LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

Lower Pool Studios - Semester 2, 2011

Choose lifecycle Deposit Ecological Urbanism Hydrologics In the thick of it Kindle Massey Shape of things near water Spacing Tokyo Tectaceous - The fault creep The way of wu wei Zero degrees

CHOOSE

LIFEcycleStudio Outline: Using local projects as a starting point, Choose Lifecycle grounds research and analysis of materials through landscape architecture before using them as tools to explore scales of production, site, time and use. Material quantities from precedent analysis will act as design generators, and students will be asked to re-design & re-locate materials across a range of sites and scales. Design outcomes will ask students to create a future environment where projects are designed in the knowledge that, regardless of their lifecycle or use, they are temporary installations and their material properties will be an invaluable, ongoing resource.

Tutors: Rohan Buckley & Jack BarlowTimes: Tuesday 17:30 - 20:30 & Friday 14:30 - 17:30

Landscape Architecture Lower Pool Design Research StudioSemester 2 2011

Tuesday 5.30-8.30pmFriday 2.30-5.30pm

Lecturer. Matt York

DEPOSIT

Deposit

Site

Responsibility

Outcome

Will provide an investigation by design into how the processes of water sensitive urban design (in particular stormwater harvesting and re-use),

and its relationship with site specific ecologies can re-evaluate design methodology, proposition and response for a new public open space in

Bacchus Marsh.

A 3Ha drainage corridor in Bacchus Marsh that will be responsible for treating a new residential catchment prior to discharge into Werribee

River.

-Water sensitive urban design (primarily storm water harvesting)-EVC classifications for Western Basalt Plains

-On-site ecological findings and requirements (designing with growling grass frog and golden sun moth) and impact of season

-Grading and drainage (key component of the studio)-Public realm within flood plain

A 3Ha Open Space Master Plan that arranges/presents/conflicts/orders a landscape considerate of the site responsibilities listed above.

Ornesvingen viewpoint, Norway

ECOLOGICAL URBANISM STUdIO 18 jULy–5 AUGUST

While climate change, sustainable architecture, and green technologies have become increas-ingly topical, issues surrounding the sustain-ability of the city are much less developed. The premise of ecological urbanism is that an eco-logical approach is urgently needed as an imag-inative and practical method for addressing ex-isting as well as new cities.

Ecological Urbanism considers the city with multiple instruments and with a worldview that is fluid in scale and disciplinary focus. Design provides the synthetic key to connect ecology with an urbanism that is not in contradiction with its environment. Ecological Urbanism brings together practitioners, theo-rists, economists, engineers, artists, policymak-ers, scientists, and public health specialists, with the goal of providing a multilayered, di-verse, and nuanced understanding of ecological urbanism and what it might be in the future. The promise is nothing short of a new ethics and aesthetics of the urban.

The aim of the studio is to investigate the potential of landscape as a medium to maximise the ecological potential of the city.

Studio Lecturer- Gareth Doherty

Tuesdays, Room 88.5.12+ ½ 11, 10.00-5.00Fridays, Room 88.5.6 + 6A, 10.00-5.00

ECOLOGICAL URBANISM Edited by Mohsen Mostafavi with Gareth Doherty Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Lars Müller Publishers, 656 pages approx. 1000 illustrations, hardcover, (2010)

hydro-logics

image: stephan zirwes - www.stephanzirwes.com

Hydro:Water operates at a range of scales simultaneously.Constantly in motion it passes over, between andwithin the landscape. This motion is expressed through the landscape as a range of hydrological ‘behaviours’ (fanning, eroding, cutting, depositing, meandering).

In this studio you will investigate the behaviours (as well as other hydrological types) of the western basalt plains of Melbourne in a slice from Derrimut toAltona.

Logics:Your understanding of behaviour will be used to deduce a ‘logic’ (the relationship between elements – water/geology/soil) which will be employed to reorder the landscape.

Reordering requires an understanding of the properties of the existing and a strategy for insertion. We will explore various devices for reordering.

Models:The studio will predominately focus on model making, where the act of making is seen as a means toproducing knowledge.

Two defi nitions of ‘model’ will form a framework to oscillate between the abstract and physical.1. As a means to question, hypothesise and abstract,2. The physical act of making, with physical limitations, failures and material performances that are non-abstract.

