Architecture, Building and Planning - Research Publications
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ItemClimate Change Adaption and Affordability – Costs, Benefits and Regulation of Improved Environmental Performance in Housing(RICS Publications, 2008)Climate change regulatory response has lead to a number of recent studies that examine the cost and benefits of mandating improved housing design and specification. Research addressed in the paper seeks an understanding of the financial impacts of ‘sustainability’ and ‘energy efficiency’ in housing generally, biased to an Australian temperate climate regional perspective (Victoria and South Australia). The paper presents the research literature and examines the question of ‘trade-offs’ in improved residential building environmental performance. Analysis of previous studies and data on housing costs, both initial capital and operational, is a primary focus of the paper which draws some conclusions from the housing studies and cost information.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableSimplicity Offers Flexibility(RMIT University, 2006)Report on sustainable housing developments and examples from Germany.
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ItemTrans-disciplinarity within the discipline(QUT, 2005)Architecture, while desirous of maintaining its autonomy, has always been fascinated by other disciplines, and has frequently appropriated concepts and models from science, mathematics, philosophy, literature, and so on. Architectural education has likewise contributed to such interdisciplinary pursuits. This paper will argue that while the ongoing investigation into other disciplines is of great value to architecture, the capacities and tasks proper to architecture need to be examined in more depth. Architecture must negotiate ways of maintaining its autonomy while remaining permeable to the influence of other disciplines. This is specifically relevant when it comes to the area of design education, which in its own right collects together a number of specific disciplines, such as interior, landscape, urban design and architecture. Within my own practice, which is strongly related to my teaching experience, the concept of trans-scale, as well as the establishment of trans-disciplinary networks, has facilitated a greater understanding of the potentialities of architecture as both an autonomous and open discipline. In order to investigate what I call the trans-disciplinary possibilities of architecture I will present work undertaken in two design studios with students from RMIT University. The first design studio, undertaken with architecture students, was an examination of a minor context embedded in a major context, specifically the city of Stuttgart. The second studio, which I have more recently completed, is an interior design studio in which students are asked to study and design a public square in Melbourne in order to understand their discipline with respect to both the broader scale of the city, and the more discrete scale of public furniture and design object. With both exercises I address the idea of a relationship between the different design disciplines, ie interior design and urban design, and frame it with trans-disciplinary questions. For instance, what is the role of the history of a city and the context of a site on a design concept? How great could be the impact of furniture considered within an urban project?
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ItemResearch into identifying Effective Learning Environments(OECD Publications, 2005)The evaluation of school learning environments has for decades traditionally focused on the technical performance of the facilities with little attention being paid to their pedagogical performance or effectiveness. There are a range of ‘top down’ imperatives which have driven such an approach, including the need to sustainably finance educational infrastructure and show evidence as to how this money is being spent successfully. This need is emerging following the funding approaches now being taken by such bodies as the European Investment Bank and in Public Private Partnerships. On the other hand ‘bottom up’ imperatives have considered the pedagogical performance of learning environments as a means of providing feedback to authorities especially in the process of procurement. This in turn has influenced the development of planning and design guidelines. This paper examines more closely the educational learning environment and the qualitative and quantitative research measures that have been used in recent times to determine their effectiveness. It explores some of the pedagogy and environment performance measures that have evolved and views these in the context of emerging research and evidence which attempts to relate pedagogy (including student and teacher attitudes) to space. It examines some case studies and focuses on the recently developed DET Victoria pedagogy-space strategies. Finally some conclusions are drawn and suggestions made for possible future research directions.
