School Assembly Studio

The School Assembly Studio forms the foundation of a student-led Design/Make Initiative being undertaken in collaboration with Dandenong Primary School. The initiative aims to develop, over several stages, an architectural intervention for the school that will be designed and prefabricated by Masters students. The objective of the intervention is to improve the environment and amenity of the school by addressing a specific need. As the first stage of the initiative, the School Assembly Studio involved a range of co-design workshops with the primary school students, master-planning exercises and staff surveys designed by the Masters students, uncovering critical insights that informed the development of the design proposals. By simultaneously conducting research into prefabrication and industrialised manufacturing systems, the Masters students were able to develop their designs into a detailed set of construction drawings, ready for prefabrication. The second stage of the initiative will involve the selection of one (or more) of the proposals to subsequently be prefabricated by the Masters students and installed at the school. The School Assembly Studio Design/Make Initiative continues MADA’s tradition of student-led construction projects, allowing Masters Students to gain hands-on experience in offsite prefabrication and componentized construction systems.