspects try to address loneliness by catering to intellectual curiosity. However, the end result is a question rather than an answer: does the infinity of the world make one forget his minute loneliness, or make his loneliness more unbearable?

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Concept Diagram

APARTMENT

SHORT TERM ACCOMM

APARTMENTS FOR PARISH STAFFS

TOWER

LIBRARY

ORIGINAL STATUE

Ground Floor Plan

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ENTRY TO SHORT TERM ACCOM

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ENTRY TO SHORT TERM ACCOM

STORAGE JRS OFFICE

PARISHIONER APARTMENT

CAFE WHERE PAYMENT IS VOLUNTARY COLD ROOM

PUMP ROOM WHERE MONEY IS COLLECTED

CAFE SEATING

CAFE SEATING

PRIEST' S APARTMENT

MULTI FUNCTIONAL HALL

WEDNESDAY NIGHT DINNER

PRIEST' S APARTMENT

T

EE

TR

TS

EN

M

LE

C

Basement Plan

Cross Section of Short-Term Accommodation

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Section of Social Area and Parishioners’ Apartment

Section of Solitary Area

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Ashwin Kuruvilla

St. Canice Centre for Rehabilitation

The St. Canice church is located in the heart of Kings Cross and opens its doors to a wide and diverse community of parishioners. Apart from the aspect of faith, the church plays a small, yet significant role in rehabilitating Kings Cross from some of its vices by reaching out to the homeless and the disadvantaged. How can a space of faith encourage rehabilitation and well-being? Can architecture rehabilitate a community through inclusive design?

By expanding the existing outreach by the church, the project proposal aims to transform St.Canice into a care centre - a beacon for health, by catering to the well-being of its patrons. The project envisions a holistic environment that rehabilitates the ‘Body, Mind and Spirit’. The masterplan seeks to unify the site which is predominantly occupied by the church and welcomes the public into the heart of the site, inviting people in need to get the support they require.

The programme is a response to the 3 primary non-religious outreach activities on the site. The rehabilitation of ‘the body’ is facilitated by the addition of a medical clinic that caters to the community and a new restaurant with the primary focus of establishing itself as a food centre open to all to all. The rehabilitation of ‘the mind is through a series of spaces that cater to psychological services and mental health. Materiality and light, play pivotal roles in the shaping of the project. The entire lower level of the building is enveloped in brick as a ‘plinth’ and pays homage to the church, while ‘new’ delicate spaces, constructed from timber emerge from this plinth base. Unlike most medical centres or clinics, the project moves away from the sterile ‘white’ nature of most medical centres by using warm, natural materials and perforated privacy screens that encourage the community to support each other.

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View From Roslyn Street

Level Transition

View of Office and Residential Block

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Image Annotation

Plan View

Rosyln Street View

Image Annotation

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Volume and Light Study

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Ying Tung Lau (Dodo)

Community Food Centre Food and Dignity at St Canice

Kings Cross is experiencing gentrification, yet has high numbers of homelessness. My project aims at making the Parish a bridge between the residents and homeless people - a successful bridge of dignity which raises both respect from the community and self-respect of the homeless people, through food.

Food is our daily necessity and a good way to gather different people. It can become the bridge between the two parties in Kings Cross. The design of the Community Food Centre follows the food cycle, from growth to cultivation, to selling and to eating. The food cycle starts with the growing of food in the community garden. Then, it is harvested and sent for distribution to the market, where we get our food in a city. The teaching kitchen would then be the place which people learn cooking. After that, we eat the food in either the soup kitchen or restaurant.

However, it is not the end of the food cycle. To complete the food cycle, food waste produced on site and from the residents around is collected and turned into compost. The compost is then used in the food growing, and closes the cycle.

The Community Food Centre could be a place which teaches people the importance of healthy food and how much effort was put in to produce that. Throughout the different activities held around this food cycle, both homeless people and residents could have an opportunity to gather round, both to be nourished, and also to build lasting bonds and community.

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Entrance to Parish Office and Soup Kitchen

Ground Floor Plan

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Fruit Garden

Herb Garden

Interactive Learning Centre Structural Model

Site Sectional Perspective

Event Space and Vegetable Growing

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Fresh Food Market

Soup Kitchen Sectional Perspective

Soup Kitchen Section Model

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Thanh Le (Hayden)

Colours for The Soul A garden filled with colours that exists to replenish souls and bodies. Unless you are here, this garden refuses to exist.

I always believe that it is important to create architecture that truly cares for people and is especially inclusive for everyone. Even though it might seem a bit idealistic, but I believe it is fair and beneficial to try.

I believe for St. Canice, the most important thing is to create resilience in three main aspects: financial resilience, social resilience and cultural resilience. It is important to establish a place to help the people in need, nourish them back to their best health condition, considering the mental problems that a lot of refugees and homeless people are facing.

We may not forget about other stakeholders, the other aim for my project is to establish a new culture of learning and making, in artistic and crafting form, so people who are involved in this community can feel refreshed and have a new purpose/skill for their lives. This culture is also important to be the main architectural language for the whole St. Canice community.

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Colour and Space Study

Roslyn Street Elevation

Roslyn Gardens Elevation

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1st Floor Plan

Ground Floor Plan

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Emergency Shelter Perspective

Colour and Space Study 2

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Jacqueline Lindeman

The Kings Cross Commune A Speculative Exploration of the Relationship Between People, Architecture, Time & Resilience

My project seeks to explore the dynamic relationship between people, place and time, in relation to the overarching theme of resilience.

Building on the existing social and physical qualities of the site, my project is an exploration of the potential for the site as an urban sanctuary within the context of a dynamic urban neighbourhood. Through the process of scenario planning, a fictional reality was established allowing the site to be re-imagined over a series of points on a hypothetical timeline. Moving through phases of abandonment and ruin, a narrative was established that sees the site occupied in the future by an artists’ commune.

