Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses

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    Comparison of measured and perceived fundamental characteristics to identify strategies for increasing the rate of daily walking in suburban areas
    Panawannage, Thanuja Dilrucshi Nandapala ( 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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    Transaction Costs and Entrepreneurial Discovery in House Building Innovations: A Study of Developers’ Behaviour in Ghana
    Kavaarpuo, Godwin ( 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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    Home, Hospitality and Confinement: The Villawood Migrant Hostel
    Miller-Yeaman, Renee ( 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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    Parks, bins and bags: Socially engaged art practice supporting young people’s hope and agency about the future of the environment
    Kantor, Katherine ( 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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    The City of Melbourne’s Designed Ecology: Potentials for the Future Practice of Landscape Architecture
    Greene, Brent Francis Conway ( 2022)
    This research reveals how the City of Melbourne’s perception of ecological design, as exemplified in Royal Park and Birrarung Marr, has shifted since 1835, the year of permanent British colonisation. Attitudes are influenced by twentieth century nationalism and environmentalism, extreme climate events of the early 2000s, the neo-liberal economic preferences of successive Victorian governments from the 1990s onwards and community expectations of designed urban environments. These diverse perceptions have resulted in a poor alignment of ecological values between stakeholders such as policymakers, maintenance teams, landscape architects, governments and the wider community. By comparing the local case studies against designed urban ecologies in European and North American cities, this research reveals how the City of Melbourne’s approach has so far restricted local landscape architects in their experimentation with spontaneous ecosystems through practice.
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    Risking It: Transformational Art in Primary Education
    Walton, Clare Patricia ( 2022)
    Over the past 30 years, children’s access to risky activities and play has significantly decreased despite the mounting evidence that it supports children’s development. Discourse on children’s citizenship and right to engage in risky activities has been examined in the fields of child psychology, geography, urban planning and more recently, socially engaged arts, but there has been very little work investigating how the socially engaged arts practice can create an enabling environment for risky play situated inside the walls of the traditional school. Working across two campuses of a primary school in a regional city in south-east Australia with children (aged 9 to 11 years), this project used a socially engaged arts practice to support participants to build their own adventure playgrounds. The research was documented using photography, and audio recordings, and journal notations by the participants and the researcher. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with parents and teachers, the assisting teacher and artist’s assistant. Applying practice-led research methods and critical ethnography, the thesis found that measured risky play activates children’s citizenship and enables them to build stronger communities. It also revealed the challenges of addressing perceived risk to the school and to the lead researcher’s own practice as an artist. The creative component of this thesis has been developed as an Adventure Playground called Kids’ Urban Dreaming, built in collaboration with students across two campuses of a primary school in south-west regional Victoria. The documentation of the building of Kids’ Urban Dreaming is embedded within the thesis and includes photographic and video documentation. A summary of the creative component is a short video that features members of the Kids Urban Dream Team working together to create their adventure playground, highlighting how measured risky play can support children in the development of their active citizenship.
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    Do It Properly and Make The Most Of It: Western Australian Architects And The UK Working Holiday 1946-1960.
    Murray, Andrew Marshall ( 2022)
    This thesis examines the working holiday to the United Kingdom (UK), as undertaken by Western Australian architects between 1946 and 1960. Specifically, it charts the institutions, mechanisms and influences that shaped the development of this phenomenon, and the effect it had on the architectural profession in Western Australia. During this fifteen-year period, approximately thirty young architects made the journey from Perth to the UK to pursue work experience and further education. Here, they would typically spend several years working as architectural assistants, directly participating in the postwar rebuilding of Britain through the documentation and design of schools, factories, residential units, commercial buildings and cultural centres. Adopting a group biography approach, this study explores the paths and influences that shaped this tradition, which, by the end of the 1950s, was so entrenched in the lived experience of Perth architects that it was colloquially known as the ‘sixth year’ of the diploma course. The thesis charts the students’ routes travelled to and from the UK, the kinds of practices and type of work encountered, and the professional and social networks that were formed during their time there. Significantly, it looks at the role that this working holiday had in the making of a local architecture culture in Western Australia upon their return to Perth. Those architects who travelled and returned were able to funnel their experience and enthusiasm into producing buildings, editing journals, giving lectures, teaching, and performing in plays, in an effort to stimulate the local architectural profession and galvanise the local architectural community. This thesis argues that the working holiday had a major effect on the shaping and development of the architectural profession in Western Australia in the postwar period, and as a phenomenon that has yet to be acknowledged. The thesis also acknowledges the contribution that Western Australian architects, and by extension architects from across Australian and New Zealand, made to the architectural profession in Britain, providing labour, expertise and alternate perspectives across a range of major architectural projects.
