Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses

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    The architectural profession in Melbourne 1835 to 1860
    Lyall, Donald Sutherland ( 1965)
    As the traveller of 1835 rounded the last bend in the Yarra to glimpse the little settlement at Melbourne, his thoughts could hardly have turned to the cities of his homeland. Yet within twenty five years, its original thirteen buildings were to be obliterated in a building expansion unprecedented in Colonial history. Within this period, over one hundred architects came to Melbourne, some to stay, others to remain only briefly. The lure of gold enticed some, others, despairing of success in the overcrowded English profession, came as squatters, as architects, as speculators, some were tradesmen, engineers, surveyors. From this diverse assemblage came the designs for the more important buildings of the city. (From introduction)
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    Two Scots in Victoria: the architecture of Davidson and Henderson
    Willingham, Allan ( 1983)
    Research for this dissertation began in February 1970 with a part-time post graduate, study to identify and document the architectural heritage of the Western District of Victoria. The initial program of study, which was centred on my birthplace, Camperdown, and the surrounding municipality of the Shire of Hampden, concentrated on an investigation of the many pastoral homesteads located in this rich grazing region of Victoria. Although the task proved to be both expansive and expensive, it was quickly established that throughout the nineteenth century, Scottish immigrants to the Port Phillip Colony of New South Wales exerted a strong, distinctly Caledonian influence on the patterns of settlement and cultural development of the lands known as 'Australia Felix'. In many instances, it was apparent that Scottish architectural traditions had been directly transplanted into an Australian context with a landscape altogether reminiscent of the Lowlands and Border Country of Scotland. In mid 1972, my research program was reduced in extent and redirected towards an investigation into the nature of this Scottish presence, and the influence of Scottish architects in the development of identifiable architectural traditions in Western Victoria. An index of the building and architectural data contained in the files of the Geelong Advertiser from 1840-1888 was prepared and a chronological account of the development of homestead architecture in the Western District was subsequently framed. Although several architectural firms were associated, with varying degrees of success, with the pastoral industry of the region, one firm, that of the architects Alexander Davidson and George Henderson, dominated the building industry at the height of the wool boom in the 1870's. A chance follow up to a footnote in Margaret Loch Kiddle's authoratitive, social history of the Western District Men of Yesterday (1961), during a visit to Scotland in 1972 led to the discovery of George Henderson's papers in Edinburgh. This extensive collection of letters, drawings and photographs, which was kindly made available to me by Mrs. E.S. Phillipps, the daughter of George Henderson, relates to the careers of the architects Davidson and Henderson in Australia and also to the earlier practice of their mentor, the noted Edinburgh architect John Henderson. Included in the collection are 115 letters, written by George Henderson to his mother in the period 1867-1877, whilst working in Australia. These monthly epistles provide a unique and extremely frank, personal and detailed account of an architectural practice in Western Victoria in the nineteenth century and form the basis of this dissertation, which is essentially a study of the architecture of Davidson and Henderson.
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    Glass' Creek and Hay's Paddock: the background history of a park
    Kelso, M. H. ( 1984)
    This case study relates the history of a controversy in the Melbourne suburb of Kew, about the development of public open space. The space consisted of an existing park, through which a creek flowed and proposed parkland adjacent to it, which was private farmland when the history began. The controversy was activated by a group of residents who opposed the Municipal Council's plans to underground the Creek and to build three ovals. They wanted the Creek reconstructed and the site developed as a "natural" environment. The dispute focused on three issues: treatment of the degraded, urban creek; use of the land for active or for passive sport, and the values ascribed to the land. The case study is based on documentary material from the files of the main organisations involved, and on interviews with some participants. It covers the period 1971 to 1981, describing the area, the interests of the main organisations, the history of their attitudes, proposals and decisions. The problems of urban creeks are outlined. The report describes how Glass' Creek was reconstructed and some of the problems associated with that. It considers why the recreation conflict was protracted and concludes that this was due to differing belief systems about the value of the land itself, which could only be resolved by political means. Finally, the case study examines what "natural" meant and how participants expressed their values towards the land through physical and symbolic proposals for development of the site. The case study illustrates problems in the planning structure and raises questions for landscape architects about the relationship of people to their physical environment and the way in which they invest it with meaning.
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    An investigation of salt marsh dynamics: a study of salt marsh at Jack's Beach, Westernport Bay, Victoria
    Denis, Lee ( 1982)
    Many studies of the environmental factors influencing the occurrence and zonation of salt marsh (and mangrove) communities may be found in the literature, however few of these studies consider all of the environmental and vegetation factors as integral components of a dynamic system. The present study gathers together quantified environmental and vegetational information, including the vertical zonation of vegetation, the relation of vegetation to tide levels, weather data, soil characteristics, and the relationships between these factors and soil salinity and soil water content, as an integrated investigation of salt marsh dynamics. Because of time and resource restraints, the collection of quantitative data was restricted to a relatively small area of salt marsh (including mangroves) at Jack's Beach in Westernport Bay, Victoria. However the wider implications for the salt marshes of Westernport Bay are discussed and some general inferences are drawn.
