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The Future Prototyping Exhibition was held in the Dulux gallery, 24 Feburary – 27 March 2020.

As coronavirus infections began to rise in Australia, citizens were ordered by government to stay home. “If you can stay at home, you must stay at home” has become the motto for good citizenship, and our primary weapon against a cureless pandemic. However, over less than two months, the experience of staying home exposed the inadequacy of housing for many people.

2019 was a year of milestones for the faculty of architecture, building and planning. In addition to celebrating the 150-year anniversary of built environment education at the University of Melbourne through the be—150 initiative, 2019 saw the first cohort of bachelor of design students officially graduating.

The 3D printing space thrives on open source collaboration, and is proving ideal for designing and prototyping customised solutions for medical personal protective equipment.

The award-winning Bower Studio links community groups with postgraduate architecture students and staff from the University of Melbourne. For twelve years it has focused on Indigenous and remote communities to codevelop and construct a range of community buildings across australia, Papua New Guinea and Thailand.

Inflection Journal is the first student-run architectural journal produced by and for the Melbourne School of Design. It explores themes relevant to contemporary architectural discourse through the contributions of students, scholars and practitioners.

After graduating from the Melbourne School of Design with a Master of Architecture in 2015, Bridget Nathan’s experience in the workforce led her to develop a curiosity to discover the past experiences of women in architecture, and from this The Doyenne Interviews were created.

Dr Sandra Carrasco is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Melbourne School of Design whose research is centred to resident issues in massively built housing projects including the analysis of the transformation of the built environment and the appropriateness of rebuilt settlements, incremental housing, informal settlements and post-disaster reconstruction and community resilience.

Researchers from Melbourne school of design, led by Paul Loh, have developed an adjustable mould frame for casting doubly curved concrete panels. With the increased use of computation tools in architectural design, architects and designers are increasingly integrating the use of complex curved surfaces in their designs.

This April saw five recent graduates travel to Milan to exhibit their work as part of the salone del mobile, the world’s largest and most prestigious design fair.

The connected cities lab is a new centre based within the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning. Launched in January 2019, the lab seeks to tackle the more-than-local issues which underpin urban governance in an increasingly urbanised world, focusing on the international dimension of cities and city leadership. Connected Cities Lab director Michele Acuto shares his insights into how the lab came into being and the research focus heading into the future.

Led by architect Jannette Le, and tutors Michael Mack, Mond Qu and Denis Vlieghe the Smoke and Mirrors Exhibition of student projects depicted independent scenes from a wizarding world of magic.

New research finds that people are willing to pay more for energy efficient housing, making the case for a mandatory national rating system for existing homes.

After making an international engineering career at global multinational Arup, Enterprise Professor Brendon McNiven is shaping our Architectural Engineering curriculum.

After completing a PHD at Melbourne School of Design, Kate Tregloan has recently returned to the faculty as associate professor of teaching and learning. Here, she shares insights from a career spanning practice, research and teaching.

A group of 16 Melbourne School of Design masters students gained firsthand insights into planning practices in Asia Pacific cities through a study tour to Japan and South Korea in July.

In February 2018 the Melbourne School of Design partnered with the Richstone group to develop a prototype for a flat-pack pre-fabricated wall system which includes complete plumbing fixtures. The partnership was funded under the Innovations Connections grant awarded by the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science.

This July, Lauren Granek was one of 17 masters students who spent a week at the architecture biennale for the Venice traveling studio, led by Prof Alan Pert and Scott Woods.

We are pleased to announce the formation of a new Faculty research hub to be called InfUr— with a focus on Informal Urbanism. What is informal urbanism and why does it matter?

As an architecture student at Melbourne School of Design, Sarah Ball pictured working in a small firm focusing on residential projects. Now the Principal, Global Sector Leader – Education at Woods Bagot, she focuses on spaces that shape student experiences.

Students returned to Melbourne School of Design this February to find a sleek, mirrored cube had emerged in the Andrew Kee King Fun Gallery. It forms the centrepiece of the school’s newest makerspace: the New Experimental Technology Lab (NExT Lab).

Place is important to Indigenous people and yet there are only a handful of Aboriginal architects in Australia. Jefa Greenaway is working to change that.

The modern metropolitan cities of the world are a classic example of living systems. Like any other living system, these cities have life pouring through their veins in the form of road networks and other infrastructure systems. These systems inhale and exhale as people commute to work in the morning and back to their homes in the evening.

The Melbourne Housing Expo is part of a century old tradition of international building exhibitions that explore ideas about living, dwelling and building in cities and regions. It aims to affect lasting transformation of the everyday practices of housing provision through experiment and public engagement.

Thrive is a transdisciplinary research hub. Our vision is that it must be possible to have a sustainable, thriving built environment for people and ecosystems. The hub uses applied industry-relevant research to create visible outcomes in the world.

Globally entrapped in the “modern religion of development”, cities manifest a wide spectrum of housing issues reflecting their respective economic development stages and socio-cultural specificities.