Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemFrom Environmental Data to Landscape Design: Responding to urban heat in inner city Melbourne( 2023-05)External site design is traditionally the domain of landscape architecture and urban design, yet the challenges of climate change in inner urban projects require joint expertise from the sciences, engineering, planning, architecture, and landscape architecture. Despite the increasing need for collaboration, little research examines how these diverse disciplinary values, methodologies, and knowledge come together in the design of the built environment. With a focus on Melbourne, Australia, a city known for its fluctuating climate, this thesis addresses this gap through an interrogation of the multi-disciplinary processes which inform the conceptualisation of designing for urban heat. Part One (chapters 2-4) comprises an extensive literature review tracing the development of environmental data, simulation, and thermal sensation research. This section documents the major theoretical and technical drivers influencing how architects, landscape architects and engineers conceptualise and engage with thermal conditions for designing external urban space. Part Two (chapters 5-7) then turns to the challenges of designing for heat in the unique climate of Melbourne, Australia. Chapter five establishes the core models of built environment interdisciplinarity and further draws on theory from social and political geography to highlight the influence of institutional, sociological, and epistemic values in shaping how disciplines come together in response to complex problems like urban heat. These values provide the analytical lens for exploring the policy and design case studies in the final two chapters. Chapter six focuses on the evolution of climate policy related to heat in inner Melbourne, where the institutional response, aided by the rise of digital tools, has shifted from risk assessment towards collaborative planning models, followed by design guidelines and tools. Chapter seven focuses on a major built project that foregrounds the landscape's value and addresses urban heat in the initial project proposal. This final analysis traces the evolution of that project through the design brief, interviews with designers and the constructed outcome. This study reveals layers of misalignment from policy to practice, which shape how urban heat is addressed in external site design. Fragmentation of the Australian climate governance structure and the adoption of loading-dock models privilege science in policy development and contribute to persistent implementation gaps between research priorities, policy-led ambitions, and design in the competitive built environment industry. In all contexts, the role of external space is overloaded with competing demands, from climatic and ecological performance to community engagement, social programming and functional concerns like access and maintenance. Finally, this thesis demonstrates that while technology, simulation, and data provide more knowledge and tools for working with the complex conditions of urban heat, it cannot be assumed that they offer the answer. Instead, institutional frameworks, power dynamics and conflicting disciplinary values continue to shape the success of policy and design in addressing the demands of climate change.
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ItemBeyond the "bare bones" of social housing: Designing with nature for health( 2023)Despite evidence indicating a correlation between well-designed living environments and health, many people live in inadequate and poorly designed homes. The need for high-quality design is especially significant in the context of social housing, where many residents come from backgrounds of poverty, trauma or disability. Much of the current discussion around social housing in Victoria is focused on increasing supply to meet demand. However, the design quality of this housing is incredibly significant, given the psychological, physiological and social effects it can have on residents. The health impacts of housing can be enhanced by providing human connections to nature in design. The positive impacts of natural design elements on health and wellbeing are well documented in literature, however not in the context of social housing. This thesis addresses the social housing research gap using the City of Port Phillip as a case study. Two qualitative research questions are considered: (1) How are therapeutic landscape design principles represented in planning policy? (2) What are the perceived opportunities and challenges for integrating the natural healing environment into social housing? A policy analysis has been undertaken to examine the strategic council objectives and statutory planning mechanisms guiding design and development outcomes. Semi-structured interviews with public and private sector stakeholders involved in sustainability and social housing inform a thematic content analysis of the key challenges and opportunities to designing with nature. Overall, the research finds that the natural healing environment is poorly integrated into the City of Port Phillip’s planning policy, potentially due to challenges in quantification and measurability, limited social housing funding and assumed high cost of nature. Identified opportunities include knowledge sharing and capacity building as well as incorporating lived experience and evidence-based design.
