Travelling Studio (Philippines) (ABPL90440)

This studio facilitates interdisciplinary teaching and learning approaches in the fields of architecture, urban design, urban planning, property, construction and landscape architecture. It will bring together staff and students of the Melbourne School of Design and the University of the Philippines. These engagements will enable students to understand and to develop design and planning responses to informal urbanism as a global phenomenon. Students will undertake analysis and design/planning inventions on one or more of the following issues: informal settlement, in-situ upgrading, citizen-based planning, informal land tenure, informal transport, walkability, informal street trading and governance.

Students will learn to engage with complex issues of informal settlement including morphological issues (street networks, walkability, density, building typology) as well as community-based planning, livelihoods, land tenure and the politics of eviction. Students will work both collectively and individually to produce urban visions and frameworks for the future of these settlements.

SPECIFIC INFORMATION ABOUT TRAVELLING STUDIO (MANILA, PHILIPPINES)

These projects will be focused on the University of the Philippines campus in Manila (14°39'06.76" N 121°04'00.60" E) with its associated transit networks and employment opportunities. About 93 ha of this 500ha campus are occupied by informal settlements of various kinds. We will work with these communities to develop plans for the upgrading of buildings and infrastructure consistent with the maintenance of livelihoods including street vending and transport. The focus of particular student projects may include community planning, housing, community buildings, infrastructure upgrading, open space design, walkable access networks, land tenure, governance frameworks and political strategies.

Students will be required to specialize within their pre-trip and post trip assignments. The travel component will be collaborative with each student contributing from their expertise. We will seek assistance from disciplinary staff when and if necessary to assess students from outside our disciplines (construction, property, landscape).

Multidisciplinary Nature

The studio is focused on understanding and engaging with informal settlement upgrading - mixed-use development on land where property tenure is uncertain, where construction may be substandard, where the architecture and urban design is incremental. The settlements are geared to local employment, informal trading, urban agriculture and transport planning. Addressing the spatial, social and institutional challenges involved in the process of designing on-site upgrading and redevelopment requires transdisciplinary collaboration. It is difficult to imagine a more multi-disciplinary studio than this.

Overseas participation dates: From 4 June to 14 June inclusive.