LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

Lower Pool Studios - Semester 2, 2011

Choose lifecycle
Deposit
Ecological Urbanism
Hydrologics
In the thick of it
Kindle
Massey
Shape of things near water
Spacing Tokyo
Tectaceous - The fault creep
The way of wu wei
Zero degrees

















CHOOSE
LI FE
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y
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Studio Outline: Using local projects as a starting point, Choose Lifecycle
grounds research and analysis of materials through landscape architecture
before using them as tools to explore scales of production, site, time and use.

Material quantities from precedent analysis will act as design generators, and
students will be asked to re-design & re-locate materials across a range of
sites and scales.

Design outcomes will ask students to create a future environment where
projects are designed in the knowledge that, regardless of their lifecycle or
use, they are temporary installations and their material properties will be an
invaluable, ongoing resource.
Tutors: Rohan Buckley & Jack Barlow
Times: Tuesday 17:30 - 20:30 & Friday 14:30 - 17:30
Landscape Architecture Lower Pool
Design Research Studio
Semester 2 2011
Tuesday 5.30-8.30pm
Friday 2.30-5.30pm
Lecturer. Matt York
DEPOSIT
Deposit
Site
Responsibility
Outcome
Will provide an investigation by design into how the processes of water
sensitive urban design (in particular stormwater harvesting and re-use),
and its relationship with site specific ecologies can re-evaluate design
methodology, proposition and response for a new public open space in
Bacchus Marsh.
A 3Ha drainage corridor in Bacchus Marsh that will be responsible for
treating a new residential catchment prior to discharge into Werribee
River.
-Water sensitive urban design (primarily storm water harvesting)
-EVC classifications for Western Basalt Plains
-On-site ecological findings and requirements (designing with growling
grass frog and golden sun moth) and impact of season
-Grading and drainage (key component of the studio)
-Public realm within flood plain
A 3Ha Open Space Master Plan that arranges/presents/conflicts/orders
a landscape considerate of the site responsibilities listed above.
Ornesvingen viewpoint, Norway
ECOLOGICAL
URBANISM
STUdIO
18 jULy
5 AUGUST

While climate change, sustainable architecture,
and green technologies have become increas-
ingly topical, issues surrounding the sustain-
ability of the city are much less developed. The
premise of ecological urbanism is that an eco-
logical approach is urgently needed as an imag-
inative and practical method for addressing ex-
isting as well as new cities.
Ecological Urbanism considers the city with
multiple instruments and with a worldview that
is fuid in scale and disciplinary focus. Design
provides the synthetic key to connect
ecology with an urbanism that is not in
contradiction with its environment. Ecological
Urbanism brings together practitioners, theo-
rists, economists, engineers, artists, policymak-
ers, scientists, and public health specialists,
with the goal of providing a multilayered, di-
verse, and nuanced understanding of ecological
urbanism and what it might be in the future. The
promise is nothing short of a new ethics and
aesthetics of the urban.
The aim of the studio is to investigate the potential
of landscape as a medium to maximise the
ecological potential of the city.
Studio Lecturer-
Gareth Doherty
Tuesdays, Room 88.5.12+ 11, 10.00-5.00
Fridays, Room 88.5.6 + 6A, 10.00-5.00
ECOLOGICAL URBANISM Edited by
Mohsen Mostafavi with Gareth Doherty
Harvard University Graduate School of
Design, Lars Mller Publishers, 656 pages
approx. 1000 illustrations, hardcover,
(2010)
hydro-logics
image: stephan zirwes - www.stephanzirwes.com
Hydro:
Water operates at a range of scales simultaneously.
Constantly in motion it passes over, between and
within the landscape. This motion is expressed through
the landscape as a range of hydrological behaviours
(fanning, eroding, cutting, depositing, meandering).
In this studio you will investigate the behaviours (as
well as other hydrological types) of the western basalt
plains of Melbourne in a slice from Derrimut to
Altona.
Logics:
Your understanding of behaviour will be used to
deduce a logic (the relationship between elements
water/geology/soil) which will be employed to reorder
the landscape.
Reordering requires an understanding of the properties
of the existing and a strategy for insertion. We will
explore various devices for reordering.
Models:
The studio will predominately focus on model
making, where the act of making is seen as a means to
producing knowledge.
Two denitions of model will form a framework to
oscillate between the abstract and physical.
1. As a means to question, hypothesise and abstract,
2. The physical act of making, with physical limitations,
failures and material performances that are non-
abstract.
You will work through digital and physical models
in order to understand the formation, qualities and
change over time of the hydrological behaviours.
We will spend time in the labs working with digital
modelling software.
From this understanding you will generate a set of
formal structures that reorder an existing series of
landscapes in your slice through Melbourne.
Times:
Tuesday 1.30-4.30
Friday 9.30-2.30
Weeks 1 9
Lecturer:
Bridget Keane
Landscape Architecture Lower Pool Design Studio 2
nd
Semester 2011 - Rob Roggema
KINDLE
Design of bushfire resilient landscapes

