Architecture, Building and Planning - Research Publications

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    Place and Parametricism
    Roudavski, S ; Lee, V ; Burry, M ; Taylor, M ; Malpas, J (Real/Material/Ethereal: The 2nd Annual Design Research Conference, 2019)
    This project contributes to a broad range of design fields, especially architecture. The overarching project, also called Place and Parametricism, looks at qualitative and quantitative ways to represent and manage places. Within this theme, the focus of this exhibition is on the analysis of digitally held information and on design-research methods that can advance such research. The project: 1) develops an account of place that is useful in concrete design situations; 2) conducts a systematic examination of computational approaches to place; 3) creates and tests computational design tools that can advance place-oriented design; and 4) demonstrates the effectiveness of this toolkit. The exhibition specifically focuses on the demonstration of the methods and tools. In response to these aims, the project has conducted a range of design experiments. The investigators used these outputs for theory construction in collaborative multidisciplinary settings. The project has produced multiple outputs including contributions to theoretical understanding and practical design approaches. It produced novel teaching and learning strategies, demonstrated how computing can be used to unify multidisciplinary knowledge on place and disseminated the toolkit within relevant communities of practice. This recorded work has been selected for the exhibition within the Real/Material/Ethereal: The 2nd Annual Design Research Conference in 2019, the leading disciplinary research forum in Australia. The work is supported by the ARD DP170104010 grant and co-created with leaders in their fields. The publications are forthcoming, and the team are in an active discussion with the curators at the National Gallery of Victoria where this work will form a part of a major exhibition. The themes presented in the exhibition have been discussed in peer-reviewed publication, presented at conferences, and won awards for the excellence in research.
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    Do-It-Together Habitats for Arboreal Wildlife: Materials and Installation
    Parker, D ; Soanes, K ; Roudavski, S ( 2023)
    This project creates and installs fully functional prosthetic-habitats structures from innovative materials. Community-based participation is significant for environmental restoration in many contexts. Existing designs, such as nest boxes, are accessible to humans with different levels of expertise and can provide crucial habitat-structure for arboreal wildlife. However, conventional manufacturing techniques result in geometric and material limitations which constrain deployment, utilisation, and long-term use. Alternative approaches, such as computationally designed hollows, provide novel design opportunities. However, to date, these approaches are not feasible within community-led projects. There is a need for more advanced designs that can use better geometries and materials while encouraging diverse human participation in siting, specification, manufacturing, and deployment. In response to this need, this project asks: what materials and installation techniques can best suit community-based design and making of prosthetic hollows? To test this hypothesis, this project designs, manufactures, and deploys prosthetic hollows in Moonee Valley, Melbourne. The project produced: geometric and material prototypes, hollows installed on site and outcomes of the process comparisons. The benefits of the project will include improvements to the design and making of prosthetic hollows for wildlife as well as approaches that support making of artificial hollows in communities. This project contributes to the development of new best practices for prosthetic hollows within local communities. It benefits the Moonee Valley community and produces novel, reusable knowledge that is applicable to other sites and species.
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    Do-It-Together Habitats for Arboreal Wildlife: Design and Making
    Parker, D ; Soanes, K ; Roudavski, S ( 2023)
    This project extends develop participatory-design approaches in application to prosthetic habitat-structures for urban wildlife. Community-based participation is significant for environmental restoration in many contexts. The involvement of human communities in the case-study of prosthetic hollows is an illustrative example with broad implications. Existing designs, such as nest boxes, are accessible to humans with different levels of expertise and can provide crucial habitat-structure for arboreal wildlife. However, conventional manufacturing techniques result in geometric and material limitations which constrain deployment, utilisation, and long-term use. Alternative approaches, such as computationally designed hollows, provide novel design opportunities. However, to date, these approaches are not feasible within community-led projects. There is a need for designs that can use better geometries and materials while encouraging diverse human participation in siting, specification, manufacturing, and deployment. In response to this need, this project asks: what materials, forms and techniques can best suit community-based design and making of prosthetic hollows? We hypothesise that combining techniques of advanced digital fabrication and do-it-yourself/do-it-together manufacturing can both improve and democratise the design of prosthetic hollows. To test this hypothesis, this project (1) designs, (2) manufactures, and (3) deploys prosthetic hollows in Moonee Valley, Melbourne. The project produced: (1) geometric and material prototypes, (2) hollows installed on site, and (3) outcomes of the process comparisons. The benefits of the project include improvements to the design and making of prosthetic hollows for wildlife and approaches that support making of artificial hollows in local communities. This project contributes to the development of the new best practice for the implementation of prosthetic hollows within local communities. Participants included local residents, environmental groups, council workers, Indigenous rangers, school representatives, and others.
