"Urban Suburb"

FINAL

"Urban Suburb"

studioCODE v8, v8 Rizky Lasmaratti, v8 Handy Yonathan, v8 Mui Kim Low

 

The Aquaponics Platform

   Melbourne is facing its highest ever increase in population, and it is predicted that the population will be two fold at 2050. With this sudden increase in density, social interaction has evolved into its most complex and intense than ever. Public spaces where the relationship of the community is built will have to be revolutionized into space that maximizes quality as well as quantitative factor. The conventional design approach where forms are derived top down through typological reference is reductive and stagnant, as opposed to the pattern and intensity of social interaction nowadays.


   Besides, with this intense increase in populations, there is a possibility that its rate will surpass the rate of food production. Being a city dweller especially, we know nothing about farming. Farm in most of the city dwellers’ understanding remain a huge piece of land operated by farmers in the outback.


   Located near the Victoria Market in between Peel Street and Franklin Street, ‘The Aquaponics Platform’ aims to utilize this interstitial space as an opportunity to reassess the relationship between programs of different genres following this intense increase in density and population in the city. The project combines aquaponics farm allotments and recreational spaces that seem incompatible conventionally, in the same space. The aquaponics allotments will be owned or rented by city dwellers, whereas the recreational
space will be set its purpose as a result of bottom up self organization amongst the occupants of the allotments as a community. Emergent, where the behavior of the whole is much more complex than the behavior of its parts, an effect of multiplication instead of addition is anticipated. With this new kind of typology, it might generate excitement and anticipation like never before.


   ‘The Aquaponics Platform’ was very much inspired by the study of mold growth and networks, especially in terms of its circulation planning and form generation. Through research, we discovered the similarity in behavior between mold and human. Mold portrays swarm behavior when in search of nutrients and suitable living conditions, and forms a network of certain pattern to facilitate nutrients transfer and so on. And human portrays swarming behavior differ not much from those of mold during their social interaction. This can be easily observed in a group of people interacting in public space such as park, crowd behavior to buskers on the streets or even private event such as a dinner party. ‘The aquaponics platform’ is hence designed and created having the idea to facilitate and activate social behavior as such, emphasizing on 3 elements: circulations, point of meetings and allotment. This is done utilising Delaunay Triangulations that avoids skinny allotment that would be unfit for farming as well as achieves circulation and meeting points pattern similar to those of the mold.
 
   Overall, ‘The Aquaponics Platform’ is space where Melbournians of different interest, backgrounds and cultures come together through farming as a medium. It’s basic aim is to increase the city dwellers understanding and involvement on food production and at the same time create spaces for different activities
as an attempt to a more integrated community. Its wider result would however be more than addition of its planned purposes but a multiplied one, and is something we anticipates, towards a more effective and yet exciting city.

 

  

We’ve chosen to expand the initial boundary of the site, in order to make more direct physical connections to its surroundings. The original site characteristics are not changed or made anew, but rather, explored to capitalise their potential. We want to work to maximise multiple use of spaces throughout the day by allocating programmes into hybrid configurations based on complimentary time cycles. It is important that activity is constant and not controlled by private or public rhythms.

The project attempts to challenge the verticality that has dominated the typology of high-rise residential, by exploring how this typology could be altered into a horizontally integrated volumetric density. We aim to design the site as the beginning node of a network of connected volumetric densities for the city, where each subsequent node to be configured by the program generator. Programs aim to be hybrids of multiple functions in the categories of: ‘Living’, ‘Educational’, ‘Commercial’, and ‘Leisure’, with consideration of existing activities which are already present in the site, and of time cycles and surrounding attractors such as, Flagstaff Gardens and the Victoria Market. Hybrid programs seek to enhance the experience of high density living, by simultaneously providing new public spaces accessible to the wider community.

We understand that hybrid program feed on the meeting point between the intimacy of the private sphere and the sociability of the public sphere, which is why we aim to offer a high degree of spatial affordance and appropriation possibilities through non-prescribed spatial design. We aim to develop, via Grasshopper, a fluid structural/material system to facilitate the exchange between private and public space through time cycles.We’ve chosen to expand the initial boundary of the site, in order to make more direct physical connections to its surroundings. The original site characteristics are not changed or made anew, but rather, explored to capitalise their potential. We want to work to maximize multiple use of spaces throughout the day by allocating programmes into hybrid configurations based on complimentary time cycles. It is important that activity is constant and not controlled by private or public rhythms.

Urban Prison

‘High walls, no light, segregated from the society, prisons have for a long time a place of confinement and punishment. No walls, ample light, placed in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD is the prison we propose as a place of rehabilitation and reintegration with the society.’

     Despite prison population and recidivism significantly increasing over the last decade, the incarceration structure in Australia has failed to see advancements throughout the past century and desperately requires innovation and re-imagination. This debate creates an opportunity to rethink the future of prisons design. This is evidently shown through the locations of prisons at the edges away from the city, framing the negative perception that prisoners are transported away akin to garbage.

The thesis attempts to challenge negative preconceived notions of “PRISONS” to re-instil an urban penitentiary type into the city fabric that is desirable, focusing on the prison ‘wall’ and what it means to be in the city?

 

The idea of a prison in the city isn’t foreign or new; 

But by putting the new type back into the city, will the architecture play the dominant role it once did historically?

How would this proposal for a new prison type change negative perceptions of the prison on a multitude of many levels?

This occurs primarily with the prison wall.

 

A ‘Wall’ is defined as ‘a continuous structure that encloses or divides an area of land’. The wall defines the ‘social physic that two bodies cannot share the same place at the same time’. This forces people to remain on their side, primarily for their well-being, which results in the main scenario of having a prison wall.

 At present, the “prison walls” are located in the outskirts of civilization consists of either a barren tall concrete wall or even just a tall fence as there is very little impact on the surrounding context and people to take into consideration.

     The new prison wall needs to allow a level of permeability and acceptance to happen between the city and the prison, and can only do so only via a state of trust between the law and inhabitants of the prison and the urban dwellers. Only then, can the intervention start to be-apart of the city morphology, the hidden gem that increases the value of its surrounding properties.

     The investigations on graffiti and street art reveals its potential as means of education as well as a medium of social blurring and breaking of social hierarchies.  Music and film bring together a vast mix of people ranging from identical to polar opposites. The roles of both the prison and society are mutually interrelated. Rewriting the typical prison schedule through the prison-program generator, it becomes catalytic for the emergence of other programmatic hybrids such as places for living, education, art, agriculture and even sporting facilities which in turn could contribute to society and its surrounding urban context. Where the re-defined ground plane and wall meet, it becomes a means of social connectivity, forging a network of links that engages with its adjacent site context of Queen Victoria market, Flagstaff Gardens and the CBD. Program Allocation Conception: Transparency Programmatic Map: Spatial Exploration Design Process Context Render Materiality Exploration
Graffiti Laneway 

Exhibition Volume
Prisoners' Production Space Perspective from William St. Perspective from Franklin St.

Sweet Urbanism

The Sweet Urbanism design elevates public open space to a level of higher importance. Alex Wall’s theme, ‘thickening the urban surface’ largely inspired the design. Octagon gazebos and raised platforms accommodate a range of dynamic and hybrid uses. Consistent with the Sweet Urbanism parti the design will make the site a centerpiece for the community, in a similar way to how a cake acts as a centerpiece for a party.

Large-scale urban design gestures play a large role in this project. The site boundaries are extended across Franklin St to create a less striated space. Additionally the vegetated bridge across Peel St creates a continuous landscape towards Flagstaff Gardens.