Research projects

Current projects

• Advancing new home sustainability through demand-side empowerment

  Investigating homebuyer decision-making. Monitoring of energy efficiency and sustainability communication on volume home builder websites and social media.

• AI Competency Framework for Construction Education: Bridging Industry Innovation and Academic Excellence

  Developing comprehensive, industry-aligned AI competency standards for construction education to bridge the critical gap between academic learning and evolving workplace demands in an increasingly digitalized built environment.

• Architecture and Industry: The migrant contribution to nation-building

  Linking immigrant social histories to industrialisation through an explicitly spatial analysis, this project explores the post-war architectural, rural and industrial landscapes of Australia as shaped by the labour of displaced persons.

• Australia/China Research Network on Planning Global City-Regions

  A three-year Melbourne School of Design project is facilitating international research in global city-regions.

• Citizen Heritage: Digital and Community-based Histories of Place

  This project explores new digital technologies to enhance the visibility of lesser-known precincts of urban heritage.

• Community Activated Placemaking Spaces (CAPS)

  The project harnesses community-based participatory research to evaluate existing use patterns of playgrounds and ancillary public spaces as intergenerational spaces to inform improved design for social inclusion and community wellbeing.

• Cross-cultural analysis and capacity building in construction management

  Practices focusing on housing and infrastructure sectors in Assam and Australia – An initiative of ‘Smart Villages” research

• Environmental Performance in Construction

  The EPiC Database and Resource Hub provide a range of resources that can be used to inform environmental design of construction projects.

  • Research project
• Experiential, Adaptive Learning Tools for a Resilient Built Environment

  Globally, the annual frequency of recorded disasters has increased fourfold since the 1960s. The effects of climate change, inappropriate use and management of natural and human made resources, have combined with increases in urban populations interacting with natural hazards.

• Exploring the contribution of Indigenous Cultural Practices for Health and Wellbeing in Indigenous young people

  This project is developing an Elder-led model of health care that includes reclamation of Indigenous cultural practices, guided by Indigenous artists, to improve mental health and wellbeing.

• Global South Research and Pedagogy

  Considering areas in the Global South - those regions outside Europe and North America - not as recipients of exported knowledge but as producers of theories, methods and world views that question the motivations of Western ways of knowing.

• Innovation Infrastructure: Planning for Growth

  This project aims to identify policy and practice actions to achieve effective innovation infrastructure planning in Australia.

• Innovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change (ILETC)

  An Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project funded for four years from 2016 to 2019 led by The University of Melbourne.

• Integrating climate change adaptation and mitigation in built environments

  This project aims to facilitate climate change adaptation and mitigation across Australia’s built environment: progressing climate change action, informing investment decisions and reducing harm and cost of climate change impacts.

• Peripheral Centralities: Lost, Past, Present and Future

  A series of four seminars exploring the role of suburban peripheries in the expansion of cities, and their perception in the public imagination.

• Planning the driverless city

  Autonomous vehicles may improve road safety, reduce car ownership, and reduce the need for parking. They may also entrench car dependency, encourage sprawl and shift investment away from vital public transport systems.

• Plans to Pedagogy

  A research and consultancy project funded for three years from 2018 to 2020 led by The University of Melbourne.

• [RE]Maker

  Exploring circularity in architecture through the transformation of surplus and waste into new materials.

• ROOM: Digital design to fabrication in temporary accommodation options for youth homelessness

  ROOM harnesses digital design to digital fabrication and building optimisation to produce a customised performance-efficient, low cost ‘self-build’ unit - offering training opportunity - in producing external living space as reusable temporary accommodation.

• Transforming Housing: Affordable Housing for All

  Transforming Housing: Affordable Housing for All is an action-research project focused on influencing and supporting the transformation of the housing policy and delivery environment in Victoria.

• Tourism development and local resilience: self-organisation and community empowerment perspectives

  How can tourism development affect community resilience to natural hazards in different self-organisation and regulatory contexts? How should policy-making address these relationships?

• The Architecture of Confinement

  The expedient design, assembly and erection of WWII internment facilities, and their subsequent transformation for post-war detention and commemoration has produced a legacy of camp environments associated with citizenship.

• Wildfire Disaster Prevention, Preparedness, Response and Recovery in Coastal Tourist Destinations: the case of Wye River, Australia

  From a regional resilience perspective, what were the outcomes of prevention, preparedness, response and recovery strategies in place for the 2015 Wye River wildfires? How does tourism help shape these?