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    Collaborative Tools to Design and Build Habitats Structures and Resulting Prototypes for Australian and Italian Owls
    Parker, D ; Soanes, K ; Bettega, C ; Marchesi, L ; Pedrini, P ; Fedrigotti, C ; Brambilla, M ; Roudavski, S ( 2023)
    duce artificial hollows that suit specific ecosystems, are sustainable, and can be implemented by non-designers such as residents, community conservation groups, and councils. The resulting designs can respond to local cultures, resources, user preferences, climates, existing structures, and management needs. These outcomes advance the goals of biodiversity-inclusive design and design for multispecies cohabitation.
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    What Is It Like to Be an Owl … in a Human World? Mutual Support, Conflict, and Design Imagination in Interspecies Communities
    Parker, D ; Soanes, K ; Roudavski, S ( 2023)
    This project challenges Thomas Nagel’s scepticism about the possibility of understanding the lives of nonhuman animals and explores cultural relationships between humans and powerful owls (Ninox strenua) in southeastern Australia. We argue that a better understanding of stakeholder interactions in interspecies communities is not only necessary but readily attainable and can reverse many designed or unintentional harms to support mutually beneficial cohabitation. To investigate this proposition, we conduct immersive ethnographic interviews with humans who have committed numerous years to living with owls and apply their learning to map existing and potential contributions of nonhuman stakeholders in the design of urban places. In the process, we document previously unpublished observations of owl cultures, including mourning, farming, teaching, personal expression, place use, and decision-making. Our approach contrasts these behaviours of owls with aspects of human cultures that cause disturbance, intrusion, and misunderstanding. In response, we describe observed motivations for sustained cultural interactions across species, highlighting the need for a fundamental reframing of power relationships in interspecies communities. Our presentation contributes to the theme of Animal Cultures by demonstrating encouraging existing practices and practical steps that can lead to substantial improvements in parallel with the visionary possibilities of politically inclusive interspecies communities.
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    More-Than-Human Design for Coastal Justice: A Case Study of Mangroves in Jakarta’s Bay
    Tenggono, G ; Sintusingha, S ; Roudavski, S ( 2023)
    This research project uses evidenced-based designing to explore the role of non-human beings in future urban coastlines. This topic is significant because climate-induced flooding and erosion lead to global reliance on ‘hard’ water infrastructure that disproportionately harms nonhuman communities. For example, projects such as Jakarta's proposed sea wall can lead to serious adverse impacts. Future cities need to be more just as well as more resilient. However, even the best current approaches to coastal infrastructure can benefit from greater inclusion of nonhuman voice because they often remain anthropocentric and do not account for nonhuman services or include nonhuman voices. To address this gap in knowledge and practice, we propose an approach that supports mangroves’ rights to place in Jakarta’s Bay. Our methods are: 1) defining a more-than-human approach to design; 2) selecting Jakarta as one of the world’s fastest sinking cities with characteristic challenges; 3) designing an alternative future that combines non-human expertise, traditional local knowledge, scientific evidence, and high-tech engineering; and 4) assessing this design in comparison with the status quo, demonstrating its challenges and benefits. The results show that an inclusive approach can lead to plausible solutions that support more-than-human communities while maintaining shorelines and providing benefits to human inhabitants. However, existing societal understanding and governmental agendas may not recognize mangroves as legitimate stakeholders and resist engaging with non-human beings. As in many other places, a return to the local wisdom can re-establish beneficial relationships with place that colonial practices have suppressed for too long. The visual evidence that accompanies our narrative vividly illustrates future scenarios that can build solidarity and inspire communal imagination. In conclusion, this project contributes to knowledge by demonstrating the effectiveness of a more-than-human design framework in a practical case, proposing a concrete solution for Jakarta, and offering a reusable approach to just resilience.
