2025

86533_Spatial Agency

  • In this design studio, students will develop a series of schematic housing proposals that respond to the social, cultural, and environmental needs of the local Aboriginal community on the South Coast of NSW. The focus will be on a range of housing typologies, including designs for Elders, youth, and multigenerational households. These designs will serve as a foundation for community engagements, allowing the proposals to be refined based on feedback and input from the community. The designs must be socially and culturally responsive, incorporating sustainable and context-sensitive strategies, while addressing environmental factors such as seasonal variation, orientation, prevailing wind, local weather conditions, and the use of sustainable materials.

    These schematic housing proposals will lead into the development of masterplan concepts for a larger site, aiming to accommodate up to 140 new homes. Students will consider how the designs support the social and cultural aspirations of the community and ensure a strengths-based approach to Aboriginal housing design. The final designs will be sensitive to the local landscape, with a focus on creating homes that are adaptable, culturally relevant, and environmentally sustainable, while enhancing a strong sense of community and self-determination.

  • Centred on the refurbishment of the Tony Mundine Hostel in Leichhardt, this design studio aims to understand, design and interrogate the agency of space as a relational condition for community revitalisation and urban regeneration. Through site visits and consultations, students will engage with residents and staff of the hostel, working in partnership with Aboriginal Hostels Limited — a not-for-profit Commonwealth company providing access to culturally safe and affordable accommodation to First Nations people who are away from home. AHL provides accommodation to individuals and families who are awaiting housing, seeking employment, studying, or needing healthcare. Having identified the need for refurbishment, revitalisation and upgrades, AHL management seeks to ensure the infrastructure can respond to the cultural, social and environmental needs of Aboriginal residents. 

    This studio will explore the following ideas:

    • being 'at home' while away from home.

    • Country, and connecting with Country.

    • ways of decolonisation in a heavily colonised urban suburb.

  • The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the office market, leading to a two-tiered market with deteriorating asset values and increasing vacancies. Sustainable temporary adaptive reuse (STAR) is being explored as a low-level intervention to deal with under-occupancy in buildings.  

    Students will design a temporary space in Burwood City where resilience, vibrancy, and equity are the key focuses. The site will be tan office space which has been left dormant since 2020. This studio will also contribute to the STAR Toolkit launch in April 2025.


  • In collaboration with Wellington Local Aboriginal Land Council, this studio seeks to explore the potential to assist cultural practices and healthy housing for large family groups enabling to regional and remote Indigenous communities of Australia.

     Based in the indigenous community of Nanima Village located near Wellington in Wiradjuri Country, the studio will look at how architecture can assist in carrying out cultural activities, implement healthy living practices and effect the environment of the community as a whole.

     The studio takes a community development approach to design practice enacted through a site visit with on-site engagement with the Nanima community members in Week 5 to finalise a brief encompassing the local environment, housing and assisting cultural activities.

    Initial casual consultation with the Wellington Local Aboriginal Land Council has brought up ideas for infrastructure to assist in carrying out cultural activities including educational opportunities for tour groups, medical services, healthy housing and improving the landscape environment to reduce heat and dust.

    Students will have options to design culturally responsive infrastructure and a housing proposal informed by distinct socio-spatial activities, durability, climatic & seasonal variation and the threat of natural disasters (flood and fire). 

  • Women over the age of 45 are currently the fastest-growing population of people experiencing homelessness in Australia. Reasons include family and domestic violence, unsustainable rental prices, single women unable to survive on a single income or pension, carer responsibilities impacting consistent or full-time employment and the simple fact that women often retire with half the superannuation of their male colleagues. Many women resort to couch surfing or living in cars and are often not included in statistics related to homelessness. Limited research exists on the housing-related needs of older women. As interior architects and spatial design experts, we are aware of the lack of best-practice models for older women’s housing that addresses architectural and landscape design implications. The Design Guide for Older Women’s Housing responds to this research gap.

    Using a care ethics approach, and an understanding of trauma-informed design principles, you will generate proposals for accommodation, communal areas, and service facilities to meet the needs of older women at risk of homelessness at a proposed site in Bathurst. This will include opportunities for adaptive reuse, additional structures, and new landscaping. We will collaborate with Housing Plus, a leading community housing provider in NSW, and Monash Uni architecture students in the formative stages. This studio builds knowledge in an urgently needed area of social impact design focused on housing, and services for communities of older people to benefit you as future practitioners

  • Aboriginal communities along the entire NSW South Coast have expressed strong interest in leading the development of a restorative aquaculture industry for the region.

