 |
Postgraduate & Honours Students (this page is under construction)
|
 |
|
Current Postgraduate Students Current 5th Year Honours Students Current 4th Year Honours Students |
Current Postgraduate Students |  | Iman AlattarPhD Supervisory team:
Associate Professor Stephen Loo, School of Architecture & Design
Dr Catriona McLeod, School of Architecture & Design
Textual Representation of the Socio-Urban History of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries in Baghdad
This research study aims to revisit some critical moments in the history of Baghdad. The study encompasses Baghdad’s urban development history between mid eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The main task of this research is to study the representation of Baghdad’s urban history through the interrogation of intellectual work of some famous scholars at that time, including historians, poets, religious leaders and artists. The textual representation of the urban history studied in this thesis, in conjunction with the materialistic documentation of the traces of architectural and urban forms will provide clearer and more productive historical experience, which I believe would promote a better understanding of the relationship between cultural development and identity formation with urban development. Moreover, the study embraces arguments about issues concerning ‘authenticity’ of historical experiences, which contribute to informing culturally sensitive future developments in Baghdad and other Islamic cities. |  | Peter BoothMaster of Architecture by Research Supervisory team:
Associate Professor Stephen Loo, School of Architecture & Design
Dr Catriona McLeod, School of Architecture & Design
Digital Materialism: Performative Process and Digital Fabrication Fundamentally architecture is a material-based practice which implies that making, and the close engagement of materiality is intrinsic to design process. With the rapid uptake of new computational tools and fabrication techniques by the architectural profession, the connection between architecture and materiality is being challenged. Innovative digital technologies are redefining the relationship between design and construction encoding in the process new ways of thinking about architecture. A new archetype of sustainable architectural process is emerging, often cited as Digital Materialism. Advanced computational processes are moving digital toolsets away from a representational mode towards being integral to the design process. These methods are allowing complex design variables (material, fabrication, environment, etc.) to be interplayed within the design process, allowing an active relationship between performative criteria and design sustainability to be embedded within design methodology. As this field of Digital Materialism expands further, the role that these mechanisms play in the examination of digital workflow will become emphasised further. This research proposes a new understanding of architectural interrogation which is emerging in light of the relationships between digital process, performative encoding and material fabrication.
|  | Mark DewsburyPhD Supervisory team:
Professor Roger Fay, School of Architecture & Design
Associate Professor Gregory Nolan, Centre for Sustainable Architecture with Wood, School of Architecture & Design The Empirical Validation of the Thermal Performance of Light Weight House Framing Systems in Cool Temperate Climates Since 1998 the Australian Government has put in place measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In 2003, the Building Code of Australia (BCA) included measures which mandated a 4 Star house energy rating (HER). The standard was raised in 2006 to 5 stars and it is the COAG agenda that 6 stars be adopted in 2010. The adoption of energy efficiency measures in the BCA has raised concerns from industry and manufacturing groups, as to the accuracy of the simulation software for residential buildings. Both industry and government recognised the need to validate the HER software AccuRate. The objective of this research is to better understand the thermal performance of light-frame buildings used in the Australian residential sector and to empirically validate the AccuRate software in cool temperate climates such as in Tasmania.
Mark has been involved in the design of commercial and private buildings in the public and private sectors for more than 20 years. Mark has a strong interest in building thermal performance, building material and site sustainability issues and on site waste management systems.
