LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

Lower Pool Studios - Semester 1, 2012

A Sahara in the head - Mike Hornblow
Amalgam - Bridget Keane
Eurymodal - Flynn Hart and Dan Nunan
Fundamental Forces - Cath Stutterheim
Fringe - Jane Shepherd
Imposter topographies - Clark Thenhaus
Kerb - Rosalea Monacella
Mega_Households - Michael Howard
Nowhere - Saskia Schut and Scott Mitchell
Rich Space - Mark Gillingham
Water Lab - Julia Werner

















amalgam
Emmett Gowin: glacial furrows and bomb disposal
craters, Umatilla army depot, Hermiston, Oregon, 1991.
eurymodal
eury: broad, wide, diverse, adaptive
modal: a state of existence, normative living
Tutors:
Dan Nunan +
Flynn Hart
( POLLENSTUDI O)
Tuesdays: 1.30-4.30pm
Thursdays: 6-9pm
1 x Weekend Workshop
Melbourne Fringe Festival Exhibition
How w i l l our f ut ur e ci t i es r espond t o f or ces of change? I n or der t o l i v e sust ai nabl y w e need t o
adapt t o const ant st at es of f l ux caused by cl i mat e, pol i t i cs and soci al upheav al .
Por t Mel bour ne i s an ar ea pr one t o a r ange of ex t er nal i nf l uences i ncl udi ng possi bl e sea l ev el r i se,
i ncr easi ng ur ban densi t y , changes i n l and- use and i nf r ast r uct ur e. A r ange of r api d- change
scenar i os w i l l be t est ed at v ar i ous si t es agai nst concept s of adapt abi l i t y , mobi l i t y and r esi l i ence.
Thi s st udi o w i l l l ook t ow ar ds si mpl e l ow - cost t echnol ogi es, mobi l e and emer gency ar chi t ect ur es
as w el l as pl anni ng f or f ut ur e pr oof i ng. Scenar i os w i l l be t est ed on si t e w i t h 1: 1 i nt er v ent i ons as
w el l as t hr ough di gi t al scenar i o mappi ng and ani mat i on.
As Eur y - Ther mal or gani sms can adapt t o a w i de r ange of t emper at ur e condi t i ons, so t oo can a
Eur y - Modal bei ng adapt t o a w i de r ange of l i vi ng condi t ons.
Fi sk , 1944. Map of anci ent cour ses of t he Mi ssi ssi ppi Ri ver
04
f
f
F
U
N
D
A
M
E
N
T
A
L
forces
Trees are so much part of our urban environment that we
tend to relegate them to the humdrum background of our
awareness. They survive against terrific odds, as widening
streets encroach, and their space is allocated to further
development. In recent years, the additional pressure put
on them by increasing urban heat load and the southward
trend of hotter climatic belt are becoming more apparent.
Fortunately for Melbourne, its city council understands their
value to our lives.
And to the sequestering of Carbon Dioxide.
As designers, however, our role and responsibility is to
understand their value as place makers, space makers,
and providores of shade and beauty. But each tree has its
species particular qualities and requirements.
The studio will begin by looking to what drives the
engine of the worlds angle of movement and how these
fundamentally establish the seasons, the weather and the
climatic forces which have given rise to trees.
Trees have very particular needs: these we will attend to
through research of surface materials, emerging techniques
for increasing infiltration and edge conditions. The main
focus will be on the qualities of trees. Drawing is an action
which embeds awareness into our thoughts; drawing is
thinking, To refine our awareness of these, we will be doing
many hand drawings. These will include observational
drawings and scaled measured drawings.
We will draw:
- the individual characteristics of tree species through life
drawing,
-the spatial qualities present in selected precedents,
- and analytical diagrams of spatial effects.
These drawings will be empowered through the seven
fundamental lenses which ground successful design work

01 Orientation
02 Shape of the Earth (topography)
03 Shadow
04 Under the skin (drainage and infiltration)
05 Precedent
06 Surface treatment
07 Seasonal Transition
Finally, you will each incorporate this knowledge into the
design for a selected small urban space.
Along side the research and design work, you will be
introduced to essential communication skills. These will
enable you to situate your work within a presentation
format used throughout the studio, in final presentation and
portfolio.
02 03
05 06
07
01
STUDIO LEADER: Prof. Cath Stutterheim (RMIT University / SAALA)
STUDIO TUTOR: Karolina Bartkowicz (SAALA)
TIME: Tuesdays & Thursdays (9:30 - 12:30) RM 8.11.45
semester 1 2012 landscape architecture lower pool
Topic: new_fringe is a design studio concern with changes to land use on the
peri-urban fringe. Peri-urban zones of cities continue to expand rapidly. New
housing replaces what was often productive agricultural land. But rather than
consider this is solely as a planning or political or economic problem we will
look at it as a rich and dense design brief.
Attempts to incorporate food production into new housing sub-divisions
have limited purchase on land-use or food system outcomes. While new sub-
divisions in Melbourne promote sustainable living, environmental benefts,
and the health and wellbeing of the community, to date, food production
responses have been limited to community vegetable gardens, fruiting street
trees and a chook run.
Task: In this studio you will produce a site-specifc concept for a new fringe
that incorporates food production and housing. Your projects may vary from
broad-scale planning projects illustrated with site-specifc examples through
to more thoroughly developed small-scale projects.
Theory: Formal theoretical positions for the generation of your concepts will
be ofered through the reference/reading material [on sustainability; food
security/food justice and peri-urban issues], the reading groups and guest
lectures. A core research question that you can customise will guide your
inquiries through design to propose a new set of land-use relationships for
housing and food production in a peri-urban location in the Wyndham city
municipality.
Techniques/tools: will include weaving together feldwork, mapping [hand and
digital] the theoretical positions and the propositional capacities of diagram-
ming to develop new design ideas.
Educational philosophy: it a community of learning studio where we all help
each other to learn, to think more clearly, to be less guarded and to have
more fun while develop strong innovative projects.
Guest: Professor Michael Buxton who has signifcant expertise on peri-urban
issues will be involved in the studio.
Class times:
To ballot for this studio you need to be available Tuesdays all day and Wednesday after-
noons from 2.30pm
Schedule for 75% of semester is:
Tuesday _ all day
for 25% will be
Tuesday afternoon + Wednesday afternoon
new_fringe [a foodcity studio]
Jane Shepherd_ RMIT FOOD LAB [Food and Landscape Architecture Bureau]
image: Animal Superpowers by Chris Woebken and Kenichi Okada
1 11 1
11 11 1 1 1
tutor
Dr Rosalea Monacella
time
Wednesday 10am-5pm
class commences Wed 7th March
room
88.05.01
credit
36 credit points
(equivalent to 1 Design Studio + 01 Eelctive)
1 1 1111
1 111 111 111 111 11 1 111
1 1 1 1 1 111 1111 111 1 1 1 1 1 1111 1 1 1 1111 111 1
1 11 1 11 1 111 1 11 1 11 1 1 11111111111

