Studio 06

MELBOURNE AFFORDABLE HOUSING CHALLENGE

Ursula Chandler

Studio Description

The studio looks to propose an effective, affordable strategy that could meet the housing needs of Greater Melbourne. Run in parallel with the Bee Breeders Affordable Housing Challenge Competition https://beebreeders.com/architecturecompetitions/melbournechallenge/ the studio will focus on ideas of affordability and specificity in architecture. Looking at the Epping Train Line we will select sites along the railway corridor, a pat, landscape, or brutal urban infrastructure which connects a series of districts, nodes and in-between spaces. We will use this existing infrastructure and the landscape it has generated to re-imagine and re-interrupt the periphery and the non urban, and the community that facilitates. . Through staged strategies, construction innovation and prefabrication, and larger urban and infrastructure planning we will produce robust and long-term proposals, which expand architecture from something which is ‘artistic’ to something which attempts to address the forces that shape our environments; economics, politics, society and geography.

Studio Outcome

The task is to intervene within one of the existing train station precincts on the Epping line. Through staged intervention each project will propose;

1. A element of re-use or reclamation
2. A new community accessible building or element
3. New housing proposal [refer to competition brief]

Projects will oscillate between the existing and emerging landscape and geography of your site, down to the construction detailing and fabrication of buildings and infrastructure.

Studio Leader

Ursula has worked on projects across Australia, the United Kingdom and Africa. Prior to establishing Ursula Chandler Architects, Ursula was a Project Lead at Adjaye Associates [London] and worked for Robert Simeoni Architects and Bates Smart in Melbourne. The practice works on a range of projects types and scales and in 2019 was short-listed for the annual NGV Architecture Commission Competition. Ursula has led design studio at both Melbourne and Monash Universities and has previously taught architectural history and construction technology. Ursula graduated from the University of Melbourne and received the RAIA Bates Smart Graduate Prize, Robert Barber Award in Landscape Architecture and a Dean’s Honours Award.

Readings & References

• To be supplied in Week 1

Schedule 18:15-21:15 Mondays and Thursdays

Contact Handbook Key Dates