|  | Detlev GeardPhD Supervisory team:
Professor Roger Fay, School of Architecture & Design
Associate Professor Gregory Nolan, Centre for Sustainable Architecture with Wood, School of Architecture & Design
The Empirical Validation of the House Energy Rating Scheme ‘AccuRate’ for the Cool Temperate Climate of Australia The House Energy Rating Scheme ‘AccuRate predicts the heating and cooling requirements and provides a star rating for residential buildings. Star rating is given from 0-10 stars, the higher the star rating, the less energy is needed. This research aims to empirically validate the accuracy of this simulation program. Three test houses, a 4-Star rated timber floor house, a 5-Star timber floor house and a 5-Star concrete slab floor house were built at Kingston, 13 km south of Hobart, Tasmania. The houses were extensively monitored during a three months unoccupied period. Data taken from the houses will be compared to the predicted AccuRate simulation and analysed. Empirical validation is an important step to determine, if the program will need further modification and fine tuning. | | | Anna HooperPhD Supervisory team:
Dr Catriona McLeod, School of Architecture & Design
Dr Deborah Malor, School of Visual & Performing Arts
Topic Abstract |  | Teen-Onn (Tim) LawPhD Supervisory team:
Professor Roger Fay, School of Architecture & Design
Dr Jane Sargison, Centre for Renewable Energy and Power Systems, School of Engineering The Zero-Energy Office of the Tropics
We live in a resource constrained world. Marginal improvements in the energy efficiency of our buildings may already be too modest a goal to achieve the levels of mitigation advised by climate scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change. We thus sought to ascertain the limits in achieving energy autonomy of offices possible with current technology organised in an innovative way. The presentation covers the attainment of thermal comfort and indoor air quality (which account for the largest energy budget in offices) by looking at the building as its own climate-controlling machine together with a reconsideration of our almost universal need for air-conditioning. We explore how a zero-energy office design can be approached with increased efficiency and decreased consumption.
|  | Jennifer Lorrimar-Shanks
PhD Supervisory team:
Dr Catriona McLeod, School of Architecture & Design
Dr Ceridwen Owen, School of Architecture & Design
Dr Aidan Davison, School of Geography and Environmental Studies
Conceiving a Sustainable Built Environment - The Ecosystem Analogy and Hong Kong
Given the ongoing destruction of the natural environment through pollution, depletion of natural resources, and disruption of biological cycles, the study of methodologies to reverse these practices, and ensure the survival of humanity and the natural world, is essential. Humanity’s discord with nature is reflected in its own dysfunctional and inequitable social relationships, which should also be challenged. The built environment contributes to social and environmental welfare; accordingly, it must be a significant part of the solution. In order to conceive sustainable systems we must examine the current unsustainable approach, and understand how destructive practices have arisen. Analogies have the ability to extend our understanding by explaining a theme in terms of an already familiar idea. The Ecosystem Analogy can facilitate the reorganisation of human systems to emulate natural systems - inherently sustainable models that have endured for millennia – demonstrating effective patterns of material and energy use, non-linear cooperative communities, flexibility, adaptability, and diversity. I intend to explore the Ecosystem Analogy as a transitional model for a complex urban environment. Hong Kong provides a challenging focus for a study that will incorporate cultural, political, and social influences on the built environment. | | | Philip McLeodPhD Supervisory team:
Professor Roger Fay, School of Architecture & Design
Associate Professor Gregory Nolan, Centre for Sustainable Architecture with Wood, School of Architecture & Design
Comparative Environmental Impacts of Construction Abstract |  | John Pott
PhD Supervisory team:
Associate Professor Stephen Loo, School of Architecture & Design Haptic Architecture: Tactile Interfaced Built Environment
Abstract | 
| Maria Perez-PulidoPhD Supervisory team:
Associate Professor Gregory Nolan, Centre for Sustainable Architecture with Wood, School of Architecture & Design
Associate Professor Edwin Paling, Conservatorium of Music
Dr Damien Holloway, School of Engineering
Study of Mechanical and Acoustical Properties of Tasmanian Timbers for Violin-Making When using traditional instrument-making techniques for the creation of bowed string instruments, Tasmanian woods match the resulting tonal qualities of European woods. This research aims to recognise the potential benefits of using Tasmanian woods for violin making by determining the acoustical and mechanical properties of likely species, establishing a range of gradings for each one of the species selected for study, and looking into designing violin top and back plates to give them wanted acoustical/vibrational properties. It will be necessary to study the differences between the properties of the chosen materials and the materials traditionally used in violin making. |  | Sabrina SequeiraPhD Supervisory team:
Professor Roger Fay, School of Architecture & Design
Dr Jane Sargison, Centre for Renewable Energy and Power Systems, School of Engineering
Dr Florence Soriano, Centre for Sustainable Architecture with Wood, School of Architecture & Design
An Analysis of Subfloor Air Movement in a Residential Building and Its Effect on Thermal Performance Building simulation programs predict temperatures inside a building based on its design and the local climate. Recent research has brought the accuracy of specifically the subfloor modelling into question. This project aims to validate the subfloor ventilation model and investigate the effect of subfloor ventilation on a building’s indoor temperature. Experimental data is provided by three instrumented test buildings. Computational fluid dynamics will be used to provide insight. Once the subfloor cavity conditions are quantified and understood, their effect on the thermal performance of the buildings’ interior will be assessed. The outcome will be a more robust building simulation tool.
