Semester 1 2017 Thesis 7
Melbourne Housing Expo
Tom Alves
Melbourne is undergoing a period of historically significant housing change.
More apartments are being built in Melbourne than at any time in the past yet few intensified precincts deliver the amenity and qualities of place consistent with Melbourne’s reputation for liveability. Despite this, intensification is essential to provide >1.5 million new homes needed by 2051 and to enable transition of the metro region to a more sustainable form of urbanisation.
Status quo development processes do not deliver diverse or affordable housing.
Recent higher density housing provision is part of a wider process transforming Melbourne’s property markets, another feature of which has been the on-going decline of housing affordability. Current development practices do not deliver affordable and diverse housing but deliberative development and design-led planning processes offer an alternative
Internationally and historically, Housing Expositions have been instrumental in challenging entrenched norms in the systems of housing and urban development, and used to test and demonstrate new ideas about housing design and urban growth. As the concept of a Melbourne Housing Expo gains momentum with government and among practitioners, in this Studio we partner with an active and engaged urban municipality to develop an Expo proposition on a real inner/middle-ring development site, and begin a process of wider engagement.
Students will prepare a concept and masterplan for a Melbourne Housing Expo and then develop their skills through the design of an apartment building. Although strongly focused around a design outcome, this studio
will also include investigations of development economics, housing and planning policy, affordable housing provision, as well as the cultural and institutional contexts of housing design and development. At the end of the studio, work will be presented to stakeholders and the public.
Studio Leaders:
TOM ALVES holds a PhD in Housing and Urban Studies and is a Research Fellow at the MSD. Formerly at the Office of the Victorian Government Architect, he led the development of Victoria’s apartment design standards and helped establish the Victorian Design Review Panel, acting for a time as its Director. He was Lead Author of the Housing Chapter during the development of Melbourne’s metropolitan strategic plan. Tom has worked previously in architectural practices in Melbourne and Sydney. His academic research has focused on urban consolidation, medium density housing, apartment provision, and the processes of ‘deliberative development’, a term he coined with Dr Andrea Sharam.
ST1/07 Monday 6:15pm - 9:15pm, MSD Room 238
ST2/07 Thursday 12pm - 3pm, MSD Room 141