Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemReducing greenhouse gas emissions from residential buildings in Australia : impact, opportunities and barriers impeding progress( 2003)The quest underlying this research is improved understanding of greenhouse gas reductions attributable to residential buildings in Australia. Past efforts to reduce CO2 emissions from residential buildings in Australia focus predominantly on operational energy and to a lesser extent CO2 emissions attributable to energy embodied in the building structure, i.e. an individual dwelling and its site. The emissions and corresponding opportunities associated with the life support systems servicing the dwelling, e.g. water supply, food supply, sewage disposal, are still relatively unexplored. The first part of this research takes a wider view by including the life support systems. As a demonstration of how the impact of the life support systems can be studied, water supply and sewage disposal are explored in detail. Once potential opportunities for reduction are identified, these opportunities also need to be realised. Both the theory and practice of energy conservation in residential buildings worldwide, and in Australia, have been there since the 60s and 70s. However, there is evidence that implementation in Australia has not transferred into the mainstream as yet. Efforts have been made to identify the barriers impeding progress to energy efficiency. These are mostly based on personal observation. Structured methods based on empirical data are restricted to individual key players such as architects or householders. Empirical studies of a limited cross section of the key players have been carried out overseas but are restricted to commercial buildings. These studies have also been isolated attempts and not as part of an overall management strategy. In the second part of this research a diversity of needs and barriers faced by a wide cross section of key players is identified empirically, as part of an overall management strategy aimed at achieving energy and related CO2 reductions from residential buildings in Australia. Energy reduction is taken to include operational energy, embodied energy and the energy associated with the life support systems of a dwelling. It is proposed that both these domains of opportunity identified present opportunities for significant reductions in CO2 emissions from residential buildings in Australia.
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ItemSex and the slum : imperialism and gender in nascent town planning, Australia and New Zealand, 1914-1919( 2003)This thesis explores early 20th century town planning discourse in two of Britain's dominions, Australia and New Zealand. It uses the first national town planning conferences held in Australia and New Zealand (1917, 1918 and 1919) as a vehicle for examining themes of imperialism and gender within town planning discourse. In both dominions, women had a visible presence and an increasing voice in the nascent town planning movement. The women planning advocates were predominantly middle-class, they supported the continuation of women's traditional domestic role and they celebrated women's position as the `mothers of the race'. They wanted improved housing standards in order that women could undertake their important work of mothering to better effect. Similarly, they wanted more extensive kindergarten and playground facilities in order to shape and mould the citizens of tomorrow. But more than this, the women who took the most active role in the Australian and New Zealand town planning conferences were imperialist, win-the-war loyalist and in some cases even militarist. It was the imperial race that was at stake. The term `planning's imperial aspect' has been used by others to describe the initiatives of imperial powers in exporting town planning to their colonies and dominions. However, in view of the Australian and New Zealand enthusiasm for importing town planning, and the extent to which Australian and New Zealand planning advocates promoted town planning in terms of its potential to benefit the imperial race, this thesis expands the usage of the term to encompass colonial/dominion initiatives in importing town planning from the relevant imperial power, in this case from Britain. The thesis shows that in early 20th century Australia and New Zealand, the activities of women planning advocates clearly demonstrate planning's imperial aspect. This is because the women recognised the particular plasticity of children's bodies and minds and the consequent opportunities that infancy and youth provided for the instillation of middle-class values and behavioural norms, and thus focused their attention on the sites and activities that had the greatest potential to positively modify the fitness, health and morality of children - the imperial soldiers, workers, wives and mothers of tomorrow.