|
Current 5th Year Honours Students |  | Alysia BennettMaster of Architecture (Honours) Supervisory team:
Dr Catriona McLeod, School of Architecture & Design
Associate Professor Stephen Loo, School of Architecture & Design
Car free and carefree? Architects were very influential in the early to mid twentieth century in assisting the car to integrate into society by accommodating it not only into cities but also within architecture typologies. Current sustainable city development around the world is focusing on the eradication of the car from cities, a strategy that is both widely advocated and assisted by of architects.
My research is examining whether car free is the most appropriate or even realistic option for our cities, what is the role of the architectural profession in relation to sustainable development and how 'carchitecture' [1] can evolve beyond its current single minded use to improve social, economic and environmental conditions within urban and suburban environments. [1] Bell, Jonathon. 2001. Carchitecture: When the Car and City Collide. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhauser. View some of Alysia's work
| | | Jyh Chian (Richard) Chung
Master of Architecture (Honours) Supervisory team:
Associate Professor Stephen Loo, School of Architecture & Design
Dr Catriona McLeod, School of Architecture & Design
How can Richard Sennett’s craftsmanship fit into contemporary architectural design process and material production to encourage/support sustainability in the 21st century? Richard Sennett identifies the broken link between arts and crafts in our current society of efficiency and advanced technology, to stress how craftsmanship can lead to the well-being of society. He reiterates the fundamental purpose of craftsmanship as a means of anchoring humans within nature; and reinterprets craftsmanship in various perspectives to conclude its importance in addressing global environmental issues.
The dissertation is inspired by Richard Sennett's notion of 'craftsmanship'. His concept serves as a lens in my research to reflect and refract its practicability in the design and production process. | 
| Elizabeth Davis
Master of Architecture (Honours) Supervisory team:
Dr Catriona McLeod, School of Architecture & Design
Associate Professor Stephen Loo, School of Architecture & Design
Learning space design
Since the Industrial Age the model of school classrooms for mass education has remained largely unchanged. However, since this time the view of intelligence has broadened from the linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences traditionally valued to encompass ‘whole child’ intelligence shown through unique ways of thinking and learning. [1] Thus, my research aims to establish commonalities in the actual or desired functional arrangement of learning spaces that support ‘whole child’ learning. The research data will be collected from educators currently teaching in schools across the state. The data will be analysed to determine patterns of functional arrangements of teaching and learning spaces that assist educators in supporting student achievement across a broad scope of educational outcomes. [1] Heny Sanoff. Relating Educational Objectives to Learning Spaces in E Knapp, K Noschis, C Pasalar (eds). School Building and Learning Performance, (Lausanne: 12 Architecture & Behaviour Colloquium, 2007), 117-120.
|  | Rosalyn Fraser
Master of Architecture (Honours) Supervisory team:
Geoff Clark, School of Architecture & Design
Dr Catriona McLeod, School of Architecture & Design
How can an adaptation of Ron Herron’s 1964 proposal for the Walking City provide feasible re-housing for 21st century ecological refugees? “An environmental refugee is a person displaced owing to environmental causes, notably land loss and degradation, and natural disaster”[1] Ron Herron, a core member of the Archigram group in the 1960s designed a city on legs that could roam the world, housing thousands of people in a vast independent society. Acclaimed as brilliant by some, and horrendous by others, the Walking City was a futuristic mode of habitation that has not been realised to date. With current technology and an urgent need to re-house entire communities whose habitat has been lost to natural disaster, the Walking City may be a viable option. A series of parameters will be set up in order to establish how to make a city walk, and guidelines for suitable conditions. [1] Glossary of Environment Statistics, Studies in Methods, Series F, No. 67, United Nations, New York, 1997 (Accessed online at http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=839 May 2009).
