Alterations, Additions, Systems

This studio will consider residential renovations, alterations, and additions in relation to systems that extend beyond individual architects, projects, and clients. We will frame designing renovations as a practice (like many others) that can consider how we live in relation to existing buildings and how the architect’s labour—its distribution, its valorisation, and who can access this labour—is entangled with such an undertaking.

Early in the semester, we will analyse various systems across several example projects. This includes projects by three emerging architectural practices, Office MI-JI, Niimori Jamison and JDH.A, who will join the studio for a series of in-class workshops. Direct interaction with these architects will support and add depth to our considerations of their designs and to the studio’s themes more broadly. Another set of projects will further expand the analysis, which will include physical models, diagrams, and drawings that prime our approach for the next phase of the semester.

In groups, the final brief of the semester involves designing a series of alterations and additions on three sites with varied existing conditions and histories. The systems investigated earlier in the semester will guide these proposed renovations, which are intended to be resolved and explore how we can alter existing buildings and practices to live and work in other ways.

James Bowman Fletcher is a practising architect (800377) and Lecturer at Monash University. He studied architecture at the University of California, Berkeley and Monash University, and Sociology at the University of Melbourne’s School of Social & Political Science. He was once a co-founder of the architectural practice OCTA. Before OCTA, while working in local architectural practices, James was a member of the art and architectural collective 227768c. James’ work has been exhibited at the NGV’s inaugural Design Week and published locally in Architect Victoria, Inflection, and ArchitectureAU.