Kindle /kindle/ [v. trans] Light or set fire. Arouse or inspire (an emotion or feeling): a love of art was
kindled in me. [intrans] (of an emotion) be aroused: She pressed on, enthusiasm kindling within her. [intrans]
become impassioned or excited: the young man kindled at once.
WHAT Our future climate will be different from the
climate we know now. Not only will temperature rise,
but we need to deal with many changing topics, such as
increased risk at flooding, long periods of droughts,
weather extremes and increased risk at bushfires. This
studio will focus on the design of stable landscapes
capable of handling and dealing with bushfires and other
climate hazards. We need to re-think and re-design
landscapes as integrated systems in which ecology, water
and occupation are deeply connected.
A focus on fire proofing only therefore neglects the
complexity and interconnectedness of the landscape.
This studio aims to develop conceptual design strategies
responding to bushfires, embedded in real-life
complexity. Development of design strategies for the
plannable drivers of bushfires, such as the availability
of water and fuel (material that can burn), enhance
regions to better cope with the unplannable ones, such
as high temperatures and strong winds.
The studio will be linked and profit from the recently
started VCCCAR (Victorian Centre for Climate Change
Adaptation Research) - project Design-led decision
support for regional climate adaptation and offers the
opportunity to research and design in a studio
environment and be linked with the real-life practice of
the Greater Bendigo case study area at the same time.
The studio aims to explore and design with the dynamics
of bushfires in the peri-urban context. The studio will ask
questions such as: How can we design with the forces of
fire? How can we reconsider Bendigos regional
landscape as a patchwork of the water- and ecosystems,
fire-safety-corridors and fire resilient enclaves?
Preparing landscapes for bushfires, not neglecting other
climate impacts, such as floods, asks for novel, ground-
breaking, complex and critical design propositions,
which provide a highly flexible response to fire extremes
and a high quality peri-urban space and rural living.
The studio will ask for conceptual design ideas to align
peri-urban and rural structures to the increasing extremes
of bushfires on the one hand and occasional floods on the
other. You will then design sitespecific projects for
Bendigos greater region for adaptation to increasing
weather and fire extremes.
WHY Unpredictability and uncertainty are phenomena
we have to learn to deal with in a creative visionary way
in the ever-growing complexity of 21
st
century life.
These opportunities and constraints also apply to
planning and design our peri-urban and rural
environments. The bushfires of 2009 across Victoria are
strong examples of highly dynamic weather extremes,
resulting from climate change. These events have clearly
shown the need to re-think the relationship between
bushfire prone areas and their urbanised environment and
to possibly use bushfires to inspire to increase the
qualities of the spatial environment.
HOW Taking the approach of analysing, designing and
thinking through the scales the studio will start with a
thorough investigation of one of Bendigos forest
complexes to eventually evoke a deeper understanding of
the entire regional landscape and the relationships with
the City of Bendigo.
The studio group will meet on Fridays, all day. The
studio will start with clearly formulated assignments of
creative investigations to be worked on from week to
week. As students you will develop your own design
project. Work constellations in this studio will shift
between working individually, in small teams and as the
entire studio group. There will be in-class lectures by
academics, practitioners and students of the studio, site
visits, in class debates, 1:1 critiques and regular short
presentations, but also participation in the design
charrettes to be organised in the context of the
VCCCAR-project. The studio is understood as a
continuing learning workshop, which requires an
interactive engagement.
Regular Class: Fri, 9.30 am to 4.00 pm
Workshops: tba
Location: Building 45 B

