MA+d Dreams

The Studio will interrogate the impact of introducing density into Melbourne’s sprawling suburbia and question what high-density housing in the outer fringe might look like and could be. Through a piecemeal study of context, precedent and lived-in conditions, the Studio looks to design housing with specificity and agency.
Studying and exploring the neighbourhood sensitivities and living models, students undertook numerous 1:1 drawing techniques as a method to interrogate scale and the grain of the neighbourhood. Taking from the local context studies, students interrogated a number of housing models once again using 1:1 drawing as the main technique to gather information. Interrogating these examples from a posteriori to a priori a number of concepts have been built to respond at a neighbourhood and apartment scale.

The final outcome will be to deliver a multi-residential project that explores ideas of integration, adaptability, and virtuosity within an existing suburb. As a result, the students have explored ground plane activation, apartment layouts and developed an overall form that is sensitive to surrounding landscape within the criteria of elegant simplicity.

Studio Leader: Jim Cowie & Declan Murphy

Image:  Inkerman + Nelson, MA+Co 2023