Studio 02
The NEW Third Place
Mark Ng
Studio Description
The NEW Third Place is calling for students interested in designing memorable places for informal social life with a human-centred approach.
In countries like the USA and Australia, the loss of informal public life over the past few decades has led to widespread social isolation, passive consumerism, strain on work and family institutions, and cultural segregation.
Our solution to this is the creation of third places. These are places for informal public gathering like the French cafe, Japanese teahouse, or London Coffee House of bygone eras. These places, while often unassuming, are a common and often defining feature of great civilisations and cities.
This studio critically engages with the ideas of Ray Oldenburg’s book, The Great Good Place, to provide a foundation for you to propose your own new, experimental version of this — What will the new third places of the future look like?
Studio Outcomes
This studio aims to provide the knowledge and inspiration for you to develop your own human-centred approach to designing social spaces.
You will be encouraged to take the lead and build your own specific brief, choosing the scale, typology, and site of your project. This will allow you produce a project that is geographically and culturally relevant to you.
Your final project will be a NEW third place that has the principle function of facilitating informal public life. This could be a radical new type of bar in the middle-ring suburbs that has a 5m x 5m foot print, as an example.
In order to bring your ideas alive, the studio will place heavy emphasis on graphic representation, strongly encouraging you to produce powerful drawings and images exploring unconventional methods.
Studio Leader
Mark is a multidisciplinary designer with experience in practice as design lead at Breathe Architecture, and experience in teaching at the MSD across the undergraduate and masters levels, conducting past studios such as Nightingale Night School and the Future Homes Design Competition. Mark’s strengths lie in creative thinking, rigorous conceptual design, and visual communication, working at the intersection of architecture, graphic design and art.
Readings & References
- Oldenburg, R. (1999). The great good place: CafeĢs, coffee shops, bookstores, bars, hair salons, and other hangouts at the heart of a community. New York: Marlowe.
Schedule Mondays 18:15-21:15 and Thursdays 15:15-18:15