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    Decision making in landscape architecture: an examination of the notion of decision making during design review and its impact on design delivery for the Steampacket Place, Geelong
    Thomas, Katrina ( 2002)
    The aim of this research project was to examine the notion of decision-making during design review and its impact on design delivery. To achieve this aim, a multi award-winning project was selected to understand how decision-making influenced delivery of the project. The case study, Steampacket Place, Geelong, was examined to reveal, what criteria were employed to facilitate decision-making during the design review, and what were the responsibilities and capacities of design reviewers to influence the design delivery. Archival material for the project was used to construct a description of the events that led to design delivery. Focused interviews were carried out with members from the design review board and the project directorate to validate the archival data and to seek their opinions on the structure of the board and the design review process. The data was analysed to test the proposition that design review is about improving the quality of the physical environment and is a collaborative effort based upon shared communication between various groups and individuals to ensure that decision-making is a transparent process. This study describes how decision-makers worked with consultants to collaboratively develop and inform the design of both the public and private sectors. The success of the project owed much to the skills, professionalism and integrity of the Board members. Design quality was a key imperative for Steampacket Place and this was incorporated into the administrative structures created to manage both design review and project delivery.
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    Tourism planning and community consultation in metropolitan Melbourne
    Inbakaran, Christina ( 2002)
    This thesis explores consultation in relation to tourism plans and tourism aspects plans. It examines the extent to which councils involve the community in plan formulation, and the main methods used for the purpose. Community consultation and participation have been investigated by a number of authors. It is a topic that originated in the 1960s and its importance has grown enormously over the years. It has now become a pre-requisite for many projects. In the area of planning, consultation and participation are terms that are used almost synonymously. In this thesis the terms consultation and participation are both used to indicate the involvement of the community. This study evaluates the actual extent of community participation, from an assessment of the approaches of councils, to the points on the Shand-Arnberg Participation Continuum that the consultation methods reach. The study has a number of revelations regarding the people involved in the consultation process, cost and time factors, and the extent to which the community is actually involved in the tourism plans that are formulated. The literature on the subject has indicated that this process has a tendency to exclude the ethnic communities, low income and other minority groups. The trend so far has been to involve the middle class and the articulate groups that dominate a community. However, major findings of this study include that consultation is neither related to the demographic characteristics of society, nor the income of councils. The findings of this research have implications for both, the councils and the general public, and the way tourism developments are planned.
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    Risk management in construction: the extent of use of formalised risk management procedures in construction management project delivery systems in the Victorian construction industry
    Serratore, Brett B. ( 1996)
    The aim of this research is to determine the extent in use of formalised risk management procedures, in construction management project delivery system, in the Victorian construction industry. This has been undertaken by surveying and interviewing a number of organisations that provide construction management services in this sector of the Australian construction industry. The research aims to gauge the use of these procedures from the construction manager's point of view.
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    Refutations and conjectures: prolegomena to the study of architectonic themes
    Halik, Kim ( 1995)
    An examination, in two parts, of aspects of contemporary architecture concerned with issues of history, meaning and the practice of architecture as a form of intellectual discipline. The first part investigates the work of Italian born American architect, Romaldo Giurgola, one of the last architects in the lineage of Louis Kahn still abiding by many of the latter architect's architectural philosophy. The range of his works, built and unbuilt, are examined and seen to take up important theoretical and social themes in American architectural culture originating from the Jeffersonian era. Through an analysis of Giurgola's writings and theoretical statements on a range of issues his work is shown to contribute to a continuation of the tradition of modern architecture. The viability of this tradition is questioned, in the light of both theoretical and socio-political deficiences. Four Questions is an ontological interrogation of the meaning of a series of thematic terrains held to be significant for the formulation of a viable contemporary practice of architecture: the Public, The City, The House and Theory. Through an analysis of these themes, the study highlights what is seen to be a major shortcoming in the discourse of contemporary architectural culture- a lack of awareness of its acutely historical situation. Each section theorizes issues of architectural representation and relates these back to a condition of modernity. On this basis, those current trends which aim to locate the meaning of architectural work either in the field of social commitment, in the formulation of new urbanities or in new domestic typologies are criticized for insufficient awareness of the conditional and problematical nature of such pursuits. The last section, an excursus on architectural theory, indicates that an important species of contemporary architectural theory- Deconstruction- is indicative of a general trend that seeks to put aside the difficult conditionality of architectural production in the contemporary situation. Architectural theory which aims to share ground with philosophical discourses is argued to have become too abstract. As an alternative, it is suggested that the responsibility of the architectural theorist and the practitioner alike towards a discursive endeavour is located in a search for an engagement of architecture with reality which does not, however, sacrifice intellectual probity or transgress the limits of an architectonic definition of this reality. The projects included in the folio explore the small margin still allowable within a practice of architecture that seeks to explore the full range of architectural expression whilst maintaining the above described conditions of intellectual probity.
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    Modelling visual complexity of landscapes
    Thomson, Colina ( 1990)
    In the past, development projects such as transmission lines and other facilities have been constructed to meet the criterion of lowest cost. However, increasing community concern for the environment has led to changes in this attitude. In particular, concern over the visual impact of facilities such as transmission lines has led to the development of techniques to enable planners to assess the effect of these projects on the visual quality of the landscape. This study commences with a discussion of the techniques which have been developed to quantify the visual environment. The development of a computer-based method of analysis of the visual effect of transmission lines, devised by Hadrian et al (1988), is examined in detail. The importance of visual complexity of a landscape as a measure of the ability of the landscape to absorb changes is also examined. In general the study focuses on the development of a method for determining the visual complexity of a landscape scene from biophysical characteristics of the landscape. Two landscape areas were selected for the study which included three major landscape types of interest to transmission line planners. The landscaped scenes to be studied in each of these areas were photographed and their complexities as perceived by observers were determined. A series of measurements of biophysical data for the scenes was made using two methods which involved taking physical measurements directly from the photographs. Measurements for each scene were also taken from a Geographic Information System databases of the areas. These various biophysical measurements were then correlated with the perceived complexity and a number of models for the perceived complexity were developed. The best correlations were found to be those which related perceived visual complexity to landscape features recorded in the Geographic Information System database.