Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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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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ItemTransformative processes for architectural design: a heuristic study of regenerative practices( 2020)This research investigates the role of design processes in nurturing initiatives and outcomes beyond the provision of physical infrastructure. Intertwining theory and practice, the research approach combines Heuristic Inquiry, Case Study and Design Research methods. Building on the literature and two case studies in Australia and Colombia, this thesis proposes the Enabling Design Process approach (EDP). The EDP recognises the ‘regenerative’ and ‘transformational’ capacity of design processes to nurturing collective and individual actions towards more inclusive, resilient and beneficial interactions in the creation of a project. The thesis starts by exploring literature that provides a planetary context to design processes, such as the concept of Transitions, the Ecological Worldview and the Social-Ecological System. Then it examines existing and emerging approaches in design, including literature that argues for the need to expand both the accessibility and agency of architectural design practice. The case studies provide demonstrations about how the different concepts in the literature work in practice allowing the emergence of the creative synthesis - The Enabling Design Process approach. The creative synthesis brings literature and case studies together to propose principles, capabilities and activities to apply to the design process of projects. The design process to rebuild a school project in Nepal offered a learning opportunity to put the creative synthesis into practice, providing insights into the potential and challenges of its application. The thesis concludes by discussing the possibilities of applying Enabling Design Processes in future projects and the ability of these processes to enable agency (individual and collective), support communities through significant change and to increase living systems awareness while designing built environments. This thesis offers four main contributions. The first is linking different theories through practice and, by doing so, contributing to various bodies of literature. The second is a methodological contribution to research in design and creative practices. The third is highlighting close connections between design and the social context, making design a process of ongoing dialogue able to raise levels of mutual understanding. The fourth is a design approach that enables designers and stakeholders of built environments to nurture social, ecological and personal development. By providing an intersection between different bodies of literature through practice, the thesis contributes to Transition theory, Regenerative Design and Development and Agency in design practice literature.
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ItemThe instruments of transitional urbanism: The mobilisation of temporary-use projects in state- and market-led urban development( 2020)Research in “temporary-use” urbanism — the interim use of vacant land and buildings — has identified a shift from a citizen-driven process to one enabled and managed by the state and the market. Amid this colossal pantomime of actors, projects, plans and capital, however, the field lacks studies of the value in co-opting this short-term activity for larger-scale urban development. These values, or useful benefits of temporary-use projects, impact a range of areas including urban design, architecture, planning, policy and property development. This dissertation argues that the longer-term value of temporary-use projects for urban development are embedded in knowledge hidden within organisations and actors. Through a comparative research framework, this dissertation examines how specific value can be transferred to larger-scale urban development via people and projects.