| 
| Luke Hayward
Master of Architecture (Honours) Supervisory team:
Dr Catriona McLeod, School of Architecture & Design
Associate Professor Stephen Loo, School of Architecture & Design Humour + architecture Humour has been identified as an extremely complex, essential, powerful and sophisticated cognitive, social and expressive process. Current theories make the case that humour plays an important role in many aspects of human existence. There are demonstrated physiological and psychological benefits that result from experiencing humour and laughter. Humour also aids in social interaction and learning, especially when dealing with conflict, incongruity, loss, risk and competition. Despite this current examples of humour in architecture are limited and usually unsophisticated. Does humour have a potentially more powerful role to play in architectural expression? My research aims to reveal potential new modes of expressing humour in architecture through the exploration of contemporary humour theories. |  | Bonnie Herring
Master of Architecture (Honours) Supervisory team:
Associate Professor Stephen Loo, School of Architecture & Design
Dr Catriona McLeod, School of Architecture & Design
Provocation of socio-spatial engagement for revolution in the everyday In response to our production driven society, experience has become abstract and spatial practices more passive. Henri Lefebvre speculated that the reinsertion of the ‘social body’ in the Production of Space [1] could destabilise pacifying societal orders and the crisis of representation, to reveal a socio-spatial revolution latent within ‘the everyday.’ Beyond Lefebvre and the avant-gardes of the mid 20th century, lived experience is still considered to be site for this resistance to occur, though crucially requires an engaged and alert habitation.
The focus of my thesis explores the tactics of socio-spatial provocation as a mode of framing ‘lived’ space and countering the violence of indifference.
[1] Lefebvre, Henri (1974). The Production of Space. Trans. by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1991. |  | Peng Chuen (Nicholas) Lim
Master of Architecture (Honours) Supervisory team:
Associate Professor Stephen Loo, School of Architecture & Design
Dr Catriona McLeod, School of Architecture & Design
Queer space and complementarity
Architectural discourse constructs queer space through the notion of ‘other’. Consequently, ‘other’ and ‘otherness’ is a prerequisite for the definition of queer space.
It is my contention that this conceptualisation of ‘other’ limits the built potential of queer space in respect of its exponents’ aims.
My thesis attempts a reinterpretation of ‘other’ using quantum theory, focusing primarily on Neils Bohr’s concept of complementarity, making ‘other’ indeterminate but accessible through a new notion of ‘otherness’. As such, my research involves the appropriateness of this new interpretation of ‘other’ and its possible implications as new sites of resistance. | 
| Daniel Moore
Master of Architecture (Honours) Supervisory team:
Dr Catriona McLeod, School of Architecture & Design
Associate Professor Stephen Loo, School of Architecture & Design
How are we designed? Personally, I can make no connections between my tertiary education achievements and the desired learning outcomes prescribed for me by my educators in the unit outlines I have been given over the past 5 years. This is due to assessment in architectural education in Australasia being oriented towards a student’s outcomes rather than their process.
