Design Laboratory 2009

URBAN ROOMS

Presented by RMIT School of Architecture and Design

Leaders -
Suzie Attiwill, Associate Professor, Program Director, RMIT Interior Design (Biography)
Roger Kemp, Lecturer, RMIT Interior Design (Biography)

Saturday 18 July, 10am - 6.30pm
Invitation only

URBAN ROOMS Design Laboratory approaches, tests and investigates the design of interiors as a process of interiorisation shaped by intensities and forces, and spatial temporal conditions within the urban environment.

The Design Laboratory has two parts. The first stage involves the development of strategies and techniques for interior making within future urban situations. The second stage consists of the design of urban rooms as a collection of propositions for the civic spine of Melbourne.

URBAN ROOMSis connected to the research agenda of Urban Interior {UI} – a research group based in the School of Architecture and Design – which addresses the relation between people and the urban condition.

As the number of people living in urban areas begins to exceed those in rural areas, a paradigm shift must be actuated to accommodate new social relations borne out of innovative technological, sensory, physiological, environmental and material dimensions. {UI} investigates how the aesthetics of the spatial and temporal dimensions of design contribute to, and engage with, this emerging social condition. What might be the contribution of design disciplines in this new mode of urban inhabitation? How can temporary inter-related design actions in urban conditions reveal the kinds of qualities needed to sustain and enrich the increasing inhabitation of urban areas?

{UI} is composed of individuals from a range of disciplines including fashion, landscape architecture, theatre, sound, interior design, architecture, and industrial design. As a collective, individual research trajectories cover a breadth of practices, scales and concerns from the intimacy of bodies to events within the public realm. The acronym {UI} is also suggestive of the focus of our research: there is an attention to both the individual and collective nature of the habitation of environments; you and I. Critical to the act of {UI} research are ‘occupations’ – spatial and temporal events which transform the urban condition of Melbourne to question how temporary ‘occupations’ can reveal the kinds of qualities needed to sustain and enrich the increasing inhabitation of urban areas in the near future.

STUDENT PARTICIPANTS

Kate Archibald, Clara van den Bosch, Judith Chan, Juan Juan Dai, Christina Fogale, Elizabeth Grimmer, Sarah Jamieson, Alice Kohler, Shan Shan Law, Bethany Mann, Syaza Mohamad Faisal, Azani Mohamed Sabuir, Molly Shelton, Justin Rogers, Ashleigh Rye, Phuong Tran, Nicholas Visser.