Studio C/06

Beyond Isolation

Rob Nerlich and Kate McMahon

Studio Description

Using the vehicle of a design competition for senior housing (https://architecturecompetitions.com/beyondisolation/), the studio will explore ways that architecture can interweave culturally and climatically responsive design, tectonics, topologies and forms to anchor memory and reinvent community housing.

This housing studio demands innovative approaches and asks students to formulate and embed additional programme to foster community, tackle senior isolation and generate genuine integration into surrounding social fabric. Technical and care aspects must be managed to enhance living. Agism and discrimination, and innovation in housing older people will be considered. How can the provision of social, communal, and intergenerational spaces enhance senior living?

The site is located to the west of Melbourne in an area in need of senior housing and urban regeneration where an intervention has the potential to contribute positively to the local community. First Nations engagement will embed Indigenous design responses.

Selected projects will be entered in the competition.

Studio Outcomes

A sensitive response to site will be developed through investigation of climate, topography, orientation, landscape and urban characteristics with a focus on Country and First Nations Knowledges. Students will learn to interpret data to gain understanding of the setting. Projects will need to respond sensitively to and with care for location.

Students will be challenged to learn about indigenous understandings of Country through engagement and research, and phenomenological approaches will also be studied (readings, precedent studies etc.)

Iterative massing studies will be undertaken before detailed planning to understand site potential and urban realm design opportunities.

Environmentally sustainable design will be explored appropriate to the location and orientation of the site. Operational and embodied carbon will be considered, and methodologies explored to guide construction techniques and material selections.

Social justice issues explored will include how architecture can contribute to the creation of dignified and delightful places for senior people to live.

Studio Leader/s

Kate McMahon is a registered architect in Victoria and the United Kingdom and is an experienced Studio Leader in the Master of Architecture at the University of Melbourne. Kate is a co-founding director of mcmahon and nerlich architects a design and research led small practice in South Melbourne. Having worked extensively on a wide range of education and residential buildings here and in the UK, Kate designs iteratively using 3d spatial explorations including a combination of physical and digital modelling, and is interested in how quality design can enrich communities.

Rob Nerlich is a registered architect in Victoria and is an experienced Studio Leader in the Master of Architecture at the University of Melbourne. Rob is a co-founding director of mcmahon and nerlich architects. With considerable experience in projects across many scales, here in Australia and abroad, Rob is interested in housing in all its forms - from individual houses to inner urban apartments and believes that all members of society deserve a dignified and appropriate place to live.

Readings & References

Alison Page and Paul Memmot – Design, Building on Country

Robert McCarter and Juhani Pallasmaa – Understanding Architecture.

Kenneth Frampton – Towards a Critical Regionalism; Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance.

Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture.

Christian Norberg- Schulz – Genius Loci, Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture.

a+t research group: Aurora Fernadez Per, Javier Mozas, Javier Arpa - Density is Home.

Quaderns d’archittectura i urbanism, no. 225, Scales of Sustainability.

Rachel Hurst, St Albans Housing , NMBW Architecture Studio with Monash Art, Design and Architecture in Architecture Australia, May/April 2022.

Schored, Monash University, XYX Lab Gender+Place, A Design Guide for Older Women’s Housing.

Schedule Tuesday 12pm - 3pm, MSD Room 238 and Thursday 3:15pm - 6:15pm MSD Room 241

Contact Handbook