You will work through digital and physical modelsin order to understand the formation, qualities andchange over time of the hydrological behaviours. We will spend time in the labs working with digital modelling software.

From this understanding you will generate a set of formal structures that reorder an existing series of landscapes in your slice through Melbourne.

Times:Tuesday 1.30-4.30Friday 9.30-2.30Weeks 1 – 9

Lecturer:Bridget Keane

Landscape Architecture – Lower Pool Design Studio – 2nd Semester 2011 - Rob Roggema

KINDLE Design of bushfire resilient landscapes

 

Kindle /kindle/ [v. trans] Light or set fire. Arouse or inspire (an emotion or feeling): a love of art was kindled in me. [intrans] (of an emotion) be aroused: She pressed on, enthusiasm kindling within her. [intrans] become impassioned or excited: the young man kindled at once.

WHAT Our future climate will be different from the climate we know now. Not only will temperature rise, but we need to deal with many changing topics, such as increased risk at flooding, long periods of droughts, weather extremes and increased risk at bushfires. This studio will focus on the design of stable landscapes capable of handling and dealing with bushfires and other climate hazards. We need to re-think and re-design landscapes as integrated systems in which ecology, water and occupation are deeply connected. A focus on ‘fire proofing’ only therefore neglects the complexity and interconnectedness of the landscape. This studio aims to develop conceptual design strategies responding to bushfires, embedded in real-life complexity. Development of design strategies for the ‘plannable’ drivers of bushfires, such as the availability of water and fuel (material that can burn), enhance regions to better cope with the ‘unplannable’ ones, such as high temperatures and strong winds. The studio will be linked and profit from the recently started VCCCAR (Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research) - project ‘‘Design-led decision support for regional climate adaptation’ and offers the opportunity to research and design in a studio environment and be linked with the real-life practice of the ‘Greater Bendigo’ case study area at the same time. The studio aims to explore and design with the dynamics of bushfires in the peri-urban context. The studio will ask questions such as: How can we design with the forces of fire? How can we reconsider Bendigo’s regional landscape as a patchwork of the water- and ecosystems, fire-safety-corridors and fire resilient enclaves? Preparing landscapes for bushfires, not neglecting other climate impacts, such as floods, asks for novel, ground-breaking, complex and critical design propositions, which provide a highly flexible response to fire extremes and a high quality peri-urban space and rural living. The studio will ask for conceptual design ideas to align peri-urban and rural structures to the increasing extremes of bushfires on the one hand and occasional floods on the other. You will then design sitespecific projects for Bendigo’s greater region for adaptation to increasing weather and fire extremes.

WHY Unpredictability and uncertainty are phenomena we have to learn to deal with in a creative visionary way in the ever-growing complexity of 21st century life. These opportunities and constraints also apply to planning and design our peri-urban and rural environments. The bushfires of 2009 across Victoria are strong examples of highly dynamic weather extremes, resulting from climate change. These events have clearly shown the need to re-think the relationship between bushfire prone areas and their urbanised environment and to possibly use bushfires to inspire to increase the qualities of the spatial environment.

HOW Taking the approach of analysing, designing and thinking ‘through the scales’ the studio will start with a thorough investigation of one of Bendigo’s forest complexes to eventually evoke a deeper understanding of the entire regional landscape and the relationships with the City of Bendigo. The studio group will meet on Fridays, all day. The studio will start with clearly formulated assignments of creative investigations to be worked on from week to week. As students you will develop your own design project. Work constellations in this studio will shift between working individually, in small teams and as the entire studio group. There will be in-class lectures by academics, practitioners and students of the studio, site visits, in class debates, 1:1 critiques and regular short presentations, but also participation in the design charrettes to be organised in the context of the VCCCAR-project. The studio is understood as a continuing ‘learning workshop’, which requires an interactive engagement.

