RMIT Architecture - Community and Industry Projects





HOME » Projects » COMMUNITY AND INDUSTRY PROJECTS

:: related links » professional degree COMMUNITY AND INDUSTRY PROJECTS page 1 \| page 2 Design research and teaching projects with community and industry partners including 'Live' projects, urban and community design consultancies, scoping projects, community-based design studios, student-designed built projects, public art installations, and related events and publications. LIVE PROJECT DESIGN RESEARCH/TEACHING/PRACTICE OFFICE Project Office RMIT School of Architecture and Design A conduit between RMIT University School of Architecture and Design and 'Live' design and construction opportunities. Established and operated by active teaching staff, Project Office facilitates partnerships between the School and external (government, industry, community) agencies and supports collaborations which integrate experiential practice and academic research in the service of enriched learning and advanced scholarship. In addition to providing administrative assistance towards the realisation of such ‘live’ projects, we support access to expert consultation and fabrication tools in order to actualise design in process. RMIT Architecture Studio/Elective/Project Leaders: Mauro Baracco, Tarryn Boden, John Cherrey, Graham Crist, Melanie Dodd, Susan Massey, Simon Whibley, Gretchen Wilkins, Leanne Zilka EXHIBITION AND BOOK LAUNCH All Change: Regenerated Towns in Regenerated Nature: Urban Case Studies in South-West Wimmera Exhibition Opening and Book Launch Time: Thursday, 1st November 2012, 6:00 pm Venue: RMIT Design Hub, Melbourne, Level 3 Entrance, Cnr Victoria Pde and Swanston Street DARC: All Change Website RMIT Architecture Students Project Gallery This exhibition and publication document urban, architectural and landscape projects in South-West Wimmera, Victoria, integrated with the environmental rehabilitation visions of Habitat 141, investigating sustainable spaces and activities for a region that is envisaged as a connected and interrelated territorial network. Searching for meaningful degrees and fields of integration with the visions proposed by Habitat 141, a large scale environmental rehabilitation project coordinated by Greening Australia, these projects consider the various towns and natural environments of the South-West Wimmera region as a connected and interrelated territorial network - a common rehabilitated geographical asset of natural and urban environments with the potential of alternative sustainable economic models for the existing communities and their cultural, historical and social backgrounds. The research documented in the exhibition and publication is based on the general premise that the wide and multifaceted topic of 'urban sustainability' relevantly includes the study of rural communities in decline and the envisioning of their regeneration through the definition of spaces and buildings for activities integrated with the various outcomes that are induced by the rehabilitation of, and care for, the surrounding natural environment. In parallel to this, a further degree of urban and territorial sustainability can also be achieved in Australia by contributing to lower the pressure from coastal urban environments through re-injection of life, economies and therefore population in rural environments. All Change exhibition and publication are supported by RMIT Design Research Institute – Future Fabric of Cities Flagship program. For further information please contact: Mauro Baracco School of Architecture and Design, RMIT University mauro.baracco@rmit.edu.au RMIT ARCHITECTURE ACADEMIC MEL DODD IS AN INVITED KEYNOTE SPEAKER AT ARCHITECTURE 'LIVE PROJECTS' PEDAGOGY INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM 2012 Architecture 'Live Projects' Pedagogy International Symposium, 2012 Oxford Brookes University, Headington Hill Campus, UK Thursday 24th - Saturday 26th May 2012 Critical reflections on Live Projects with a view to co-creating a pedagogic best practice framework Keynotes: Melanie Dodd, Associate Professor RMIT Architecture, Australia. Author, Live Projects: designing with People (2012) Prof Jeremy Till, University of Westminster. Author of Architecture Depends (2009) Prue Chiles, Director of bureau design + research, University of Sheffield. Author of 'LIVE' (2012) Prof Ruth Morrow, Professor of Architecture, SPACE: School of Planning Architecture and Civil Engineering A three-day international symposium by and for live project educators, live-project community participants, live project students, practice architects involved in community co-design, University management involved in community partnership projects, and live project practitioners and participants from associated fields and disciplines. BOOK Mel Dodd, Fiona Harrisson, Esther Charlesworth, eds. (2012) Live Projects, Designing For People, Melbourne: RMIT Press (forthcoming July 2012) RMIT ARCHITECTURE STUDENT CONTRIBUTION TO THE DESIGN DEVELOPMENT OF A BUILT COMMUNITY PROJECT IN VIETNAM FEATURED IN THE MEDIA Architect students turn plans into reality to aid children in Vietnam Benjamin Preiss TheAge, April 10, 2012 "Plans are drawn with great care but rarely make it beyond three-dimensional models for