Jazelyn Tan

Urbanscape: Rethinking the Role of Threshold of the Future Student Housing

Thousands of international university students reside in student housings over the semester. However, with COVID-19 restrictions now in place, the pandemic situation complicates the transition of living at home to being independent overseas in different ways. As a student, the imperative to stay home has amplified effects on the sense of loneliness and loss of study routine as well as campus or street experience.

The thesis wishes to intensify the student living experience at the scale of student housing. Looking at a balance environment for liv­ing and learning, it aims to reflect on the impacts of COVID-19 on the current student housing typology in Melbourne psychologically, socially and functionally during both, on and off pandemic modes.

To facilitate a sense of belonging and community between students, a concept that will be explored in the thesis will be the intertwin­ing of nature and public functions at the intensity of a street along explorations of 3 threshold spaces in student housings: public, semi-public and private, acting as a ‘in-between mediator’ for the solidarity and solitude.

Imagine the pandemic will subside but other pandemics will follow, how does student housing of the post-covid era cultivate or maximise student experience within a vertical housing com­pound with considerations of health and wellbeing in mind?