Architecture, Building and Planning - Research Publications
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ItemModelling and Design of Habitat Features: Will Manufactured Poles Replace Living Trees as Perch Sites for Birds?(MDPI AG, 2023)The need to support life in degraded landscapes is a pressing challenge of our time. Models from ecology, computing, architecture, and engineering can support the design and construction of habitat features in contexts where human intervention is necessary and urgent. For example, anthropogenic change is causing many arboreal habitats to disappear due to diminishing populations of large old trees. Current management approaches can provide artificial replacements in the shape of poles for perching and boxes for nesting. However, their large-scale long-term impacts are rarely assessed and often unclear. Along with benefits, these structures can result in ecological traps, waste, and pollution. Although computer-aided design and fabrication can provide more sophisticated solutions, limited understanding of tree structures and their use by arboreal wildlife constrain the formulation of clear goals for engineering. In response, this research examines long-term implications at a restoration site that already features a variety of living and manufactured habitat structures. To do so, we build a computational simulation that uses high-fidelity lidar scans of trees in combination with field observations of bird interactions with branches. This simulation models landscape-scale dynamics of habitat supply over hundreds of years. It can account for many types of structures, including trees, snags, and utility poles, irrespective of the processes that led to their availability. We use this understanding of integrated supply to generate quantitative comparisons of design strategies that can inform design decisions in application to arboreal habitats and other modified ecosystems.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableArtificial Intelligence for Multispecies Cohabitation: Through the Eyes of a Bird(The Miyawaki Mini Forests and Smart Green Network Symposium, keynote presentation, 2022)The objective of this project is to consider smart cities in the context of evolving ecosystems and their multispecies communities. To do this, we 1) indicate that current discourse on the ethics of AI has significant shortcomings; 2) link human and nonhuman contributions to cohabitation by emphasising multiple sources of smartness; 3) introduce the notion of ecocentric and interspecies design; 4) discuss forms of more-than-human participation; and 5) conclude by outlining a practical project where design is by trees for birds and with humans who deliberately step back to play supporting roles.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableThe Last of Their Kind(The Special Interest Group in Computer Graphis (SIGGRAPH), Digital Arts Community (DAC) exhibition The Earth, Our Home: Art, Technology and Critical Action, online, opened January 28, 2022, 2022)The Last of Their Kind is an outcome of a research program that seeks to open possibilities for participatory designing that involves nonhuman lifeforms. This exhibit gives detail to intertwined and mesmerizingly rich stories of interspecies communities. To provide a brighter contrast with familiar human-centred narratives we focus on plant lives. Humans often study plants as resources. Instead, we seek to tell stories about the self-directed lives of plants and relevant ethical questions. The Last of Their Kind focuses on individuals, species and communities facing extinction. Some call these beings ‘endlings’. How should humans study and preserve stories of beings that go away, often forever? Nobody has a complete answer, but we can try to bear witness, record as a lesson, sometimes help. We focus on three different characters. One story follows a group of elders. Another looks at the last representatives of a species. And the last considers a formerly dominant but disappearing community. Engaging with these beings, we use lasers, magnetic fields, and particle accelerators to generate detailed data representations of plant worlds. Applying analytical tools and artificial intelligence to this data, we seek to capture the richness and nuance of behaviours, capabilities and preferences that characterise nonhuman lives. Interspecies stories are hard to narrate. Their characters have evolutionary backgrounds, life histories, capabilities and scales that are not intuitive to humans. Our imaging technologies span from kilometres to microns and expose histories and futures from new perspectives: high above a rainforest, deep within a tree trunk, or only visible in the infrared. These stories attempt to create a narrative world that can support multiple perspectives, including nonhuman. We believe such spaces are a foundation for fairer and more hopeful interspecies futures. Biographies The authorship of this exhibit belongs to Deep Design Lab, a creative collective. The project team includes: Stanislav Roudavski, at the University of Melbourne, researches designs for animals, plants, rivers, and rocks as well as humans. His experiments