Existing philosophies of the parish are appropriated in a progressive way, as the commune promotes a greener, more equitable future that extends out into the community, cultivating the streets and open spaces to promote a lively and sustainable engagement with the currently dormant urban environment. Principles of counter-communities and co-housing are fostered to create an alternative resident population that thrives on communal activity and daily life. Community education, development, engagement and outreach remain the central activities around which the site revolves.

The proposed architecture of the commune explores a democratic approach towards the site’s existing buildings, allowing these time-battered, ruined structures to be re-claimed for a range of alternative programs. Opportunities in both materiality and experience are harnessed through strategic interventions that seek to highlight the existing potential of the site. Transitions between old and new built forms are developed as a set of unique spatial experiences, enhanced through a modest material expression that responds to the existing fabric of the site.

In this way, the project explores an optimistic future as St Canice continues to act as a spiritual, emotional and physical support to the distinctive residents of the neighbourhood and its surrounding suburbs. The commune, and the potential unlocked in the adaptive re-use of existing buildings and philosophies, continues to develop the resilience of its community, neighbourhood and the wider city.

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The Church Ruin

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The Church Hall Re-Imagined

Detail Section Through Junction of Commune House

Upper Ground Floor Plan, Creation of the Rosyln Street Farm & Reconfigured Access Through the Site Middle Ground Floor, Establishing a Public Plane Lower Ground Floor, The Establishment of a Commune House

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Roslyn Gardens 2076, The Reclaimation of the Site

Rosyn Gardens 2046, Phases of Ruin & Abandonment

005_Roslyn Gardens 2016

Section A-A, Exploring the Opportunities of Existing Structures & Their Materials

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Hui Liu (Sandy)

Social Integration and Consolidation How could make St.Canice to integrate diverse groups of people and solve urban density?

St. Canice is located adjacent to Kings Cross which is an important part of Sydney’s culture and history, as well as close to the bustling modern CBD area and residential zones. It plays a vital role as a gathering place for diverse groups of people, generating a challenge to urban density and the integration people in this historical, vibrant and culturally rich area.

The intention of this project is to reintegrate and consolidate these diverse groups of people, increasing social engagement, social networks and interaction through being positively ‘wrapped’ by recycled brick buildings which signify Australia’s daily domestic life, activities and atmosphere. The use of brick as a material and brickwork as construction not only enhances environmental impact, but also generates an ambiguity between indoor and outdoor spaces. It also assists social housing programing to be blended into public programming, thus reducing isolation among different groups of people and breaking the alienation of traditional social housing.

Edges of brick buildings have been defined by aligning with surrounding buildings and the selection of domestic recycled brick are intended to respect and blend St. Canice into the surrounding building fabric, increasing a sense of engagement and integration. Interactive green spaces (park, garden and courtyard, urban farm) with different functions aim to improve the area’s quality of life, promoting knowledge sharing and consolidating integration between the public realm and social housing, while creating a greener footprint, contrasting with chaotic urban life.

The use of Australian brick therefore extends and respects the traditional life and culture, reinforcing security and increasing socialised activity areas between and in brick volumes. The integration of buildings and the integration of programmes integrate people. Simultaneously, it engages urban density.

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Axonometric

Kings Cross Museum

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Master Plan

Longitudinal Section

Cross Section

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View from Community Centre

View from ROSLYN STREET

View from Inner Garden

View to Social Housing Entrance

Roof Garden

Detail Section

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Michael Masi

Saint Canice, Building Change in Our Community The human aspect has been pushed to the back of our minds in modern society, how can we as architects create places that instil a true sense of community and inclusiveness within the ever-changing cityscape?

What is our role as architects, designers, planners, thinkers, doers, politicians, activists and members of the general public in this modern world? It is clear in today’s capitalist society that in order to get ahead and to succeed, one must put themselves in front of and over another human being. In our everyday lives many of us have forgotten what it truly means to be “human” and to have to emotions, feelings, senses and interactions that we as a species are blessed with. The touch of someone’s caring hand, the soft whispers of a friend urging to fight on, the smell of a freshly cooked meal, the sound of laughter and conversation. In this fast paced world many of us have taken these seemingly simple things for granted. However, it is a harsh reality that many people cannot afford the luxury of a simple hug from a loved one or a smile from a friendly stranger.

The community of Saint Canice in Rushcutters Bay, directly adjacent to the infamous Kings Cross neighbourhood, is a place of various lifestyles, social status’s, faiths, educations, demographics and ethnicities. Recently a trend of gentrification and displacement of not just the homeless or disadvantaged, but of even the “middle class,” has begun to take hold of this community along with many others throughout this city. This community and the people that bring such a large cultural diversity to it have begun to fade away into the high rise, glossy, cold office blocks and multi-residential towers that are beginning to swallow this city’s identity.

In response I have fought the usual premonition of many architects to fall into the easy, most affordable or “expected” design outcome of a major urban intervention. The human aspect, and more importantly those who sleep on the streets, those who wake up hungry and those who find themselves at a disadvantage should be brought back into the mainstream which has crudely shoved them aside. A simple manifesto of three main terms: NOURISH, SHELTER and SUPPORT has become the focus of this project and driven what is a socially sustainable and responsible agenda to encourage real change in this world.

Though it is difficult to summarise this large of a project within the allotted time and space given, it is important to note the ways in which I have viewed and worked throughout this studio. At first, the architectural intent shown here may seem a little heavy-handed in the project’s approach to large scale, urban intervention and “takeover.”

However, I strongly believe that in order for architecture to make a difference in this world, especially in regards to social agency, it must either be extremely bold in its function and form or completely subdued in simplicity and intent. What binds these two seemingly polar opposites of the bold and the simple is its meaning, and the true connection of built spaces to humans, our experiences and the time and place in which these interactions reside.