Studio participation requires at least two visits to
Bendigo (including travel coast). Part of the studio is
participation in a two/three-day design charrette in
Bendigo, for which you need to cater your own expenses
regarding travel and accommodation.
m i c r o
The Both/And Studio
Tutor: Susan Massey
Tuesday Evening
Friday Morning
This studio is interested in issues of social space in the public urban realm specifcally, it is commited to synthesizing the
difering needs of various user groups in a shared, common outdoor space.
Urban public spaces should be inclusive.
Because water is universal and it is as responsive to issues of need-utlity as it is to materializing as amenity-art-recreaton, it will
be a primary vehicle for how the needs and expectatons of various user groups are met in a single, all-inclusive environment.
How to keep water out/in, collect it, redistribute it, clean it, display it, conserve it, etc. will be fundamental consideratons.
PROGRAM
Building on the propositon set forth by Hitoshi Abes Megahouse that dense, modern cites
fnd the program of a house (exceptng the bedroom , bath, and personal storage) mapped across
it restaurant as kitchen/dining room, library as study, karaoke bar or sports venue as game
room, cafe as lounge room... This studio will map analogous (though more universally accessible)
programs in Melbourne. Afer locatng and documentng the free resources and amenites in
the CBD and close inner suburbs, including resources directed to the homeless, students will
be asked to consider how the city might be navigated as a distributed house of programs and
how shared, common outdoor spaces could be designed to support napping, bathing, short-
term storage of personal belongings, and the collecton of drinking water. The premise of such
a project supposes that the city might provide more basic accommodaton in social spaces at a
comparable measure to which it already provides non-essental amenites.
The studio DOES NOT propose to design outdoor spaces as a replacement to traditional homeless shelters, rather,
to provide supplemental infrastructure for transient activities for all people, including the homeless, backpacking
tourists, pedestrians seeking refuge from the heat, bicycle commuters, picnic-goers, etc. The studio is not focused
specifcally on the homeless but is instead concerned with designing inclusively for multiple user-groups. As such,
there is already a position that accommodating the homeless in mainstream programs rather than designing solely
for a targeted demographic is the preferred strategy for this semesters investigations.
House : City
Room : Locality
Basic accommodaton
Non-essental amenites
The users of Melbourne outdoor public space, be it a park or plaza or garden, are varied in
demographic though there may be some specifcites of populaton depending on its locaton
in the city relatve to the immediate context. The users have many needs in common, but also
some specifc expectatons that may not be shared by all users. Because water is universal and
is as responsive to need-utlity as it is to materializing as amenity-art-recreaton, it will be the
primary vehicle for how the needs and expectatons of various user groups are met in a single,
all-inclusive environment.
USERS
Commonalites
Diferences
Necessity-Utlity
Amenity-Art-Recreaton
Afer mapping the citys free amenites and resources,
targeted locatons will be analysed and selected as
potental sites. Whether the studio might locate small
interventons across multple sites, or, develop a
comprehensive single site to serve as a model for other
like-sites across the city, will be a collectve decision
informed by the studios preliminary, investgatve
research. The primary criteria for site selecton will be
the potental for marrying utlity and beauty in shared
public space with universal access to all.
SITE
Research : City
Intervene : Locality
Consolidaton
Dispersion
CHALLENGE
The studio schedule will coordinate its major deliverables based on the Design Research Institutes
2011 Design Challenge on Homelessness, which has a two-stage competition process employing
design innovation and impact/practicality/application as criteria. At the midterm, students will
submit idea-proposals to the competition which graphically communicate the supporting research
and the intent for design development of an idea. Students will continue to develop the design
proposal and present it at the fnal review as competition entry boards. On 11 Nov, the competition
will announce the short-listed fnalists who will be invited to submit further development of their ideas.
The shortlisted fnalist projects will be showcased in a curated exhibition in the Design Hub in April
2012 and the winning project will receive an award.
*
*
**
**
Design Like You Give a Damn
[Architecture for Humanity]
Design Revoluton: 100 Products
that Empower People
[Emily Pilloton]
Design For the Other 90%
[Smithsonian Insttute]
Expanding Architecture
Design As Actvism
[Bell/Wakeford]
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What?
Why?
How?

the shape of things near water

a lower pool landscape design studio

lecturers cath stutterheim with lucas patetl

fridays from 9.30 till 6.30pm room still to be decided.

the case study of this studio is Lara, a small rural town established in 1824, off the main freeway between Melbourne and Geelong (Melway
p423). The flood plain banks of the Hovell Creek, which flows through it from the You Yangs to the Bay, create open space that divides the towns
housing.

the context of the design work is the worlds growing realisation of the value of vegetated outdoor living to public well being, faced by loss of
natural environment through civic development and climate change.