contribute to knowledge by using scientific evidence and advanced technologies in concert with cultural, political, and historical analyses. Alexander Holland, at the University of Melbourne, investigates the digital and physical characteristics and design opportunities of past and future environments. His experiments expand the reach of participatory design to include nonhuman as well as human inhabitants. Julian Rutten, at Swinburne University of Technology, studies the intersections of culture, nature, and technology. His research focuses on remote sensing and three-dimensional imaging techniques that aim to support more-than-human habitats. Together, the team has extensive design, art and architecture experience with many international exhibitions and publications to their credit. Acknowledgements Biologists: Rebecca Miller, Royal Botanic Gardens Darren Le Roux, Australian Capital Territory Parks and Conservation Service Phil Gibbons, Australian National University Yoav Daniel Bar-Ness, Tasmanian Geographic Imaging specialists: Jay Black, the University of Melbourne Anton Maksimenko, the Australian Synchrotron Image Credits The image of beetle on spathe is from Sayers, T., Steinbauer, M., Farnier, K., & Miller, R. (2020). Dung Mimicry in Typhonium (Araceae): Explaining Floral Trait and Pollinator Divergence in a Widespread Species Complex and a Rare Sister Species. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 193, 375–401. https://doi.org/10/gjkgwx All other images are by the authors.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableEcological Games: Mould Racing(TRANSnational STS: Society for Social Studies of Science Annual Conference and Exhibition, 2018)This work contributes to architectural, urban and landscape design by constructing an analytical narrative of site exploration through a locative mobile game. This contribution is important because data- or precedent-driven analysis of complex sites is insufficient for the purposes of ecological design. Seeking to alleviate this situation, the project asks whether complex sites can be better understood through embodied and situated interactions with computational simulations. We hypothesize that such simulations can be useful for design because they can deepen designers’ understandings of the environment, encourage creative participation, and expand the repertoire of design methods.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableMould Racing(Mould Racing: Workshop 1, 2016)Can a complex site, such as an urban park, be better understood through a game? Might this playful preparation be useful for design? In response to such questions, this project structured design-oriented site research as a development, implementation and deployment of a locative mobile game in which designers learn by racing colonies of virtual organisms. The analysis of this experiment demonstrates that this approach can support creativity and provide benefits compatible with goals of ecological design.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableParticipatory Design in Pocket Pedal(TRANSnational STS: Society for Social Studies of Science Annual Conference and Exhibition, 2018)
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ItemNo Preview AvailablePocket Pedal(Participatory Design for Urban Cycling along St Kilda Road, design workshop, Open Stakeholder Workshop, 2016)A video giving an impression of a mobile phone game developed in support of participatory design, here in application to urban cycling
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ItemMobile Gaming for Agonistic Design(The Architectural Science Association and The University of Adelaide, 2016)This paper demonstrates how mobile games can contribute to participatory design and its aim of achieving positive change through the involvement of stakeholders. This overarching goal is considered via a particular case-study that utilizes a purpose-built smartphone game. The case-study applies this game to the design challenges of urban cycling. Utilisation of the game in a stakeholder workshop suggests that mobile play can aid understanding and help to establish communication amongst diverse participants. For further information and media, see https://osf.io/vy5dq/
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ItemPocketPedal: Beyond Disciplines with Mobile Games(AADR, 2016)
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ItemDesign Tools and Complexity: Mobile Games and Collective Imagination(eCAADe; University of Oulu, 2016-09-24)This paper is based on a hypothesis that games can be used to support design decisions in a variety of complex situations. To explore this proposition, the research described below focuses on two aspects. Firstly, it experiments with the potential of games to be socially provocative. And secondly, it applies the induced provocations in support of collective imagination. This discussion is supported by a practical case study: a working prototype of a smartphone game that simulates urban cycling. The paper discusses utilisation of this game by diverse stakeholders in a workshop that sought to advance decision-making in a particularly vexatious stalemate.