Regular Class: Fri, 9.30 am to 4.00 pm Workshops: tba Location: Building 45 B Studio participation requires at least two visits to Bendigo (including travel coast). Part of the studio is participation in a two/three-day design charrette in Bendigo, for which you need to cater your own expenses regarding travel and accommodation.

m i c r o

The Both/And Studio

Tutor: Susan MasseyTuesday Evening

Friday Morning

This studio is interested in issues of social space in the public urban realm— specifically, it is committed to synthesizing the differing needs of various user groups in a shared, common outdoor space. Urban public spaces should be inclusive. Because water is universal and it is as responsive to issues of need-utility as it is to materializing as amenity-art-recreation, it will be a primary vehicle for how the needs and expectations of various user groups are met in a single, all-inclusive environment. How to keep water out/in, collect it, redistribute it, clean it, display it, conserve it, etc. will be fundamental considerations.

PROGRAM

Building on the proposition set forth by Hitoshi Abe’s ‘Megahouse’ that dense, modern cities find the program of a house (excepting the bedroom , bath, and personal storage) mapped across it– restaurant as kitchen/dining room, library as study, karaoke bar or sports venue as game room, cafe as lounge room... This studio will map analogous (though more universally accessible) programs in Melbourne. After locating and documenting the free resources and amenities in the CBD and close inner suburbs, including resources directed to the homeless, students will be asked to consider how the city might be navigated as a distributed house of programs and how shared, common outdoor spaces could be designed to support napping, bathing, short-term storage of personal belongings, and the collection of drinking water. The premise of such a project supposes that the city might provide more basic accommodation in social spaces at a comparable measure to which it already provides non-essential amenities.

The studio DOES NOT propose to design outdoor spaces as a replacement to traditional homeless shelters, rather, to provide supplemental infrastructure for transient activities for all people, including the homeless, backpacking tourists, pedestrians seeking refuge from the heat, bicycle commuters, picnic-goers, etc. The studio is not focused specifically on the homeless but is instead concerned with designing inclusively for multiple user-groups. As such, there is already a position that accommodating the homeless in mainstream programs rather than designing solely for a targeted demographic is the preferred strategy for this semester’s investigations.

House : CityRoom : Locality

Basic accommodationNon-essential amenities

The users of Melbourne outdoor public space, be it a park or plaza or garden, are varied in demographic though there may be some specificities of population depending on its location in the city relative to the immediate context. The users have many needs in common, but also some specific expectations that may not be shared by all users. Because water is universal and is as responsive to need-utility as it is to materializing as amenity-art-recreation, it will be the primary vehicle for how the needs and expectations of various user groups are met in a single, all-inclusive environment.

USERSCommonalitiesDifferences

Necessity-UtilityAmenity-Art-Recreation

After mapping the city’s free amenities and resources, targeted locations will be analysed and selected as potential sites. Whether the studio might locate small interventions across multiple sites, or, develop a comprehensive single site to serve as a model for other like-sites across the city, will be a collective decision informed by the studio’s preliminary, investigative research. The primary criteria for site selection will be the potential for marrying utility and beauty in shared public space with universal access to all.

SITE

Research : CityIntervene : Locality

ConsolidationDispersion

CHALLENGE

The studio schedule will coordinate its major deliverables based on the Design Research Institute’s 2011 Design Challenge on Homelessness, which has a two-stage competition process employing “design innovation” and “impact/practicality/application” as criteria. At the midterm, students will submit idea-proposals to the competition which graphically communicate the supporting research and the intent for design development of an idea. Students will continue to develop the design proposal and present it at the final review as competition entry boards. On 11 Nov, the competition will announce the short-listed finalists who will be invited to submit further development of their ideas. The shortlisted finalist projects will be showcased in a curated exhibition in the Design Hub in April 2012 and the winning project will receive an award.

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**Design Like You Give a Damn[Architecture for Humanity]

Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People

[Emily Pilloton]

Design For the Other 90%[Smithsonian Institute]

Expanding ArchitectureDesign As Activism

[Bell/Wakeford]

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What?

