Thesis Studio/02

Designing from Everyday Life_The Gums Camp Ground

Akihito Hatayama

This studio is available to students enrolled in ABPL90375 Landscape Architecture Design Thesis.

Studio Description

Setting a goal of Net Zero Emissions by 2050, Australian government released ‘Long-Term Emissions Reduction Plan’, prioritising developments of technology. Despite its focus on energy production, there is not enough discussion around our endless consumption.

How can landscape architecture organise and enhance circular production and consumption as part of everyday life, and moreover, setup iterative evolution of their diverse network?

This studio will shift our attention to our field of behavior in tackling climate adaptation, which includes everything we do such as how we eat, shop, commute and produce waste to more complex collective organisations, for instance, how we collect and process the waste to how the economy works around it.   The site is Gum’s Campground in Kings Lake National Park, the traditional land of the Wurundjeri people to the south and the Taungurung people to the north.  It is one of the upstream catchments for Birrurang (Yarra) and provides infrastructure for visitor’s activities, which are managed by Parks Victoria.

Studio Outcomes

The studio begins with series of explorations for design drivers, which are:

• Observing own behaviors to investigate consumption, production, and distribution of resource to experience and personalise the broader issue;
• Interacting with peer’s works to discover the potential networks of resource distribution among various activities of production and consumption;
• Reflecting traditional culture and living where circular production and consumption was often embedded as a part of everyday life.

These prescribed tasks set in the first 4-5 weeks followed by in-depth site analysis, students are challenged to engage in individual research to formulate an own design concept, deeply immersing themselves into the past, present and future of the Gums Campground.  To make the project grounded, the design development process will envisage to organise a design workshop where students can consult their own design with the professional project landscape architects working on National Park and also to provide an opportunity for final presentation of selected works to a stakeholder of this site.

Studio Leader

Akihito Hatayama is a Principal Designer at SMEC, a multi-disciplinary design consultancy and has worked on projects with a broad range of scales and typologies from an intricate private residential garden, metropolitan health care precinct, infrastructure to large scale mixed-use project.  His projects have received multiple Australian National Awards including UDIA and AILA Landscape Architecture Awards.  Working on his larger scale design and planning projects, he has also been experimenting bottom-up landscape and community design that evolves from activities of everyday life, deeply engaging with hands-on gardening and natural farming.

Readings & References

• Australian Long Term Emission Reduction plan https://www.industry.gov.au/sites/default/files/October%202021/document/australias-long-term-emissions-reduction-plan.pdf
• Kings Lake National park Management Plan (1996) https://www.parks.vic.gov.au/-/media/project/pv/main/parks/documents/management-plans/resource-library/kinglake-national-park---management-plan---1996.pdf?rev=cdd4e5bcdf6f4a0193338ccab5bcdca5
• Kings Lake National park Master plan (2011) https://www.parks.vic.gov.au/-/media/project/pv/main/parks/documents/management-plans/kinglake-national-park-master-plan.pdf?rev=f8d7cd6e227f448f8a9061044af47b2d
• Brown, A. (2013). Just enough: Lessons in living green from traditional Japan. Tuttle Publishing.
• Holmgren, D. (2018). RetroSuburbia: The Downshfter’s Guide To A Resilient Future. Hepburn Springs: Melliodora Publishing.
• Smil, V. (2017). Energy and civilization: a history. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
• Schumacher, E. F. (1973). Small is beautiful: Economics as if people mattered. New York: Harper & Row.

Schedule Fridays 14:00-20:00

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