I am researching the link between journaling and the design process to see if a better awareness of one’s process leads to a clearer understanding of one’s progress throughout both the BEnvDes and MArch courses. I am working with small groups of current students at the School of Architecture and Design by using basic journaling and group discussion sessions.
|  | Keith WestbrookMaster of Architecture (Honours) Supervisory team:
Associate Professor Stephen Loo, School of Architecture & Design
Dr Catriona McLeod, School of Architecture & Design
Interpretation centres for urban communities - are they relevant? Traveling to a new place, we seek out locations of interest that convey the unique social and historic qualities of a city. This quite often involves visiting a series of interpretation centres and museums. However, when living in a city, we spend our time going about daily routines, seldom visiting the interpretation centres that supposedly define the city’s history and culture to a visitor. The interpretation centre marks a site as having a significant past, like a head stone does on a grave. I am exploring how an architectural process can render the urban interpretation centre redundant in order to capture the contemporary significance of significant sites for urban communities. |
Current 4th Year Honours Students | Supervisory team for all 4th year honours students:
Dr Catriona McLeod, School of Architecture & Design
Associate Professor Stephen Loo, School of Architecture & Design |  | Loren Bates
Master of Architecture (Honours) Home = Shack (or does it?) I shall introduce my abstract with three quotes that sum up my initial thoughts about Shacks and place and this thing I am calling 'Shackness'. "Places are fusions of human and natural order and are the significant centres of our immediate experiences of the world" (Edward Relph - Place and Placelessness). "Shacks in Tasmania are perhaps one of the most endearing symbols of Tasmanian life. Shack culture is ingenious, warm, colourful, peripheral, eccentric, often rough, sometimes funny and occasionally brilliant" (Brand Tasmania website). "I think we care a great deal for play. We actually work harder than people often give us credit for - we ourselves we are very critical of ourselves but we also know how to play... the pursuit of happiness seems to me to be something Australians feel is a central right and I think they have learnt to pursue that. I think we are on the whole a people who are light of spirit rather than heavy. It comes partly from the fact that this is a world that seems to nourish us" (Interview with author David Malouf). I am deconstructing the tectonics and poetics of the traditional Tasmanian Shack to distill what makes the Shack a significant place to Shack owners in order to reconstruct Home as Shack. | | | Sam Bresnehan
Master of Architecture (Honours) Architecture of the everyday and the relationship with digital culture, explored through [hyper]surface Powerful, efficient, portable wireless devices, within consumer culture, connect the individual with the virtual everyday. The way society perceives the material, analogue world, therefore, is both supported and enhanced by the digital realm. Grosz [1] notes that ‘the change in our perception of materiality, space, and information, affects how we understand architecture, habitation, and the built environment.’ The integration of digital technologies and generative design process has reinforced the value and complexity of architectural surface (envelope, joinery, urban fabric) within contemporary architecture. Hypersurface, as suggested by Perrella [2], is the ‘informed typology of an interstitial terrain between the real and unreal which then flows transversally into a stream of associations.’ Surface, as mediator or interface, has the ability to re-empower architecture and its appreciation within digital cultures and societies. This will be a process-based, design as research activity; it will involve being immersed in the development of a built object, whereby the process is the dominant and documented activity, in an exploration of [hyper]surface. [1] Grosz, Elizabeth. Future, Cities, Architecture. “Architecture from the Outside, essays on virtual and real space”. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, 2001. [2] Perrella, Stephen. Hypersurface Theory: Architecture >< Culture. “Architectural Design: Hypersurface Architecture” Ed. Toy, Maggie. London: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 1998, pp 7-15. |  | Ryan CawthornMaster of Architecture (Honours)
