Architecture and Sustainable Design

Design Studio ARCH4101 and ARCH5101
Semester 1, 2007
Eco-Extremes
Experimental Eco-Precinct @ Marrickville

Student works gallery

Project Synopsis
The studio group explored the disjunctions between ecologically sustainable design ideals and how these can (or can’t) be transposed to the (dirty) reality of an inner city site.

Working in groups of 2 through out, students developed experimental scenarios for ecologically sustainable urban environments in unconstrained idealised contexts.

These idealised experimental scenarios were then be made to collide with a real urban site in Marrickville, and from that collision, ecologically sustainable strategies for the overall site were developed.

One portion of the site was then developed in greater detail to test how the overall ecologically sustainable strategies can be maintained/reinforced at higher levels of architectural resolution.


Site 1
Nowhere, anywhere.
Site 2

The old Marrickville Hospital Site, where Council is aspiring to create a vibrant, mixed-use, multicultural urban environment.

Objectives

• Learn how different ways of being, different life worlds, are associated with different levels of ecological sustainability.


• Experiment with different scenarios for ideal ecologically sustainable ways of being in unconstrained contexts.


• Explore the extent to which contemporary ways of urban living can be ‘re-designed’ either through control or coersion.


• Explore the extent to which ideal ecologically visions can be overlayed on real urban sites.


• Mentor junior years, learn some of the pedagogical skills of design tutoring