Why?How?

the shape of things near water a lower pool landscape design studio lecturers – cath stutterheim with lucas patetl fridays from 9.30 till 6.30pm room still to be decided. the case study of this studio is Lara, a small rural town established in 1824, off the main freeway between Melbourne and Geelong (Melway p423). The flood plain banks of the Hovell Creek, which flows through it from the You Yangs to the Bay, create open space that divides the town’s housing. the context of the design work is the world’s growing realisation of the value of vegetated outdoor living to public well being, faced by loss of natural environment through civic development and climate change. Lara’s desire is to protect the rural lifestyle of its 11,000 people: however, its fabric is consolidating towards the energy-hungry rail and freeway. the design brief is to reconsider the potential of the river environment’s left over spaces, to become public destinations for outdoor activity, relaxation and enjoyment of natural systems, by considering alternative roles for and new relationships of these ‘negative voids’ of the creek to Lara’s other urban components. Can low energy use, unifying forms, links and circulation contribute to a better balance of the urban fabric of Lara? the research a you will draw on support systems at Lara which have already been established through a previous Upper Pool Studio that considered the

overall urban fabric of Lara: • Introduction to the open space strategy of Geelong City Council and its Urban Design officers, • A lecture by an environmentalist from the Corangamite Catchment Authority, which is responsible for this area as an environmental water

reserve undergoing seachange and treechange. • Collaboration with Lara Secondary School’s Science program, • A walk with Kevin Hoffman, along the garden of botanical significance on the flanks of the Hovel Creek that he has established over 20

years, • Class discussion about the design approach and forms of three recent water side public space precedents in Australia and New Zealand. b You will learn about Lara through site investigations of your own and in groups: record and consider specific aspects of the site through its

sectional relationships with reference to given contours; experiential qualities and components through drawing and critical photographic analysis. Trains run regularly from Melbourne to Lara station, and there is a central gathering space available to us.

. the design outcome This studio is NOT about constructing wetlands or ecology. It assumes that (although threatened) such systems exist as realities as much as do air, seasons and birdlife. Rather, it requires that you design form for human use, which will promote realisation, enjoyment and reflection of these natural phenomena. This will require you to work precisely with existing, using your earlier sectional drawings as the base to make places from given contours and levels of the river banks paths and abutments, and consider such factors as relationships to the water, views, orientation, an existing vegetation. skill building The studio will provide the opportunity to extend and consolidate the skills you have learned in Environments and in the Stairs Studios, and further develop your critical drawing skills including AutoCAD and Rhino competence.

SPACING TOKYOa design investigation

RMIT LOweR POOL DesIgn sTuDIOLanDscaPe aRcITecTuRe

seMesTeR 2 2011

Studio Leader: Rhys Williams

Rhys joins RMIT this trimester as a higher degree research student. His research concerns the creation of a ‘designerly history’ of Tokyo’s early-modern public spaces: 1876 to 1932. Prior to arriving in Melbourne he taught in the landscape architecture program at the Victoria University of Wellington, NZ.

* VIew FILM TRaILeRs aT THe cOuRses BLOg www.SPACINGtokyo.tumblr.Com

This sTudio pRovides a basic inTRoducTion To The condiTion of exTeRnal space paRTiculaR To Tokyo and iTs anTecedenT Edo.

With the aim of articulating the condition’s varied manifestations and distinct tendencies from a spatial perspective, enquiries will be undertaken through the medium of design. Specifically, strategies will be used that privilege the concerns of landscape architecture, rendering this largely unreported condition: spatially, temporally and relationally defined.

Distanced, physically and culturally, from its subject, this studio’s activites will be sited in representations of Tokyo/Edo found in the films of auteurs such as Akira Kurosawa and Yasujirō Ozu.*

Studio activities will be structured across 2 linked projects:

Project 1: partipants will be challenged, through structured experimentation with a variety of representational strategies, to establish a Spatial Reading of a selected example of external space represented cinematically.

Project 2: a Spatial Exposition will be proposed that articulates, through the medium of landscape architecture, the spatiality of the subject studied in project 1. This ‘event’ space will constitute the immersive content for a hypothetical ‘exhibition’, located in Melbourne, profiling Tokyo’s condition of external space.

Image:The North bank of the Tamagawa River in Southern Tokyo (R Williams).

sTuDIO TIMesTuesDaY 13:30 to 16:30FRIDaY 13:30 to 16:30

The Fault Creep explores notions of tension and stress in the landscape, through investigations into the effects of tectonic activity. Australia is suprisingly moving faster than any other continent in relation to this occurance ( with the Indo-Australian Tectonic Plate progressing 65mm north each year). Professor Sandiford, a researcher at the University of Melbourne (School of Earth Sciences) suggests that the plate ‘is breaking up and the Indian Ocean quakes are contributing to the creation of two separate plates’. This dramatic occurrence is destined to ‘cause a catastrophic reorganisation of the whole global plate network’1 and have a signifi cant infl uence on the earth’s landforms.