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ItemThe order of housing things : public housing policy discourse in New Zealand and Australia, 1983-1999( 2001)The purpose of this thesis is to examine discourses of housing assistance to understand how empirical knowledge came to be effected in the state housing assistance arrangements of New Zealand and Australia. To achieve this purpose a discursive methodology was crafted to account for both the constitution of empirical knowledge, and the bureaucratic apparatus by which housing assistance is administered. By pursuing the theoretical insights of US pragmatist thinkers, and recent French post-structuralist authors, empirical knowledge in the thesis was understood as a series of regular relations between abstract categories of 'things' or 'statements', as enunciated in the utterances of housing assistance policy actors and agents. Similarly the state was viewed as a discursive apparatus, which operates to constitute reality through the enunciation of this empirical order of things. The results of the methodological strategy were to be found in the empirical case studies of housing assistance in New Zealand and Australia during the period 1983 to 1999. In New Zealand a regular arrangement of housing policy discourse operated. until 1990. This 'order of housing things' constituted its subjects as unable to operate effectively in the housing market, thus requiring direct intervention via the housing assistance apparatus to ensure their needs were met. After 1990, this arrangement was replaced by an order in which the market was constituted as able to efficiently allocate housing to those in need, with maintenance of an adequate income becoming the sole basis for state action. In Australia, the order of housing things has consistently been one in which the directly provided subsidised state housing is the enunciated and practiced 'truth' of housing assistance. While alternative orders have been enunciated, such as the provision of assistance solely through an income payment, none of these alternatives obtained the status of the incumbent order during the study period. The thesis contributes to social scientific understanding through the careful and extensive empirical analysis of public housing policy in the two countries under consideration. Added to this understanding are the detailed theoretical explorations, which tease out recent post-structural approaches to discourse and the state, and which provide methodological solutions to questions of the nexus between empirical reality, language, practice, subjects and government policy.
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ItemProcess dynamics : buffer management in building project operations( 2000)The management of uncertainty and complexity is necessary for performance in the management of building projects. This thesis explores lean production and its engagement of uncertainty and complexity to ascertain the means by which lean thinking can best be used to enhance building project performance. As uncertainty and complexity impede performance, they are often managed in ways that will minimise their impact. Buffers like excess inventory and deliberate delays have been used to shield operations from the effects of uncertainty and complexity to improve levels of performance. However, lean thinking argues that the use of buffers to shield uncertainty and complexity from operations is wasteful and induces operational inertia. It eliminates these buffers and utilises operating capacity as an alternative to enable a more efficiently responsive engagement of uncertainty and complexity. Thus, the purpose of buffers changes in lean operations from that of a shield to that of enhancing accommodative capabilities. Buffers are therefore considered necessary, and the concept of process dynamics is introduced to consolidate the management of buffers. Process dynamics encapsulates the insight from lean thinking about the efficiently responsive accommodation of uncertainty and complexity. Building projects require the provision of choice and variety under conditions of considerable uncertainty. Projects structures are arranged to provide variety, yet contend poorly with the uncertainty and complexity present. The consequence is waste that leads to prolonged duration and increased costs. The provision of choice and variety means that some degree of uncertainty and complexity is intrinsic to high levels of performance. Consequently, approaches that better accommodate, rather than shield uncertainty and complexity can improve time and cost performance while still enabling the provision of wide product variety. Levels of wasteful practice in building projects are described through the meta-analysis of past studies into deficient practices in building projects. This analysis confirmed the high levels of waste. The process dynamics concept is tested through a simulation model. This model indicates the performance improvement from deploying buffers under the process dynamics regime. The results indicate that process dynamics provides the means for utilising lean thinking in the management of building projects to maximise performance outcomes.