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Rosyln Gardens Intersection

Museum, Contemplation Space, Food Hall & Urban Farm

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Plan Level 0M

Plan Level -8M

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Saint Canice Urban Masterplan & Site Intervention

Community Centre & Food Hall

Shelter Village & View of Tiny Homes

Laneway between Food Hall & Community Centre

Community Centre & Food Hall View From Urban Farmland

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Setareh Mohammadpour

Social Integrity in Borderless Architecture The role of architecture to mitigate social isolation of homeless/refugee individuals

21st century metropolises have been facing significant issues, including homelessness and refugee crisis. In this regard, what the role of architecture could be to mitigate social isolation of these vulnerable individuals within the society? As there are enormous social and individual drawbacks rooted in homelessness such as mental illnesses, drug addiction and family breakdown, a comprehensive scheme is required to deal with this issue. In this project, St. Canice church has been proposed as a community – based foundation where refugees, homeless and jobless people will be settled for a given period of time. It includes four distinct areas of affordable housing, job sector, community center and recreational facilities. This program creates an opportunity for the residents to follow their passions and more importantly become skilled individuals who are able to become independent enough to seek for future job within the society.

As to master planning, the design presents new version for the St. Canice church. A new welcoming atmosphere is designed in which borders between indoor and outdoor spaces are getting blurry. By considering open spaces as being dominant on the site, the current site isolation is broken. Buildings are designed in a way that they do not block the church view to keep the church as a valuable heritage on the site. Community garden and greenery spaces as well as the outdoor amphitheatre provide the residents and local community with an engaging area.

In regards to buildings designs, the idea was to merge indoor and outdoor spaces so borders get meaningless.

In this respect, glass operable walls are used to convey the meaning of openness where users feel someone is receiving them with open arms. In other words, indoor spaces are designed to be fully open to the public. Flexible and activity-based interiors allow for happening various events ranging from workshops to exhibitions.The apartment building consists of various apartment types to suit different families and single individuals. Other than controlling the sun penetration through the building, façade screens create a lively façade that changes constantly.

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Ground Floor Plan

Outdoor Amphitheatre

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View from Roslyn Gardens Street

View from Roslyn Street

Community Centre Ground Floor Space

Market Space

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Section through Community Centre

West Elevation

Site Model

Sectional Model

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Kylie Pan

St Canice’s Project How can resilience be achieved by strengthening the mutualistic relationship between individuals and community?

With accelerated pace of globalisation and urbanisation, Sydney embraces its potential to be an emergent world city. While Kings Cross, being at the heart of a vibrant, diverse urban precinct in the Sydney City, especially known for its nightlife features, has attracted people outside its local community over the years. Somehow the local community of Kings Cross itself has been broken down into polarised social groups that is pushing the locality away from idealistic future of Sydney, which will be a place of celebration for all.

The proposed project focuses on strengthening the symbiotic relationship between self and community, directing it to mutualism rather than commensalism or parasitism, transform the site into a self-perpetuating social and learning hub that evolves around the church as the heart of the community, enhance its strong and solid presence, along with supporting programmes that creates a unique learning experience, improve individuals’ mental wellness and equip them with practical skills simultaneously.

Different programmes have been placed on site according to footprint, desire lines and church axis, which come together as a whole to enhance individuals’ resilience and hence make impact on the community, enabling mutual benefit for both parties.

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Exterior Perspective

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View Towards Entry

View Towards Plaza

Programming Illustration

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Alana Peddie

Patina A resilient future for Saint Canice by reconsidering ‘waste’.

We live in a society where abundance is now seen as normal. An obsession with the new and an attitude that anything that is broken or not quite right should be thrown away. Items are defined by a specified purpose and we have an instinct to turn our backs on the ‘blemish’.

There is a gathering realisation of the environmental benefits of long-term use over the throw away culture of ever shorter life cycles. At Saint Canice, an existing centre of community supporting outreach programs aimed to assist the less advantaged, the disparities between those that have so much and those with so little is immediately apparent and the need to more evenly distribute and care for resources clear. I envision St. Canice as a place of resilience and adaptability by adjusting attitudes to waste.

My project stemmed out of three key aspects with a focus on re-use and renewal; the building itself, people and food. The focus to create an adaptable form with longevity, using considered materials which functions as a community centre with assisted living where nature’s life processes are exposed. From the growth and sale of food which doesn’t have to comply to perfection to the natural aging process of materials and people.

Yet detail was very important to me for while I wanted the building to look to both the past and the future it belongs to the current user. Consideration has been given to how tactile and experiential qualities of spaces allow a sense of scale and belonging. To design a building is to create something of permanence. An architectural vision that will be subjected to change once it has been made reality. For time leaves indelible traces, it reflects the multiple touches of users as well as the marks of the passing seasons. Developing a ‘patina’ of use by allowing beauty in embracing the blemish.

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Roslyn Street Elevation

View of Courtyard (Raingarden)

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Ground Plan

Intergenerational Learning ‘Internal Courtyard’

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Assisted Living (Inhabited Hallway)

Detail Models (Concept, Courtyard, Joinery Screens, Planted Screens)

View of Kitchen (Ugly Food Co-op and Soup Kitchen)

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Teresa Yie Sheng Peng

Voice for the Voiceless What would be the best resolution for the voiceless (homeless, unemployed, refugee), the neighbourhood, and the society?

The significant contrast between the wealthy and the poor due to the upgrade of the Kings Cross area may cause refugees and the homeless to lose a sense of belonging and self-identity. A sense of belonging is a multidimensional concept that should be viewed as a reciprocal and on-going exchange between social behaviors and experiences. It is the designer’s role to promote the importance of a healthy self-identity and social well-being through the proposed design.

The proposed design aims to deliver a self-sustaining platform involving sustainability on both social and programmatic levels. Social sustainability combines design of the physical environment with a focus on how the people use a space relate to each other and function as a community. With community-based participation at its center, it results in the creation of engaging public spaces that contribute to people’s health, happiness, and wellbeing. Programmatically, this goal is to be achieved through activation of built forms and open spaces, at the same time, articulation of the existing church with the new architecture. The proposed design consists of accommodation, educational and skill training services, and social infrastructures contributing to the local neighbourhood.

