Studio 3/03

Not Another Suburban Town -  An alternative for a new suburban Australian Dream

Gary Fang

Studio Description

The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the way many of us live and work, urging the adoption of alternative planning concepts that address the demands of local living and adaptively weave more resilient private and public open spaces into our future cities.

Based on the idea competition - The Business as (Un)usual, this studio invites you to imagine (not) another suburban dream for an emerging Australian city in 2100. You will be challenged to envisage a future Australian city for around 50,000 people located in a regional area.  For more details of the idea competition, please go to: https://www.audrc.org/bau-competition

In this studio, we assume a high-speed rail connecting Sydney and Melbourne will be built by 2100; new rail cities, satellite cities or SeaChange cities are subsequently becoming the next hot spots for alternative regional living. Driven by this scenario, these settlements require a more humane community scale, sustainable housing, transport and economic outcomes and accessible private and public open space networks that will support a new lifestyle in a 2100 setting. Your proposal will be developed at two scales: an overarching conceptual image for your future Australian city followed by a more detailed design investigation of a 1km² precinct.

What is the new suburban Australian Dream?

Across the world, liveable cities, or even our favourite neighbourhoods, have provided us with lively spatial precedents to understand the essential needs and criteria of local living. Drawing on research and observations, you will be asked to explore landscape architecture driven design approaches for cities. Concepts of Landscape Urbanism, supported by the theoretical writings of Peter Connolly, James Corner, and Alex Wall, along with the Networks Cities 15-step methodology introduced by Brearley Architects and Urbanists will provide beginning points for initiating your speculation and design proposition.

Studio Outcomes

This studio will encourage a high level of specificity in drawings and idea representation and offers students the opportunity to engage with the representational challenges of design competitions. This will include strategies for working across multiple scales, shifting between analogue and digital models and illustrations and presenting landscape architectural thinking and vision. The final submission requirements are aligned with the competition which closes in July 2022. (four presentation panels and supporting text).

Studio Leader

Mr Gary Fang holds a Master of Landscape Architecture with distinction from RMIT University, and completed his bachelor studies at Soochow University (China). Before pursuing his own practice, he was a landscape architect at Brearley Architects & Urbanists and Hansen Partnership. He has teaching experience across various landscape design courses at RMIT University and has led design studios at undergraduate and graduate levels since 2017. His research interests lie therein the testing of boundaries set by the binaries of landscape-garden, landscape-infrastructure and landscape-architecture.

Readings & References

• Peter Connolly, "Embracing openness: Making landscape urbanism landscape architectural: Part 1." In The Mesh Book Landscapes/Infrastructure, edited by Julian Raxworthy and Jessica Blood, 76-103. RMIT University Press, 2004.
• James Corner, "Terra Fluxus." In The Landscape Urbanism Reader, edited by Charles Waldheim, 21-33. Princeton Architectural Press, 2006.
• Alex Wall, "Programming the urban surface." In Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, edited by James Corner, 233-249. Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.
• James Brearley and Qun Fang, Networks Cities. China Architecture & Building Press, 2010.

Schedule Lectures: Mondays 11:00-12:00; Studios: Mondays 12:15-18:15

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