Monash Adjunct professor joins Monash Architecture academics and students in ‘Stronger Together: Housing as a Common Good’ studio

Monash Adjunct Dana Cuff, Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Director of cityLAB, ran a two-week intensive workshop as part of the Stronger Together: Housing as a Common Good studio for Monash Master of Architecture students in May.

The studio, led by Dr Jacqui Alexander and Pia Socias, investigates tactics and tools to wrestle back inner-city land from the speculative market to foster greater housing access and equity in Australia.

Learning from local and international case studies, it considers the barriers and opportunities for implementing new ownership and tenure models at home, working across a series of test-sites in Fitzroy, Melbourne, where socio-economic diversity is under threat as a result of rental precarity, the rising cost of living and the proposed demolition of public housing.

The studio becomes a vehicle for exploring housing activism in parallel cities, in collaboration with Dana Cuff, and a site for collaboration with local politicians, stakeholders and others involved in the design and delivery of dwellings.

The Stronger Together studio follows on from a body of research developed by Jacqui Alexander as part of her doctorate, Dwelling on the Platform: Housing Access and Equity in the Digital Society.

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