Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses

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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.
Understanding the relationship between urban design and walking to inform sustainable urban development: a case study of Hanoi

Ho, Thanh Phuong ( 2022)

Background Walking is increasingly seen as a crucial instrument in promoting sustainability all over the world due to its various benefits to the health and well-being of urban citizens as well as the environment and the economy of the cities. A growing body of evidence in the literature, mostly from Western countries, shows that urban design largely influences the prevalence of walking in urban environments. However, there is a limited number of studies on the relationship between walking and urban design from low- and middle-income countries in Asia, where urban forms are traditionally more compact, complex and with multiple layers and varied urban typologies. Due to the advent of rapid motorisation and urbanisation, Asian cities are now losing their traditional walking lifestyle and instead, embracing urban development that prefers access via private motor vehicles rather than active transport modes such as walking. Aim and objective Choosing Hanoi as the case study, the present thesis explores the relationships between walking and urban design by investigating the prevalence, variation, and characteristics of walking across the city, and at the same time, evaluating urban design across the varying urban typologies. Methods. Using a multidimensional approach, four studies were conducted simultaneously across Hanoi including a travel survey focusing on walking, an urban design qualities audit, a perceived urban design survey and a study on environmental factors such as weather and pollution. The obtained data are analysed together to explore the relationship between them. Results The results highlighted that walking still plays an important role in Hanoi’s urban transport with a high share in both the number of trips and travel time. Urban typologies and their characteristics have been found to have particular impacts on urban design and walking. Old, high-density and mixed-use urban typologies like Ancient Quarter tended to report better urban design and higher walking rates than modern but low-mix typologies like New Urban Areas. The likelihood and the prevalence of walking were also significantly associated with different factors of demographic, perceived urban design and urban design qualities. Land use mix was found to be positively associated with both walking rates and time, suggesting it is the most important urban design feature in promoting walking. Environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, air and noise pollution did not significantly influence the prevalence of walking. Conclusion Overall, the study contributes to our understanding of the prevalence of walking and urban design in Hanoi, providing policymakers, planners, urban designers and architects with important insights for sustainable urban design policies, strategies and interventions.
Victorian architectural ornament

Errey, Elva L. ( 1972)

Summary. Part One Is concerned with a technical and historical account of the chief materials employed in architectural ornament in the period indicated; cement and plaster, terracotta and brick, wood and metal. Part Two is a catalogue of the ornamental types and forms produced in these materials based on an analysis of over two thousand buildings and illustrated by just over one thousand drawings, encompassing the following categories : cement and plaster - acroteria, parapet treatments (chiefly pediments), scrolls, finials, balustrades, window surrounds, shells, keystones, swags and festoons, studs, friezes, consoles or brackets, capitals and chimneys (rendered); clay products - ridge cresting, finials, chimney pots, brickwork patterns and chimneys (exposed brick); wood - gable end fillers, bargeboards, struts or brackets, verandah woodwork; cast-iron - balustrades, friezes, brackets, ridge cresting and window guards; pressed metal - wall and ceiling lining, centre roses, cornices, roofing finishes and finials. Part Three deals with the buildings as a whole, considering stylistic changes and the typology of distinct groups of structures under the headings: offices, warehouses, factories and banks; shops - major and minor; hotels; town and shire halls; court houses; hospitals; schools; railway buildings; theatres and halls; miscellaneous public buildings; houses employing bricks in contrast colours; houses employing red brick with cream dressings; "Italianate" houses ; "Italianate" terraces; Queen Anne style houses; sub-Queen Anne and bungalow houses. The stylistic changes in general may be summarized broadly as proceeding from a mixture of details derived from Gothic and Classical sources applied to buildings of non-historical (nineteenth century) character via another pseudo-historical revival (Queen Anne in two major forms), followed by an admixture of fairly superficial Art Nouveau influence to a welter of historically oriented revivals and abstractions and simplifications of preceding forms. These developments overlap considerably and appear with variable force and diversity according to the type of buildings. Part Four is a brief account of the work of one hundred and seventy-five leading architects or builders of the period arranged alphabetically under the name of the architect or firm. The emphasis throughout is on dealing with as broad a range of examples as possible, rather than concentrating only on large scale and/or progressive projects.
What if Safety Becomes Permanent? Architecture and Music as a Site of Transing

Castricum, Simona ( 2022)