many architecture students. But a group of RMIT University students have helped design a daycare centre that will treat children suffering the crippling effects of the Vietnam War. The Dien Ban Disability Day Care Centre opens this week near Hoi An in central Vietnam after years of design work and community meetings... The project allowed RMIT architecture graduate Ton Vu to return to his country of birth. He was among a group of students who visited the site to carry out research and revise the plans professional architects had drawn up. Mr Vu, who was born in Ho Chi Minh City, said the RMIT students made substantial changes to the plans after discussing them with the children and parents who would use the centre. He also acted as an interpreter. ''They were telling us about how important it is for them to have a centre of this nature to help them carry on with their daily work and have their children in good care,'' Mr Vu said. The university worked with Architects Without Frontiers, British charity the Kianh Foundation and professional architects. RMIT funded most of the centre's construction and design costs..." Participating RMIT Architecture student Ton Vu was also recently announced the winner of the Architecture Australia Unbuilt Award 2011 for his final year Design Thesis Major Project Sai Gon Informal, a proposal for supporting bottom-up informal urbanism in Vietnam. See news item below. TRAVELLING INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY AND INDUSTRY STUDIO Disability Day Centre, Dien Ban, Vietnam Building the Community - Integrated Practice Studio, 2010 RMIT School of Architecture and Design; School of Property Construction & Project Management RMIT Vietnam Multimedia Design Systems Program RMIT Project/Design Studio Leader: Dr Esther Charlesworth, Senior Research Fellow (Architecture and Urban Infrastructure), RMIT School of Architecture and Design and RMIT Global Cities Research Institute Interdisciplinary Studio Leaders: Dr Guillermo Aranda-Mena, School of Property Construction & Project Management, RMIT Don Gordon, Program Manager - Multimedia Design Systems, RMIT Vietnam Client: Kianh Foundation, UK Partners: RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia; RMIT International University Vietnam (RIUV) Pro Bono Industry Partners: Architects Without Frontiers, Australia; Büro Architecture, Interiors and Planning, Melbourne; Chamberlain Javens Architects, Melbourne; Allens Arthur Robinson RMIT Global Initiatives: Building the Community 2010, iTunesU Project Video, 2010 Architects Without Frontiers, Australia: Projects: Disability Day Centre, Dien Ban, Vietnam Related Projects Building the Community: International Industry and Community Studio/Scoping Projects, Hoi An, Vietnam, 2007-2008 PROJECT OFFICE LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMMUNITY CONSULTANCY Kings Creek Reserve Project Leader: Melanie Dodd, RMIT Architecture. Practice: mufAus Client: Mornington Peninsula Shire Council & Neighbourhood Renewal Victoria Funded by Sustainability Fund Victoria The ambition of the project is to provide an entrance ramp, signage, and information point, which allows more members of the community to access the reserve. The information point is intended to provide educational information about how to maintain the quality of Kings Creek, its waterway, vegetation, and environmental qualities by addressing problems of rubbish and re-vegetation. Meant to serve as a focal point for the council’s conservation efforts and the community’s clean up and re-vegetation activities, the entrance is also being designed to act as an outdoor public meeting space for local schools visiting the reserve. The project is made possible by funds provided to Mornington Peninsula Shire Council and Neighbourhood Renewal Victoria by Sustainability Fund Victoria. The Project Office is providing consultation service in support of the project. PROJECT OFFICE STATE GOVERNMENT CONSULTANCY Work Where I Live Project Leaders: Graham Crist, Simon Whibley, RMIT Architecture. Practice: Antarctica Client: Victorian Public Service Sponsored by RMIT Design Research Institute This project is a collaboration between staff members at both RMIT University’s School of Architecture and Design and Victorian Public Service. Sponsored by RMIT University’s Design Research Institute, the intent of the study is to uncover the opportunities for distributed and flexible working and to examine their possible benefits and the relationships between how people live versus how they work. Distributed and flexible working involves locating workplaces nearer to where working professionals live, and using these places in combination with working from home or commuting to a central workplace. The benefits of distributed working include: -Reducing our energy footprint by reducing commuting distance and workplace area. -Stimulating local economies, especially in regional centers, and reducing the load on Melbourne CBD infrastructure. -Capturing the social benefits of shared spaces and collaboration, as well as lifestyle benefits of working nearer home. COMMUNITY STUDIOS BOOK Mauro Baracco (Ed) Tree sprawl : consolidation and expansion of open vegetated space : projects in the urban territory of Merri Creek Melbourne: School