Amber Young

Engawa

ENGAWA student micro-housing aims to facilitate community and place making between students and surrounding public to ultimately create a more welcoming environment for students studying in Melbourne. This is achieved through combining the Japanese design ideas of the“engawa”, micro-house and “machizukuri” to re-define the current student housing typology in Melbourne and facilitate the students’ ownership of space. To achieve this, ENGAWA explores 3 types of thresholds; public, semi-public and private with transitional spaces between them, in order to facilitate community, as well as the adaptation of the engawa and nagaya urban streetscape into the Australian context.