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    Vegetal Voices: Learning through Making with Trees and Humans
    Briggs, C ; Tournier, D ; Martin, B ; Rutten, J ; Holland, A ; Roudavski, S (Honolulu, online, 2023)
    This project presents an approach that seeks to empower voices of trees through an innovative use of spatial data. To engage with this challenge, we focus on a tree that lives in the south of Australia, near Narrm (Melbourne). This tree retains the marks left by the ancestors of the Kulin Nations who used its bark to make useful objects. Plants, particularly trees, can care for themselves while helping other living beings. Their vegetal contributions are necessary for the survival of all complex lifeforms. Yet, no combination of human knowledges can fully understand, replicate, or replace the spectrum of support that plants offer. Human biases prioritise human needs over other forms of life. This results in the oppression of plants and diminishes their contributions to diverse bio-communities. To overcome paternalistic approaches that result from human biases, our project seeks to learn from this tree on behalf of all plants. The method includes three steps: firstly, acknowledging the resilience and 'voice' of trees as they withstand various external pressures; secondly, dissecting these survival strategies to confront and recalibrate human biases; and finally, engaging in a collaborative endeavour with the tree, allowing it to extend its influence through mark making. Our innovative approach involves interpreting detailed laser scans of the tree and transforming them into animated digital marks, thereby facilitating a meaningful dialogue between humans and trees. The objectives of this study are threefold: to validate the concept of 'voice' in non-human entities like plants, to highlight the complexities of plant lives that are unobvious to humans, and to show that numerical data can be a conduit for creative collaborations between humans and trees. The findings are compelling and multi-faceted: the tree 'speaks' through its physical form and scars; data analysis uncovers significant events encoded in its marks; and the collaborative mark-making process disseminates the tree's story while also serving as a form of interspecies care. This project not only showcases how collaborative mark-making with trees can transform human understanding, but also repositions plants as active agents in design.
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    Kummargi Gadhaba Yulendj Tarrang [the knowledge of these trees is rising up]
    Briggs, C ; Tournier, D ; Martin, B ; Roudavski, S ; Holland, A ; Rutten, J ( 2023)
    This project presents an approach that seeks to empower voices of trees through an innovative use of spatial data. To engage with this challenge, we focus on a tree that lives in the south of Australia, near Melbourne. The ancient trunk of this tree retains the marks left by Indigenous Australians who used its bark to make useful objects. Our project seeks to hear from this tree on behalf of all plants. All plants can care for themselves while helping other living beings. Their vegetal contributions are necessary for the survival of all complex lifeforms and yet human knowledge about trees is incomplete and often selfish. To learn further, our research integrates scientific and Indigenous knowledge with a more-than-human approach to making that casts trees as teachers who can help humans do better. Our approach to human-tree collaboration looks for meaning in detailed laser scans and rebuilds them as animated digital marks that can reach diverse human audiences.
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    Brackish: Towards a Methodology for the Co-Production of Ethnographic, Legal and Design Knowledge for the Pluriverse
    Marc, B ; Grotti, V ; Roudavski, S ; Young, M ( 2023)
    Global action for nature restoration is rapidly taking off, stimulating the development and scaling up of ecosystem restoration or ‘rewilding’ programmes. Typically, such programs invoke market logics of ecosystem services and natural capital, expressed in the concepts of the ‘green’ and ‘blue’ economy. Such technocratic or market-based programmes struggle to account for the complexities of ecological, social and cultural multispecies entanglements. Rewilding initiatives conjure utopian visions of equilibrium, but these visions are challenged by uncertainty over future conditions, spatial fragmentation and the influence of multiple uncontained processes on diverse scales (e.g. climate change, pollution, invasive species). The challenge of restoring diverse and uncertain worlds invites a humble engagement with indigenous and local communities, cultivating an ethic of care for social and ecological reproduction. Focusing on coastal areas, critical zones where multiple dynamic ecological and human processes meet, this project proposes a collaborative methodology for multispecies cohabitation, justice and care through ethnography, design and law, with the active participation of local communities, ecologists and indigenous scientists. Thinking through more-than-human kinship, fertility and reproduction, we focus on relations and procedures rather than visions or destinations.
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    Creative Decisions by Creatures and Gadgets: A More-than-Human Approach to Future Design
    Brock, D ; Roudavski, S ( 2023)
    This study explores novel approaches to envisioning the future by bridging the gap between ecocentric and technocentric perspectives on creative decisions. Despite differing depictions of future societies, both perspectives share a common emphasis on improved decision-making as a prerequisite of preferable futures. However, current discourses struggle to integrate these viewpoints and give voice to nonhuman beings and communities, notably in design, perpetuating harmful systems. Our study advocates for a more holistic approach that integrates all forms of wisdom to reimagine decision-making processes for the betterment of future societies. Our research poses the question: “How can future decisions benefit from all sources of knowledge and wisdom?” We hypothesize that more-than-human decision-making can improve just relationships, caring, resilience, and wellbeing in multispecies communities. To test this, we outline decision-making processes in nonhuman living beings, compare their decisions with those made by technical systems, and consider hybrid decision-making in various contexts. Our case-studies discuss the impact of smart technologies on companion animals in future cities, emerging interactions between grey and living infrastructure in old cultural landscapes, and the impact of ecocentric ethics on proposed space colonies. Our findings illustrate that more-than-human decision making can open paths to superior futures. Integration of ecocentric and technocentric perspectives, amplified by the tools for the empowerment and translation of nonhuman voices, can aid in designing futures that are fair for all beings.