‘What if Safety Becomes Permanent?’ is about the rights, safety, and relationships gender-nonconforming people experience within the context of architecture and public space. Within the context of the global discourse on transgender civil rights, where cisnormative institutions often determine the parameters of the discussion, this work centres on the lived testimony of trans and gender diverse people. By exploring gender nonconformity through my personal narrative at the intersection of architecture, music and trans identity, I engage ‘world-building’ as a speculative, creative, and practical methodology in architectural and urban rendering offering pragmatic thinking to engage an accessible discourse of trans visibility in architecture.
Learning environment affordances: Bridging the gap between potential, perception and practice

Young, Fiona ( 2020)

Over the past decade, there has been significant investment into new school buildings in Australia. This period of educational facility growth has given rise to the emergence of innovative learning environments (ILEs), spaces which exhibit a wider range of affordances for learning than traditional classrooms. Whilst ILEs are intended to offer more pedagogical opportunities for teachers and students, little is known about how the affordances of ILEs are being used. This study clarifies the concept of affordances within the context of physical learning environments, identifies how affordances are perceived by architects and teachers, and synthesises a range of strategies to support teachers to take advantage of ILE affordances to enhance deeper learning. The research is embedded within an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project called Innovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change (ILETC), which investigates how teachers across Australia and New Zealand can be supported to use ILEs to achieve deep learning goals for their students. This qualitative research project was conducted as two distinct studies. The first study involved investigating teachers’ and architects’ perceptions of affordances for learning across traditional and ILE spaces in five educational facilities. The second study investigated teachers’ understandings and use of affordances in support of pedagogies for deep learning. An innovative methodological pairing of participatory action research (PAR) and co-design was employed to work with teachers from two secondary schools to develop understandings of the processes by which new learning spaces can be actioned for deep learning. Data were collected through workshops, semi-structured interviews and teacher reflections. Findings show differences in the perceptions of teachers and architects with respect to learning environment affordances, with teachers found to perceive more affordances for learning than architects. A taxonomy of affordances for varied teaching and learning approaches was also identified. Furthermore, strategies were developed to support teachers to take advantage of the affordances of ILEs. These strategies related to connections between infrastructure, school organisation and teacher practice.
Ethno-Architectural Contextualization of Housing for Smart Villages: A Multi-case Study in Assam, India

Katharpi, Velyne Ingti ( 2020)