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ItemThe Potential for Cross Laminated Timber to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions Associated with Buildings( 2023-02)Cities around the world are facing the challenge of accommodating the growth of their population while mitigating climate change. In 2016, Australia, like 195 other nations, signed the Paris Agreement which aims to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to limit mean global temperature rise below 2 degrees C. The construction and building industry is responsible for 39% of global GHG emissions, with the manufacture of steel and cement representing 9% of global emissions. In the last decade, an innovative wood-based construction material known as cross laminated timber (CLT) has been introduced as an alternative to reinforced concrete for the primary structure of buildings, and many researchers have shown its potential to reduce the GHG emissions associated with buildings. However, this research has identified that despite a focus on embodied GHG emissions in most publications, most are lacking complete scopes and implementation of innovative methods and data. Using a real case study building (CSB) primarily constructed with CLT, and a hypothetical reference building (RB) constructed with conventional materials, this study has quantified and compared the GHG emissions of both buildings over a service life of 50 years. Methods in this study included the implementation of a hybrid life cycle inventory approach that combines both process and input output data. The results showed that the overall GHG emissions of the CSB exceeded that of the RB by 5.2 % over a service life of 50 years. For both buildings, the embodied GHG emissions represented more than three quarters of the overall GHG emissions, and the greatest difference between buildings’ results occurred at the end of life stage, highlighting the potential sensitivity of the end of life of scenario. However, this study has also shown that CLT has the potential to reduce GHG emissions associated with buildings, by extending the service life of buildings and reusing wood-based-products into subsequent projects to divert them from landfill at the end of their life. There are significant challenges to design and build for GHG emissions performance. From the lack of adapted, accurate and efficient tools to inform designers about GHG emissions performance, to implementing a design for deconstruction approach and circular thinking, this study has shown the need for a paradigm shift in the design process. This study also emphasised the lack of consensus regarding some methods such as biogenic carbon accounting and the need for further research in this area. Furthermore, this shift towards designing and building for GHG emissions performance and research advancement are required to accelerate if the Construction and Building industry is to play a key role in limiting global temperature rise below 2 degrees C.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableParks, promenades, prosceniums, and piazzas: performance and performativity in the designed public spaces of Melbourne, 1850-2000( 2023-02)Despite the extensive scholarship dedicated to the history of Melbourne’s public realm, there are few studies which consider a spectrum of designed public spaces in relation to their changing social context. (Designed public spaces are dedicated areas within the public realm purposefully shaped around social relations). Architectural histories of public places usually concentrate on the creators, their intent, and architectural form without necessarily examining the range of social practices or behaviours over time. Paradoxically, these destabilising socio-historical processes are key to understanding how design might shape better social and civic outcomes— especially when considering the limitations of historical antecedents. Rather than focusing on why public spaces fail in comparison to these normative models, more research is needed on how valued public spaces work as a social reality. This thesis aims to understand more about the design, use and meaning of public space by employing a version of Lefebvre’s spatial triad as a framework to analyse a range of case studies in central Melbourne, from 1850 to 2000. It focuses on how spatial form is crafted by individual or successive designers in relation to fluid or conflicting expectations, perceptions, values, and practices to produce resilient yet meaningful places. The research project draws on several social theories to discuss the findings including Jeremy Benthem’s panoptic model for self-disciplining subjects, Walter Benjamin’s “flaneur,” Richard Sennett’s open city concept, James Fredal’s idea of mutual visibility, Sharon Zukin’s conceptualisation of civil society, and performative theories by Judith Butler and Lisa Henry-Benham. All examined architectural frontages, thresholds and open spaces demonstrated coherent design responses to known spatial practices and conflicts, however, the better examples incorporated theatral space. Theatral designs guided attention towards co-performers in shared space, or towards performers on open, accessible stages framed by architectural prosceniums, landscapes or panoramas. Such spatial arrangements enhanced desirable social performances and simultaneously constrained “performativity” (repeated, unexpected acts which could subvert or consolidate space). In this thesis, I argue that by encoding public spaces for a select set of performances, and a degree of performativity through theatral approaches, designers could establish a basis from which to calibrate built form for evolving social norms, new visitors and shifting spatial practices. Recasting designed public space in this light enables architects and historians to move beyond the assumption that public space is static setting for a stable public. More significantly, this study develops the idea of theatral space which design practitioners might find useful for creating more enduring and successful public places.
