District Studio

Ellen Kwek

Studio Description

This studio is about DISTRICTS, or ‘precincts’ design with an additional focus on interventions at a smaller than typical scale. The micro-urban scale, attentive design detail, and the personal experience are sometimes omitted or unsuccessful in a larger scale new build proposition.

The District Studio is an open framework of ideas about the design of a CENTRE or BROADER ZONE with connection to a specific place – a site selected by each student that is not dominated by the commercial and is carefully positioned to better serve neglected aspects of its local lifestyle.

Richard Sennnet (in Building and Dwelling – Ethics for the city’. Introduction: Crooked, Open, Modest) has discussed and analysed the city/village as a system of ideas, and as a physical place – a ‘collective city consciousness’ - the character of life in a neighbourhood, feelings and attachments to a place, political mentality, how they want to collectively dwell.

He also notes, using the idea of 'crooked', that ‘experience in a city is rarely seamless…is much more often full of contradictions and jagged edges’ ² . Elsewhere in the text ‘asymmetry’ is used as a descriptor for city spaces. Sennet’s writing on ‘openness’ and ‘modesty’ are also relevant:…as this studio acts to produce designs that can stretch and land outside the edges of one building – to be dispersed or connected across its site borders. For a more compelling connection to place, land – and history, remains, future flexibility and possibility in the urban and regional realm, but also understanding that 'the between' is as important as much as it is ‘background’. In the last paragraph of his chapter, Sennet asks us if we can as designers of city places to be ‘modest yet energetic…’?

The campus, convent/monastery, village, market, compound, laneway, riverside, quarter, are existing formal types/nouns that may help students generate a design brief, and work toward an architectural and urban design outcome at a self-determined scale.

Studio Outcomes

Students will design a mixed-use medium scale project and dispersed smaller scale projects.

The following aspects are key:

1 Skill understanding SCALE and appropriate detail

2 ANALYSIS of specific context

3 AGILITY with designing with what is at hand & capitalising on the opportunities in existing built fabric

Brief:

Investigate and experiment with sites in inner-urban, suburban or regional town centres to produce a distinctive district/precinct with connectivity to communities, specifically embedded in place.

Propositions could include:

Wholly new build visions

Infill projects

Retro fit and repair of existing buildings and infrastructure

Your project can combine any of these approaches and potentially extend across boundaries/streetways/landscape in the public realm, and include pavilionised, micro-grain and dispersed programs.

Students are to focus on the interrelationship of many small, appropriate parts such as is required in a public mixed-use facility, or collection of cultural uses or services, or an outdoor place connecting several uses or structures.

Responsive urban design and considered interfaces/thresholds are key to a successful outcome.

The user groups of your proposition are to be determined during your research; an open, adaptable investigation is useful to find the right fit for the situation you select (consider minority user groups - youth specific spaces, aged users, recreation and health, free community cultural zones, supportive arts facilities).

Sites are to be self-determined. Some examples of types follow:

A retrofit of an urban area in Melbourne

A regional town centre

A suburban community centre

A flexible, multi-use space and market in the city

Studio work will include a combination of targeted creative tasks and analysis of architects’ approaches to precedent sites. Teaching will be supportive of each student to develop their own approach with the studio’s topic.

Guest speakers from industry on relevant themes and site visits are included throughout the semester.

Studio Leader/s

Ellen Kwek is an architect and interior designer who has experience working in Melbourne and Tasmania for Liminal Studio, multiplicity, Peter Elliot Architects and Six Degrees Architects. In 2024 at the University of Melbourne she ran the studio ‘Life Complex’ in Design Thesis and taught in Studio Gamma, in projects with a focus on multi-residential housing, urban design and landscape connection.

She and her partner, Michael Frazzetto, were featured in 'Never Too Small' video documentary web series Designing Happier Living: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnbqhyUYL-M

She works as a freelance designer and is interested in multidisciplinary design. She is a volunteer at Linden New Art gallery in St Kilda.

In 2023 she was a finalist in the Tapestry Design Prize for Architects:
https://tapestrydesignprize/org/finalists/liminal-studio-ellen-kwek

Readings & References

Sennett, Richard. Building and dwelling: ethics for the city. London: Penguin Books, 2018.

Jackson, Steven J et al. “Field Notes on Repair: 1,” Places Journal, November 2024. Accessed 05 Dec 2024. <https://placesjournal.org/article/field-notes-on-repair-1/

Decoding the city – NH architects https://nharchitecture.net/blog/projects/decoding-urban-metrics-melbourne/

Paddington Reservoir Gardens- Art Nation (video)

https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/parks/paddington-reservoir-gardens

Schedule:
Monday 11am-1pm, MSD 240
Thursday 9am-1pm, MSD 236

Contact Handbook