MEGA_HOUSEHOLDS
FRENCH FOOD LANDSCAPE STUDY TOUR
LOWER POOL STUDIO semester one 2012
FOOD_LAB
(FOOD LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE BUREAU)
MICHAEL HOWARD
here INSIDE I AM (outside?)
I FORGOT HOW I GOT HERE
I AM WANDERING wondering
through far away places (this one?)
I want to be NOWHERE
(else but here)
with Scott Mitchell
&
Saskia Schut
Broader issue
When so little now seems unmapped uncharted, we
say (like Arakawa and Gins) this induces death. What of
uncertainty? The unknown? We ask you, in the realm of
your own garden (the backyard of your suburban home, or
the balcony of your 10th foor apartment, the courtyard of
your inner city share house... or other) to design a small
space to feel lost... (disoriented, adrift, nowhere to be found,
strayed, missing, consigned to oblivion).
By adopting a term such as lost the body is reinstated
as primary to design processes; imagination is brought
to the fore and the rationalist (categorised, mapped)
space is challenged. The term makes room for otherness,
darkness, the unknowable, the wild and the fantastical.
Scale and Outcome
Design for a small garden that engages the notion of lost
through spatial and material manipulation.
Tools and Techniques
* fctional narratives
* 1:1 material experiments
* 1:1 spatial experiments
* model making
* flm/photography
Tuesdays 1:30 - 4:30pm
Fridays 1:30 - 4:30pm
Time: Fridays 9.30am to 4.30pm Location: Building 45.A
Water Lab
Designing with urban water-land-dynamics
STUDIO THEME The studio will explore and design with the
inevitable dynamics of Melbournes water system. Through de-
sign you will be negotiating the constantly changing sites be-
tween land and water considering human needs for space for
their urban way of living and infrastructural requirements for
water detention areas. Our broad research question asks: How
can we design with the forces of accelerated water dynamics as
one of the results of climate change? Climate change impacts,
whether they arise as fooding or drought, have presented us
with challenges that ask for novel, ground-braking, complex
and critical design-propositions, which provide a highly fexible
and functioning response to water extremes and at the same
time high quality public space and urban living. In this context
the studio asks further how we could challenge the notion of
Water Sensitive Urban Design beyond the usual small-scale
rain garden projects? It is a great term expressing a complex
large-scale urban design ambition. The reality though is that
it seldom exceeds the design of rain gardens or wetlands. This
studio wants to think of Melbourne as a water sensitive urban
landscape in a larger scale mode and seeks conceptual design
ideas which respond to phenomena of motion, of disturbance,
of dynamic and of change and understand these as the building
blocks for contemporary urban design.. Site-specifc designs will
then explore how this approach could manifest in form.
DESIGN APPROACH This studio will work with an integrative
design approach, which doesnt distinguish between the phas-
es of analysis and design as separate parts but rather under-
stands them as simultaneous and interwoven acts of a creative
design process. We seek new kinds of visualisations as both
a foundation and a result of new ways of understanding and
capturing the dynamic and complexity of urban landscapes. In
other words, design is an act of understanding or design is to
understand. Unpacking and getting a comprehensive idea of
Melbournes urban landscape systems and their complex opera-
tions the studio will begin with creative-intuitive design inves-
tigations as tools of understanding. Not to stay imprisoned
by our bias and preconceptions, the terms and images that we
have known but mainly refer to former times and environmen-
tal/urban conditions, we need to open ourselves to the subject
matter we want to design with as little prejudice as possible.
Therefore the studio emphasizes on seeing the unseen, reading
the unread, feeling the unfelt, uncovering the hidden, mapping
the unmapped, visualising the invisible, untangle the tangle.
STUDIO OPERATION The studio group will meet up regularly
on Fridays all day. The studio will start with clearly formulated
assignments of creative-intuitive investigations to be worked on
from week to week. Eventually you will develop your own de-
sign projects and will be asked to formulate your own design
steps (in co-ordination with myself as your tutor). Work constel-
lations in this studio will shift between working individually, in
small teams, and as the entire studio group. There will be in-
class-lectures by the tutor and guests as well as from students
of the studio, on-site trips, in class debates and workshops, 1:1
critiques, and regular short presentations. The studio will be un-
derstood as a learning workshop, which requires an interactive
engagement and continuing design practice.
Landscape Architecture // Lower Pool Design Studio // 1st Semester 2012
Tutor: Julia Werner