Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemNational identity, Australian plants, and the natural garden in post-WWII Australia, 1945 to 1986(University of Melbourne, 2015)
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ItemRethinking the Inflexible City: what can Australian planning learn from successful implementation of ‘temporary uses’ across the world?( 2013)Temporary uses have been identified as a low-cost, participatory, and economically beneficial method of managing urban change. As planning practice increasingly deploys temporary use, good outcomes require an understanding of how the two interact. Using the case study methodology, this thesis examines the ways in which formal planning practice can encourage, support, complicate and hinder informal temporary urbanism. The thesis does this by analysing the experiences of four agencies facilitating the implementation of temporary uses worldwide, examining their interaction with the planning system, and identifying common constructive and obstructive policy mechanisms. Temporary use projects can be initiated without high levels of support from formal planning; however, having to comply with the formal planning process is a significant hurdle. Traditional planning does not make provisions for short-term urbanism, imposing costly and time-consuming processes incommensurate with the short duration and low cost of the temporary use. Applications for change of use, requirements for building safety triggered by the planning process, and the perceived arbitrariness of the decision-making process are the biggest hurdles that formal planning imposes on temporary use. Temporary uses are best supported through dedicated processes, staff, and relaxed regulations. The findings confirm that temporary uses are a successful method for finding opportunity in situations of uncertainty and crisis. Formal planning practice can strategically deploy temporary projects to achieve long-term planning objectives. These findings should spark more debate about, research on, and experimentation with temporary uses.
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ItemComparison of measured and perceived fundamental characteristics to identify strategies for increasing the rate of daily walking in suburban areas( 2020-07)Future cities will increasingly face health, socio-economic and environmental problems, including disease, social isolation, economic breakdown, excessive carbon dioxide emissions, climate change, and fossil fuel depletion. The planning and design of neighbourhoods which provide high levels of pedestrian accessibility to daily needs destinations such as schools, grocery shops, greenspaces and public transport could contribute to solutions to these problems by the reduction of car-based travel. Future cities need to be walkable based on solutions that can be achieved through better planning and design which takes into consideration accessibility as well as Key Urban Place Characteristics (KUPCs). The author considers walkability to be formed by two factors: the first, accessibility, is the distance to daily needs destinations, and the second is KUPCs, the safety and security, comfort, and attractiveness of the walk to those daily needs’ destinations. Although many suburban neighbourhoods in Melbourne have good access to daily needs, people who live in these areas often choose to drive to their destinations rather than walk. This may be due to negative perceptions of the place and the lack of fundamental place characteristics. The aim of this research is to identify strategies to increase rates of daily walking based on an understanding of the relationship between urban place characteristics and accessibility in suburban neighbourhoods. Therefore, the author has chosen four case studies; two international best practice case studies to validate a theoretical framework obtained from the best practice literature, and an in-depth examination of two local case studies in Melbourne using the validated theoretical framework to assess the scale of walkability in the most accessible areas in selected suburban samples. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used in this study, in keeping with a sequential explanatory design mixed-method approach. Data collection was conducted using mapping, urban informatics, desktop analysis, field observations of KUPCs, and face-to-face interviews with residents. The analysis of walking-related values using key research studies provided opportunities to reveal the most important characteristics needed for walking to daily needs in the case studies. These results were used to identify strategies for increasing the rate of daily walking in suburban areas.
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ItemEncountering Architecture Architecture, Audience, Communication and the Public Realm( 2021)What new forms of communication can be developed to communicate architecture, city making and city shaping to public audiences? This thesis advocates for the urban spatial encounter as a communicative strategy that uses the medium of the public realm to engage audiences with architecture, the city and the built environment. Situated at the intersection of architecture, urbanism and public art, the urban spatial encounters are creative works that take the form of installations and events. They are designed to catalyse active conversations between architectural practitioners and public audiences; conversations that engage people with architecture and the built environment and the issues that shape them. The encounters traverse a broad range of sites and scales—from small-scale guerrilla spatial interventions into public space to a grassroots community activist campaign that took on one of the world’s largest corporations, Apple. Drawing on the fields of public art and play scholarship, this thesis argues that the urban spatial encounter is an effective medium for communicating architectural and spatial knowledge and practices, for increasing city-making literacy in public audiences and a means for affording citizens a place in shaping the urban environment. Through practice based research, this thesis aims to raise public awareness and catalyse discussion within the architectural profession on the value of scholarship and research into the public communication of architecture and the built environment.
