Architecture, Building and Planning - Research Publications
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 13
-
ItemRespect for Old Age and Dignity in Death: The Case of Urban Trees(SAHANZ, 2021-07-01)How can humanist principles of respect, dignity, and care inform and improve design for non-human lifeforms? This paper uses ageing and dying urban trees to understand how architectural, urban, and landscape design respond to nonhuman concerns. It draws on research in plant sciences, environmental history, ethics, environmental management, and urban design to ask: how can more-than-human ethics improve multispecies cohabitation in urban forests? The paper hypothesises that concepts of dignity and respect can underline the capabilities of nonhuman lifeforms and lead to improved designs for multispecies cohabitation. To investigate the implications of this ethical framework, we 1) indicate injustices of current management in relation to natural and cultural histories of trees; 2) outline a conceptual framework that includes large old trees as stakeholders in urban communities; and 3) use this framework in a thought experiment with urban trees in Melbourne, outlining comparative design outcomes. Our findings show that the expansion of dignity to include nonhuman life is possible and plausible. Such an extension can justify and encourage design innovation for multiple species and sites. The resulting design practices will lead to improvements by supporting communities of trees at all stages of their life-cycles, including old age, death, and rebirth. This approach requires substantial shifts in accepted thinking and practices including history, ethics, aesthetics, regulation, and education. Design can play a significant role in the necessary transitions by demonstrating tangible and positive outcomes. In this context, history emerges as an essential tool that can extend societal imagination by situating possible future places in the context of ancient and ongoing geological, evolutionary, ecological, and cultural processes.
-
ItemSentience and Place: Towards More-than-Human Cultures(Printemps Numérique/ISEA, 2020)Expectations for the future can differ greatly. Some await a technical utopia that will support harmonious and easy lives. Others predict a global ecosystem collapse that will threaten the future of humans as species. Both camps make appeals to sentience in support of their stories. Addressing this discordance, this paper combines narratives in ecology and technology to ask what roles sentience might play in future places. In response, it hypothesizes that an understanding of sentience as an inclusive, relational and distributed phenomenon can promote more-than-human cultures and contribute to the wellbeing of heterogenous stakeholders on the Earth and beyond. To test this hypothesis, the paper outlines biological understandings of sentience (as applied especially to humans, animals and other lifeforms), contrasts them with the interpretations of sentience in artificial entities (including robots and smart buildings), gives an example of attempts at sentience in architectural design and discusses how sentience relates to place. The paper’s conclusion rejects the dualism of technophilic and biophilic positions. As an alternative, the paper outlines sentience as a foundation for richly local more-than-human cultures that have intrinsic value and can help in the search for preferable futures.
-
ItemMultispecies Cohabitation and Future Design(Design Research Society, 2020)How should humans live with animals and other forms of life? Could responses to this question improve the health and wellbeing of the biosphere? This paper argues that design researchers ought to engage nonhuman lifeforms as collaborators: informants and co-designers, or clients and users. Inspired by recent design challenges involving birds, bats and trees, this paper positions emancipatory multispecies cohabitation as a goal that can alleviate ongoing biodiversity losses and human-wildlife conflicts, in cities and beyond. It opens an interdisciplinary conversation by translating emerging scholarship in ethics, politics, and aesthetics to a narrative about desirable more-than-human cultures. This discussion has significant implications and can help to inform regulation, instrumentation, and pedagogies of future design.
-
ItemModelling Workflows for More-than-Human Design: Prosthetic Habitats for the Powerful Owl (Ninox strenua)(Springer, 2019)Anthropogenic degradation of the environment is pervasive and expanding. Human construction activities destroy or damage habitats of nonhuman lifeforms. In many cases, artificial replacement habitats become necessary. However, designing for the needs and preferences of nonhuman lifeforms is challenging. Established workflows for this type of designing do not exist. This paper hypothesises that a multi-scale modelling approach can support inclusive, more-than-human design. The case-study project tests this approach by applying computational modelling to the design of prosthetic habitats for the powerful owl (Ninox strenua). The proposed approach simulates owls’ perception of the city based on scientific evidence. The tools include algorithmic mapping, 3D-scanning, generative modelling, digital fabrication and augmented-reality assembly. Outcomes establish techniques for urban-scale planning, site selection, tree-scale fitting, and nest-scale form-making. The findings demonstrate that computational modelling can (1) inform more-than-human design and (2) guide scientific data collection for more inclusive ecosystem management.
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableParametric Skinning of Complex Graphs: An Airborne Textile Structure Test-Case(Architectural Science Association and RMIT University, 2018)The research project presented in this paper aims to extend the repertoire of architectural design and construction. To achieve this purpose, research-through-design methods are used to match a commonly desired target geometry with a realistic and efficient materialisation strategy. The proposed approach has been tested through construction of practical prototypes that eventuated in a full-scale structure that performed well in a variety of outdoor conditions. The outcome of this work is a workflow for semi-automated skinning of complex graphs such as trusses or space frames. The project tests this workflow through an application to a topologically complex L-system. The L-system graph is parametrically skinned with a continuous, adjustable envelope. The outcomes of this skinning are materialised in fabric to produce a twelve-metrelong, wind-supported, airborne inflatable structure. This workflow is a novel extension of existing approaches to skinning and fabrication of structures based on complex graphs because it allows a hitherto unavailable, fabrication-ready geometric definition of joints between cylindrical and conical tubes of varying diameters. It is significant as a reusable approach to the geometric construction of such joints in a variety of materials and across multiple scales. Furthermore, it is interesting as an innovative prototype of possible wind-supported architectural structures.
-
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/
-
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.
-
ItemBuilding Like Animals: Using Autonomous Robots to Search, Evaluate and Build(School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, 2016-05-16)
-
ItemSketching with Robots(ACADIA, 2015)
-
ItemPortmanteau Worlds: Hosting Multiple Worldviews in Virtual Environments(ISEA International, the Australian Network for Art & Technology and the University of Sydney, 2013-01-01)