Studio 02

SUBURBS STUDIO

Rory Hyde

This studio is available to students enrolled in ABPL90169 Design Thesis.

Studio Description

This studio will focus on the Sunbury South Town Centre, part of a major new greenfield growth area to the north-west of Melbourne. It is being run in partnership with SRL, a property owner working to raise the quality in this space, with input from other leading designers including OMA and Right Angle Studio.

The suburbs are where most of us live, and yet the least amount of attention is paid to their design. This studio will seek to understand this territory without judgement, and to develop tools for operating at the scale of the suburbs, a scale that has largely evaded architectural intervention.

At a time when patterns of work and life are being radically recast, how could we reimagine the suburbs as a socially, economically, sustainably place to live?

Studio Outcomes

Students will imagine a new kind of town centre, one that acknowledges the suburbs for what they are, while reconceiving them for the future. This work will be informed by input from a real client, with various site visits and guest lectures from designers and academics working in this space.

Students will be introduced to the ways in which new suburban town centres are built. How a green field of farmland can become a new part of city, engaging with the infrastructural, social, economic, political, and cultural aspects of the suburbs today.

Studio Leader

Rory Hyde is Associate Professor in Architecture, Curatorial Design and Practice at the MSD. Until 2020 he was the the Curator of Contemporary Architecture and Urbanism at the V&A Museum in London. He has worked extensively in practice internationally, including for AMO, MVRDV, ARM, and BKK. Rory’s work examines new forms of practice and the changing role of the architect today. He is the author a number of books, including Future Practice (2013) and Architects After Architecture (2020).

Readings & References

• Alexandra Lange, Meet me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall, 2022
• Alex Wall, Victor Gruen: From Urban Shop to New City, 2005
• Robin Boyd, Australia’s Home, 1952, and The Australian Ugliness, 1960
• Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia, 2003
• Graeme Davison, The Cream Brick Frontier, 1995, and Car Wars, 2004
• Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, 1985
• Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Learning from Las Vegas, 1972

Schedule Tuesdays and Thursdays 09:00-12:00
Off-campus Activities Week 2

Contact Handbook