xxx_park

This studio investigates alternative design models for the suburban business_park – mono-functional, car-based employment centres typically lacking in vitality or design imagination.

Students will examine historical modes of working, commercial building typologies, along with the industrial environments that have housed those activities, to understand the impact of industrialisation on suburban built fabric.

Contemporary design case-studies will expose how the nature and location of ‘work’ have changed in response to technological advancements, societal shifts, evolving notions of ‘resources’ and ‘productivity’, and the environmental effects of what we produce.

The studio will explore experimental spatial strategies for transforming an existing business park within the Monash National Employment and Innovation Cluster in a xxx_park that fosters new and exciting mixes of live, work and play. The Monash Cluster is a large suburban territory identified as a high-growth area for emerging industries by Victoria’s planning authorities. Within this economic and policy context, we will consider what a future xxx_park looks like and how it could perform a different urban role to an:

  • industrial_park
  • innovation_park
  • research_park
  • science_park
  • media_park
  • urban_park
  • green_park
  • theme_park
  • car_park

Individual projects will focus on the use, configuration and qualities of future work places at an architectural scale. Your final project briefs will emerge from the multi-scalar tests and development of team-based proposals for a future xxx_park. Through these various spatial operations and built form explorations, the xxx_park studio will reconsider the role of design as new (sub)urban economies unfold and the city evolves.