    The proposition is shared across two sites. The in-land aquaculture infrastructure is to be positioned at Fisherman’s Beach where unobstructed access points to the processing plants in Mallacoota can easily be established.

     The far more public amenities that showcase both Indigenous culture and knowledge as well as the advancement of marine preservation and aquaculture will be positioned centrally at Eden’s waterfront in Snug Cove. Integrated with the proposition at this site are a broader spectrum of facilities that provide education, and research, as well as accommodation for these user groups and additional public amenities such as considered outdoor space as well as dining and retail provisions.

    The Brief

    Preliminary consultation with the Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council has revealed the need for concept design of the Blue Futures education and research facility. The centre aims to support the development of an applicable skills and knowledge base to develop a sustainable, long-term Blue Economy for the NSW South Coast, inclusive of the proposed Walkun Abalone farm and the wider aquaculture industry.

     This multi-use facility will provide a range of maritime and seafood industry research and training opportunities from skills-based training to graduate and post-graduate degrees or micro-credentials. The proposed facility is a collaboration between the Eden LALC, the University of Wollongong, the University of Technology Sydney, local industry, and a range of education and research providers.

     Programs within the new facility will include:

    _ Education and training facilities (teaching rooms)

    _ Research and development spaces, such as wet labs

    _ A public interpretation centre

    _ Retail and dining spaces that showcase culture and produce

    _ Maintenance and storage infrastructure.

    The facility will be located within the Snug Cove precinct and be incorporated within the broader redevelopment plans for land owned by the Eden LALC.

  • Partnering with Hearing Matters Australia (HMA), The Centre for Neurodiversity design studio will explore an inclusive approach to architecture that is primarily informed by the nuanced ways in which neurodiverse people inhabit and interact with space.

    Situated in the UTS Start-Up Space on the corner of Broadway and Harris St, Ultimo, students are asked to design a Centre for Neurodiversity that provides support services and research facilties for a range of neurodiverse people.

    Investigating the adaptive and transformative potential of public institutional interiors to become more inclusive and accessible, The Centre for Neurodiversity will take a community development approach to design practice enacted through a series of quick charrette-style design exercises, and consultation with neurodiverse people to develop and establish a set of design principles .

  •  

    Partnering with the Eden Local Aboriginal Community Council, the Merimbula Eco Tourism Studio is focused on the design of an Aboriginal owned and operated eco-tourism development in the coastal town of Merimbula on NSW’s Saphire Coast.  Situated on a parcel of land owned by the Land Council that is wedged between the lake, the ocean and the airport, the site is currently zoned for conservation. Exploring the potential of developing the site in a way that protects threatened species and coastal dunes while realising the social and economic benefits, new infrastructure on this site must navigate a range of environmental challenges.

     

    The Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council is keen to harness the site’s pristine coastal location, community values, proximity to Merimbula airport and growing a tourism industry.  The development of an eco-tourism venture has the capacity to generate local employment and serve as a launch-pad for other Aboriginal owned business’s such as cultural tourism or retail enterprises. These outcomes could serve as an income stream for the local Aboriginal communities whilst alleviating pressure on housing and accommodation in and around Merimbula.

     

    The Merimbula Eco Tourism Studio takes a community development approach to design practice enacted through a five-day study tour to Merimbula in Week 6, to work with the community to establish their infrastructure requirements for the development a sustainable eco-tourism enterprise.

     

    The Brief: 

     

    Members of the Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council have expressed their desire to develop beach front land situated along Arthur Kaine Drive in Merimbula. Combining conservation with tourism development, students are asked to design a low impact, sustainable tourism destination that is responsive to the local landscape, climate and community values. The provisional design brief comprises of 12 individual villas for accommodation, a camping area, communal area, a kitchen, restaurant, reception, staff accommodation, car parking, storage and connective landscaping. Engaging with Indigenous sensibilities to land and Country, your designs must respond to seasonal variation, forms of approach and departure, external orientation, prevailing wind and weather, local materials, resource scarcity, privacy, durability, limited builders in area, climatic conditions, lifecycle costs and an emphasis on using conventional materials used in unconventional ways.