of Architecture and Design, RMIT University, 2011 ISBN 9780646557045 Project Partners: MCMC Merri Creek Management Committee CERES Community Environment Park, East Brunswick Supported by the RMIT School of Architecture and Design The works in this book and related exhibition are a selection from projects completed between 2008 and 2010 throughout design studios coordinated by Mauro Baracco in the Master Course of the Architecture Program at the School of Architecture and Design of RMIT University. They document design investigations into the consolidation and expansion of existing open spaces in Melbourne – leftover, brownfield and green reserve areas. Aiming to regenerate these and other types of open environment, these projects also tackle human population growth and the associated problematic consequences that currently affect Melbourne and Australian urban areas in general, and believe that urban densification must include and rely on careful attention to the in-between space, and that this space should be vegetated. The book includes texts by Mauro Baracco and Luisa Macmillan, and reviews and images related to 10 projects completed by: Jennie Lang, Ottavia Franzini, Dayne Trower, Mohammad Afiq Shazwan Abd Samat, Maja Hansen, Edwina Thompson, Frankie Piesse, Emile Clare, Pia Socias, Emily Wallace. The book is available for purchase at major bookshops in Melbourne or you can purchase it directly from RMIT by contacting mauro.baracco@rmit.edu.au Image: Exhibition at CERES, Edwina Thompson and Emily Wallace Student Work COMMUNITY STUDIO EXHIBITION Tree Sprawl Project Leader: Mauro Baracco Partners: MCMC Merri Creek Management Committee CERES Community Environment Park, East Brunswick Supported by the RMIT School of Architecture and Design Exhibition Venues: CERES Market, Brunswick East, Melbourne, Saturdays 11, 18 and 25 June, 2011 Merri Table & Bar Café/Restaurant at CERES, 11 June - 1 July 2011 CERES Community Environment Park, East Brunswick PROJECT OFFICE COMMUNITY ELECTIVE Life Skills Elective Leader: Graham Crist, RMIT Architecture. Prsactice: Antarctica Partners: Lifeskills Latrobe Latrobe University Lifeskills Latrobe is an organisation which provides training to people with disabilities. They are based on the Bundoora campus of Latrobe University and are proposing a new facility on a leased campus site. This will form their administration and teaching spaces, and a 24/7 hub with flexible spaces for community use, including art rooms, meeting rooms and a commercial training kitchen. This project will run as an elective for Semester 2 out of the Project Office. It is a project with a tight budget and real constraints. Students will develop a design, examine the detail of the brief and the needs of the users, and produce beautiful drawings and models way beyond the expectations of the clients. Students will work as a project team, and intensify this process, completing the process in six weeks (weeks 1-6). PROJECT OFFICE COMMUNITY STUDIO Pop-up Street Studio Leaders: Melanie Dodd, RMIT Architecture, Practice: muf Aus; Tarryn Boden Partners: Vic Urban Dandenong Monash University What makes a street a street? Is it the width of the pavers, the shop windows, the signage, lighting and infrastructure, or the benches and street furniture that we sit on? Or is it something less tangible, less physical – like the daily exchanges and interactions that occur: the occupations, which reveal everyday habits and routines and uncover the invisible qualities of social, political and economic transactions? Operating out of a shopfront in Foster Street Dandenong and partnered with Monash University and Vic Urban Dandenong, Pop-Up Street will take an up close and personal look at the formal and informal qualities of street life, speculating on how architecture can be responsive to both the tangible and the ephemeral qualities of time and space. This studio will speculate on street edges and boundaries – particularly how to maintain and re-situate the cultural and street identity of Dandenong – through a series of temporary and longer term proposals that engage with this idea of redevelopment over time, and question the hierarchy of the informal street versus the built form. Students will engage with precedent practice that reveals how to design with as much emphasis on process, as on product; on how the edges of the street will operate, be used and misused, as much as final formal and physical outcomes. ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES INDUSTRY STUDIO Three Little Pigs Studio Leaders: Gretchen Wilkins, Leanne Zilka, John Cherrey Semester 2, 2011 Industry Partners: Jamco Signs, Austral Plywood Capral Aluminium Dunlop Foams Three Little Pigs is a fastâ€paced design/build studio that produced a series of minimum dwelling units using reclaimed industrial materials. Sponsored by Jamco Signs, Austral Plywood, Capral Aluminium and Dunlop Foams the studio experimented with the relationship between eccentric, castâ€off sheet material and advanced digital fabrication techniques. “Straw, sticks and bricks” were replaced with recycled plasticized foam and fabric (tarpaulin), bendable ply and metal sheet, retooled into spatialâ€structural systems which accommodated the essential aspects of living: microâ€habitats for eating, sleeping, bathing, playing, or reading. The studio focused initially on design research / documentation followed by fabrication and assembly. A microâ€house with fabrication techniques drove the project. ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES INDUSTRY STUDIO AND EXHIBITION PROJECT One-TWO-One Studio Leaders: Gretchen Wilkins, Leanne Zilka, John Cherrey Semester 1, 2010 Exhibited: London Festival of Architecture 2010 ‘Fab-Pak’ at Architecture Biennale Beijing 2010 Cumulus Shanghai Conference 2010 The One-TWO-One studio at RMIT University sought to produce a series of full scale flat-packable structures by coupling reclaimed laminate sheet material and advanced digital fabrication techniques. Designed as urban installations for both London and Melbourne, the work explores systems of digital unfolding and physical re-folding, while keeping within the constraints of international shipping logistics such as weight-to-volume efficiencies and time-to-cost ratios. The projects also explored the relationship between localised material harvesting and remote manufacturing, proposing work that might proliferate across international networks and collaborative labor. Two projects demonstrate a series of new structural and architectural possibilities of reclaimed laminate sheets, an expandable urban bench and an urban wall of interlocking wave units. The work was exhibited as part of the London Festival of Architecture and the State of Design Festival in Melbourne, 2010 Project Credits Wavewall: Nik Kellina Bakti, Ahmad Shazilly, Oscar Sainsbury, Timothy Heron, Shann Ching Pei Yong, Mak Alex, Lee Yi Ting, Xiaozhou Qin SliceForm: Bronwyn Litera, Ashini Erangi Kulatunge, Jonathan Barzel, Maximilien Forget, Mathilde Lucas â€¨ â€¨ Softcore: Claire McGuire, Simon Wright, Brahman Perera, Mhairi Macleod, Lukas Maehr, â€¨Laurence Yat, Laam Chan, Xiang Li, Wai Ting So STATE OF DESIGN INSTALLATION EXHIBITION One two One - Urban Installations Exhibitors: Leanne Zilka, Gretchen Wilkins, John Cherry, RMIT Architecture & RMIT Master of Architecture (professional) students: Mak Alex, Nik Kellina Bakti, Jonathan Barzel, Maximilien Forget, Timothy Heron, Ashini Erangi Kulatunge, Bronwyn Litera, Mathilde Lucas, Xiaozhou Qin, Oscar Sainsbury, Shann Ching Lee Yi Ting, Pei Yong Exhibition Opening: Monday, July 19th, 6pm Venue: Bowen Street, RMIT (at the Latrobe Street end by the tall light pole) Exhibition Dates: 19 – 25 July, 2010, Monday – Sunday, 24 hours Exhibition Locations: Bowen Street, Bowen Lane, RMIT University & City Square, Swanston Street State of Design Website: One two One LONDON FESTIVAL OF ARCHITECTURE EXHIBITION RMIT Architecture: 1:1 One [two] One - Urban Installations from Melbourne in the International Architecture Student Festival (IASF) London Festival of Architecture, 19 June - 4 July, 2010 Exhibitors: RMIT Architecture Studio Leaders Leanne Zilka & Gretchen Wilkins, with John Cherry & RMIT Master of Architecture (professional) students IASF Webpage: RMIT Architecture: 1:1 One [two] One The International Architecture Student Festival asked design students from all over the UK and internationally to create a series of site-specific interventions in two key public spaces in London responding to the theme of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, exhibited as part of the London Festival of Architecture. Participating schools include: RMIT; Cambridge University; University of Innsbruck; Cardiff University; Arts University College Bournemouth; Central Saint Martins; Oxford Brookes; Ravensbourne; Canterbury School of Architecture; Central Saint Martins; Kingston University; London Metropolitan University; Kyung Won and Dong Yang Universities; Parma University Ben Stafford student work ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES INDUSTRY AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT STUDIO Urban Bye-Pass Studio Leader: Leanne Zilka with Prof. David Mainwaring, DRI Partners: Port Phillip Council RMIT Material Science Bypasses effectively deny localities, and the local response to the bypasses is often equally as disengaged. Using the Graham street bypass in Port Phillip, where various forms of housing, industry, transportation, schooling, and public space have been separated into northern and southern territories, and surrounding residents and commuters have effectively “barricaded” themselves against the bypass in an effort to refuse its impact, this studio considers the spaces under and around the bypass so as to reintegrate and reinvigorate the bypass with its local surrounds during the day as well as at night (where opportunistic activities/programs have become menacing and introduced security concerns.) The preferred palette for the studio’s investigation is influenced by a Phosphorescent long afterglow material (developed at RMIT by Prof. David Mainwaring) that can glow for up to 8 hours. The “material” is a fine polymer powder that can be embedded in paint, PVC sheeting, and spun in fibre, which allows for flexibility in its application. A collaborative venture, Port Phillip Council is supporting the RMIT Architecture studio’s site-specific applications of these passive technologies which were developed by RMIT Material Science.