This studio explored the adaptive reuse of surplus government sites as new live/work precincts for small-scale urban manufacturing. Focusing on the former Coburg North TAFE and ex-VicRoads headquarters in Kew, students investigated how existing workshops, classrooms, offices, and industrial fragments could be strategically unbuilt, reassembled, and reprogrammed for contemporary forms of production.

The studio asked how Melbourne’s underused urban sites might support new economies of making, learning, and dwelling. Programs included food and beverage processing, furniture and garment making, ceramics studios, laser cutting workshops, 3D printing and CNC prototyping labs, artist studios, apprentice co-living, designer co-working, maker showrooms, and public workshops.

Working with real planning conditions, zoning constraints, and building requirements, students developed design proposals that tested the relationship between regulation, adaptive reuse, and the evolving needs of the city. The studio positioned architecture as a tool for negotiating industrial heritage, urban transformation, and emerging live/work models.

Projects engaged with the tensions between production and habitation, public access and technical performance, and the economic realities that shape Melbourne’s urban edge. The studio suited students interested in adaptive reuse, making, material practice, and the future of productive urban environments.

Studio leader: Jean-Paul Rollo