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    Transitional strategies for innovation in landscape architecture practice
    Ivankovic-Waters, Jela ( 2022)
    Technological innovation in the built environments is rapidly evolving. Building Information Modelling (BIM) exemplifies how newly available technologies are influencing industry practices and theoretical approaches. Yet landscape architecture has been slow to progress beyond the early adopter phase in Australia. This lag is due to perceptions about technological incompatibilities with the practical needs of landscape architecture, but it also highlights limited discourse about innovation within the discipline. Landscape architecture is therefore at risk of falling further behind the advances made with BIM by its major disciplinary partners in engineering and architecture. This research investigates how landscape architecture is adopting BIM as an innovation. It aims to identify the main drivers, facilitators, inhibitors, and outcomes. The TOE framework is developed to explore the responses of four case studies in the technological, organisation and environment contexts. This lens enabled an examination of the contexts and transition between the stages of innovation from pre-adoption through to adoption and implementation. Data is primarily collected through qualitative methods of semi-structured interview. Cross-case analysis is based on a Grounded theory approach. Findings indicate environment factors, such as the market and industry forces are the main catalysts for innovation with BIM. Strategies reveal how landscape architecture is adapting organisation structures and processes to meet the shifts in business relations and digital design practices. Key to these strategies is leadership, collaboration, and skills specialisation. This empirically based research provides a theoretical method for analysing innovation at an organisation level, which has implications for the practice in the rapidly changing industry.
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    Flood Risk Reduction in a Dynamic Urban Context: Exploring the Urban-Water-Resilience Nexus
    Kabir, Saimum ( 2022)
    In the dynamic context of urban growth and environmental change, today’s cities are confronted by compounding effects resulting from interactions between socio-spatial changes and frequent hazards. In particular to existing urbanised areas, interrelated forces of historical development paths, the ongoing process of incremental urban change and environmental uncertainty pose critical challenges to the management of flood risk. This research aims to identify desirable pathways and associated challenges to dealing with flood risk in urban areas by examining the cross-scale dynamics of urban changes over a long time and their consequent effects on stormwater flooding. The study uses a mixed-method, single case study for the longitudinal and multi-scalar examination of the research objectives. Underpinned by complex adaptive systems thinking, it combines evolutionary resilience and risk-based strategies to identify pattern-process feedback within each scale as well as their cross-scale interactions. In the context of metropolitan Melbourne, findings show that historically, urban growth planning and water sectors took separate development paths and are now gradually converging towards an integrated urban-water management regime. However, a major challenge for urban resilience to floods still remains in a governance capacity to deal with flood risk in this area arising from broad-scale factors such as the aspect of path dependency, metropolitan growth targets, inadequate policy guidelines for slow-onset change management as well as local factors such as interconnected legacy risks, policy conflicts between local character and stormwater management objectives and overconsumption of land by the growing affluent society. The study also reveals that these factors may not affect the whole system evenly; rather risk distribution may be influenced by two physical properties of urban systems such as spatial heterogeneity in urban forms and characteristics of local drainage systems. Further, at the micro-scale, enhancing ‘balanced’ diversity in the housing system is found to be critical for enhancing resilience. Overall, these findings call for an integrated, spatially explicit approach to urban flood risk reduction that accounts for both spatial and temporal characteristics of urban form, and institutional capacity to modify them.