Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemA computational design approach for enhancing precinct walkability: informing design processes via agent-based modelling( 2019)This thesis aims to investigate how to inform concept design iterations by integrating walkability evaluation with pedestrian agent-based modelling (ABM) via developing and implementing accessible CAD tools. While we have entered the post-digital era by the end of the last century, computer-aided design (CAD) has become a crucial and globally ubiquitous component of design practice. Many functions and new ways of working, including BIM and virtual simulation, would not have been conceived as possible in the architectural industry before the advent of digital practice, yet they are now regarded as indispensable within the profession. Meanwhile, the emergent design topic of walkability has been increasingly recognised as a pivotal component of urban liveability and sustainability over the past twenty years. As a result, facilitating pedestrian-friendly environments is now becoming an urgent need for many urban design and planning projects, and computer-aided design has played a significant role in prompting this agenda. As there is no universally agreed upon measurement of walkability, and both objective and subjective evaluation methods coexist in the current urban design scheme, this thesis suggests that using ABM can be advantageous and beneficial for both methods through different implementation. Therefore, the interest of this research is to develop a computational design strategy for different speculations by applying flexible and user-friendly ABM applications. This argument has been tested and discussed with the following four tasks: The first includes an in-depth study of computational design strategy, complexity issues and emergence phenomena involved in urban design. The second is to understand different walkability evaluation criteria and how agent-based modelling can be useful under different circumstances. Then, the third task examines existing ABM technologies by identifying their potential adaptations and proposes new digital prototypes that are succinctly focused on precinct walkability issues. Last, the prototypes will be further optimised and validated in two case studies in Arden-Macaulay, Melbourne, Australia and Ecocity, Tianjin, China, with multiple degrees of design speculations. The two ABM prototypes I developed have been shown to be feasible for pedestrian simulation at the precinct level and are accessible with considerably less cost than other commercial platforms. The Modular Scripting prototype offers a new interactive simulation approach for integrating walkability considerations in the urban design process with a ‘reactive scripting’ function that enables designers to calibrate during the loop. The Game Engine prototype, on the other hand, recognises that the schematic design loop is not merely an engineering endeavour and suggests a synthesis simulation method, which makes subjective evaluation possible; here, an architect or urban designer can gain a more intimate sense of their occupant's experience through ABM and let that enrich their design decisions. The main contributions of this research can be summarised in four ways: 1) It examined existing ABM methods and toolboxes and investigate how ABM could integrate with walkability evaluation ; 2) It developed two accessible and flexible ABM prototypes for graduate architects and small design firms; 3) It discovered how to properly set up pedestrian simulation in walkability-prioritised and precinct scale projects; and 4) It investigated how to use ABM tools to inform design decisions in different conceptual proposals and how this could accommodate ever-changing design iterations. This thesis concludes that the proposed computer-aided design approach can demonstrably synergise both pedestrian ABM and walkability indexing into the schematic design process. The inherently flexible design approaches and accessible ABM tools can be adopted by different design practitioners and academics, as well as potentially other disciplines. The integration between advanced digital techniques and speculative design thinking can expand the realm of the design communities and offer them new possibilities to embrace a design agenda for healthier and more sustainable cities.
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ItemParticipation in architecture: agonism in practice( 2018)Literature about participation in architecture promised architecture the restoration of a moral dimension, arguing that participation would offer opportunities for empowerment and deliver broad benefits. To its disservice, the field of participation has been dominated by a rational ideology, and a focus on agreement and decision-making – incorporated in the term ‘consensus’. The dominant approach to participation has been at the expense of difference, passions, arguments, resistances and tensions present in the participatory process – incorporated here in the term ‘agonism’. Exacerbating this gap between consensus and agonism, a lack of real-world examples and analysis of everyday participation, has led to a quite limited practical language about participation or descriptions of the concrete process of participation in action, and arguably an avoidance to design and critique participatory processes in architecture and urban design. This Doctor of Philosophy attempts to do participation in architecture through a series of Creative Works in practice, by carefully considering approach, and, designing for difference and bottom-up empowerment of others with social, physical, emotional and psychological benefits specific to each project. The methodology exposed the realities of participation in architectural design practice with communities, highlighting social themes for exploration and multiple modes for practice. This research project demonstrates that agonism is an action-orientated way forward for participation, arguing that the tension between architecture and participation is actually productive. It concludes that difference rather than consensus is crucial to participation, suggesting for architectural and urban design practice that the philosophical role of an architect is to consciously create and maintain opportunities to keep alive the participatory process in the world, by critically designing participation.
