Students at the University of Sydney’s School of Architecture, Design and Planning have presented three studio projects based on project briefs that challenged them to explore the role of architecture in addressing cultural, environmental, and social issues in regional Australia.

A key element of architectural education, studio projects enable students to receive hands-on instruction and training to conceptualise designs that address real-world problems. The three project briefs, Let Every Voice Be Heard, Conflux/antiflux, and The Future of Towns provided the students with experience working on real sites with real clients to solve nuanced issues in regional communities.

Let Every Voice Be Heard: Community-led design creating safe havens for those most at risk

Women's housing in Hobart

Student designs for women's housing in Hobart. Image: Maja Baska

Domestic violence is a leading cause of homelessness for women and children globally, made worse by the resultant economic stress, which is further exacerbated by external factors such as the housing crisis, inflation, and the recent pandemic.

Tara Sydney, Justine Anderson, and Caitlin Condon from Adjacency Studio are three inspiring young women who teach Studio 2B: Let Every Voice Be Heard in the University’s School of Architecture, Design and Planning, where students design long-term housing for women and children at risk of homelessness in nipaluna (Hobart). The studio collaborates with the Hobart Women’s Shelter, ideating and building model designs to help the shelter's mission of doubling its permanent housing units by 2024 for the provision of safe, emergency accommodation for women and children affected by family violence and/or homelessness.

Through research and consultation with experts, students are encouraged to think about trauma-informed design principles and the relationship between people and place, to conceptualise dignified spaces that are safe, comfortable and therapeutic, and nurture a sense of community to support vulnerable women and children.

“Our students’ work is shared with the Hobart Women’s Shelter and their architects to help test ideas such as site strategies, spatial organisation, material choices, landscape design, et cetera. Each cohort that has worked to this brief has produced an incredibly thoughtful and rigorous body of work to pass on to the client,” Sydney said.

“When students are able to engage with real projects and real communities, especially those that focus on designing with empathy, they can begin to appreciate how architects can operate as advocates for promoting a better and more equitable world,” Anderson explained.

“It is pertinent to find new ways to empower the next generation, as we need architects who are committed to promoting social justice through their work. Through this studio, we have not only seen our students engage with the active and effective role they can play in more equitable futures through design, but also recognise the necessity of good design to be championed by architects advocating for and working intrinsically with the community,” Condon noted.

Conflux/antiflux: Challenging the way we think about landscape

The conflux of rivers is where two or more water bodies meet, creating a charged zone that can be dangerous. In 2022, the Hawkesbury-Nepean watershed, a large territory in Western Sydney defined by its many river confluxes, flooded as water saturated the river system after excessive rain, resulting in mass evacuation, extensive riverbank erosion, and destruction of many homes and businesses.

While climate change was a major driver, the impact of this flooding was worsened by decisions to build, farm and plan upon an area that has always been a floodplain.

Conflux/antiflux (Studio Brief 7) asked students to consider architecture’s role and agency at points of river convergence such as the Hawkesbury-Nepean region, and how to respond to natural disasters, whether stemming from climate or the cyclical nature of the geographical area.

“Many of the decisions about how and where a city is developed, including in dangerous areas such as floodplains, take place without the involvement of architects. But architects possess important skills that can be useful in visualising spatial issues and in advocating for just urban policy,” Oskar Johanson, brief leader of Conflux/antiflux said.

Students of the studio engaged with the environment through site exploration at key locations within the Hawkesbury-Nepean River Catchment Area, learning Indigenous perspectives on the concept of Country and how this knowledge resulted in working with, rather than against, flood-prone landscapes for thousands of years.

Warragambah Dam

Field visit to Warragambah Dam

The students then used the practical and theoretical knowledge gained from these field visits and in-classroom discussions to develop a framework that critically considers the local landscape and community when designing equitable, ecological spaces. Projects ranged from investigating flood and fire-resilient adaptation of heritage buildings, to ideating schemes for water filtration and storage, and finding alternative approaches to connecting with Country and decolonialising the landscape.

“Thinking through these diverse issues at multiple scales, the students proposed all sorts of intriguing ideas and frameworks that would make a significant impact on the Hawkesbury-Nepean region,” said Sophie Canaris, brief leader of Conflux/antiflux.

“The proposals considered flood risk and the needs of the river to recognise where a building or urban design scheme wasn’t appropriate – that sometimes less architecture is needed, not more,” Canaris added.

By imbuing a sense of agency to redefine and reconfigure their roles away from an anthropocentric, pro-growth lens in favour of sustainability and conservation, students are equipped to confront compounding environmental issues such as climate change and societal issues like population density and housing affordability.

The Future of Towns: Reviving place and identity

The high streets in regional Australia, with their charming window displays, old historic buildings, and welcoming bank entryways have seen a sharp decline over the past five decades, leaving a slew of empty buildings in what was once a bustling area of activity.

Several events contributed to this decline, ranging from the economic downturn of the 1980s, rising interest rates, the devastating drought through the 1990s, the proliferation of out-of-town shopping centres, and the growing prevalence of online shopping. However, 20 years on and after the COVID-19 lockdowns, there is renewed interest in our regional centres.

“With the construction of large infrastructure projects such as the Inland Rail Project, the boom in primary industry creating jobs throughout inland NSW, and the improvement in digital connectivity, there is enormous demand to move out of the city and into our regional centres,” said Ashley Dunn, brief leader of The Future of Towns.

“But there is not enough housing or investment in building and strengthening the social networks and infrastructure in these areas.”

This presents the opportunity for a radical rethink of how we can rejuvenate regional town centres, to build structures with wide-ranging public, social, and environmental value, promoting both a greater sense of community and a sustainable way of life.

The Future of Towns (Studio Brief 5) asked students to design an experimental, mixed-use building on the high street of Cobar, NSW (approximately 690km from Sydney) as a prototype for regional town centre rejuvenation.

Cobar

Master of Architecture students exploring Cobar and Bourke

“Far from being behind the cities, regional centres are in the ideal position to adapt to accommodate a circular consumer and business economy of recycling, reuse and waste management, and can lead the way in developing new models that deal with climate change and set new benchmarks for sustainable living,” Dunn explained.

Sustainability is a key focus of The Future of Towns, with the brief calling for a social and affordable housing scheme that considers the environment when choosing materials and construction methodology, while simultaneously exploring other uses to increase the building’s public value and social capital.

“Provision of high quality, geographically and climatically appropriate housing is symbiotic to the provision of public and community services within the town centres,” Dunn said.

The students visited key locations in Cobar for site analysis and to get a sense of the community. They also visited Bourke, 160km from Cobar, to study the Bourke Court House and the Lands Department Building, precedents of geographically and climate-specific architecture that were built before air conditioning, and examples of passive climate control and sustainable design. The lessons students learned from these precedents were then applied to their designs.

“Connecting students with the community in these regional towns allows them to understand the similarities and differences compared to people that live in the cities. Experiencing first-hand the climate, the light, and the air gives students the intimate and practical knowledge to then be able to make design decisions in direct response to specific local conditions and to the regional communities’ needs,” Dunn added.

Image: The students visited key locations in Cobar for site analysis and to get a sense of the community

Branko Miletic

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