Design Thesis/07

Open Studio: culture

Helen Walter

Studio Description

This is an open studio for students to pursue individual self-initiated design theses. Students will bring a question they feel the need to explore. It may concern a site, program, architectural type, technology or process, conceptual framework, social or political issue, an unrealised or unfinished idea. Students will research this question through an iterative process of experimentation, design and reflection, with an emphasis on critical engagement with physical, social and cultural contexts.

The studio image shows Martino Gamper’s project 100 Chairs in 100 Days (2007-2017). Collaging together bits of chairs that he found discarded on the street or in friends’ homes, Gamper made a new and unique chair each day for a hundred days in pursuit of a “…process of personal action that leads towards making rather than hesitating.” Students will be encouraged to develop their own design process with rigorous testing and iteration in a collegial peer group environment where students support one another through mutual review and critique.

Workshops and presentations framing relevant issues, examples, techniques and tools will complement your regular studio reviews.

Studio Outcomes

Students are required to have a strong research focus from the start. This will form the basis to develop a clear project idea. We will step through the process of developing your projects from refining your brief, selecting a site, defining a program, and articulating a concept.

Each week we will examine a different aspect of the project together – aspects which are common across all projects – such as site analysis, conceptual framing, program mapping, user research, presentation and communication.

Deliverables will be a detailed design project resolved at a scale appropriate to your project type and brief, and communicated to a quality and complexity expected for a graduating thesis project.

Studio Leader/s

Helen Walter is an architect with a background in sculptural practice. She has worked in award-winning practices including ARM, Paul Morgan Architects and Lyons on diverse projects ranging from a 17-hectare arts precinct, a housing development for at-risk women and children, as well as educational, cultural and domestic residential projects. More recently she was Associate Director at MAP with artist Callum Morton, developing and delivering public art projects in collaboration with artists including Emily Floyd, Kathy Temin, N’arweet Carolyn Briggs, Daniel Von Sturmer, Manon van Kouswijk and Nicholas Mangan. She has taught architecture at RMIT, Monash, and the University of Melbourne.

Readings & References

Readings and references will be set in response to students’ projects.

Schedule Tuesday 10:00 am - 12:00 pm MSD Bldg Room 241 and Friday 9:00 am - 1:00 pm MSD Bldg Room 140

Contact Handbook