THE/13
Open Studio: Homework
Allan Burrows
Studio Description
“The private home is not an isolated unit, but a living system within a mass of systems, requiring the labour of many.” – Kelly Prendergast, Home Body
This is an open design studio focusing on multi-residential architecture in Melbourne.
In this studio we will consider how these buildings are more than just physical and spatial structures—they're part of a larger, interconnected systems influenced by regulations, economics, construction processes, personal motivations, and cultural desires. ‘The Melbourne Apartment’ could be understood as a concept suspended between various sectors as a centrally managed idea for wide scale implementation – but at present, no practitioner is able to fully access or shape its entire ‘body’.
Students will be able to posit a thesis anywhere within this context but will be encouraged to understand their architecture to be in dialogue with a nominated system/s – real or imagined. The studio aims to be an opportunity to evaluate and reimagine the conditions for multi-residential architecture to occur and speculate upon alternative models of architectural standardization through the lens of a finely crafted agenda.
This studio pursues theses that dexterously navigate the personal and the cultural, the idiosyncratic and the systemic, and the ultra-specific and the generic.
Studio Outcomes
Students will research, develop and site their projects under their own volition. Suggested processes, drawings, analyses, and precedents will be discussed on a project-by-project basis.
Prevalent themes of density, supply, site, type, economic feasibility, and development models will provide a background for the work, but the studio encourages students to foreground alternative models that critique, distort or further these discourses.
The final projects may reside within architecture, policy, regulatory frameworks, or speculative development tools, but each student will design multi-residential buildings with high tectonic resolution, to evidence the project's implications. Projects are free to be speculative/experimental, but students will be encouraged to arrive at their positions through critical analysis of the real.
Studio Leaders
Allan Burrows is an architect, writer, researcher, and educator based in Melbourne (Naarm/Birrarung-ga) where he currently works at Wardle. He has led design studios at the University of Melbourne and RMIT University for several years, where his research has typically focused on contemporary living conditions; exploring how architecture behaves within interdisciplinary systems and institutions.
Readings & References.
Readings and references will be discussed on a project-by-project basis.
Schedule:
Monday 3:15-6:15pm in MSD 216
Wednesday 9am-12pm in MSD 146
Off-Site Activities: