Travelling Studio (Indonesia) (ABPL90260)

Travelling studios are working laboratories for design thought and production and involve the exploration of complex, real-life practical issues. They expose students to unfamiliar cultures, places and people, and stimulate their ability to think creatively and solve problems. At the same time, it serves as a platform to sharpen student's skills to lead and/or work in a team setting.

These studios aim to bring together graduate students from architecture, urban design, landscape and urban planning streams and encourage an interdisciplinary focus.

Pre-trip briefings or seminars will precede the travel component of the studio. The studio will incur travel costs, in addition to tuition fees. Faculty subsidies will, however, be available.

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Specific information about Travelling Studio (Indonesia) 

This studio facilitates synergies between research, teaching and practice in the fields of architecture, urban design and landscape architecture. It is built on an interdisciplinary teaching and learning approaches, bringing together the staff and students of the Melbourne School of Design, Bandung Institute of Technology (Indonesia), and the University of Stuttgart’s Faculty of Architecture and Planning (Germany), three academic institutions with established expertise on the topic of informal urbanism. The three institutions’ collective international engagements will expose students to cross-cultural and global discourses on the topic and their translations in design engagement. This exposure will assist our students in understanding and responding to informal urbanism as a global phenomenon.

In the studio students will undertake two interrelated activities:

• firstly, a survey and analysis of key contested urban riverscapes in three Indonesian cities which have showcased contrasting developments in dealing with informal urban formations, ranging from forced eviction, relocation/resettlement, to the more inclusive in-situ upgrading;
• secondly, a design project focusing on one of these locations.

In the survey stage, students will critically observe and map contrasting urban morphologies and conditions that are situated along the urban riverscapes of the city of Jakarta, Bandung and Yogyakarta where formal and informal urban developments have long co-existed. The three cities are located in Java, the most urbanized island in the world and one with a long and rich cultural history. The design project will focus on Bandung, the provincial capital of West Java where intensifying urban renewal and gentrification have gained momentum in recent years. These have situated riverside informal settlements, public green open space, tourist development, and high density upper middle-class housing developments as seemingly competing urban ingredients.

The studio will then address the question How can we envision the in-between city? The design project will explore how a more inclusive urbanism can be created or initiated through considered spatial and constructed configurations in selected sites along the contested Cikapundung riverscape, a prominent green urban corridor lined with dense informal settlements, by integrating architectural, urban design and landscape architecture interventions.

Anticipated ranges and scales of design intervention:

• Mixed use building (residential and appropriate commercial program);
• Civic building (library/market/community centre/educational facility);
• Neighbourhood activations (green and communal open space infrastructure);
• Network of public open space and urban amenity.

All design interventions will be considered, developed, and refined as a material, social, and environmental system.

The studio attracts students who are interested in urban architectural and landscape design, urban design thinking, Asian urbanism, urban informality and socio-cultural sustainability.  Expertise on these aspects is not mandatory but desired. Basic information and communication of principles related to such fields will be covered in the pre-fieldwork component of the studio.

APPROXIMATE COSTS

Flights: $1000
Domestic Transport $100
Accommodation: $700
Living expenses (meals and incidentals): $700

Note: Students may be eligible to receive a one off payment of up to $1000 from Melbourne Global Mobility (conditions apply) and $800 from the Faculty - utilised towards student’s accommodation costs. Prices listed are subject to change.

CREDIT

This travelling studio can count as credit towards your course in one of the categories listed below

• Master of Architecture: ABPL90142 (Master of Architecture Studio C), ABPL90143 (Master of Architecture Studio D), ABPL90115 (Master of Architecture Studio E) or Architecture elective or multidisciplinary elective
• Master of Landscape Architecture: ABPL90072 (Landscape Studio 5: Sustainable Urbanism), or Landscape Architecture elective, or multidisciplinary elective
• Master of Urban Design: Elective
• Master of Urban Planning: multidisciplinary elective 

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For further information about this studio: http://edsc.unimelb.edu.au/graduate/subject-options/travelling-studios