Studio 38

Studio Fable

Michael Mack & Tony Yu

Studio Description

Architectural practice is constantly outpaced by an increasingly tech-savvy and digitally interconnected society. In order for discourse to maintain relevance in this dynamic age of technological development, it must shift from being reactionary, to being radical. Studio Fable aims to investigate and critique how technological development responds to the current and future issues of the built environment through an analysis of current conditions and projections into the future. Students will be tasked with generating an architectural design in response to a pressing current or future issue around a technologically developing society. Once upon a time in the future, we told tales of architectural craftsmen weaving the technological oddities of today to create the design impossibilities of tomorrow, join us once more, unto the breach.

Studio Outcome

In phase one, we will investigate, critically analyse, and project ideas on a chosen emerging technology through design research, culminating in a hypothesis for the future. Students will also generate research methodologies to direct their speculations. From this point, projects will form and interrogate design scenarios at two physical scales; the City and its Constituent parts. We will utilize narrative to construct a framework through which proposals can be repeatedly tested against in order to generate informed design speculations. Through feedback between both temporal and spatial scales, and design fictions, we will contrast and compare the validity of the projections. Design outcomes will be produced with an emphasis on narrative communication through a large-format drawing, as well as a complimentary animation, model or immersive virtual reality scene. At the culmination of the semester, we will be able to locate our speculations within design discourse, while simultaneously challenging the role technology has in drastically altering our current understanding of Architecture.

Studio Leaders

Michael Mack Michael Mack is a Graduate of Architecture from the Melbourne School of Design and Senior Technical Tutor in the Bachelor of Design and Lecturer in Digital Design, Fabrication and Virtual Reality. His work ranges between product design and making, immersive installations, and small-scale architectural projects. Michael is also the founder of Tinytecture, a set design and model making company combining a love of making with architectural design and fabrication.

Tony Yu Tony Yu is a Graduate of Architecture from the Melbourne School of Design and a Lead Technical Tutor in Digital Design. He is currently working as part of the Deep Design Lab researching into speculative futures around emerging technologies and more-than-human participatory design. Tony also has experience as a concept artist and designer for the video-game industry.

Readings & References

• Continuous Monument - Superstudio
• New Babylon - Constant Nieuwenhuys
• Simulacra and Simulation - Jean Baudrillard
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Phillip K. Dick.
• Wall-E - Disney Pixar Ex Machina - Alex Garland
• Black Mirror - Charlie Brooker
• ILMxLAB - Industrial Light and Magic
• No Man’s Sky - Hello Games
• Soma - Frictional Games
• Detroit Become Human - Quantic Games

Schedule Mondays 18:15-21:15 in Room 226; Thursdays 18:15-21:15 in Room 117

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