Laras desire is to protect the rural lifestyle of its 11,000 people: however, its fabric is consolidating towards the energy-hungry rail and freeway.

the design brief is to reconsider the potential of the river environments left over spaces, to become public destinations for outdoor activity,
relaxation and enjoyment of natural systems, by considering alternative roles for and new relationships of these negative voids of the creek to
Laras other urban components. Can low energy use, unifying forms, links and circulation contribute to a better balance of the urban fabric of Lara?

the research
a you will draw on support systems at Lara which have already been established through a previous Upper Pool Studio that considered the
overall urban fabric of Lara:
Introduction to the open space strategy of Geelong City Council and its Urban Design officers,
A lecture by an environmentalist from the Corangamite Catchment Authority, which is responsible for this area as an environmental water
reserve undergoing seachange and treechange.
Collaboration with Lara Secondary Schools Science program,
A walk with Kevin Hoffman, along the garden of botanical significance on the flanks of the Hovel Creek that he has established over 20
years,
Class discussion about the design approach and forms of three recent water side public space precedents in Australia and New Zealand.

b You will learn about Lara through site investigations of your own and in groups: record and consider specific aspects of the site through its
sectional relationships with reference to given contours; experiential qualities and components through drawing and critical photographic
analysis. Trains run regularly from Melbourne to Lara station, and there is a central gathering space available to us.
.
the design outcome This studio is NOT about constructing wetlands or ecology. It assumes that (although threatened) such systems exist as
realities as much as do air, seasons and birdlife. Rather, it requires that you design form for human use, which will promote realisation, enjoyment
and reflection of these natural phenomena. This will require you to work precisely with existing, using your earlier sectional drawings as the base to
make places from given contours and levels of the river banks paths and abutments, and consider such factors as relationships to the water, views,
orientation, an existing vegetation.

skill building The studio will provide the opportunity to extend and consolidate the skills you have learned in Environments and in the Stairs
Studios, and further develop your critical drawing skills including AutoCAD and Rhino competence.




SPACING TOKYO
a design investigation
RMIT LOweR POOL DesIgn sTuDIO
LanDscaPe aRcITecTuRe
seMesTeR 2 2011
Studio Leader:
RHYS WILLIAMS
Rhys joins RMIT this trimester as a higher degree
research student. His research concerns the
creation of a designerly history of Tokyos early-
modern public spaces: 1876 to 1932. Prior to
arriving in Melbourne he taught in the landscape
architecture program at the Victoria University of
Wellington, NZ.
* VIew FILM TRaILeRs aT THe cOuRses BLOg
www.SPACINGtokyo.tumblr.Com
THIS STUDIO PROVIDES A BASIC INTRODUCTION TO THE CONDITION OF
EXTERNAL SPACE PARTICULAR TO Tokyo AND ITS ANTECEDENT Edo.
With the aim of articulating the conditions varied manifestations
and distinct tendencies from a spatial perspective, enquiries will be
undertaken through the medium of design. Specifcally, strategies will
be used that privilege the concerns of landscape architecture, rendering
this largely unreported condition: spatially, temporally and relationally
defned.
Distanced, physically and culturally, from its subject, this studios
activites will be sited in representations of Tokyo/Edo found in the
flms of auteurs such as Akira Kurosawa and Yasujir Ozu.*
Studio activities will be structured across 2 linked projects:
Project 1: partipants will be challenged, through structured
experimentation with a variety of representational strategies, to
establish a Spatial Reading of a selected example of external space
represented cinematically.
Project 2: a Spatial Exposition will be proposed that articulates,
through the medium of landscape architecture, the spatiality of
the subject studied in project 1. Tis event space will constitute
the immersive content for a hypothetical exhibition, located in
Melbourne, profling Tokyos condition of external space.
Image:
Te North bank of the
Tamagawa River in Southern Tokyo
(R Williams).
sTuDIO TIMes
TuesDaY 13:30 to 16:30
FRIDaY 13:30 to 16:30
The Fault Creep explores notions of tension and stress in the landscape,
through investigations into the effects of tectonic activity. Australia is
suprisingly moving faster than any other continent in relation to this
occurance ( with the Indo-Australian Tectonic Plate progressing 65mm
north each year). Professor Sandiford, a researcher at the University
of Melbourne (School of Earth Sciences) suggests that the plate is
breaking up and the Indian Ocean quakes are contributing to the creation
of two separate plates. This dramatic occurrence is destined to cause a
catastrophic reorganisation of the whole global plate network
1
and have
a signicant inuence on the earths landforms.
The Fault Creep is a scenario based studio that aims to engage with the
landscape as a voluminous, dynamic changing geology. Sitting between
the themes of surface, geologies, and materials, it relies heavily on
drawing and modelling as exploration devices and narrative generators.
In particular the studio will engage with that of the science-ction genre
as a way to generate future predictions. The Fault Creep is not only
interested in the movement of faultlines but the continual subsurface
transformation, its affect on the terrain and what we term landscape side-
effects, such as oceanic trenches, folded mountains, sliding plates, hot
springs and bubbling mud.
The studio investigates two sites within Victoria, exploring multiple time
based/physical scales and occupations. One in suburban Melbourne and
the other which is along the Selwyn fault line on the active Mornington
Peninsula, which we will visit during the semester.
Cassie Lucas & Caitlin Perry
Tuesday arvo 1:30-4:30 in building 88
Friday morn 9:30-12:30 in 8.12.42

