Studio 38

STUDIO FABLE

Michael Mack and Tony Yu | Cities + Technology Focus

This studio is available to students enrolled in ABPL90143 Studio D and ABPL90115 Studio E only.

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 projection into the future. As groups, students will be tasked with generating an architectural proposal for Melbourne 2077 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. We then ventured once more unto the breach, tackling the future crises of the built environment. Join us as we speculate on the future of Melbourne in the final chapter.

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 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 and architectural speculation 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 series of drawings and complimentary mediums, including animations, models or immersive virtual reality scenes. 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 is a Graduate of Architecture from the Melbourne School of Design, Subject Coordinator and Senior Technical Tutor in the Bachelor of Design, teaching across various subjects ranging from Digital Design and Fabrication to Rendering and Virtual Reality. His previous 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 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
• Le Transperceneige - Jacques Lob
• 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
• Prey - Arkane Studios
• Detroit Become Human - Quantic Games

Schedule Mondays 18:15-21:15 in MSD Room 236; Thursdays 18:15-21:15 in MSD Room 216

Contact Handbook Key Dates