The last landscape (architecture and mortality) How does architecture house the memory of those who are no longer at home? To be human, constituted as we are, is essentially to lead a mortal life, a life of limited span and, in death, unknown possibility life inherently becomes the dialect of dying. This dialectic of death I believe should and can be viewed with respect to the living, whereby death, in this light is seen as life in its absence; an inherent quality of life in itself. I aim to re-cast the neutral ground held by the architectonic framework constituted by its nostalgic disposition in regards to recognising man’s mortality, where I am investigating the incursion of architecture into this field of the non-existent; death, man’s last landscape. My research activity involves the research and analysis of crematoria, and columbaria, the rights and rituals of death and afterlife in varying themes and cultures and also building typologies that deal with death, memory and absence such as Libeskind’s Jewish Museum. I am also researching the topic of one’s own death and the concept of non-existing, as explored in the writings of Sartre, Nietzsche and Heidegger. | | | Chow Ying Hong (Vincent)
Master of Architecture (Honours)
What can replace the shopping mall as a third space? The shopping mall has been acknowledged as a third space, or an in-between space (Bhabha, 1994, p.38), uniting all activities under one roof, providing experiences besides products and services to consumers (Leong, 2001). However, it has declined in popularity in recent years, with the advancement in technology, which has encouraged human alienation, and a practice of not associating publicly (Oldenburg, 1991, p.10). My interest in this research then is to find out what could be the manifestation of consumerism as a neutral ground for people to meet and integrate, now that shopping preferences have evolved. This will involve analysing the shopping trend timeline, consumer behaviour, which influences the shopping trend, and case studies of different retail operations, which reflect the characteristics of the third space. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Leong, Sze Tsung. … And Then There Was Shopping in Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping, edited by Leong, Sze Tsung, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, 2001. Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. New York: Marlowe & Company, 1989. |  | Chloe Comino
Master of Architecture (Honours)
How do architects design for escapology, anarchy and new sobriety? I am exploring contemporary political and cultural critiques represented within alternate architectural praxis. Numerous design collectives such as Taking Place in London, The Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory (FAST) in Amsterdam and Recetas Urbanas in Seville practice micro-strategies of resistance, focusing on globalisation, gentrification, and urban ecology. These resistances act as catalysts within the community to assert the role of architecture in political and cultural critique. Now this is the contradiction: The Stijlinstituut in The Netherlands, an influential physical and digital archive of future trends, has announced the mega trends for 2009 to be taken up by marketing gurus globally. These new mega-trends include escapology, anarchy and new sobriety. ‘Red-washing’ is the new ‘green-washing’ and this exploration is leading into some murky waters. |  | Clare Dunlop
Master of Architecture (Honours) Can a small house address cultural loneliness? Australian households have changed considerably in number, size and composition over the past 20 years. Culturally we are manifesting status anxiety, mortgage stress and malaise. How much space does it take to be happy? My research aims to establish, through case study analysis, how much space Tasmanians use within their houses... and how much is wasted. | | | Martin Green
Master of Architecture (Honours) An investigation into the realities of architectural praxis and nexus New computational apparatuses and methodologies are challenging the relationship between architecture and matter, where ‘the medium creates its ends, as much as an end creates its medium’. [1] Architecture is unaware of the deductive and inductive reasoning of computational utilisation, creating a form/matter divide where matter is seldom examined beyond its visual or technological capacities and conflicts with the theory that matter should be inherent to the design process as a material based practice. I propose to examine the philosophical and ontological accounts based on Aristotelian hylomorphism [Substance theory], and Foucauldian philosophies of power and rhetoric as a bases of investigation into architectural discourse of matter and computational practice and production. [1] Pablo Miranda Carranza. Out of Control: The Media of Architecture, Cybernetics and Design in Material Matters: Architecture and Material Practice, ed. Katie Lloyd Thomas (New York: Routledge, 2007), 151.
| 
| John-Paul Ibbott
Master of Architecture (Honours) How can traditional craftsmanship be brought into the digital age and still result in inherently beautiful objects?