The Fault Creep
1} http://home.vicnet.net.au/~phillip/env2stud.htm
Image: Caitlin Perry
lower pool design studio
fiona harrisson & guests
marian mackan, lucas dean &
michael camelleri
intensive weeks 1-10
tuesdays 1:00-5:30
thursdays 5:30-7:30
workshops cost $60
pop up books
book binding
Books are explored as a
design project in themselves.
We will explore specific book
structures of concertina and
pop up techniques used as
a format to design thinking
and crafting at the 1:1. [There
will be workshops for you to
learn these skills] These books
become both the containers
of the garden ideas and also
a vehicle through which to
explore design.
The Way of Wu Wei
The studio will explore making landscapes through detailed design and
material resolution. The course will focus on speculative small scale
public gardens. Crafting an idea through making is the means by
which we will develop our skills and explore resolution of design ideas.
The Way of Wu Wei is a traditional tale that speaks of design as a
way of being. This studio offers an opportunity for you to explore and
develop your own sensibility to design and thinking about the world
through making.
The semester is structured through three main projects where you will
design in response to different provocations: imagination, precedent
and site. This exploration will occur through a reflective process of
making and remaking.A key ambition of the studio is for the work
to speak for itself. Towards this end the studio learning environment
is set up to reflect this ambition. Rather than students talk about
their ideas, the work will be exhibited for discussion. This creates
a collective learning environment where all studio participants are
engaged in the work of others.
with
Dr. Scott Mitchell &
Ms. Saskia Schut
Weather that ubiquitous phenomena *chance
storms light showers clearing in the afernoon low of
17 top of 26* we (me, the home , the city, the
land) know it we feel it we see it and we are
responsive to its variations *late cool change*. In
the sustained artifce that we make let us use
this phenomena to augment the performance
of inhabitable structures.
Outline
Zero degrees expands the notion of the
landscape beyond the ground (surface and
structure), engaging atmospheric phenomena
as a design material. Te studio draws from/
feeds into architectural speculations (Antfarm/
Archigram/R&Sie/Serenson/Subnatures
etc.) to develop projects that challenge
conventual modes of habitation (landscape +
architecture). Students will engage in direct
material experimentation at a range of scales
phase 2
Drawing from this designed system, we will
develop environments that engage with a specifc
geographic location and condition (specifc sites
to be chosen as appropriate to the phenomena
being explored). Projects will be developed
through material and spatial experiments and
processes of drawing and flm making.
Te studio will include in class presentations,
workshops (including drawing), feedback and
discussion. Te studio encourages self direction
and playfulness.
including 1:1 with the aim of developing a
deep understanding of how matter performs in
the world. Tis understanding will be further
explored through detailed drawings and flm/
video.
phase 1
Te studio begins with an exploration of
atmospheric phenomena (results of variations
in temperature, humidity, light etc) and
biological processes. Trough the creation
of one-to-one working systems, we will be
developing an understanding of these dynamic
and transformative processes. Such systems
exist in nature as for example termite hills
where the form is determined to optimise
temperatures. Tese systems will be explored
and refned through installations, models,
detailed drawings, material research and flm.
Class times
Tuesdays (alternating weeks)
1:30 - 4:30 bld 8 model workshop
5:30 - 8:30 bld 88.5.17/17A
Fridays 1:30 - 4:30 bld 88.5.3/3A