The Fault Creep is a scenario based studio that aims to engage with the landscape as a voluminous, dynamic changing geology. Sitting between the themes of surface, geologies, and materials, it relies heavily on drawing and modelling as exploration devices and narrative generators. In particular the studio will engage with that of the science-fi ction genre as a way to generate future predictions. The Fault Creep is not only interested in the movement of faultlines but the continual subsurface transformation, its affect on the terrain and what we term ‘landscape side-effects’, such as oceanic trenches, folded mountains, sliding plates, hot springs and bubbling mud.

The studio investigates two sites within Victoria, exploring multiple time based/physical scales and occupations. One in suburban Melbourne and the other which is along the Selwyn fault line on the active Mornington Peninsula, which we will visit during the semester.

Cassie Lucas & Caitlin Perry

Tuesday arvo 1:30-4:30 in building 88

Friday morn 9:30-12:30 in 8.12.42

Tectaceous; The Fault Creep

1} http://home.vicnet.net.au/~phillip/env2stud.htm

Image: Caitlin Perry

lower pool design studiofiona harrisson & guests marian mackan, lucas dean & michael camelleri

intensive weeks 1-10tuesdays 1:00-5:30thursdays 5:30-7:30workshops cost $60pop up booksbook binding

Books are explored as a design project in themselves. We will explore specific book structures of concertina and pop up techniques used as a format to design thinking and crafting at the 1:1. [There will be workshops for you to learn these skills] These books become both the containers of the garden ideas and also a vehicle through which to explore design.

The Way of Wu Wei

The studio will explore making landscapes through detailed design and material resolution. The course will focus on speculative small scale public gardens. Crafting an idea through making is the means by which we will develop our skills and explore resolution of design ideas. The Way of Wu Wei is a traditional tale that speaks of design as a way of being. This studio offers an opportunity for you to explore and develop your own sensibility to design and thinking about the world through making.

The semester is structured through three main projects where you will design in response to different provocations: imagination, precedent and site. This exploration will occur through a reflective process of making and remaking.A key ambition of the studio is for the work to speak for itself. Towards this end the studio learning environment is set up to reflect this ambition. Rather than students talk about their ideas, the work will be exhibited for discussion. This creates a collective learning environment where all studio participants are engaged in the work of others.

with

Dr. Scott Mitchell &Ms. Saskia Schut

Weather that ubiquitous phenomena *chance storms light showers clearing in the afternoon low of 17 top of 26* we (me, the home , the city, the land) know it we feel it we see it and we are responsive to its variations *late cool change*. In the sustained artifice that we make let us use this phenomena to augment the performance of inhabitable structures.

Outline Zero degrees expands the notion of the landscape beyond the ground (surface and structure), engaging atmospheric phenomena as a design material. The studio draws from/feeds into architectural speculations (Antfarm/ Archigram/R&Sie/Serenson/Subnatures etc.) to develop projects that challenge conventual modes of habitation (landscape + architecture). Students will engage in direct material experimentation at a range of scales

phase 2Drawing from this designed system, we will develop environments that engage with a specific geographic location and condition (specific sites to be chosen as appropriate to the phenomena being explored). Projects will be developed through material and spatial experiments and processes of drawing and film making.

The studio will include in class presentations, workshops (including drawing), feedback and discussion. The studio encourages self direction and playfulness.

including 1:1 with the aim of developing a deep understanding of how matter performs in the world. This understanding will be further explored through detailed drawings and film/video.

phase 1The studio begins with an exploration of atmospheric phenomena (results of variations in temperature, humidity, light etc) and biological processes. Through the creation of one-to-one working systems, we will be developing an understanding of these dynamic and transformative processes. Such systems exist in nature as for example termite hills where the form is determined to optimise temperatures. These systems will be explored and refined through installations, models, detailed drawings, material research and film.

Class times Tuesdays (alternating weeks) 1:30 - 4:30 bld 8 model workshop 5:30 - 8:30 bld 88.5.17/17AFridays 1:30 - 4:30 bld 88.5.3/3A