Ultimately, it is desired that not only those who are in need of help can benefit from the proposed design; instead, it would also be a fruitful and worthwhile experience for staff and visitors.

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View of Social Hubs

View of Accommodation Terrace + Library

View of New Ground Floor

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North Elevation

East West Section

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View From Social Hub To Soup Kitchen

View Of 2Bdrm Living Room

View Of Studio Unit

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Jerome Saad

St Canice A Parish Without Borders City Sanctuary

The church has always had a strong association with social justice movements including the ancient notion of sanctuary, offering protection to the vulnerable and immunity to those fleeing persecution.

Rather than take the path of resistance, St Canice has always taken an active thoughtful approach encouraging a greater sense of community and cohesion among all the inhabitants, participants, and visitors.

Informed by the city’s participation in 100 Resilient Cities and Sydney’s 2030 vision, this project aims to explore the contemporary ailments affecting Sydney and its inhabitants and assess what resources St Canice can contribute to the resilience of the local area, and to ensure its continued relevance and engagement with its immediate and extended community .

By providing non market and transitional housing; maintaining their relationship with the Jesuit refugee service; expanding the well-established soup kitchen to operate as a bar/café; providing a new childcare service; and providing a new hall, St Canice can help encourage the activity of the surrounding laity in both spiritual and secular programs, and continue to provide sanctuary to those seeking to avoid hunger, unemployment, and dislocation on a local and international scale.

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View from Rosylyn St

Ground Floor

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Baptistery

West Elevation

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Lower Ground Floor

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Timothy Smith

StC How can we as designers of the built environment stand in solidarity with the disadvantaged and disenfranchised?

Tonight in Sydney over 400 people will sleep rough in makeshift shelters, park benches and on the streets. How can we as designers of the built environment stand in solidarity with these people and other alternative urban practices such as street art and skateboarding to give all within the community the tools to resist capitalist forces of control and create a social city, while staying true to Lefebvre’s idea of the “right to the city. Investigation into these marginalised practices and ways of life lead to the formation of 5 concepts of healthy urban living that urban dwellers could focus on to improve their lives and their city. ANIMAL, WASH, EAT, TRAUMA and SHELTER were translated into spaces and ideas that could disseminate throughout the city.

At the city scale the project utilises the 4 stages of place making in campsite architecture of SITING, CLEARING, MAKING and BREAKING. Siting champions path making as urban narratives and any path to and through the city is welcomed with equal precedence. Clearing sections of the site to create a fragmented site that welcomes anarchy and serendipity make their way through the site of buildings old and new. The new spaces which reflect the 5 concepts of healthy urban living and made through communal process which is never complete. By turning the church hall into a makerspace with CNC and other tools users can make/remake the spaces on site to suit their changing needs. Breaking returns the site to movement and allows the churches outreach to move throughout the city with temporal place specific installations created in the church hall transported by bicycle.

These concepts where translated into the tectonics and materiality of the new spaces on site. Constructed mainly of lightweight timber construction with tensile fabric roofs the new spaces sit somewhere between temporary and permanent structures. Simple detailing and finishes allows the users to make the spaces themselves with little outside help. Utilising the make facilities on site the spaces can be made/remade to suit changing uses. The spaces can also be fully dismantled and leave no trace on site. All the while the ideas of healthy urban living are present in these new spaces with food production and preparation ever present in EAT, water collection and use in WASH and so on for the other new spaces.

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Mapping

Wash Mobile

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Site Axo

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Eat Shelter

Conceptual Model

North Western Facade

View from Rosyln Street Corner

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Iraj Thapa

Resilient Individual for Resilient Neighbourhood How can a place improve wellbeing of people and community?

This project investigates engagement of St. Canice Parish Church in its neighbourhood in the changing face of King Cross and explores on reactivating St. Canice to increase its social interaction with its surrounding neighbourhood, and beyond, through new proposed activities and facilities within the existing site.

The heart of St Canice is about helping, loving and sharing, and serving the wider community.

This project sets up a variety of opportunities for the community with series of places and spaces, defining the level of social engagement and interaction for individual and to the whole community, to engage in social activities and helping not-so-privileged people.

Four distinct areas are located on the four corners of the site to establish four different programs. These areas are connected by an in-between open public space ‘Courtyard’ that caters for different types of communal activities such as market, exhibition and outdoor cinema depending on time and day of the week.

Accommodation includes communal ‘apartment’ houses for members of the Parish and emergency stay or short term stay (up to three months) for struggling members of the public. The soup kitchen, restaurant and street level café on the north east corner provide both commercial cooking and communal cooking classes. ‘Workshop house’ along Roslyn Garden Street is place for art and craft class and learning life skills. The existing lower level church hall is used for community classes and meetings.

On the western side of the parish the wellbeing centre comprises wellness studios, healthy eating café and a wellness library on the upper level.

Throughout the site one can sit down and start conversations or watch the activities taking place in the courtyard. On the surrounding footpaths new seating areas for the public are provided The design proposes to establish an open inclusive accessible communal space that above all is a place to share, help, support, engage and celebrate, and specially to provide dignity to those who are vulnerable in society.

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along Roslyn Gardens

from Roslyn Street

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Church Lower Level Plan

Wellness Studio

Cross Section through Apartment and Kithcen

Church Level Plan

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Courtyard with Apartment

Outdoor Dining Area

Site Plan

Long Section through Market area and Courtyard

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Chaopu Yang

Social Return of St.Canice How can the social importance of St.Canice be achieved by exploring and maximizing the potential on site?

The ultimate goal of architecture is to achieve the harmony in the future world, between a person and society.

Located near to Sydney’s red-light district in Kings Cross, St. Canice is a shelter to vulnerable people around the parish communities.

This scheme is trying to achieve social, cultural and economical resilience of the parish community by introducing the notion of ‘diversity’ in a way that fully explores the potential of the site. It is all about the way how people are going to use it and the activities that are going to happen.

