Highway Studio

The Highway studio explored the negotiation of excess and necessity. The studio engaged algorithmic design and digital fabrication techniques to re-imagine the structures that define the highway, in particular bridges and sound attenuation walls and their possible inhabitation. Contemporary algorithmic processes are capable of generating highly intricate and excessive geometries, patterns and organisation. The focus of the studio will be on the negotiation of these excesses with the structural and performative requirements of highway structures. Students will fabricate small prototypes of parts of their projects using RMIT’s digital and robotic fabrication tools, with the intention that material and fabrication experiments will feedback and influence the design. The studio explored advanced composite materials and examine their performative and expressive capacities. VicRoads consulted to the studio regarding the site and brief, while Bollinger+Grohmann consulted on computational structural analysis and optimisation.