Travelling Studio D (Tokyo)

This subject is not offered in 2013.

240 hours

Admission to a degree in the Melbourne School of Design.

For the purposes of considering request for Reasonable Adjustments under the Disability Standards for Education (Cwth 2005), and Student Support and Engagement Policy, academic requirements for this subject are articulated in the Subject Overview, Learning Outcomes, Assessment and Generic Skills sections of this entry.

It is University policy to take all reasonable steps to minimise the impact of disability upon academic study, and reasonable adjustments will be made to enhance a student's participation in the University's programs. Students who feel their disability may impact on meeting the requirements of this subject are encouraged to discuss this matter with a Faculty Student Adviser and Student Equity and Disability Support: http://services.unimelb.edu.au/disability

Travelling studios are working laboratories for planning and design thought and production and involve the exploration of complex, real-life issues. They expose students to unfamiliar cultures, places and people, and stimulate their ability to think creatively and solve problems.

This travelling studio takes students to Japan, a country of great spatial and cultural juxtapositions. Nowhere else are these juxtapositions more evident than in the dialogue between traditional cultural values and technological progress. The 2011 Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and subsequent Tsunami hit the country at its heart. It also exposed a need to reevaulate the country's confidence in technology and the Japanese inherent cultural knowledge of the natural environment. Taking the events as a starting point, the Japan design research studio will explore the interconnectedness of the cultural landscape and built environment from a cross-disciplinary design perspective. Through a series of creative explorations of temporality, density, scale, cultural perception and the production of space, students will generate and test design strategies that could respond to the specific environmental conditions. Students will engage with recontruction projects in a small fishing village in northern Japan and translate the ideas into general discussions about design responses to disaster prevention in Tokyo.

An intensive pre-trip seminar and design workshop will precede the travel component of this studio. This studio will incur travel costs, in addition to tuition fees. Faculty subsidies will, however, be available.

• To provide students with an experience in international collaboration.
• To encourage students to identify and engage critically with specific cultural practices, industrial contexts and socio-technical traditions.
• To stimulate systematic/creative thinking and problem solving within students through their experiences of how local issues govern planning, design and construction processes in a particular location.

Progressive project work equivalent to 10,000 words in total comprising:

• Pre-trip seminar and workshop exercises, equivalent to 1,000 words (10%)
• On site work and design proposal, equivalent to 3,000 words (30%)
• Design development, dissemination and exhibition, equivalent to 7,000 words (60%)

This subject is not available as a breadth subject.

• Interdisciplinary teamwork.
• Understanding and navigating social and cultural differences.
• Knowledge transfer.
• Organisational collaboration.
• Managing risk.