On the basis of actual functions, a community center and community gallery is well crafted for encouraging shared activities and commemorating shared memories of the community, while the vertical garden and soup kitchen office preserves the original characters on site but in a more iconic and welcoming way, attracting new blood to become part of the parish community. The residential buildings are compact in order to produce less influence to the surrounding buildings.

A sunken plaza is designed to become the gathering space of the site, while the ground floor of the church is lifted up to to highlight the social importance of the church. Two spatial sequences are designed to the side of the church, producing a contrast between communication and meditation.

Other small considerations including brick ground pavement where the bricks come from the original residential buildings, a ramp step under the community center, a coffee corner, a special exhibition space and free beds provided for use by homeless people.

The intention is that the scheme will help St. Canice really achieve the goal of ‘social return’ in Kings Cross, wherein the Parish provides benefits to the life of all residents.

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View of Sunkun Plaza

View from Roslyn Street

View from Residential Plaza

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View inside Community Gallery

Higher Ground Level Plan

North Elevation

Lower Ground Level Plan

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Long Section

Plaza Section

Image Annotation

West Elevation

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Architecture and Housing INTERPRETING HOUSING INNOVATIONS FOR DWELLING Studio Leader

ALISON NOBBS

White Bay

“First we shape our cities and then our cities shape us.”

Jan Gehl

Housing our population comprises the largest single

continue to wittingly build this model of suburbia. The

purpose for building within of our city’s fabric. Public

current alternatives to this typology are the equally

space, such as streets, parks and places of work and

established models of terrace style housing or stacked

learning usually accounts for 30-40% of the urban

apartment dwellings.

footprint, leaving the remainder, in some instances up to 80% dedicated to housing. And yet, despite the

The studio will consider how housing can intrinsically

dominance of this building purpose, the typology

reflect the evolving nature and needs of society. Through

of housing remains largely unchanged by the evolution

a process of interpreting social components and

of contemporary society and culture. Increasingly

requirements a new model or typology of domestic place

restrictions are imposed on new models of housing by

will be proposed.

historical definitions and accepted ‘types’.

One of the biggest growth areas continues to be

The studio will consider that in order to increase

greenfield developments perpetuating the traditional

density there is an alternative to the accepted housing

suburban family house model. Suburbanisation as we

varieties. A fundamental questioning of the typology of

know it continues to essentially provide consumers

dwelling in an urban setting, one that both defends and

with an immutable type, this is low density housing.

acknowledges the legitimacy of the home and evolves it

Many architects and planners warn that it is unwise to

to a new model, innovations for dwelling.

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Studio Leaders

Alison Nobbs Students

James Hargrave

Yuzhuang Lin

Alyse Hyman

Laura Raiss

Paul Jewiss Yvonne Kha

Miguel Suarez Olmos

Darman Johnny Khatari

Diana Mingyuan Yang

Haiyun Lan

Siyue Zhang

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James Hargrave

Space Between What potential is there in the space between?

Sydney along with many other cities around the world is facing a common thread of challenges relating to a disconnect between housing, social life, and work. These three programs have become compartmentalised in our growing cities and the distance between them has become exhausting. In investigating this phenomenon in Australian (Sydney most specifically) I have been trying to understand what aspects of our man made landscape have contributed to this disconnect.

I am interested in exploring human instinct and how it has shaped the housing we live in today. How have we defined boundaries and used man made limits on a micro scale? How have these man made boundaries and limits ultimately altered our social and environmental potential on the macro scale? Can these boundaries and limits be broken down, extrapolated, and reinterpreted to meet the modern day requirements of our cities. In re-imagining the boundary and limit what potential does it have in reconnecting our compartmentalised city?

Housing can promote and sustain healthy social environments. What I have come to understand is that a dwelling’s potential far exceeds the space within. Blurring the preconceived notions of public and private has allowed me to explore and experiment with a different space - the space between. This space does much more that merely define ownership, it has the potential to facilitate activity, encourage habitation, and bridge that gap between social isolation.

In exploring the potential of the space between on the micro scale, the same philosophical approach to the housing has been overlaid at the master planning scale. The disconnect between White bay, the wharf, and Balmain fundamentally comes down to the restrictions imposed by physical boundaries. Extending the existing topography to where it once was, feathering the water’s edge with terracing and pools, moving car traffic underground, and integrating housing and circulation into the landscape all blur the boundaries that were once imposed.

If this philosophy of addressing the space between was approached from a city scale - life of the future may be very different.

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Exploded Axo

View 1

View 2

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Plan

Site Model

Section Model

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Section

Section Model

View 3

View 4

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Paul Jewiss

Divercity Is there a more diverse housing typology?

Density and Diversity are arguably two of the most critical components in determining our housing stock. As we grapple with urban sprawl and a housing shortage how can we re-interpret housing to offer a more diverse solution to our housing needs.

‘Divercity’ challenges the traditional notion of housing and offers a micro housing solution on a macro scale.

‘Divercity’ aims to create dwellings that are both inward and outward focused, to have housing that can adapt to the dynamic households of today and tomorrow. A housing solution that talks to the whole population and not just a percentage of it.

Through the exploration of user engagement of the site and architecture we can see that it is possible to create typologies that provide perceived personal security whilst also creating opportunities for social contentedness through the overlap of public and private space and through the program of the transition space that is created.

The sustainability of our housing, cities and world depend ultimately on the input and output of our lives and the housing solution we choose to pursue.

The housing typologies created through ‘Divercity’ offer a series of spaces arranged around a central ‘smart wall’.

These walls are designed to interact with the spaces to provide program and purpose to the space through user engagement. The use of levels and hierarchy of spaces formally distinguishes public and private realms whilst using transition spaces to mediate the internal external relationship.

At a larger scale the success of ‘Divercity’ is embedded in the public program intertwined throughout the precinct.

The proximity of White Bay to the city and greater Sydney in general reinforces the importance of a diverse city in beginning to grapple with the housing and health issues we are facing as a country. Through integrated design we can see how the environment we create is essential in realising a more sustainable built environment.