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ItemTransaction Costs and Entrepreneurial Discovery in House Building Innovations: A Study of Developers’ Behaviour in Ghana( 2022-12)Innovative housing is necessary to address crucial housing problems in Sub-Saharan Africa, including inferior quality and unaffordability while delivering sustainable housing. That notwithstanding, innovation housing investments are limited, and adoption failures are common. At the same time, despite several innovation barrier studies, there are limited insights into developers' discovery of viable opportunities to adopt specific innovative technologies and adoption outcomes (failed, successful or otherwise). This dissertation develops and implements an institutional approach (integrating transaction costs economics and entrepreneurial theories of opportunity discovery) to understand the innovation experiences of the earliest adopting developers of walling innovations (first movers) in Ghana. The specific research questions examined are: 1. what are the critical constituents of transaction costs (TCs) to the developer in the context of walling innovation, and to what extent do they influence actual technological innovation choices of developers? 2. to what extent do these TCs influence innovation adoption outcomes? 3. whether and to what extent does the relationship between different perceived uncertainties and TCs determine developers’ walling innovation choices? 4. what governance mechanisms do developers use in reducing the TCs associated with discovering innovation opportunities and their adoption? The study applied a mixed research method design, with Accra and Kumasi, Ghana's main real estate markets, as case studies. In total, eighty-two developers validly completed the survey questionnaires (Accra – 78, Kumasi - 4), providing data on their perceived innovation uncertainties, TCs and innovation history, among others. Their responses were analysed using correlations, principal component analysis and regressions to examine the uncertainties and TCs associated with their walling technologies adopted. Content analysis techniques were used to examine the qualitative data from in-depth interviews with the first movers, walling technology suppliers, sector ministry and departments, bank, key informants and a building research institution (15 respondents total). The findings reveal limited walling innovation among developers. Eighty-six per cent of the 82 developers always or mostly used conventional sandcrete blocks. Six per cent of developers discontinued the use of pozzolana, burnt clay bricks (7.6%), compressed earth (1%), interlocking blocks (4.6%), aerated concrete (9.1%), and modular prefabricated housing (15.2%). Positive intentions to adopt an innovative walling material were distinct from historical practices. Among the first movers, identified walling innovations (burnt clay bricks, modular prefabricated housing, aerated concrete, compressed earth, pozzolana, expanded polystyrene system, and aluminium formwork) have limited sustainability dimensions. They are also mainly sourced exogenously. Prototyping developments/building showhouses through mainly vertical integrated development processes was the commonest governance approach to opportunity discovery and reducing the associated TCs with the increased administrative control offered by in-house coordination. It allowed developers to coordinate information from relevant stakeholders (incl. financial institutions, planning authorities and potential homebuyers). Moreso, at the pre-technology adoption stage, a mix of governance mechanisms, the lone genius, outsourcing, vertical integration, and spot market transactions were observed, each with different TCs depending on whether the adopter was a developer and technology supplier, a developer-builder or both. The study further identifies and discusses the critical TCs incurred in coordinating dispersed non-price knowledge associated with the different innovation outcomes (e.g. four failed adoptions, one discontinued). Contrary to popular conceptions that the high TCs associated with innovations adversely affect innovation tendencies, their effects are mixed. Those adopting a new technology did not perceive lesser TCs. Their impact is also conditional on the uncertainties around the discovery of market value. Market uncertainties have the most significant and consistent influence on innovation intentions and technology choices. However, reducing uncertainties does not linearly improve adoption probabilities. The study’s implications are that innovation policy should address the broad aspects of transaction costs to enable developers inexpensively identify and exploit innovation opportunities.
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ItemFeminists speak binary: Examining the role of digital technology in the feminist advocacy for women’s ‘right to the city’( 2023-01)This research is about using digital technology in feminist advocacy work addressing violence against women in the city. Violence against women is a wicked problem that affects women’s rights and freedoms. Wicked problems are considered as hard-to-define and difficult to address without an immediate/easy solution. Feminist advocates address violence against women using tactics that include research, lobbying, alliance building, and communication. Advocacy work increasingly involves the use of digital technology; specifically, the use of digital tools for data management and social media platforms to disseminate information for awareness. This use of technology creates a tension between the origins of digital technology in the patriarchal-capitalist system and the purpose of feminist advocacy of dismantling that very system. This research explored this tension through a single case-study of a feminist organisation – Safetipin – and their work in Delhi between 2013-2019. Safetipin, a tech social enterprise, offers digital data management tools for capturing women’s experiences within the city. Working with its advocacy partners, Safetipin supports inclusive urban planning practices that improve women's lives in the city. This research used a rights-based approach and the notion of women’s right to the city to explore Safetipin’s work and identify the patterns of change resulting from this work. Framing the city as a complex adaptive system and using advocacy evaluation as the conceptual framework, this research examined how feminist advocates can create urban change using digital technology. This work is based on a qualitative approach involving the analysis of twenty-three semi-structured interviews with Safetipin’s stakeholders. This research argues for the importance of building the capability of stakeholders/agents within a system to drive systemic change. This argument is based on the understanding that large-scale systemic change depends on people within that system, their attitudes, and their behaviour. Individuals and organisations learn and evolve in response to the context within which they operate. Individuals differ from organisations which have complex processes, systems, and multiple individuals who govern their operations. As a result, while organisations can be slow to change, individuals can be simpler targets for advocacy efforts. Using new forms of knowledge management facilitated by digital technology, feminist advocacy organisations can engage with a wide range of people and seek to affect change in their attitudes and behaviours to create conditions for systemic change. This research found that Safetipin navigates the tension between the patriarchal-capitalist origins of digital technology and the purpose of feminist advocacy work by weaponising the reverence for technology at the individual and systemic level. It found that Safetipin leverages new forms of knowledge products generated from digitally managed data to engage with individuals within government organisations and building their knowledge on the issue of violence against women. This research also identifies the gap in the literature on the meaning of safety in relation to violence against women in urban contexts. The research highlights assumptions about women's experiences of violence and safety that undermine implementation of interventions for meaningful change within the urban landscape.
