AMiLA Workshop: Urban Resilience

This subject is not offered in 2016.

9am - 5pm - (7hours per day for seven days)

Admission into one of the following courses:

MC-LARCH Master of Landscape Architecture
MC-LARCH2Y Master of Landscape Architecture (200 points)
MC-LARCH3Y Master of Landscape Architecture (300 points)
MC-URBDES Master of urban 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

The City of Melbourne is developing a series of strategies to address the serious impacts of climate change and to provide tactics for adaptation and the fashioning of a resilient urban environment. In particular, the City has advanced three key actions or design initiatives that focus on: Vegetation (Melbourne Urban Forest Strategy), Greening Buildings (Green Roofs Program and Canopy Forum), and Water Security: (Melbourne as Catchment, MCC WSUD Guidelines, and amendment C142). Immersing ourselves in the living city and adopting a landscape architectural lens this Design Studio Workshop Intensive engages directly with these plans to investigate the agency of design strategies and tactics. Through interrogating policies, procedures, and local and global precedents and generating design propositions, the workshop aims to develop landscape driven methods for engaging with vulnerable cities impacted by global warming.

The ecology and economy of the city are inextricably linked – landscape is the connector. Consequently, sites for investigation infer intersections between program, space, and ecologies and reveal the layers, the material and immaterial forces that constitute the city, while also establishing an understanding of an interconnected sequence of movement and spatial and temporal relation throughout the City of Melbourne.

In this Design Studio workshop, teams will engage with four sites to investigate and test the three City of Melbourne initiatives. Responding to or indeed challenging the stated policies, the ambition of the studio workshop is to develop through intensive design explorations, a range of visions and indeed design templates for potential emergent landscapes for the City. Perhaps as a consequence, the studio asks: Is this business as usual or the chance to change paradigm? That is, instead of an approach based on notions of ‘future proofing’ the developed city, does it suggest entirely new methods for adaptation and change?

Visual and text based analysis of sites and conceptual thinking informed by diverse practice
Research development, extended critical thinking and design inquiry into the City of Melbourne
Investigate contemporary landscape design to inform resilience strategies
Collaborative research and design
Presentation and representation of both conceptual and tangible design work. This will include diagrams, text, verbal explanation and high quality drawings
Exhibition outcome, curated and professionally mounted

• Site survey and concept strategy: group preparation of survey and analysis drawings, group proposal for concept strategy through visualisations, explanatory text and oral presentations, due on day 3 of workshop, 30%.
• Developed design strategies presentation: individual development of design strategies within overall group proposals through visualisations, explanatory text and oral presentations and exhibition, due final afternoon of workshop, 70%.

City of Melbourne Strategy Reports

This subject is not available as a breadth subject.

Ability to analyse ecological, political and cultural contexts towards formulating innovative programs for speculative design.
Creative response and effective communication models for complex problems.
Critical analysis of design precedents.
Application of graphic techniques encompassing mapping, diagrams, virtual and physical models to analyse, design and communicate.