2020

Mysuru, India

Studio leader: Blair Gardiner

Following its independence in 1947, from the 1950s to 70s India underwent a period of rapid change with the simultaneous reclamation of Indian national identity and the striving for inclusion in the western economically developed world. These forces coalesced in the architecture at the time, which simultaneously sought internationally modern characteristics but with reverence to the distinct Indian climate, cultural modes of occupation and available materials and technologies. With India’s unique structural conditions bound to its demographic, economic and cultural characteristics a challenge is presented to built environment design in formulating response strategies to India’s rapid expansion.

This travelling studio seeks to enquire how designers may offer a contribution in low-income, rapidly urbanising environments. It offers students the opportunity to learn, about India’s modernist residential typologies and the craft/trade-based systems and technologies that were adapted or discarded within a period of architectural transition. The purpose of the studio is to undertake research into a selection of crafts, trades, materials and technologies that supported India’s modernist housing; and to survey, analyse and design/document these to identify if they have a role to play in the contemporary context. It also offers the opportunity to investigate what happened to that industry and whether it is still economically, socially and environmentally possible to design and build utilising local craft/trade-based systems today. A key feature is to recognise the unique context under which buildings are made and the nature of the labour that carries out the task of bringing the design idea into a physical presence. The studio asks students if it is possible to consider the nature of this relationship and if designers have a role to play in facilitating social/technical opportunity and how this opportunity may be integrated into design.

Manila, Philippines

Studio leaders: Kim Dovey, Reden Recio

This studio facilitates interdisciplinary teaching and learning approaches in the fields of architecture, urban design, urban planning and landscape architecture. It will bring together staff and students of the Melbourne School of Design and the University of the Philippines. These engagements will enable students to understand and to develop design and planning responses to informal urbanism as a global phenomenon. Students will undertake analysis and design/planning inventions on one or more of the following issues: informal settlement, in-situ upgrading, citizen-based planning, informal land tenure, informal transport, walkability, informal street trading and governance.

These projects will be focused on the North Triangle area of Manila (14°39'07.93" N 121°02'10.38" E) and the settlement of San Roque with its associated transit networks, trading and employment opportunities. We will work with the San Roque community (and the San Roque Alliance) who seek help in exploring visions for on-site redevelopment with upgraded infrastructure and maintenance of livelihoods including street vending and transport. This is a community faced with forced eviction from houses they own, land they have occupied and livelihoods they have developed over 40 years. The focus of particular student projects may include community planning, housing, community buildings, infrastructure, open space, walkable access networks, governance frameworks and political strategies.