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ItemBarriers and facilitators to nature-based stormwater management in Melbourne’s private realm: the role of statutory planning frameworks and actors( 2021)Sustainability transitions in Australia’s Stormwater Management (SM) sector over the past two decades have led to the realisation that achieving a ‘Water Sensitive City’ is critical to ensure the health and wellbeing of urban residents and urban ecosystems, as climate change and urbanisation increase uncertainty around the quality and quantity of water in urban environments. ‘Nature-Based Stormwater Management’ (NBSM) is increasingly acknowledged as an important approach to accelerate transitions to a Water Sensitive City due to the multifunctional role of vegetation. In response to sustainability shifts in planning and urban water sectors, the Victorian state government and several municipalities across Melbourne introduced strategic plans and guidelines supporting Integrated Water Management (IWM), Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD). More recently, a series of local and state-wide planning scheme amendments in the statutory system have formalised IWM, WSUD, SM and Environmentally Sustainable Development (ESD) requirements for development on private land. However, current literature highlights that a wide variety of systemic and actor-based factors influence uptake of NBSM in Melbourne and ultimately restrict practical implementation of NBSM systems. This thesis employed qualitative semi-structured interviews with twelve public and private statutory actors to identify barriers and facilitators in Melbourne’s inner-city statutory framework that influence uptake of NBSM on private land. Findings suggest that while more prescriptive policy requirements are important to prioritise the use of vegetation, they are insufficient in isolation to produce effective NBSM outcomes. This is due to barriers presented by competing interests, inconsistencies between councils, poor technical knowledge, and siloed decision-making. Instead, targeted collaboration between actor groups at the early stages of project development, supported by state-led knowledge-sharing initiatives, will be necessary to successfully deliver NBSM and maximise co-benefits provided by vegetated systems. Recommendations from this study can be used to inform targeted strategies for Melbourne’s public and private practitioners to establish healthier relationships with urban water systems long into the future and simultaneously achieve a wide variety of planning objectives.
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ItemParadoxes and Paradigm Shifts in the Utopic Desire for High-rise Housing in Melbourne and Surfers Paradise, in Australia between 1945-2005.( 2021)This study is about paradoxes and paradigm shifts in the utopic desire for high-rise housing in Australia between 1945-2005. Three different contexts that occasioned desires for high-rise housing were selected as case-studies for investigation: The Housing Commission of Victoria; Surfers Paradise, and Melbourne Docklands. The time-span is from 1945, tracing the post WW2 desire for public high-rise housing till 2005: a long enough period to examine paradigm shifts in the utopic desire for high-rise housing. The study adapted Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm theory to investigate paradigm shifts in the utopic desire for high-rise housing in the three case-studies. Three trends were drawn out in the analysis. Firstly, that utopic-desires for high-rise housing were paradoxical at a number of levels. Secondly, utopic-desires for high-rise housing were nomadic as they changed in relation to emerging problems and paradoxes. Thirdly, utopic paradigms were an expression of the political ideologies of stakeholders. The study established that by situating utopic-desires for high-rise housing within the political ideologies of stakeholders, utopic-desires became focused on addressing the needs of one group in society, overlooking other social groups’ needs. Furthermore, the study’s findings show that utopic desires don't lead to utopic solutions, and concludes that deconstructing contradicting utopic-desires may reduce the magnitude of paradoxical and heterotopic outcomes. This can be achieved by questioning whose needs are addressed, and by investigating how utopic solutions in housing may affect different groups in society and the larger context.
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ItemTowards a comprehensive framework for integrating embodied environmental flow assessment into the structural design of tall buildings( 2021)Urgent changes are needed in the construction industry to meet short term mitigation goals for climate change. Traditionally, operational environmental flows have been the primary focus of regulations and current attempts to improve the environmental performance of buildings. However, studies have revealed that embodied environmental flows are often underestimated and rarely considered. Embodied environmental flows are particularly significant in the structural systems of tall buildings due to the substantial influence of wind and earthquake loads on structural material requirements. This thesis presents a framework for integrating embodied environmental flow assessment into the structural design of tall buildings using comprehensive hybrid methods for life cycle inventory analysis and advanced structural design and finite element modelling techniques. An advanced software tool was developed to formalise the framework and automate the structural design, modelling, analysis, optimisation and embodied energy and embodied greenhouse gas emissions assessment of more than 1,000 structural systems. Through regression analyses, predictive models were constructed for the embodied energy and embodied greenhouse gas emissions per net floor area of 12 unique combinations of structural typologies and structural materials. These models were integrated into a purpose-made online dashboard, which enables engineers and designers to compare alternative structural materials (i.e. 32/40/50 MPa reinforced concrete and steel), structural typologies (i.e. shear wall, outrigger and belt and braced tube) and geometries (i.e. rectangular floor plan geometries) according to the embodied energy and embodied greenhouse gas emissions per net floor area of structural systems. Two case studies were used to illustrate the potential of the framework and software tool in reducing the embodied environmental flows of structural systems for tall buildings of varying heights. Results show that all considered building parameters are significant and cannot be neglected in assessing alternative structural systems for tall buildings based on their embodied environmental flows. The developed framework and software tool have been shown to provide the most precise and sophisticated integration of embodied environmental assessment into the parametric structural design of tall buildings as of yet. Through a simple and user-friendly interface, they enable tall building designers to utilise environmental assessment as a design-assisting tool, rather than as an appraisal method to evaluate a completed building. This will potentially lead to reductions in the environmental effects associated with the construction of tall buildings.