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ItemAn exploration of computational approaches to support systematic innovation in architectural design( 2018)Design can be broadly defined as an activity aimed at transforming an existing condition into a desired one (Simon, 1969), via the generation of things—artefacts—that display new physical order (Alexander, 1964). Design is intentional and purposeful, as it starts from the identification of a need or from a desire to change what exists. The task of designers, then, is to formalise these needs and desires into new artefacts, which when deployed on the existing condition, improve its characteristics. Every design endeavour addresses practical issues, where the goal is to ‘make things work’. However, in some cases — architectural design, for instance — designers have to deal with issues that exceed the satisfaction of practical requirements, as the results of their actions will also have impact in their cultural, social, and physical domains. This tension between the artistic ‘spontaneity’ of the design practice, and the practical aspects addressed by it, is arguably what separates design from plain problem-solving. which has been the centre of an ongoing discussion in regards to design methodology, and has defined a spectrum of approaches within the design community, that ranges between rationalism and artistry. One of the consequences that the attempts to develop systematic methods for designing, was the adoption of computers, by researchers and, later on, practitioners. And with computers, came expectations of a radical transformation. A new way of designing was supposed to emerge. But these expectations have been only partially met. Positive impacts from the incorporation of digital tools into the designer’s workflows are undeniable, as computers have allowed for more efficient productivity chains, and improved performance of the artefacts being designed. Another clear example — more related to the creative aspect of design—is the way in which newly acquired capabilities in digital representation, have enabled designers to work with complex geometries that were unimaginable 50 years ago. Nevertheless, the development of computation methods for design seems to have gone down a pathway driven by efficiency and convenience, rather than one focused on the definition of methodological connections between design and computing. Design exploration still relies almost exclusively on the capabilities of designers to frame the problem, evolve that framing and establishing connections between the requirements defined by it and the attributes of the solution candidates they can generate. And all these activities are still done by ‘sketching’ (Parthenios, 2005) — understood as the direct translation of ideas to form, based on implicit decision-making — to which digital tools are mere instrumental support. In contrast to what has happened in computational design, where the real impact of technological development has not met the expectations set by its founders, groundbreaking steps towards capitalising on the advantages that computation methods offer for the exploration of novel solutions to particular problems, have been taken in other areas of research. One example of these is artificial intelligence. This thesis explores ways in which the use of computation methods can contribute to the development of innovative design solutions in architecture. The research adopts an exploratory strategy, which requires two main tasks to be addressed. The first one is to systematically formulate what designing is, in order to define a road map for the exploration of the possible roles that computation methods can play in design. The second one is the actual exploration of the capabilities of computation methods to contribute to the generation of novelty in the design process. These tasks are addressed via the development of a conceptual model of design, that builds on well established theoretical approaches, coupled with the implementation of minimalistic generative computation methods inspired on evolutionary computing. The aim of the study is to advance the understanding of the roles that computation methods can play in the architectural design process, in order to enable designers to reach areas of the space of design alternatives that have not been explored before. Through the synthesis of a model of design, which supports the development of methods that enable systematic design exploration, this thesis contributes to advancing the field of digital design. The articulation of a conceptual framework that incorporates principles of optimisation, yet encourages spontaneity and authorship, can be extended and used as a roadmap for the development of new methods. Additionally, the proof-of-concept computation methods developed for this study, serve as an example of the avenues that this roadmap opens for exploration in digital design.
