All that is public melts into air

Bella Singal & Carey Landwehr

Studio Description

This studio will explore the diminishing role of Victoria’s public housing in the context of current public policy and the recently released Victoria’s Housing Statement 2024-34. Challenging the existing and emerging government-championed ‘renewal’ models, which continue to replicate the failures of speculative housing, this studio seeks to explore an alternative to the problematic framing of ‘public housing’ and contested ideas of ‘community’ as limited by cadastral boundaries. Focusing on the current and historic complexities faced by the community at the Atherton Gardens Estate, Fitzroy (Ngar-Go), students will contend with the potential for surrounding public infrastructure to support community needs, contest neocolonial power structures and reverse escalating stigma, dislocation, and gentrification

Studio Outcomes

The studio aims to investigate the significance and opportunities of sites surrounding the Atherton Gardens Estate. We will experiment with multiple mapping and field recording techniques to understand the different layers of entanglement between the contested histories of human and non-human interaction. Through these exercises, students will identify adjacent sites to propose an alternative or strengthen an existing public infrastructure project imperative, helping to sustain the community's future. Students will work together as a class to produce digital and physical models to illustrate the relationship between the estate, their selected sites and individual proposals. Throughout the semester, students will develop these design proposals and research findings through drawings, collages and renders, alongside ongoing reflective journaling of their process. This journal will also be a method to document methods of co-design implemented during discussions with the community, site visits, conversations with invited speakers and studio esquisses.

Studio Leader/s

Bella Singal (they/them) is an architect and a teaching associate at Monash University. In practice, they lead a mixture of typologies focusing on community projects situated in the outer suburban and regional areas of Victoria. As a teaching associate, they teach design studios focusing on different mapping techniques to draw out the various entanglements that occur within a colonised space. Bella is a committee member of Professionals Australia and is on their way to getting certified as a Passivhaus Designer.

Carey Landwehr (he/him) is an architect focusing on social housing at Jackson Clements Burrows Architects with experience delivering architecture at all scales throughout Australia. Projects include the recently completed redevelopment of the Bangs Street housing estate as part of the Big Housing Build and the first regional community housing-led social housing project in Wangaratta. Carey is the vice president of Professional Architects Australia and an accredited Living Future Institute of Australia designer. A sessional academic at Melbourne University teaching design studios and theory subjects, his research explores housing, regenerative design, public policy, and the intersection of architecture with political economies.

Readings & References

Blunt, Alison, and Robyn Dowling. Home

Browning, Daniel. "The Black Mile." ABC Radio

Capp, R., L. Porter, and D. Kelly. "Re-scaling Social Mix: Public Housing Renewal in Melbourne." Journal of Urban Affairs 44, no. 3 (2022): 380-396

Committee of the Fitzroy History Society. Fitzroy: Melbourne's First Suburb

Foucault, Michel. Power

Güntner, Simon, Juma Hauser, Judith M. Lehner, and Christoph Reinprecht. The Social Dimension of Social Housing

Howe, Renate, David Nichols, and Graeme Davison. Trendyville: The Battle for Australia's Inner Cities

Lees, Loretta, Tom Slater, and Elvin Wyly, eds. The Planetary Gentrification Reader.

McCabe, Brian J., and Eva Rosen. The Sociology of Housing: How Homes Shape Our Social Lives

McGaw, Janet, and Anoma Pieris. Assembling the Centre: Architecture for Indigenous Cultures: Australia and Beyond

Schmid, Sussanne. A History of Collective Reading: Models of Shared Living

Sennett, Richard. Designing Disorder: Experiments and Disruptions in the City

Victoria's Housing Statement: The Decade Ahead 2024-2034

Schedule:
Monday 9am-12pm & Thursday 9am-12pm in MSD 139 

ABPL90437 Design Studio C is an early-start subject. The ballot is held online at the beginning of O-week, opening on Monday 19 February and closing the morning of Tuesday 20 February. There is some preparatory online work to be completed during the week. Teaching begins with an all day, in person, compulsory Symposium on Friday 23 February.



Off-site Activities:
WKS 1&8 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, SK4 'Living Carlton', Swanston Street, Carlton

Contact Handbook