Coming from a carpentry background, I am a hands-on craftsman. Since the time of industrialisation, machine manufacturing has superseded craft. The intrinsic beauty of hand-made craft has, I believe, been lost, and replaced by accurately made objects, which are quicker to build. The outcome of this rapid production is not necessarily beautiful, it is just done. Frascari (1984) investigates the idea of the detail being the transition between conceived ideas and the actual built form; at the point where a craftsman has an opportunity to shine. More recently Wigley (1999) describes technology as being a prosthetic to the human body and in fact taking over. I will be investigating whether the speed and accuracy of digital fabrication such as CNC can still result in a ‘beautiful product’. | | | Ivonny
Master of Architecture (Honours) Nomadology has constantly been interpreted across fileds of postmodern theories from Feminism to Deconstruction. It is a 'counter-philosophy' that challenges the 'homogeneity' of everyday life. Derived as a response to political revolution, Nomadology aims to challenge the sedentary, institutionalised structure of capitalist society. Nomadology, and nomads, have evolved through time from being 'primitive' to 'modern'. The resistance and subversive attitude of nomads in overcoming turbulence appeals to me as a revolutionary way of living the 'everyday'. Nomads' lived experiences are of the displacement method, which asks for a revolutionary architecture. Since the spatial experience is to be rewritten, architecture needs to be practised as space-writing. My research will question the tangibility of Nomadology in architecture and explore the nomad's mode of operation in the interstice of mainstream. My research scope will cover the reinterpretation of 'smooth space' into architecture and the relationship to 'nomad' as the user, by using the theories of Deleuze. | | | David Jordaan
Master of Architecture (Honours) Space for thought In today's society/culture of constant go and movement, we find ourselves moving through life as if on auto-pilot, or living in a virtual existence, where advertising, TV, radio and social expectations dominate and determine every thought we have. Spaces for contemplation bring us back in touch with our personal existence, connection, meaning, as opposed to the reality of our social/cultural world. I am investigating external and public spaces of contemplation and how they can be synthesised into our everyday life. |  | Paul KaiserMaster of Architecture (Honours) Fear of surface/surfacing
In this research I aim to explore the narration of the built environment and the connection this has to spatial experience. By reflecting and retelling my spatial stories I will personalise the research and analysis I have undertaken. In doing so I hope I can validate my future design decisions. The focus of my research is nomadism; the importance of the story and character in understanding spatial quality. Has the importance of stories been forgotten? My process: Through telling, writing, drawing, photography, and film - resurfacing periodically to be analytical about my progress. |  | Harney Ketterer
Master of Architecture (Honours) Stalking crisis! Young women watched and abused when home alone. Victim states she no longer feels safe, or 'herself'... but is to afraid to disconnect from the internet. The internet is now a daily feature in the lives of young women (aged between 18 and 25) and has altered the way in which they now communicate and interact with people, and even more so with the development of social networking sites. The internet also has a huge impact on young women's 'scene of identity' in the home. The research, through surveys and focus groups, will investigate the hypothesised damaging effect of social networking sites' ability to eliminate the privacy of the home, by constantly subjecting the female to being 'on show'. This serves to make her 'scene of identity' false and interchangeable within her own home, which ideally should be the cornerstone of her identity and a place of refuge. |  | Carly McMahon
Master of Architecture (Honours) Identity | Poetics | Education The problem I find with my architectural education is that my individual skills are not fostered or recognised. This has led to a questioning of my identity. The way in which I form my architecture, its poetics, relates strongly to my identity. But in questioning my identity, I question my architecture. How then can I form architecture of my own if I do not know whom I am? In order to understand and improve how I design I must first understand who I am. This preoccupation with education, identity and poetics has led to an exploration of the relationships these three fields have with each other. The research project will combine journaling my thoughts about my designs and myself and more traditional research into poetics, education and identity. |  | Ng Cheng Ngai
Master of Architecture (Honours) How can the hospital be architecturally disinfected? In this research, I challenge the dichotomy between typology design methodologies and how the hospital can be disinfected through architectural design. The current hospital only has a fixed function and representational value. The image, type and role of healthcare is shifting. What is the new optimum model of healthcare that can offer more than life and death health care services? I am applying Venturi’s Symbolic aspects and Language to architectural design and Colquhoun’s discussion on design methodology with a certain type. I am also interested in Day's notion on methods about designing spaces and buildings that generate healing qualities through sensitive and responsible design; hence I contend that the image and quality of hospitals can be disinfected though architectural design. I am investigating theses links through observation and case study analysis, and aim to seek patterns in similarities and differences. I will then propose a new typology for hospitals in the 21st century. |  | David Parsons
