Studio 07

Uncommon-Unity

Rob Polglase, Stephanie Wan, and Tina Huynh

Studio Description

The pandemic/post-pandemic era has reinforced to many of us the importance of community and social infrastructure. This studio invites you to break open the concept of ‘community’, explore what the fundamental conditions are for ‘uncommon-unity’ and investigate how architecture can bring together heterogeneous groups, promote interaction, establish bonds, provide equity, enhance safety and foster community.

‘Social infrastructure is crucially important, because local, face-to-face interactions—at the school, the playground, and the corner diner—are the building blocks of all public life. People forge bonds in places that have healthy social infrastructures—not because they set out to build community, but because when people engage in sustained, recurrent interaction, particularly while doing things they enjoy, relationships inevitably grow.’ Klinenberg, E. (2018, p.10).

Students are encouraged to explore the links and possible tensions between social activities and spatial zones, interrogate traditional boundaries, examine sector hybridisation and explore opportunities for integration.  As an example, school communities are often enhanced through extension and multiplication of program to foster the inclusion of broader networks. How can architecture and urban design enable the amplification and intensification of such settings and unify what society divides?

Studio Outcomes

Students will be supported to develop their own mapping and design strategies to explore spatial and material properties that enable ‘‘uncommon-unity’ with architectural language defining transitions, boundaries, edges, layers, transparency, permeability.

Focus will be given to community sector opportunity cues, learnings, cultural, climate-environmental, and socio-economic dynamics. As an example, the aspiration to expand school-based facilities and programs will be offered as a context for wider community use, locating schools at the intersection of separate and sometimes competing jurisdictions, planning systems, local needs, policy-funding priorities, operational settings, and constructions of ‘community’ or ‘uncommon-unity’.

Students are encouraged to investigate their own selected communities and project sites to research opportunities and inspiration from local physical, environmental, material conditions, social histories, connections and other identifying place setting characteristics. A selection of inner-city sites with detailed site data, community infrastructure and planning framework information will also be offered.

Studio Leaders

Rob Polglase has over two decades of practice experience leading architecture, urban planning, projects, design teams, including award winning multi-sector state and local scale community infrastructure.  This work involved advocating with communities and advising governments on policy, planning, architecture, procurement of community infrastructure projects. Rob has been engaged in education throughout his career including design studios at UoM over the past six years.  Rob is currently developing research with the ARC Funded ‘LEaRN’ Building Connections at UoM - RMIT (Centre for Urban Research).

Stephanie Wan is a practicing Architect with twenty years of experience with a strong focus on educational projects. A Senior Associate at ClarkeHopkinsClarke Architects, she is a critical thinker who loves the theories underpinning design as much as their practical applications. In 2019, she was invited to participate in the AIA Archi-Pitch “Schools of the Future” and advocated for a future where the edges of school and community are blurred…

Tina Huynh is a practicing Architect with over 13 years of experience in Educational Architecture, principally with ClarkeHopkinsClarke Architects. She considers it a privilege to practice in a sector where lifelong learning and innovation are highly valued and is motivated by helping make design and architecture accessible to all. Having studied in Melbourne and Germany she holds a MArch degree from the UoM.

The studio will be coordinated with program input and review support from UoM LEaRN, Building Connections (ARC) research team, and practice partners ClarkeHopkinsClarke Architects (CHC). Depending on pandemic restrictions, much of the studio work is offered to be undertaken at CHC’s new collaborative Carlton Connect office environment, over the road from MSD. Through this collaboration between UoM (MSD) and CHC, students, academics, studio leaders and practitioners will experience firsthand how blurred boundaries and true integration can result in enhanced relationships and outcomes.

Readings & References

References, case studies, online resources will be offered with studio discussion topics.

• City of Melbourne. (2014). Community Infrastructure Development Framework. melbourne.vic.gov.au/communityinfrastructure
• City of Moreland. (2021). Imagine Moreland, The Moreland Community Vision document. https://conversations.moreland.vic.gov.au/imagine-moreland
• ClarkeHopkinsCLarke. (2022). Research and Studio Partners https://www.chc.com.au/impact-tomorrow
• Cleveland, B. (2016). A school but not as we know it! Towards schools for networked communities, Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) Conference 2016.
• Kenny, S., MacGrath, Brian, & Phillips, R. G. (2018). The Routledge handbook of community development: Perspectives from around the globe. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781317378174
• Klinenberg, E. (2018). Palaces for the people: How social infrastructure can help fight inequality, polarization, and the decline of civic life (First Edition). Crown.
• LEaRN Projects, University of Melbourne, (2021). Building Connections Schools as Community Hubs. https://sites.research.unimelb.edu.au/learn-network/projects/building-connections#research
• McShane, I., & Wilson, C. K. (2017). Beyond the School Fence: Rethinking Urban Schools in the Twenty rst Century. Urban Policy & Research, 35(4), 472-485. doi:10.1080/08111146.2017.1310098 Kraft, M. E., & Furlong, S. R. (2020). Public Policy. CQ Press.
• Shuttleworth, D. (2010). Schooling for Life: Community Education and Social Enterprise. University of Toronto Press

Schedule Mondays and Thursdays 15:15-18:15

Contact Handbook