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ItemThe politics of a minor architecture( 1999)The subject of this thesis developed from an observation that at first appeared paradoxical: poststructuralism, which has framed a significant school of architectural theory over the past three decades, has deeply socio-political origins, yet the architecture that has arisen from this theory seems remarkably a-political. Socio-political critique had framed the architectural polemic of the 1950s and 1960s at the Architecture Association (AA), led by the Smithsons, Team X and Cedric Price, yet it seemed to evaporate when poststructural theories superseded them. This thesis seeks to establish reasons why this may have been so. By way of example, the work of four architects, and the four poststructural theorists who have been most influential to them in the development of their theoretical approach, is reviewed. The thesis contends that the shift away from an interest in socio-political processes in their architecture is in part a consequence of a biased reading of poststructuralism but also a limitation of poststructural theory’s applicability to architecture. It concludes by proposing an alternative architectural methodology that is informed by poststructuralism but reinvigorated by new developments in systems theory. The thesis will contend that this methodology has greater utility for architecture as well as greater ability to respond to its socio-political context than a theory informed by poststructuralism. (From Introduction)
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ItemAn eclectic approach: rational eclecticism( 1997)This thesis was written for the Master of Architecture (By Design) course at the University of Melbourne. The course consisted of a Major and Minor Portfolio. The Minor Portfolio was done on the assumption that a collective architectural project existed. After completing the Minor Portfolio it became clear that such a collective project did not exist. An examination of the Minor Portfolio showed that the designs were eclectic and followed a particular pattern which could be called rational. Therefore rational eclecticism became the topic of investigation of this thesis. The result of this study is a statement of a rational eclectic architectural position in the Major Portfolio design projects and in the conclusions drawn in this written dissertation. The designs for the Master of Architecture (By Design) Major Portfolio (International Visitors' Centre and the Cardigan Street Housing) were produced by selecting ideas and forms as models for each design. In this design process, eclecticism was identified as the means by which forms or ideas are selected, and rationalism was identified as the development of an independent approach to design. The design process was organised as a syncretic project in which ideas and forms are associated by similarities rather than formed into a logically consistent system. An examination of recent examples of eclectic architecture showed that the value of eclecticism is in the insight that it offers to particular architectural questions, rather than in the development of a system of ideas or forms. These ideas were developed in the Major Portfolio designs. In the International Visitors' Centre design (Major Portfolio project 1), form was either the result, and representation of, an abstract idea distilled from an eclectic range of sources. In contrast, the Cardigan Street Housing (Major Portfolio project 2) design solution was free in its direct and literal use of forms based on an eclectic selection of architectural precedents. The rationality of the projects was a result of the way the precedents for the designs were abstracted to separate them from the authority of the systems they derived from. The conclusion of this thesis is that rational eclecticism is a design process suited to times when clear directions are not apparent. The opportunity for an eclectic designer in such times is to find the advantages of this lack of commonly accepted ideas. When an eclectic approach does take these opportunities it is an accepted and natural, though not encouraged or prominent, part of a pluralist architectural culture. Therefore, to have an eclectic position, it could be argued, is to hold a transitional position. However, a rational eclectic position that favours research so that the transition between positions results in a familiarity with, and ability to analyse, a wide range of other positions. It is this familiarity that is the strength of eclecticism since architectural pluralism is accepted as a success, rather than the cause of crisis.
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ItemConstructing bodies: gesture, speech and representation at work in architectural design studios( 2009)Previous studies of the design studio have tended to treat learning to design as a matter of learning to think in the right way, despite the recognition that material artifacts and the ability to make and manipulate them in architectural ways is important to the design process. Through the use of empirical data gathered from watching design teachers and students in action, this thesis works to discover how material things and bodies are important to the fabrication of architectural meaning and architectural subjectivity within design studios. In particular the role of gesture is highlighted as doing important work in design studio knowledge practices. The approach taken in this thesis is to treat design activity in design studios in a ‘post-human’ way. An analytical eye is turned to how things and people perform together and are organised in various ways, using Actor network theory (ANT) as a way to orientate the investigation. The assumption drawn from ANT is that that architectural meaning, knowledge and identity can positioned as network effects, enacted into being as the design studio is ‘done’ by the various actors — including material things, such as architectural representations, and human behaviours, such as gesture. Gesture has been largely ignored by design studio researchers, perhaps because it tends to operate below the threshold of conscious awareness. Gesture is difficult to study because the meanings of most gestures produced during conversations are spontaneous and provisional. Despite this humans seem to be good interpreters of gesture. When studied in detail, ongoing design studio activity is found to rely on the intelligibility of gesture done in ‘architectural ways’. The main site for the observation of gesture during this study was the ‘desk crit’ where teachers and students confer about work in progress. In the data gathered for this thesis gesture is found to operate with representations in three key ways: explaining and describing architectural composition, ‘sticking’ spoken meanings strategically to representations and conveying the phenomenological experience of occupying architectural space – the passing of time, quality of light, texture and movement. Despite the fact that most of the work of the thesis centres on human behaviour, the findings about the role of gesture and representation trouble the idea of the human as being at the centre of the action, putting the bodies of teachers and students amongst a crowd of non human others who participate together in design knowledge making practices.