Architecture, Building and Planning - Research Publications
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ItemTransforming the design studio through an engagement with Melbourne’s Hydropshere(ACSA/EAAE, 2021)How does a deliberate engagement with a hydrosphere injured by climate change impact the development of new curricula for the design studio? Given the anticipation of major destabilizations to our hydrological cycles, it is vital to question whether the conventions of design practice as well as teaching still hold water? As the development of established disciplinary and practice standards in architecture have been informed by the presumption of a stabilized Holocene, when formulating new design courses, could the design fields acclimatize to a new set of contexts and practices? This paper will elaborate on this by reflecting on an ongoing series of design studios that we have initiated and directed within architecture as well as urban design programs in Melbourne, Australia that focus on cultivating design practices that respond to climate challenges associated with the hydrosphere. These threats are defined by oscillations between two extremes; its acute overabundance and an austere scarcity. Climate change is anticipated to bring an increased frequency and severity of flood events to the city’s neighborhoods while extended droughts will threaten the capacity for water as a resource to sustain Melbourne’s existing ecologies and projected populations. The possibility of wild swings between tempestuous weather and protracted droughts challenges the idea of place. Notions of the enduring sense of place, which has figured heavily in design education and discourse, are questionable when designers face an environment defined by dramatic instability. In lieu of site and place, these design studios are contextualized within wider dynamic urban and ecological systems. The studio context or site benefits from its reconceptualization as an ecosystem wrought from mutable associations of energy, population and material flows. Emphases placed on scale specificity is also probed in the studio, whereby an immersion within the hydrosphere obliges an engagement with multitudes of local and interregional scales, spanning between tangible locations in the city to global structures. The Melbourne studios adopt hydrological cycles across this wide spectrum of scales and its embeddedness within food, waste and energy systems as the specific contexts of their speculative interventions. As the conceptualization of site shifts, the studio brief is also transformed. Rather than standard programmatic briefs, design strategies emerge from a dedicated investigation of the context systems and metabolisms. Consideration of how design may augment the hydrosphere precedes any concrete definition of the nature of the proposal itself. Our studio curriculum is defined by conjectural sensibilities and lyrical dialogues with instability. This obliges us to cast a critical eye over the traditional outcomes of the design studio and to elaborate on design proposals that also overturn disciplinary stability by bridging to other fields. Design migrates from the exclusive material definition of proposals to the search for adaptable and mutable interventions capable of assuming multiple conditions, behaviors and associations. This submission aims to elucidate on the transformation of the design studio curriculum through these Melbourne-based studios provoked by the urgency for design action within the hydrosphere.
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ItemProject: Q-house(The National Library of Australia, 2017)The house is a conscious exercise in developing an alternative domestic environment to the surrounding villas of the new suburban neighbourhood. the solutions for the development so far have typically been compact villas located on abruptly levelled gardens, irrespective of the complex topographical condition of their sites. Our ambition for producing an alternative domestic atmosphere is developed by constructing a more explicit relationship between the house and garden with the existing conditions of the steep site.
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ItemProject: Surface Deep(University of Melbourne, Melbourne School of Design (Publisher) / School of Architecture, Nanjing University & University of Melbourne (Venue), 2017)Located in Quebec, Canada, hearkening to the historical presence of low profile walls in gardens, this modern expression pushes a typically mundane element into an interactive public addition. This project provides a temporary entry sequence for visitors to the grounds. The undulating form frames a procession for visitors and becomes a point for reflection before continuing onward.
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ItemProject: Lifestyled. Health and Places(The Austalian Library of Australia; University of Melbourne; Nanjing University, 2017)The research was aimed at developing design models and strategies for improving residential neighbourhoods by addressing current public health concerns and has a specific focus on China's superblock residential developments. Through the use of associative modelling, evaluation and design, the project integrated a range of important health considerations into neighbourhood block models that offered a wide sample of possible neighbourhood designs that could be analysed (offering findings on what design operations could influence health indicators) while also offering immediate design templates and knowledge for designers.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableExtruded Tessellation: Ceramic Tectonics(Cevisama, 2016-02-01)The tessellated wall explores the design space of a novel ceramic customization strategy developed by MaP+S researchers and students. The technique involves the automated cutting of clay extrusions that are industrially produced on a state of the art extrusion line. The ceramic elements have been extruded from a single die, thus reducing tooling costs. Wall A consists of 350 elements and 10 different types. Colors indicate identical cutoff angles. Within each color group several different element lengths exist. Wall B contains 28 different elements. The tessellated wall investigates the design space of this approach with a module design that features interlocking, ornamental patterns which allow for novel structural use of ceramic blocks in planar, folding and curved wall assemblies. The modules are produced with a complex extrusion die. Robotic manipulators equipped with wire-cutters can be integrated into the production system to trim off the end surfaces at custom angles and lengths as the wet clay is extruded. Alternatively, CNC disk cutters can perform automated cutting operations after the large ceramic extrusions have been fired. Both approaches allow for low-cost customization of the ceramic modules to achieve a unique three-dimensional expression, control views and light, as well as address different structural needs in the wall. The modules can be bonded with cement for permanent installations, or be dry stacked and clipped together for easy assembly and disassembly, such as in the case of CEVISAMA 2016. The two walls displayed at the 2016 Cevisama consist of approximate 700 elements with lengths ranging from 15 to 60 cm. Variations in length and cutoff angle lead to 38 unique elements for the installation. These pieces are used to create a unique surface texture on every wall surface, but maintain the overall consistency of a strongly ornamental expression of the tectonic system.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableCeramic Shell(Cevisama, 2014)DRG completed a suspended ceramic installation at the 2014 Cevisama in Valencia, Spain as the centerpiece of this year’s international show. Sponsored by the Valencia Trade Fair Association and by ASCER, the ceramic shell represents the mock-up of a structural ceramic /concrete shell system that is currently under development in collaboration with the Chair for Structural Design at the TU Graz, Austria. The large ceramic stoneware elements are designed to enclose channels that form a perpendicular network of connecting ultra-high strength fiber concrete ribs. Ribs and tiles form a composite structural surface.
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ItemHealth Research through Design. A Reflection on the Capacities of Design Research in Investigating Health and the Design of the Built Environment(Quodlibet, 2020)Research into the relationships between health and the design of the built environment have been pursued more actively in the public health and planning fields in recent times. As a consequence, much of the findings and outcomes from this field of inquiry have generally been more applicable to the policy and planning arena with little direct relationship to the practice of architectural, landscape and urban design. This paper outlines, evaluates and offers conclusions arising from the outcomes of two sets of design research projects led and overseen by this paper’s authors: Leire Asensio Villoria and David Mah. Both research projects focus on the framing of design practice through a public health lens, whereby design processes and models were generated with health-related concerns operating as the major parameters and determinants of design strategies and practice. The efficacy of using health-related information and principles to inform urban design practice is evaluated through these specific examples of deliberate health and places design research. Through these specific research projects, this paper also aims to evaluate the possibilities or capacities offered by design research to contribute towards the wider body of knowledge on health and the design of places.