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Proposed Site Masterplan

View to Barangaroo

View to Glebe Island

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Render of Streetscape

Proposed Site Section 1

Proposed Site Section 2

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Site Model

Housing Model

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Darman Johnny Khatari

Adaptable Housing Why can’t we shop for a house the same way we shopped for dinner?

Worldwide, where ever it may be, we as people every day as we age, populate and evolve are required to make various living changes to suit each person or family. Our lives are rapidly changing and developing and so does our housing requirements develop too. Most people whom anticipate spending years if not decades in a new built home are likely to have accommodate changing needs over their lifetime. An increase in children, family expansion, home offices, hobbies and changing taste are only a few examples of causes for readjustments. Whatever the intention is- adapting a home to new life phases can be time consuming, difficult, and quite expensive. So what is the problem? Why can’t we shop for a house the same way we shopped for dinner?

Urban areas around the world like Australia, people are experiencing many problems related with the need for the readjustments. Many architectural precedents have attempted to resolve one or more issues but have neglected others.

The Underlining problem is that most of the architecture remains to stand as an expression of permanence, related with poor attention to building design and high consumption of energy and materials through refurbishment or demolition.

Architecture designed for today not for tomorrow, a model that is repeatedly rolled out continuously creating this sprawl of suburban problems which ultimately making each building inflexible, unadaptable and unaffordable.

The answer lies in adaptability in architecture. The project aims with the concept of adaptability to withstand flexibility, time and cost efficiency. Adaptable housing addresses the ongoing lifestyle changes without the need for demolishing or substantially modification to the existing structure and services. It is important that adaptable housing is realized as a system with conventional means to provide environmental, social and economic sustainable solutions. The concept of adaptability is achieved through the introduction of an external rigid truss structure allowing for both external and internal flexibility, and its flexibility parameters are then achieved through a modular system, such like a kit out of parts with multifunctional configurations allowing the user to add or evolve any space to their specific need.

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Shared Courtyard

Axonometric Master plan

View from upper cliff edge to white bay

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New Proposed cliff edge

Shared Courtyard

Roof top City View

Ground Floor water edge City view

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Example of Single Level Floor Plan

Example of Cluster Section

Cluster Example

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Haiyun Lan (Yuki)

The Common Ground How can we provide not only shareable space but also sharable lifestyle in social housing?

As a result of urban sprawl is the massive demand on housing among urban areas. Housing density within urban area has been drastically increased during the last decades. High density housing within urban area often means vertically stacked apartments, in which residents can barely meet and socialise with their neighbours. Therefore, within urban area, living quality and environment is significantly lower than expected.

Social housing, commonly refers to accommodations that provide both shared facility and private retreat spaces to residents, is a popular choice of living arrangement in the era, as it subsides the phenomena of social isolation. However, at the same time, it also further decreases the quality of living environment, as usually all facilities are shared by heaps of residents. Retreat spaces for residents might only be a tiny bedroom with minimal sunlight and fresh air.

Therefore, a new typology of suburban housing is needed. The scheme aims to provide a new kind of social housing. As the site is based in White Bay within bays precinct, adjacent to Sydney City, public realm development of the place can be expected. Also, principles of social housing are to share and to live with the public, therefore in the design these principles are adopted.

The design thus aims to provide a proper integration of public and private realm, with sufficient and pleasant public spaces to share, and with nice and cosy retreat spaces to be. In masterplan, the site is designed as pedestrian prioritised area, giving back the waterfront to public domain. Vertically, the built rooftops mimic the original topography status, provides connection between Balmain and the site. In housing arrangement, within clusters all semi private programs are located on ground level to create connection between cluster courtyard and households. Private zones are mainly located upstairs. All households have formal relationship with the community courtyards to share lifestyles.

The “common ground” refers to the social and sharing aspect within the community, as well as the “ground” that created by the built structure to provide connectivity between Balmain area and waterfront of the site.

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Rooftop View from Balmain Cliff Top

Semi Public Forecourt Arrival

Site Section Reveals Connection from Balmain to Waterfront Via the Terraced Rooftops

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Life in Community Courtyard

Intergeneration Family Cluster Plan

Intergeneration Family Frontyard

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Couples with Children Cluster Plan

Couples with Children Cluster

Section of Couples with Children Cluster

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Yuzhuang Lin (Katherine)

Vibrant Community How can we encourage residents communicate face to face?

In this last two decades, since high density dwellings have dramatically increased, people’s living habits have been affected by technological development. People prefer to use mobile device to contact others rather than talk face to face. People prefer to stay at home for a long time and become reluctant to engage with the outside. The modern concept of community gradually becomes less effective. In my project, I will replay the significant role of community to encourage residents to re-gather together and provide more opportunities for them to communicate face to face.

There are different hierarchies of public space for residents. In the masterplan, urban public parks are arranged between the resident area, like a sandwich. The waterfront promenade provides the opportunity to connect with the city. The new ferry wharf will carry more people from the city to the site and White Bay Power Station.

In the typical suburban block, the car and pedestrian share the road and individual backyards are closed. In my project, I have opened the original closed courtyard and separated the route of the car and pedestrian. The path of the pedestrian, named ‘public street’ is organized in the middle of the block. Therefore, the car runs on the both side of block and the pedestrians are encouraged to walk in the middle. In order to avoid negative space, an alleyway, between two typical side-by-side house, I have designed the building with two types of semi-enclosed shared courtyards. This strategy helps residents to take responsibility and control easily. The last hierarchy is the private courtyard. Each house owns its own private courtyard. In addition, the shared garage also provides opportunities for residents to meet and chat. Moreover, retail stores and a cafe are arranged on both sides of the block to connect the other functions of the site.

It is time to abandon the typical block arrangement. A healthy and vibrant community should encourage human interaction.

