Design Thesis/01

Radical Suburbs: Neighbourhood Trains

Paul Walker

Studio Description

Radical Suburbs takes its title from a recent book Amanda Kolson Hurley which examines suburban communities in American cities which drastically departed from the common view of the suburbs as cultural wastelands and places of conformity. How can we take these lessons from urban history and rethink the architecture of suburbia anew?  In this studio we will consider the Suburban Rail Loop, a major state transportation initiative, as an opportunity to consider how our suburbs could be transformed.

We have chosen Clayton as our test ground, a rapidly densifying suburb in Melbourne's southeast. The site stretches between the existing Clayton railway station and Monash University’s Clayton campus, capturing a range of places with unique histories and land usage types. It includes large growth generators such as Monash University, Monash Health, and two planned SRL Interchange stations, each with their own spatial characteristics, occupation patterns and demographics.

Studio Outcomes

Foregrounding the transformative potential of the new Suburban Raul Loop stations, each student in the studio will develop a local scale strategic design vision within the Clayton/Monash area. This will address 5-, 10-, and 20-year time spans. An architectural project tapping into that vision will then be proposed and resolved. The strategic vision can be a development framework or masterplan supported by well-documented research of relevant precedents and case studies sourced from Melbourne or elsewhere. The final architectural outcome can be drawn from a wide range of building typologies – small, medium, or large-scale architectural interventions, community and/or leisure facilities, innovative and inclusive medium density housing, local transport-associated infrastructure that supports cycling, shared EVs etc. Completely new programs associated with the urban reach of the Suburban Rail Loop can also be proposed.

Studio Leader/s

Paul Walker is a professor of architecture in the Melbourne School of Design.  His research is about twentieth century architecture in Australia & NZ, and about museum architecture in colonial and post-colonial contexts. Walker is a frequent contributor to Architecture Australia. Recent publications include C Townsend and P Walker ‘Public-Private Partnerships and Medium-Density Housing in North Melbourne’, in K Borsi, et al, eds, Housing and the City, Routledge (2022); and J Gatley & P Walker, ‘Modernization and Advocacy’, in Beatriz Colomina, et al, eds, Radical Pedagogies, MIT Press (2022). He is the lead author of John Andrews: architect of uncommon sense, Harvard Design Books (2023).

Ruofan Lei graduated MArch from the Melbourne School of Design in 2017. He is a designer with a firm belief in quality public architecture. During his practice career, he has worked on a number of major city-shaping infrastructure projects, including the Metro Tunnel, Airport Rail Link and Suburban Rail Loop. Ruofan has a unique design approach that focuses on experiential, human-scale interactions within public projects. In extension to his practice, Ruofan is an illustration artist who explores building forms speculatively. In 2020, his illustration project was selected by the City of Melbourne to be part of the laneway art program, Flashforward.

Readings & References

Architecture Australia 110: 4 (July/August 2021) issue edited by Rory Hyde devoted to suburbia

Tom Avermaete & Janina Gosseye, Urban Design in the 20^th Century: A History, Zurich: gta Verlag, 2021

Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness, Melbourne: Text, 2002 (first published 1960)

Robert Bruegmann, Sprawl: a compact history, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005

Janina Gosseye & Tom Avermaete, eds, Acculturating the shopping centre, London: Routledge, 2019

Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: green fields and urban growth, 1820-2000, New York: Pantheon Books, 2003

Amanda Kolson Hurley, Radical Suburbs: experimental living on the fringes of the American city, Cleveland: Belt Publishing, 2019

Leandro Medrano, Luiz Recaman & Tom Avermaete, eds, The New Urban Condition, New York: Routledge, 2021

David Nichols, The Bogan Delusion, Mulgrave: Affirm Press, 2011

Ricky Ray Ricardo, ‘Jocelyn Chiew: Shaping the Future Campus’, Landscape Architecture Australia 159, 2018: 26-31

Peter Rowe, Making a Middle Landscape, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991

Paul Walker & Andrys Onsman, ‘Circumnavigating the Citadel’, Architecture Australia 105: 4, 2016: 45-48

Schedule Monday 3:15 - 6:15 pm, MSD Bldg Room 142 and Friday 3:15 - 6:15 pm MSD Bldg Room 124

Contact Handbook