Post Boom City

Context

The current pandemic has produced an economic crisis with severe repercussions for cities and dwellers around the world. Currently, AUS has 1.6 M unemployed with numbers expected to increase. Consequently, many citizens won’t be able to afford their business spaces or private homes anymore.

At the same time, the building industry keeps booming with construction sites sprouting like mushroom across the inner suburbs of Melbourne. This is particularly true for Cremorne, which has been coined as ‘Australian Silicon Valley’ due to a concentration of tech industries such as Seek, Disney, Carsales in the precinct. Currently the suburb is developing 30 sites – from medium to large scale – into new offices and retail spaces. Some investment buildings for lease are completed and waiting for first tenants to move in....for some time.

It is questionable if the white-collar workers will use and require all these spaces in the future. The pandemic has taught, that many could favour the continuation of the more flexible working from home mode.

Furthermore, there is a rich history of shrinking cities that were exposed to economic crises. Left behind and unoccupied spaces ruined city centres and neighbourhoods or even the entire  city long-term.

Studio objectives

The studio will explore an alternative to this scenario:

What would be creative ways to use unoccupied/ unused/ unfinished space? Cremorne’s construction sites, unfinished buildings and unused buildings will form the starting point for such a scenario. Unfinished structures and architectures initiate our imagination of the Post Boom City. The aim is to design intelligent strategies that creatively repurpose those for new citizens’ needs. The speculative architectural propositions will oscillate between temporary and permanent notions. The development of specific programs that target users’ needs through the understanding of the current zeitgeist will be paramount.

Method

Phase 1: research
precedents studies, site analyses

Phase 2: observation and speculation
Students will be working in design teams of two

Phase 3: proposition
Students will be designing in pairs