Based on the Gandhian Philosophy of Adarsh Gram and Gram Swaraj, Smart Villages is a concept to enable rural development and bridge the rural-urban gap in India. It aims to empower the village and its residents to be self-dependent and active contributors towards holistic development of the country. As such, the ‘barefoot college’ in the village of Tillonia, Rajasthan, India, exemplifies the concept by showing that the rural people are able to thrive when given the right tools and environment. It does not imply that the rural has to become urban, but rather, it encourages and demonstrates how the knowledge and technology can be contextualised to the rural. Hence, the Smart Assam Project was developed in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, in collaboration with Assam Engineering College, Guwahati, Assam, India, to provide the environment to conduct research on creating Smart villages. The thesis explains the research problem that though there have been efforts to develop the rural, being regarded as backward in comparison to its urban counterparts instead of recognising the merits of ruralism and rurality, the approach taken towards housing is the same as an urban construction that its results are not as satisfactory to the residents, thereby, failing to contribute holistically towards development. As such, this thesis undertakes a contextualist pragmatic approach to gather and analyse data to develop an Information Framework, which enables the collation and dissemination of information regarding housing design and construction trends in the rural context, aiding a user-oriented bottom-up approach to rural housing. The research is divided into eight chapters where the first chapter states the aim, objectives, and research questions. It defines the scope of the research by focussing on architectural design and construction trends that shape the houses in the diverse socio-cultural contexts of four villages belonging to different ethnic cultures, across the districts of Karbi Anglong East, Karbi Anglong West, and Dima Hasao. As such, the research question addresses the aim and objectives of the research in three steps or sub-research questions. The first addresses the village and its surrounding regions as the causative context while addressing the household, family units and their houses as the subject that demonstrate the effect of the context to understand the causal process within the village. The second addresses the main causes that influence the architectural design and construction trends in the village among the elements that shape the causative context; and finally, the third addresses the missing components within the existing approach to incorporate it into a framework to enable better implementation of rural housing. In the second chapter indicates the scope of the research based on the understanding of rural, the rural-urban gap, the relevance of housing in rural development, and the role of architecture and architects in rural housing. The literature defines the research gap in approach, implementation and perception of rural housing schemes that deters the development of Smart villages. It shows that the socio-cultural aspects of the rural are relevant to the architecture and hence the rural construction trends. As such, a theoretical foundation is developed called Ethno-architectural contextualisation, based on the design-oriented research of environment-behaviour studies by Amos Rapoport (1963) and culture-oriented research of ethno-architecture by Gerard Toffin (1991). In the third chapter, the contextualist pragmatic approach helps shape a multi-case study research strategy which incorporates methods like cultural mapping, to study the village level causative context, and behaviour settings, to study the household level affected result, and analytic induction as a process of analysis to explain the causal process in both the village and the household levels of data collection. For the cultural mapping, transect walks and focus group discussions are conducted to gather data on the socio-cultural, socio-economic, historical, and environmental contexts. A questionnaire survey is conducted among the households to map the population based on the demographic data and socio-economic context of the village. This, along the house-type date of the households, helps to select five cases for the behaviour settings which is aided by an Interview-based projective technique and the AEIOU framework, a mnemonic coding structure, is used to analyse house layouts based on Activity, Environment, Interaction, Objects and User. The data is presented in the following fourth and fifth chapters based on the village scale data and household scale data, respectively. In the fourth chapter, the cases are presented according to the data collected in the transect walk and the focus group discussion that shares the designing and construction principles of the traditional house, before discussing the elements of the cultural ecology of each village. They are discussed based on accessibility and connectivity, historical background, socio-cultural practices and traditions, communication and knowledge sharing, community infrastructure, livelihood, resources and services and the traditional house. In the fifth chapter, due to brevity, only eight, out of the 18 household cases studied in the household level data collection process, are documented. The household is discussed based on the changing house layouts that have come about due to reconstruction, renovation or adding extensions to the house. Using the AEIOU framework, each house is presented and analysed to demonstrate the evolution of the house resulting from the contextual influences of the village. In the sixth chapter, the collective analysis of the preceding chapters of the context, the village and the subject, the architectural design and construction trends of housing is discussed as a complete process in the rural cultural. Through the discussions of the rural cultural ecology, the first sub-research question is answered. This leads to the discussion on the main causes that influences the housing practice and construction trends, which are multi-culturism and cultural assimilation, the role of the government and the role of the construction industry itself, thereby answering the second sub-research question. This leads to the suggested guidelines that need to be incorporated into rural housing scheme to promote a user-oriented bottom-up approach to housing, which answers the third sub-research question. In the seventh chapter, based on the discussion and suggestion from chapter six, the pragmatic contextualist approach encourages the research to revise a typical construction lifecycle project and contextualise it to a rural housing scheme implementation process. The process includes an information framework after the initiation stage and before the planning stage of the construction lifecycle that brings different key roles relevant to a user-oriented bottom-up rural housing in a collaborative approach to build effective forms of shelter. As a result, the Information Framework is used to inform the beneficiary of the skills, materials, and construction methods available to construct a self-built house through the rural housing scheme, thereby answering the main research question of the thesis. The eighth and final chapter reviews the progress of the research by providing a summary of each chapter and concluding the thesis with discussions of the contributions, limitation, and recommendations. In conclusion, this research set out to investigate a way to bridge the rural-urban gap through housing. In doing so, the literature review emphasized on the relevance of architecture and the role of architects in rural housing, which is unfortunately lacking in practice. The pragmatic contextualist approach of the research shapes a multi-case study research strategy which allows the researcher to conduct a research in two levels, the village level across four villages and the household level among 18 households. With the surplus of data regarding the causative context, the village, and the evolving nature of architectural design and construction practice, the analysis addressed the research questions that were presented in the first chapter, thereby explaining the rural cultural ecology, defining the main causes of architectural evolution, and producing suggestions for developing a user-oriented bottom-up approach to existing rural housing schemes. As a result, an information framework was developed based on the research methodology and the ensuing data collection and analysis process of gathering, processing, and collating data to disseminate information towards a well-informed implementation of the rural housing scheme.
The architecture of film: Tarr, angelopoulos and how to ride a wild horse

Amouzad Khalili, Hamid ( 2020)