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ItemPlacemaking Practice: Transforming Classrooms from the Inside Out – the Critical Role of Spatial Literacy(Council for Education Facility Planners International (CEFPI), 2004)For decades CEFPI, the OECD Program on Educational Building, the Schools Learning Laboratory and other related organisations have pursued transformative approaches to the planning and design learning environments to suit contemporary perceptions of learning. Yet these attempted paradigm shifts are predominantly applied by spatial practitioners 'from the outside-in'. The end recipient of these efforts, that is, the classroom teacher and his or her students, generally have little say in how their learning environments might be constructed to better serve their learning needs. This presentation will briefly explore creative pedagogical practices (resource-, problem- and project-based learning, active learning, students as researchers) and the flexibility of the curriculum framework to suggest how multiple literacies in students might be actively engaged in their daily learning lives in placemaking. In particular the development of spatial literacies augmented through spatially oriented pedagogical and curriculum development practices applied to the very classrooms in which students engage in an action-based 'pedagogy of architectural encounters' will be explored. Three case studies (one primary, two secondary) will be used to illustrate the idea of learning geographies to assess its worth in schools design. The presentation will examine how teacher professional development is fundamental to any cultural change or school transformation in parallel with school design innovations. Further, it is hoped that this paper will demonstrate an 'inside-out' transformative placemaking practice which will foster change from within the classroom, rather than being imposed from without.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableVietnam Veterans, Hollywood, and the Persian Gulf War(University of Queensland, School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, 2009)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableImagining the National Landscape: an exploration of Te Papa Tongarewa and the National Museum of Australia(Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ), 2002)
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ItemEcoHome reflection on research outcomes in light of initial research grant intentions: a multidisciplinary approach to complex housing sustainability issues(Flinders University, 2006)Sustainability in the housing industry is a complex interrelated field of inquiry. In Melbourne, Australia, a consortium of seven industry, regulatory and policy organisation, two universities covering three disciplines (building, social science and engineering) came together to explore a multidisciplinary approach to the field through the EcoHome research project. This paper will summarise the journey of the EcoHome project and its outcomes, beginning with its intentions in 2001 to the home’s sale in 2005. The journeys of the three research projects is briefly outlined and discussed in light of the intentions of the project. This paper also reports on how this project resulted in a collaborative multidisciplinary approach to research called the ‘Triple Helix’ approach and the linked development of the Re-imaging the suburb research program.
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ItemEcotourism in the architectural imagination(Channel View Publications, 2007)Ecotourism is a burgeoning sector of the tourism industry offering a relatively guilt-free environment in which to satisfy the desire for travel and adventure. The discourse is firmly entrenched within the dominant conception of sustainability, which posits nature as a privileged ‘other’ free from human intervention. Images of ecotourism destinations celebrate this ideology through the promotion of ‘pristine’ environments. However, a more complex image question arises in relation to the infrastructure that supports the tourists’ encounter with this idealised natural environment. This paper is concerned with unpacking the identities and ideologies that are embedded within images of ecotourism resorts and within the broader field of sustainable tourism. Through the lens of the premier global sustainable tourism certification program, Green Globe, three ‘images’ that correspond to three typologies of tourism destinations are identified. The ‘hyper-real’ is embedded within the mass-market arena of sustainable tourism, while the niche ecotourism market engages in a process of architectural ‘absence’. The third typology of place-based tourism mediates between these two extremes. While it can result in a tendency towards undifferentiated ‘background’ architecture, at its most productive it is conceived as a form of architectural ‘camouflage’ by maintaining a dynamic process of emergence and disappearance. When this typology is extended beyond the limits of the image, it offers even greater potential as a form of spatial liminality between traditional representations of human/environment relations as alternatively undifferentiated or ontologically distinct. The paper concludes by arguing that the design of ecotourism facilities should be focused on more than minimising impacts and that architecture has a productive role to play, particularly in relation to the education imperative of ecotourism.
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ItemMobilising Place( 2007)Unlike many other aspects of new technology, mobile media are fundamentallyconcerned with our negotiation and engagement with space and place. It is this facet ofmobile media use that I am interested in here. In this paper, I will look at how mobiletechnologies impact on notions and experiences of place. To do this, I’m examining theliterature on mobile media; this examination forms the first part of the paper.The argument that I want to develop in this paper – as suggested by the title – is twofold:First, that how we understand and engage with place is in key respects transformed bymobile media; and secondly, at the same time, place remains an important concept – oneworth mobilising – in order to better understand everyday mobile phone use. In thesecond part of the paper, I propose an alternative conception of place that might provemore productive and better suited to the present age of mobile media.Prior to an examination of the mobile media literature, it is necessary to make a fewprefatory remarks regarding why place remains an important concept and how thisconcept is framed and understood for the purposes of this paper.