de-coding the City

• Course

  • • Bachelor of Architectural Design
    Semester 2, 2019

• Studio leaders

  • Edwina Brisbane
  • Rebecca Lewis

Overview

The recent ‘Central Melbourne Design Guide’, put forward by the CoM, seeks to establish a set of minimum acceptable standards ‘to raise the bar on the design quality of development outcomes’. Such rules can provide leverage for good design outcomes when balancing these desires against the realities of buildings. But then, they may also prohibit, or limit, meaningful propositions.

In drawing a line on the bottom, do we conversely limit the top? Is the design guide bound intrinsically to Melbourne or are we collapsing global trends of good design to create a generic ‘every’ city? Do they richly engage with the complexity of the city and its citizens?

De-coding the City calls upon students to understand the city as an autonomous being; a complex entity with its own internal logic, systems and distinctiveness. It has a history, a present and a future. Students will question the logic behind the rules; how can they be challenged and how can a meaningful urban proposition be born out of them.

It values critical design thinking born from deep readings of the site and excavation into its layers, intricacies and matter. Map the City; de-code the evidence; formulate your rules; propose an urban form.

Design Methodology

This studio is split into two phases. The first is research-based, a formative phase comprising studies into the city and its planning principles. Each week will focus on a particular topic area and the production of the Atlas and rulebook.

• Atlas – a series of mappings which graphically record the city. It offers multiple readings of the City through different lens, mediums and ideals.
• Rulebook – written design principles which govern what, how and where students may build (or subtract).

The second phase is a testing phase whereby an urban proposition will be born out of the Atlas and Rulebook. It is expected that it will interpret, add to, and challenge the existing planning policies.

Semester Plan

• Week 1: Planning Policies – a study tour with CoM.
• Week 2 to 5: Curation of the Atlas and Rulebook. One, or a series of small interventions will be proposed each week.
• Week 6: Presentation of Atlas, Rulebook & Interventions. Workshop with CoM to identify sites,program/proposition for exploration.
• Week 7 to 8: Brief supplied and identified. The selected site will be developed with a conceptual proposition.
• Week 9 to13: Urban Proposition. Development the urban proposition through models, vignettes, diagrams and alternative means.

Outcomes

• Atlas [Individual work]- Mappings of the City
• Rulebook [Individual Work] - Design principles considering Urban Structure, Site Layout, Building Mass, Building Program, Public Interface, design detail
• Urban Proposition [Individuals working independently but in pairs on a shared city block]
• Proposal Scale: To be determined in class
• Resolution: Consideration of Urban Structure, Site Layout, Building Mass, Building Program, Public Interface, design detail
• Must reflect and critique on formal rules

Objectives

• an engagement with, and a critical understanding of, design planning codes through interpretation and testing.
• the skill of mapping as a means of deciphering the complex fabric of the city.
• knowledge of the urban fabric of Melbourne City Proper with regard to its past, present and future.
• a meaningful work of urban architecture which responds to the urban scale and fabric of the city.
• the capacity of research and self-directed learning.
• the value of process-driven design.