Trisha Pheh

Respecting all homes - Our site in Carlton was once an open eucalypt woodland with a broad ecosystem of endemic flora and fauna that have lost their homes post-colonisation. The existing site is a dense residential, educational and commercial urban environment with green spaces on the West and East where Brushtail Possums have been sighted.

The brief is a student accommodation that gives back to the environment and the community. My project aims to provide safe nesting for 100 humans, 80 native Brushtail Possums and 4 Gippsland Red Gums. The design proposal hopes to encourage coexistence and interaction amongst the users on various scales of a semi-public ground plane to circulating verandah's and bedroom floorplans designed to consider the flora, fauna and human responses.

The elevation acts as a visual of the materiality and relationship of possum homes and human homes while the section explores in detail how the possum homes are built to the floor slab.

The ground plane encourages the most interaction with shared facilities for humans occupying the entire ground level while possums interact through their travel wires suspended on the ceiling

The typical room levels communicate how the verandah allows communal spaces to pop up between individual room modules. The open circulation throughout the verandah's create openness and connection to the exterior environment.

The collective map overlays Geology, Bioregions and Ecological data showing the interdependency of the ecosystem. The map also highlights endemic flora and native fauna specific to the site.