Studio A + B

Urban Design Studio A + B

Leire Asensio-Villoria

This studio is co-taught between ABPL90061 Studio A and ABPL90273 Studio B.

Studio Description

The suburbs are have been a rich area for exploration and invention for the design disciplines. Frederick Law Olmsted, Ebenezer Howard, Raymond Unwin, Frank Lloyd Wright, Reyner Banham, Robert Venturi with Denise Scott Brown, Marion Mahoney with Walter Burley Griffin, Ludwig Hilberseimer with Mies Van Der Rohe, the Hampstead Garden Suburb, Riverside, Broadacre City, Lafayette Park, Learning from Levittown, Los Angeles; The Architecture of Four Ecologies, Castlecraig and Eaglemont are just a few notable exemplars.

Today, notable experiments in suburban living persist with much of contemporary innovations in architectural, landscape and urban design often taking place in the city’s suburbs.  However, with a growing awareness of the limitations in extending the suburbs as a sustainable model for urbanization and the massive burdens it can impose on our infrastructure, social lives and health..

In this studio, you will be tasked with investigating how Melbourne may densify intelligently.  You will consider how new suburban developments may also enable this densification while also addressing a model for urbanization that is sustainable and with thoughtful civic as well as ecologically enriched urban spaces or environments.

Studio Outcomes

The studio will develop foundational skills in urban design: block and fabric morphology, civic space design and sustainable urban design.  Students will engage with these sites in order to offer tangible design proposals that adopt a projective attitude towards addressing the opportunities offered by this apparent contradiction between an objective need for more compact forms of urban development with a persistent desire to conserve (or reclaim) the treasured qualities offered by suburban living.

Learning outcomes as defined in the University Handbook.

• https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/subjects/abpl90061/
• https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/subjects/abpl90273

Studio Leaders

Leire is a registered architect in Spain. She received her Diploma in Architecture awarded with honours from the Architectural Association in 2001.

Since 2002, Leire has been collaborating with David Syn Chee Mah as asensio_mah. Leire has worked at a number of international architectural practices including Zaha Hadid Architects, Torres Nadal Arquitectos as well as Allies and Morrison Architects/Arup.

Previous to the MSD, Leire taught at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, at London’s Architectural Association School of Architecture and at Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art and Planning.

Leire has a number of publications that include “Systems Upgrade. (Re)fabricating tectonic prototypes”, “Lifestyled: Health and Places” and “Architecture and Waste. A (Re)planned Obsolescence".

Readings & References

• Cerda, 1996, Cerda, urbs i territory: planning beyond the urban, Electa publishers, Madrid
• The Endless City (eds.Richard Burdett and Deyan Sudjic), Phaidon, 2007
• Busquets J., Yang D., Keller M., 2019, Urban Grids: Handbook for Regular City Design, Oro Editions
• Mah, D. and Asensio Villoria, L 2016. Life-Styled: Health and Places, 1st edn, Jovis.
• P.V. Aureli, 2007, Cities from Zero: City’s Degree Zero: Polis vs Planning, or City-making in the West and East pp25, Architectural Association, London
• M. Gausa, 2002, Housing and Singular Housing,  Birkhäuser, Publishers, Basel, Boston
• Vittorio Aureli Pier, Toward The Archipelago in Log no.11 (Winter 2008), Anyone, New York, pp91-119
• Pope Albert, 1996, Ladders, Princeton University Press, New York
• O.M Ungers, 1976, The Urban Block and the Gotham city: metaphors & metamorphosis: two concurrent projects, Ithaca, NY
• C. Waldheim, 2004, Hilbersaimer / Mies Van Der Rohe. Lafayette Park Detroit. Prestel Verlag, Munich, Berlin, London, New York.
• Whatever happened to urbanism - OMA, (with Bruce Mau), 1995, S,M,L,XL,The Monicelli Press, New York, pp. 959/971
• D. Aubert, L. Cavar & N. Chandani, thanks for the view, mr. mies: Lafayette park, Detroit, Metropolis Books.
• A. Fernandez Per, J. Mozas, J.Arpa, 2009, Density Housing Construction & Costs, a+t ediciones, Spain
• A. Fernandez Per, J. Mozas, J.Arpa, 2007, a+t Density Series. DBook. Density, Data, Diagrams, Dwellings, Spain

Schedule Mondays 10:00-13:00 and Thursdays 10:00-13:00

Contact Handbook