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Masterplan

Public Street

Shared Courtyard

Shared Courtyard

Private Courtyard

Interior Space

Study

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Cluster Landscape

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Ground Floor Plan

Elevation

Section

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Gathering in the Balcony

Miguel Suarez Olmos

Urban Engawa How can housing make Sydney a city for people and not for cars?

After the world war period, Australian cities have suffered an uncontrolled urban sprawl caused by the so called “Australian Dream”. As population grew, so did car ownership. More and more people were living in isolation, far away from their jobs and city centres. In order to cope with the fast pace growth of car ownership, cities and suburbs were designed thinking of cars, making wide roads and narrow sidewalks, leaving a bare minimum of space for people to use. Streets were no longer liveable.

This project seeks to use Japanese philosophy and architecture as a mean to start solving this issue. For Japanese, unlike most western cultures, streets were not merely transportation routes. They were much more intimately involved spaces that combine the fabric of daily life and the space for communication. In fact, they had no single assigned spatial function. At certain times they were used as a space for private life and at other times as a space for public life.

But what is important is not what happens on the streets but what happens in the space that connect the street and the dwelling itself. In Japanese housing, an “engawa” is a space where the line between inside and outside is blurred. A space that serves those aspects of daily life where family members come and go freely, gather with guests, relax, play or simply contemplate and connect with nature. This project proposes to begin to integrate the isolated dwellings into the broader community through a mixed use residential cluster that can be shared and enjoyed by everyone. This will in turn give way to the creation of new spaces that will be designed at a human scale and work in harmony with the “Urban Engawa”.

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Urban Engawa

View from Car Park

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Ground Level

View to Courtyard

View from Child Care

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Elevation

Section

Architecture Model 1

Architecture Model 2

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Siyue Zhang (Phoebe)

Encounter A Broadway Life How can we encourage more encounters inside a new typology of suburban housing community?

Broadway: a large open or main road / the theater district Sydney, as an ethnically and culturally diverse city, is attracting more and more migrants from all over the world as a desirable place to settle. However with sprawling urban areas, and a massive demand on affordable housing, housing density is required to increase dramatically. Living in high-rise stacked apartments, couples with highspeed city life and technology, has been shown to contribute to a sharp decrease in social interaction among residents. The result being a reduced quality of life and social isolation becoming one of the biggest threats to forming a harmonious city life in the era.

My project targets a solution that seeks a middle ground between high density apartment living and the traditional detached suburban home. Social housing which blends different types of families living in proximity together to encourage social engagement among residents. Thus, a new typology of suburban housing community is needed to match a new lifestyle.

The proposal of creating a Broadway life across the community introduces opportunities for neighbors and strangers to talk to each other. For instance, within communal gardening farms, residents share the responsibility of taking care of the vegetation as well as gardening facility and then to sell or exchange products at a flea market. Each dwelling has its own ‘breathing garden’, a buffer zone to keep in touch with nature and open to the sky. Besides, continuous enclosure merges the dynamic community life with tranquil personal life.

“Encounter a Broadway Life” refers to the hustle social activities within the community and the ‘broadway’ also representing another meaning – all the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

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Masterplan of Selected Area

Perspective from Balmain District

Perspective of Cluster

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Activity Laneway of Community

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1.Lonely Elderly House 2.Multiple Children Family House 3.Bike Parking 4.Sunken Chatting Space 5.BBQ Area 6.Narrow Activity Laneway 7. Children Playground

Cluster Ground Floor Plan

Communal Gathering Space in Oval-Shaped Cluster

Shared Bench outside Dwellings

Courtyard between Dwellings

Activity Bench of Narrow Laneway Between Clusters

Section of Cluster

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Alyse Hyman

Urban Biophilia How can human beings instinctive bond with nature, known as biophilia, be utilised in a simulated form to radically alter the way we exist within our homes and as such present a new typology of architectural sanctuary?

Urban biophilia…seeks to explore strategies to innovate and as such reinvigorate a long forgotten prime waterfront site on the outskirts of Sydney’s CBD, focusing on a simulated biophilic approach. My project seeks to question human being’s innate connection with nature that has been lost within the contemporary world, aiming to transform the way we live and inhabit spaces through the introduction of simulated biophilic principles. As such, I decided to delve further into the realm of simulated biophilia, discovering the measurable benefits that simulated biophilic elements have upon human beings as well as the appreciation for nature that biophilic features foster. Through introducing non-rhythmic sensory stimuli, choice of materiality, use of prospect and orientation and biomorphic forms and patterns I aimed to reintroduce the sense of nature and place that human beings yearn for, which has been greatly lost within the modern landscape and our architecture.

My innovation in housing strives to redefine the ‘suburban dwelling’, providing an alternate model of housing and density. ‘Urban Biophilia’ aims to craft a responsive and harmonious environment for both the public and its private residents, blurring the notion of privacy through placing the ‘tree houses’ on the shared waterfront edge. My housing model seeks to integrate both the public and private realms, incorporating residential, hospitality, hotel and workplace, all residing within a natural landscape to ensure an increased efficiency of land use. The housing and masterplan interact at all levels, aiming to create an active social landscape in which people and nature interact to create a harmonious community.

The urban tree houses form a new typology of an architectural sanctuary. The radiating forms which fan out from a central green atrium are informed by principles of simulated biophilia and growth. Principles of simulated biophilia also informed the sense of raw materiality that dictates the interior and exterior spaces of the tree houses as well as the circulation between houses. Through the use of elevated platforms and mesh screening, privacy and intrigue is achieved, with dappled views and openings acting as a social corridor.

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Perspective looking down at the site

Perspective Looking at A Cluster of Tree Houses

The Masterplan

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Detail Section of A Tree House

Perspective Looking Up at The Site

Perspective Looking at Retreat Zone Under A Tree House

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Masterplan Model

Tree Houses in Context Model

Tree Houses in Detail Model

Perspective Looking at A Forest of Tree Houses

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Diana Mingyuan Yang

Live/work “Three defining features of sprawl as low density, low land use mix and low connectivity. If automobiles made low density possible, then zoning laws enshrined the separation of different land uses that typifies many metropolitan areas.” Howard Frumkin With the development of automobile suburbs from the 1920s onwards, our overall pattern of settlement became more and more diverse changing our commuting patterns and methods of employment. With the spreading distribution of employment and low proximity of communities, new forms of low density residential architecture became prevalent. Resulting in cheaper houses on larger lots, creating a less dense distribution of land use.