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ItemThe role of affect in local government corporate real estate management( 2007)This dissertation reveals affect’s contribution to strategic local government corporate real estate management (CREM). Affect is found in subjective assessments of the effects of the CRE and its management that contribute to the, often, fractious and vigorous debates around proposals to provide or change Council facilities. These subjective assessments, which may be colloquially known as ‘perceptions’, are thought by CREM to contradict the, seemingly, ‘objective’ measures they rely upon in framing facility proposals and decisions. The local government and general CREM literature is not extensive and quite deficient in its treatment of subjective assessments – affective or not. Other literature that does consider subjective assessments of environments rarely considers the political and governance issues implicit in the research problem. In practice, local government CREM already navigates across the problem field of affect and other subjective assessments of CREM’s effects. This dissertation presents analysis of cases demonstrating this navigation. A multiple case study research methodology was employed using four cases of facility proposals from a middle suburban Melbourne metropolitan council. The four cases were selected to illustrate the issues that exist in local government CRE and its management. Analysis occurred within a psychologically-orientated qualitative enquiry using an ‘Affective Lexicon’ to access affective dimensions contained in word-based data, both text and verbal. Using a psychologically-based mapping model the presence of affect in local government CREM was mapped across the management processes in providing the studied facilities as a means of furthering understanding of the effects of local government CREM. Possible further research in the field of local government CREM is also identified. This research makes several contributions to knowledge. Primarily, there is the contribution from demonstrating that affective, being psychological and subjective, practices apply to and are used by effective local government CREM. This contribution is supported by demonstrating that there is an ‘Affective domain’ to and for local government CREM and the form of that domain with regard to the psychological functions present. This provides an understanding of the subjective responses to facility proposals, more commonly called ‘perceptions’, and their affective assessments’ basis; both ‘ante’ and ‘post’ CRE project processes. Furthermore, rather than being merely recipients of affective, subjective responses, this research demonstrates an affect-based approach to local government CREM through an identification of affective management processes used by local government in providing community facilities. In addition, because the field of (local government) CREM is undertheorised at this point, this research also contributes knowledge to several gaps indentified in the property literature, particularly with regard to defining the basis of CREM practice and its effects.
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ItemAn uneasy profession: defining the landscape architect in Australia 1912-1972( 2004)The profession of landscape architecture in Australia emerged as a result of a distinct set of social, cultural and political circumstances. These were in part linked to events and phenomenon through history and are described in this thesis as a proposed framework of practitioners who were associated with the occupational title 'landscape architect' between 1912 and 1972. But the profession's emergence in England, America and Australia can also be analysed and contrasted in terms of sociological concepts of professions. The sociological method deemed most applicable to the study of landscape architecture in Australia, a small profession relative to its closest neighbours of architecture and planning and a profession whose title is etymologically complex, was one that considered professions as operating in an interrelated system. This thesis explores the profession of landscape architecture in Australia in terms of how individuals who adopted the professional title (particularly when the profession began to become organised during the post World War II years) also positioned themselves in relation to other professions in planning and design. To a certain extent, defining a professional landscape architect involved analysing newly created opportunities for jurisdiction over work but also how individuals were able to effectively create a niche for their profession within the schema of existing work jurisdictions.
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ItemMaterialising the immaterial: social value and the conservation of recent everyday places( 2004)This thesis argues that recent everyday places can constitute significant cultural heritage. All places are cultural heritage, but only some are judged to be significant cultural heritage by professionals applying established criteria. Recent everyday places can play an essential role in people's lives, and become sites of strong emotional connection. In Australia and New Zealand, social value is the heritage criterion that recognises people's attachment to place. Recent everyday places are potentially significant cultural heritage if they have social value, yet they are difficult to accept as such, and they are rarely recognised in heritage conservation procedures. They do not fit preconceived notions of cultural heritage; their significance is not understood; and they have no established tradition of academic inquiry for support. The objective of this research is to examine the relation between recent everyday places and social value within the context of the contemporary Western heritage conservation frameworks. The thesis is an analytical study comprising two principal components: discourse review and analysis, and case study analysis. Discourse analysis draws upon two primary fields of inquiry. The first is contemporary Western heritage conservation discourse, including policy, legislation, charters, and literature. The second is multidisciplinary academic discourse that recognises everyday life, everyday objects, everyday places, and their values and meanings. The case study analyses apply a framework of current theoretical and practical conservation methodologies and methods to selected places in Australia and New Zealand. Findings from the research are two-fold: Firstly, social value is not adequately represented within established heritage conservation frameworks. Secondly, the acceptance of recent everyday places as significant cultural heritage is problematic because of the relation with social value. The major implication from the research findings is that recent everyday places with social value will not be accepted as culturally significant heritage until social value is adequately represented within the theoretical and methodological frameworks of contemporary Western heritage conservation. The inadequate representation of social value has implications for all heritage places with social value. The inclusion of social value in theoretical frameworks will have limited application until the methodological frameworks and methods can enable it to be maintained. Until this happens, important connections between people and place will continue to be neglected in the decision-making processes that are designed to create and maintain the quality of the built environment.