Studio 10

MGS Place Lab: Co-Creating Brunswick

Katherine Sundermann and Clare Easterbrook-Lamb | Urbanism Focus

This studio is co-taught with ABPL90376 Urban Design Thesis.

Studio Description

How can you effect real and meaningful change? Don’t operate in a vacuum.

The Co-Creating Brunswick Studio will emphasise an approach to architecture and urban design that rails against the ‘lonesome creative genius’. We see design as a collaborative and multi-disciplinary process that operates within a broader context. This means engaging with real-world challenges that span spatial, political, social and economic divides. To facilitate this process, the studio has developed a list of core collaborators in urban planning, development economics, finance, government agencies, ethnography, photography, social theory, psychology and law who will be invited to conduct lectures and workshops for the studio and be guest critics

Studio Outcome

The semester will be broken up into three components; analysis and research, precinct scale vision and architectural/place scale. The first stage will include a two-day intensive in Brunswick to quickly introduce you to the context, our main collaborators and the challenges that they are looking to address.

As a thesis student, you will be encouraged to set your own agenda that explores the complex and layered issues facing Brunswick. We see this studio as a stepping stone between your studies and your practice in the ‘real world’ as an emerging architect and urban designer. We will be providing you with the opportunity to pick the brains of some of the best practices and urban thinkers who are leading the conversation (and debate) in Melbourne. In addition, you will be provided with an opportunity to show your work to a wider audience through a studio publication and brought into the MGS office for regular feedback on your work.

Studio Leaders

Katherine Sundermann is an Associate Director at MGS Architects with in-depth experience that includes masterplanning, urban design guidelines and strategy for university campuses, residential neighbourhoods, creative employment precincts and community infrastructure. In recent years she has expanded her work on university campuses, working on visions for innovation and creative employment precincts in Cremorne, Clayton, Ballarat and Melbourne CBD. Katherine has previously run an annual travelling studio to the Netherlands entitled ‘Opportunistic Urbanism’, which culminated in a body of research into alternative housing delivery models in Northern Europe.

Clare Easterbrook-Lamb is an Urban Designer at MGS Architects, having previously worked in Sydney and Rotterdam. She has worked on a number of masterplans, strategic frameworks and urban design guidelines for universities, developers and government in Australia and Europe, as well as winning entries for large scale international urban design competitions in Asia. Clare has an interest in strategically and socially oriented design, having worked on frameworks to deliver economic revitalisation opportunities in Melbourne’s west and creative employment precincts in Ballarat and Melbourne CBD.

Readings & References

Future of work:

• Sanz, Víctor Muñoz (2018). Researching Automated Landscapes. Dutch Pavilion, Biennale Architettura 2018

Alternative housing:

• Fergus, Andy (2019). Redesigning the Housing Market. Assemble Papers.

Activation and community:

• Glaser, M. et al (2012). The City at Eye Level: Lessons for Street Plinths.

Climate adaption:

• Phillips, Braden (2019). Dairy Farming at Sea. Hakai Magazine.

Framework for diversity:

• Urhan Urban Design (2010). The Spontaneous City. BIS Publishers. (Manifesto for a spontaneous city)

Form follows finance:

• Wainwright, Oliver (2016). Abolish Viability Assessments - AF Manifesto for London.

Authenticity and experience:

• OMA (2010). Cronocaos Venice Biennale 2010.

Travel Brunswick, Melbourne | 16-18 August | $200

Schedule Mondays 17:30-20:30 at MGS Architects; Thursdays 18:15-21:15 in MSD Room 137

Contact Handbook Key Dates