With the dawn of moving images, architects started to develop an interest in studying and utilizing film for theorizing, critiquing and representing architecture. In recent years, a myriad of books and academic papers by architectural theorists have been published around the strong relationship between architecture and film. Simultaneously, leading architecture schools established subjects concerning the two interlocking arts, some academics dedicated their research career to studying the relationship between film and architecture, post-graduate degrees on film and architecture were devised and architects and architecture students have been involved in a significant trend toward creating architectural animations and film. However, despite the advances of digital filming and editing and its availability to the public, sophisticated technologies of lighting, modeling, simulation and texturing in CGI programs used by architecture students, architectural films and animations commonly present certain shared symptoms such as fast and disturbing camera movements, aimless editing, weak compositions and narrative-less montages. These symptoms reveal an unfortunate truth that architects still do not know how to use the moving images effectively, and this knowledge has yet to be successfully transferred to the discipline of architecture. This dissertation traces the roots of this challenge and tackles it in a series of research activities. This thesis proposes a toolbox named the ‘film-architecture matrix’ that can be used as a matrix of film design and analysis. Within the thesis, this film-architecture matrix is employed as an analytical tool in three chapters. The dissertation puts forward a pedagogical framework for teaching filmmaking to architects and utilizes the film-architecture matrix as the main design generator. In addition, this dissertation takes on the task of presenting and critically examining the two filmmakers, Bela Tarr and Theo Angelopoulos to architectural discourse. It is argued that the cinema of Tarr and Angelopoulos, and the cinematic movement represented by them known as ‘slow cinema’, entails certain features that make them useful studies to the field of architecture and can influence the quality of architectural films and animations, and the discipline of architecture in a broader sense.
Mystic Media: A Historical Account of Technological Transcendentalism within the Immersive Multimedia Environments of the 1960-70s

Lovell, Jonathan Paul ( 2019)

Throughout history, there has been a recurring impulse for artists to create Immersive Multimedia Environments (IMEs), which through the combined force of multiple artistic and communicative mediums, surround and suffuse the entire sensory field of their audience with the aesthetic stimuli required to construct an alternate reality. The first declarations of this impulse were often found in religious architecture; however, echoes of this ideal are heard throughout the last two centuries, from Richard Wagner’s demands for the Gesamtkunstwerk to the rhetoric of cyberspace that occurred at the turn of the millennium. This dissertation argues that many of these total works of art are designed with the intentions of implicating embodied and environmental phenomena, as a means of generating transcendental experiences within their audiences. To elaborate upon this contention within a detailed context, this thesis focuses on the Expanded Cinema movement of the 1960s and 70s. The ambitions of this movement were to invent a new cinematic language by deconstructing and reconstructing media technologies (film, video, computer graphics), live performances (theatre, dance, music) and the architecture of their presentation, so that audiences may become an integral part of the art. However, according to Gene Youngblood’s influential account of the movement called Expanded Cinema (1970), this scene of aesthetic inquiry had quickly accrued the transcendentalist rhetoric of the era, such as that espoused by the counterculture and Marshall McLuhan. To these artists, Expanded Cinema used the combined power of the psychedelic and cybernetic as means of experimenting with the embodied and environmental methods of expanding consciousness. To highlight the architectural contribution to this movement, this research conducts a cross-sectional and comparative study on how three IMEs of the Expanded Cinema movement employed different spatial strategies to curate the phenomenological and epistemological conditions that can evoke transcendental experiences within their audiences. Specifically, it explores the Labyrinth (1967), Cerebrum (1968), and the works of Pulsa (1966-73), by interviewing the people involved with these projects and investigating archival materials. These accounts are measured against the technological-mysticism found within Marshall McLuhan’s influential media theory, and against the psychological, sociological and anthropological discourse that best explain transcendental phenomena.
Urban narratives : museums + the city

Norrie, Helen Janeen ( 2013)

Cities provide the backdrop for contemporary life, with more than half the population of the world now living in urban areas. Cities provide the armature for both the everyday and for ceremony and ritual, establishing routines of movement, spectacle and meaning that are inherent to the conception, perception and lived urban experience. This study investigates the relationships between individual buildings and the 'site' in which they are located, highlighting the experience of the city as a series of related spaces, rather than merely as a set of individual objects. Contemporary theoretical conceptions of 'site' as a constructed concept are central to the argument, which contests that the relationships between buildings and context can be established through the orchestration of traversable (physical), visual, or conceptual connections. Three case studies - the British Museum in London, the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh and the Jewish Museum Berlin, all recent extensions to existing institutions - provide an exploration of the experience, spectacle and meaning of the museum within the 'site' of the city. This study examines the institutional narratives of museums and cities, both the rhetorical narratives that underpin conceptual meaning and associations, and the spatial narratives that are derived from the. orchestration of movement, spectacle and the perception of meaning through experience. This study proposes that through physical paths or traversable spaces; vistas or visual connections; and conceptual associations or theoretical ideas, the relationship between buildings and sites cans be understood as a constructed 'terrain of engagement'. This provides ways to consider the agency of architecture to assist in orchestrating connections between the museum and the physical and conceptual context of the contemporary city.
The business of green housing : towards a strategic view for adoption and diffusion

Kam, Margaret ( 2012)

Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses

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