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ItemLooking Through Layers: Towards a Post-Colonial Approach to Placemaking Evaluation( 2023-03)Evocative in its promise, placemaking has become popular as communities and cities around the world seek to reclaim or foster a stronger sense of place. Yet placemaking’s concern with context, intangible concepts like “sense of place” and the slipperiness and holistic complexity of place itself makes the evaluation of placemaking practice problematic for practitioners and researchers. The nascent nature of placemaking evaluation discourse means there is little understanding of what constitutes effective placemaking practice, nor an understanding of the contribution evaluation might make to place. Such difficulties are amplified in the land known as Australia, where placemaking is conducted on stolen land, remain enmeshed in a cult of denial afflicting built environment disciplines. Part of the violence of settler-colonial urbanism involves an extractive and exclusionary approach to planning that sees place as a passive tabula rasa to be exploited. This PhD thesis explores post-colonial possibilities for placemaking evaluation. The task is approached by exploring interactions between Indigenous and settler ways of knowing and working with place to identify ways of working in evaluation that can contribute to a practice of healing, non-injury and an expanded conception of placemaking as a practice of stewardship. The research investigates three placemaking interventions on unceded Kulin Nations land, using an embodied autoethnographic research method to explore the trajectory of place and its stories. I approach the task as a second-generation settler born on Wadawurrung Country, whose approach to place is shaped by my positionality and life experience. The research delivers a platform for an iterative approach to evaluation designed to support the full lifecycle of a placemaking endeavour and to foster the ongoing ability of place to hold life. The evaluation approach has been designed to cater for the specificity of place, with scope to be built on through the development of more granular evaluation tools. In doing so, the research eschews the extractive, exclusionary approaches of settler-colonial urbanism, showing how placemaking practice and evaluation can contribute to a post-colonial future. I respectfully acknowledge that this work has been done on unceded Kulin Nations Land. I pay my respect to the Traditional Owners of this land, to Elders past and present and to Country itself.
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ItemHome, Hospitality and Confinement: The Villawood Migrant Hostel( 2022-10)The Villawood Migrant Hostel, open from 1949 to the 1980s, was one of the Commonwealth of Australia’s longest-running migrant hostels, providing temporary housing for migrants and refugees arriving under various assisted passage schemes. During the 1960s, selected hostels, including Villawood, underwent significant alterations, moving from portable structures inherited from the military to purpose-designed hostels. In 1976, on the same site but separate from the hostel, the federal government constructed detention facilities for deportation. When the migrant hostel ceased operation, some of its buildings were adapted for use in the expanding Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, which held refugees and asylum seekers subject to detention and, subsequently, mandatory detention. Central to the thesis are the spatial and architectural changes on the Villawood site relating to on-arrival accommodation and detention. The thesis asks whether the built forms demonstrate an association between the Commonwealth’s resettlement of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers and the framing of national identities in connection to ideals of house and home. Varying degrees of nation-state hospitality underscore this association. Commonwealth on-arrival accommodation is considered as an entry point into Australian citizenship and examined in connection to physical constructions of idealised ‘homes’ in Australia. Pivoting on this single case study, the site of the Villawood Migrant Hostel, the thesis investigates the built facilities in relation to the trajectory of immigration policies as they shifted: from official strategies to increase and organise the nation’s population after the Second World War, to the introduction of mandatory detention for refugees and asylum seekers the federal government classified as ‘unauthorised’ from 1992. The thesis’s site exploration ends in 1992, as the introduction of mandatory detention significantly shifted the landscape of immigration detention facilities emerging under the Commonwealth’s administration. In considering the parallel development of detention on site, the focus of the thesis is on the architecture of the new migrant hostel apartments constructed during the 1960s, which are examined as a platform to explore dwelling types used for temporary tenures. The buildings’ physical, spatial and material fabric are introduced alongside the racialised narratives circling migrant and refugee resettlement. These historical transformations on site reveal the complexities of nation-state hospitality to displaced people and assumptions about house and home as fixed phenomena in a settler-colonial context. Through the lens of architecture, this thesis approaches the history of nation-building in connection to migration and examines how national identities were influenced by and changed due to migrant and refugee arrivals during the period of study. The thesis’s underlying argument is that ideological and physical conceptions of home influence the political and public narratives surrounding historical migrant and refugee arrival and temporary housing options. The notion of home, as a form that is visualised and spatialised as an Australian ideal, has frequently been transitory and discursively marked by cultures of both hospitality and spatial violence. In making this link, the thesis offers a reading of housing as connected to the nation-state to investigate the configuration and influence of housing ideals.