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableHuman-built-forms’ coevolution via temporal-occupied spaces in Tmor-Da, an evolving settlement, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.( 2021)This thesis discovers a plausible association of human-built-forms' coevolution via temporal-occupied spaces [TOS] in Tmor-Da, an evolving settlement in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The evidence affirms that the key finding is a human-scaled microstructure of an internal agent-of-change with an occurrence of atypical TOS that abuts built forms. The specific relationship found is between a female dweller and her home, where she adapts the TOS area in front of her home for domestic activities such as chores. Over time, this type of TOS domestic area has a higher probability of being built over as an extension of her home. Consequently, her adaptive behaviour influences and affects her home, and together with other female dwellers who share the same adaptive behaviour, they collectively affect built-form changes in Tmor-Da. Embedded in this human-scaled microstructure is a hidden order composed of rules that adhere to the prescribed modalities; porosity in built-forms, human-scaled connectivity and flexibility of changing built-forms in their immediate setting. These co-adaptive rules allow the freedom or autonomy for dwellers to change the public/private state of space and adapt to human behaviour patterns in a place. Innovations are allowed to start at this human-scaled microstructure level. The allowance for these co-adaptive relations enabled by the complex duality of top-down and bottom-up rules, with interchanging roles between individual and collective people, negotiating between freedom and control activates a reciprocal relationship between humans and built forms. The occurrence of TOS is visible as a signal of this hidden order. The TOS serves as the adaptive mechanism that supports the coevolutionary and evolving human-built-forms' relationship that cultivate resilience and recursively self-generates the settlements over time. The human-scaled microstructure also links, creates and inculcates networks that increase the social capital among neighbours to evolve and thrive in their immediate setting first, then collectively influencing their settlement. This discovery enforces the argument that allowance for TOS can harness human adaptive nature to respond to unpredictable changes in this evolving human settlement. The activation of public/ private interfaces on TOS support the human-built-forms' coevolution relationship. The insights gained from this research lead to plausible strategies to design flexible (void) areas with the prescribed modalities and propose policies that allow rules for the occurrence of TOS. New explorations are open to ways that complement the nature of human adaptive behaviour, which activate communities to invent and reinvent their neighbourhoods to thrive against city fragmentation. Therefore, some rigid human-control factors embedded in the designed spatial layout of urban rules that may contribute to stagnated growth in cities can be loosened. This thesis demonstrated the benefit of critically integrating scientific knowledge with testing fieldwork findings before concluding. An overarching human-environmental adaptation theory guides the research with a system thinking approach. An analytical framework composed of Mehaffy's critical themes from `The New Science of Cities' investigated the rules and prescribed modalities of the hidden order. As a whole, this thesis provides some evidence, including statistics, to support Jacobs' assumptions via her observations of public/private interfaces study, which inculcates social capital of neighbourhoods to flourish. The discovery also extends De Landa's philosophical discourse of the centralised and self-organising coexisting processes, which sustain the complex dynamics of cities at the macro scale, to occur at the human-scaled microstructure level.
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ItemGovernance and planning for cultural diversity on the local scale in Victoria, Australia( 2021)The unprecedented volume of international migration in recent decades driven by globalisation has made planning for cultural diversity a reality and a practically necessary task for cities. Policy approaches to cultural diversity remain contested as Australia aspires to proceed to a ‘post-multicultural’ era, where cultural diversity is celebrated while social inclusivity and sense of belonging is promoted. This study focuses on how cultural diversity has been interpreted and addressed on the local scale against this backdrop to close the research gap on planning and governance for cultural diversity in local practices. Two local councils (the City of Melbourne and the City of Ballarat) along with their latest planning strategies addressing cultural diversity (the Melbourne for All People Plan 2014-2017 and the Ballarat Intercultural Strategy 2018-2021) are selected for a comparative case study between the inner and regional city in Victoria. A systematic analysis is conducted to identify the key factors shaping local plan making for cultural diversity by employing the 3Is framework, followed by a plan quality evaluation expanded on Fincher (2010)’s framework examining the ability of the local plans to comprehensively address cultural diversity issues. Empirical results highlight that cities are to establish authentic and aligned understanding of cultural diversity and to build local knowledge and tool to comprehensively respond to cultural diversity through meaningful encounters with stakeholders and community members to fulfil the institutional and attitudinal expectations towards the post-multicultural Australian society.
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ItemInformal Music Events, a Subculture’s Claim to the City( 2021)This thesis explores the role of informal music events, as a subcultural practice, in Melbourne, focusing on their potential to be recognised as an exercising of the right to the city through the theoretical lenses of place and social capital. This area of study was chosen in an attempt to shed light on potential inequalities within the production space of Melbourne. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were used to gauge the presence of place processes and social capital within informal music events and understand the experience of these events from the point of view of the event organisers. The six place processes were found to be present along with two social capital typologies, indicating that there is place-based social value to this subculture that would make it valuable for mediation with planners and policy makers. Informal music events were found to be an alternative to the competitive formal live music venues, but also served as a key creative starting point that allowed organisers to access these formal venues later. This competitive creative environment was perceived to be related to policy such as the late-night freeze and the urban redevelopment of Melbourne’s inner municipalities. If planners are to foster creative subcultures that create social value within the city, then there needs to be a mediation of claims to the city to ensure that less economically viable subcultures may access formal spaces to prevent urban conflicts around land usage.