This in turn led to ‘residential deserts’ which were devoid of active busy neighbourhoods, created and re-enforced by generations of zoned planning policies. Frumkin defines zoning as “the practice of allocating different areas of cities for different uses, much as rooms in a house serve different functions.” Jane Jacobs argues that zoning (i.e. into residential, industrial and commercial areas) destroys the possibilities of strong communities and any form of innovative economics.

The key therefore is to solve this issue of low land use mix, which in turn will lead to a higher density of land use, and alleviate current predicaments of low connectivity. Thus the design scheme questions the nature of how we work and how we live, leaving our houses empty all day and our workplaces empty all night. Can we afford this duplicate wastage of precious space? How can we bring life’s disparate functions together?

The Live/Work housing proposes an amalgamation of commercial and residential spaces, creating a new innovative housing typology that eliminates the need for extensive commutes and alleviates the low density disconnected nature of modern suburban housing. It addresses three different forms of work: private, semi-public, public; and how they can function collaboratively, ultimately bringing life’s disparate functions back together. The masterplan seeks to create 24 hour inhabited, socially engaged and active neighbourhoods to sustain and benefit these Live/ Work communities. As a result, a new urban model of living is created resolving issues of low density, low land use mix and low connectivity for the better of the individual and community.

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Rendered Masterplan

Figure Ground Masterplan

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Cluster Floor Plan

Private & Semi-public Housing Section

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Yvonne Kha

Flexible and Adaptable Housing Is housing predetermined or can it respond to the changing lifestyles and lifecycles of its occupants?

There is a mismatch between the available housing options and people’s preferences. We aren’t building what we want; council regulations, planning and zoning arrangements add to this problem. With the increasing property prices in the city’s centre, more and more people are forced to outer suburbs and home ownership is becoming more and more out of reach.

The proposed housing project aims to respond to community fluctuations and the notions of ownership and community through a flexible and adaptable housing strategy. The masterplan comprises of community spaces across the site with a focus of returning the waterfront to residents. The raised residential clusters provide privacy for the residents while allowing the public to filter past the main walkway and commercial space towards the waterfront. A modular design allows for a variation of typologies to cater for the increased diversity in the area.

“Opportunities for people to make their personal markings and identifications, in such a way that it can be appropriated and annexed by all as a place that truly ‘belongs’ to them.”

To optimize spaces within the dwellings, a grid system is implemented with fixed and flexible components identified. The flexible components allows for the dwelling to change as spaces required by its occupants change.

This proposed housing strategy addresses the “Missing middle” housing through reinterpreting how dwellings can respond to community fluctuations.

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Typical Cluster Plan

Construction Section

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Fixed Component

Flexible Component

External View of Housing

Internal View of Housing

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Typical Elevation of Dwellings

Housing Model

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Laura Raiss

Balmain Headlands

In various cities around the world, due to many contingencies such as population increase, housing prices and busy lifestyles, green open spaces and community spaces are decreasing and becoming less important. Can landscape influence a community and the residents? How can housing use community spaces to benefit its users both physically and mentally?

In order for cities to be safe, enjoyable and vivacious we need to think of them as interactive and social spaces.

Public spaces are often more than just “empty places”, they are the meeting places, the children’s playground, community garden, the mother’s getaway. This is where relationships are formed, and give meaning to a community. It is the open spaces, the freedom of movement at a pedestrian level, the comfort of being with nature that shape our cities. By putting the pedestrian’s needs above motor vehicles, the site is completely accessible and open offers a journey as one moves through the dwellings.

This project investigates the role landscape and corridors play in architecture and urban design. These are evident in the public spaces such as the public timber seating area, and through the permeable winding pathway’s where one can not see straight through the site. The accentuation of natural surroundings, and creating social hubs was at the forefront of the design process. One will stumble upon a reading nook, a community garden, accidently running into their neighbors, creating conversation and beginning to form relationships. The site will draw in visitors with a community centre and farmers market to create a stronger community and create a link between the site with Balmain and neighboring suburbs. There is a social responsibility and by reclaiming these urban spaces for people is part of how we can humanize our cities and create stronger communities.

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View from Front of Housing

View from Rear of Housing

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View from public timber park

View of Farmers Market

View from Housing Front Meeting Area

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View from Community Centre

View from inside Type C Studio

View inside Type B Living Room

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Special Thanks SPONSORS of UTOPIA REDUX GRADUAND EXHIBITION 2016 On behalf of the graduating class of 2016 in the Master of Architecture program, the students would like to extend their personal gratitude to the many individuals who assisted and supported the successful gratitude to the many individuals who assisted and supported the successful running of the masters studio and exhibition. The exhibition would not have been possible were it not for the generous sponsorship by private individuals and the following organisations:

PLATINUM SPONSORS

GOLD SPONSORS

SILVER SPONSORS

BRONZE SPONSORS Design Inc. dwp | suters Fox Johnston Hill Thalls MAKE Architects MHN Design Union

Mirvac Design PTW Architects Smart Design Studio TKD Architects Tonkin Zulalkha Greer Architects

EXHIBITION COORDINATORS

GRAPHICS Ying Tung Dodo Lau Jun Yi Loh Tongzhuo Xiao MARKETING Frank Chin Ashwin Kuruvilla SPONSORSHIP Chris Day Yan Xie VENUE DESIGN Vivienne Hinschen Jacqueline Lindeman Alyce Thompson Siyue Zhang

With special thanks to: Dr. Russell Rodrigo & Hugo Chan.

Copyright © 2016 by UTOPIA REDUX Exhibition Committee and all featured students.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in Australia.