Master of Architecture (Honours) How can micro-housing be invested with poetics to engage and enrich the users’ senses and experience? Micro-housing is defined as the miniaturising of home, reducing our spatial requirements to the bare minimum. There are many timely factors which contribute to our need to down-size, including the economic, social and environmental costs of a large house and the degradation and numbing of our sense and perceptions through material living. Current architectural discourses concerning Micro-housing focus on its empirical aspects and its tangible benefits such as the potential for energy savings, instead of perhaps the more potent, intangible benefits, such as residential wellbeing and happiness. Poetics has been widely used as a descriptive tool; however its capacity to influence architectural design has not been fully realised, and has the potential to connect the physicality of architecture with the thoughts, memories, dreams and stories that it evokes within its users. In this research I will be literally living with and seeking examples of poetics in a building of less than 15m2, to gain an understanding of how poetics can be embodied in micro-housing to enrich our senses and experience. |  | Tory PuglisiMaster of Architecture (Honours) Another pattern language: How fractal geometry can generate anthropometric architecture I am researching how fractal geometry can generate anthropometric space. Specifically, I will utilise fractal geometry generation software to design an architectural object that conforms with an established anthropometric standard. Existing research focuses on two main lines of enquiry: 1. Measuring and analysing the fractal patterns and scales of existing art, architecture and urban design 2. Suggesting ideal fractal dimensions, scales and 'rule-sets' that designs should conform with to be considered successful – according to their proponents Little research seems to exist that actually generates architecture using fractal geometry generation tools. This research aims to be a small drop in the bucket of that void. By testing this design against an established anthropometric standard, I also hope to test the veracity of fractal geometry as a means of generating usable architecture. Bovill [1] suggests ways of both analysing and generating architecture using fractal geometry. Salingaros [2] asserts that fractal patterns exist in the most successful cities and buildings, and that a city or a building can only be successful if it contains such fractal patterns. [1] Bovill, Carl (1996). Fractal Geometry in Architecture and Design. Boston: Birkhäuser. [2] Salingaros, Nikos A. (1999). Architecture, Patterns, and Mathematics. Nexus Network Journal, Volume 1.
|  | Emma Robinson
Master of Architecture (Honours
The architectural remnant is a ‘pathological monument’, which generates a social cycle The exploration of this notion, as a speculative field of enquiry, is the intent of my research; in order to establish the validity of the architectural remnant as a generator of society, and social practice. The vehicle for exploration is an examination and classification of ‘pathological monuments’, as derived from the theory of Rossi; juxtaposed with Baudrillard’s cultural theory of cyclical evolution in The Beaubourg Effect: Implosion and Deterrence. Utilising the conclusions drawn from this research I intend to identify a series of architectural remnants in order to investigate their effect upon the evolutionary cycle of society. |  | Helene Tabor
Master of Architecture (Honours) Spaces and consequence The public realm is composed of spaces of 'no consequence'. The purpose of my research is to understand why spaces are not 'lived in' and instead are passed by or simply forgotten. I wlll investigate this through phenomenological ideas of habit, routine and 'doing as experience' (as per David Seamon's 'place ballet', 1979). This will be done in conjunction with my observations of people's daily routines to map out their 'place ballet'. As a designer I want to explore people's sense of being grounded compared with being ungrounded so that a healthy median can be achieved between 'lived in spaces' and spaces of 'no consequence'. |  | Lachlan Walsh
Master of Architecture (Honours) Non-sense or no-sense design: should we design buildings, which stimulate no senses at all? The introduction of the personal communication device (Mobile Phone, iPod, GPS, etc.) has dislocated and desensitised users from their surrounding environment and their experience of space. In this research I aim to find if it is at all important to design buildings, which operate without the presence of senses. Abram (1996) and Boyer (1996) are important to my research in the understanding if it is at all important to design for sensory stimulation. Boyer believes the link to sense and memory in relation to architecture is dependant on the imagination of the occupant experiencing the space and the complexity of the architecture that is presented. Abram describes sense as a language, written down on the walls of space that can be read to understand the meaning and give experience. I will commence my research by analysing case studies of how other architects have designed buildings for those with limited senses. Abram, D. (1996). The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books Boyer, M.C. (1996). Cyber Cities. New York: Princeton Architectural Press | Back to Top
| |
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