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ItemParks, bins and bags: Socially engaged art practice supporting young people’s hope and agency about the future of the environment( 2022)Most young Australians are keenly aware of the increasing and worsening global environmental issues arising from human activity including climate change, rising sea levels, water and air pollution, habitat destruction, extreme weather events and species extinction. These young people understand the urgency of the situation and have been passionate about combatting this complex global issue. Despite their repeated demands for action in the largest climate focused rallies in history, few pro-environmental policy changes have been made. Young people’s hopes for their future are being replaced with a sense of powerlessness, anxiety and despondency. There is a pressing need to develop new strategies that honour young people’s ideas about actions for the environment, and that develop and celebrate their agency and sense of hope for the future. In undertaking this research, my aim was to explore the potential of contemporary socially engaged art practice/s as one such strategy. This Thesis by Creative Works involved the development and facilitation of three socially engaged art projects with young people (aged ten to seventeen years old) within primary and secondary school settings in Melbourne, Australia. My thesis explores how these young people were empowered to feel agency and hope for the future of the environment producing tangible, proenvironmental outcomes through a range of practical, creative activities and events. These were the transformation of disused land into a park, making and selling recyclable produce bags at the local supermarket and the creation of an environment-friendly waste processing system in a school. The activities and events involved, developed by the students and myself, had an emphasis on conversation and collaboration as key facilitators of change. Specifically focusing on social engagement, the projects supported students to explore, articulate and activate their ideas, and operated as both a mode of enquiry and an expressive artform. The participants’ responses to interviews, questionnaires, surveys and the projects themselves demonstrate how the use of socially engaged art practices significantly shifted and supported the students’ sense of hope and agency about the future of the environment. The findings, analysis and discussion presented in this thesis contribute to theories of socially engaged art practice, education and young people, providing vital, new and engaging approaches to pro-environmental arts practice, education and action with young people.
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ItemInstitutional Barriers to Mixed-Use Development around Transport Nodes : A Brimbank Case Study( 2023)The consolidation of urban land is practiced worldwide, this includes vitalising suburban areas, upgrading urban density, promoting economic growth, and providing services and amenities to the community. Mixed-use developments are one of the ways in which urban land is consolidated, mixed-use developments are attractive, functional, and sustainable, which makes them a popular choice of development. The benefits of these developments are countless, however, there are limitations to their development and factors which affect their applicability worldwide. This paper engages in the discussion of mixed-use developments are transport nodes in the Australian context, and more specifically within the City of Brimbank in the state of Victoria. The City of Brimbank is chosen as a case study based on the two major public transport projects traversing the Sunshine Train Station and the importance of the area acting as a major gateway into the city for individuals living in the western suburbs of Melbourne and Regional Victoria. This paper aims to establish what factors affect the applicability and implementation of mixed-use developments in and around the Sunshine Train Station and Sunshine Town Centre precinct. To address the research gap of place-based knowledge and locational attributes, this research engages in a qualitative analysis through the analysis of local and state policy and professional experience. The findings highlight the institutional barriers of implementation to be related to government investment, feasibility studies, economic costs, private sector engagement, and community resistance. This thesis has contributed to academia through place-based research of the feasibility of implementing mixed-use developments in the Australian context and encourages academics to explore this space of urban planning in the context of managing issues of urban sprawl and population growth.