From the entrant’s submission:

How do we have fun in a pandemic? Can we still enjoy social events together, while. separated? Isoland is an adaptable and global solution that seeks to answer these questions amid the collective experience of isolation during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Rather than forgoing social activities, Isoland proposes a series of ‘attractions’ that celebrate the banality of life we may take for granted. The result is a theme park consisting of six common spaces for social gathering which have been compromised during global lockdown measures. Blending satire with functionality, Isoland re-imagines the familiarities and nostalgia of life before lockdown.

With Coronavirus taking force as a global experience, Isoland can become a real-world project, seeking to re-imagine, re-invent and re-interpret public space in a matter that targets necessary human interaction with social distancing forefront. Buildings mimic traditional uses, however they have been redesigned using wit and diligent measures to accommodate 1.5 metre distancing at all times. These buildings can be easily constructed and utilised all over the world in a manner which mimics the banality of assembling products from IKEA. For example, the pool’s design replicates the typical Olympic pool, only here, each lane is separated and amenities are designed as individual units involving a shower, toilet, and a single lift to a diving platform.

Isoland poses basic human questions which analyse the value of social interaction and the effect of isolation, particularly during a pandemic. The solutions are left to global leaders, who can ‘purchase’ Isoland and reproduce it due to its IKEA-like assembly instructions.

The project features investigations on the new normal of collective gatherings and proposes innovative modes of sharing experiences or social interactions through architecture and folly.

From the entrant’s submission:

An adaptive reuse of Toowong Village Carpark in Brisbane, Australia, as a social condenser in a ‘fictional’ future that has caused cities to become decentralised due to a series of future pandemics. Due to skyrocketing fuel prices, public transport and cycleways become the main method for travel. Abandoned carparks are used to connect cycleways, provide community facilities, sporting facilities, and public spaces. Dubbed the, ‘Subtropical Boulevard’, the site acts as a connection point over the invisible and visible walls created by Coronation Drive. The existing fabric and character are still apparent in these once underutilised spaces.

Through a series of interventions, a site which becomes quite desolate in the future due to decentralisation will be activated for public use. The context around the project’s conception, within the heart of lockdown mid-2020, provides a highly relevant approach to an increasingly decentralised future for major cities. What if car use is reduced by 90 per cent due to working from home and increasingly walkable micro-communities? How can architecture assist in adapting deserted carparks to be used in a new way that best serves the community? This project aims to answer these questions.

This project aims to stretch across scales and beyond architectural expression, to provide a tangible impact for the community. Beyond buildings; the project suggests community facilities that assist with metal and physical challenges, along with urban agriculture, to meet immediate needs for food in a global environment where transporting produce becomes inhibiting. Beyond the macro scale of the city, the project also aims to resolve highly technical details as a small scale. This results in humane spaces which are both inhabitable and architecturally engaging.

From the entrant’s submission:

If Architects accept that physical architecture can carry meaning beyond its objective existence, we also must accept that the act of construction invests these intangible meanings into the built environment. If architecture is to suggest anything beyond its own reality, it must do so using its construction as a point of departure.

This statement, underpinning what could be described as Tectonic architecture, has long been a sensibility that supremely concerns architects. One movement overtly interested in materiality and constructional practices was Brutalism. The Brutalist movement sought an ethical outcome via the utilisation of raw materials, clear exhibition of structure and legibility of plan – an aim that resonates strongly with the social ethos of post war building programs. However, despite all the good intentions of Brutalism, its utilitarian meanings are now universally misconstrued. The unfortunate link between Brutalism and the word ‘Brutal’ dictates the impact these buildings now have on our cities.

This project looks towards one such example of a misconstrued Antipodean Brutalist icon – the Student Union (SU) Building at the University of Auckland. My project is a series of interventions in and around the SU building that, in developing a new space for students, simultaneously looks to rediscover and reimbue the positive theoretical underpinnings of a Brutalist Student Union Typology back into the University Campus.

My reasons for doing so are simple. In a time of increasing isolation and disenchantment among students, there is a renewed need for a sense of place and unity within the student body.

From the entrant’s submission:

The Transect Pavilions are ultimately about people, and the ways in which people engage with the built and natural environment. The project is located in Singapore, and was developed as part of an intensive design studio based in Singapore in February 2020. The heart of the scheme is to activate, educate, and revegetate the suburb of Marine Parade by making small urban interventions that provide flexible, adaptable spaces for the local community. The design proposes three pavilion typologies and locations: two pavilions which are embedded in suburban and coastal fabrics, and one water-based typology, housing endangered mangrove species.

The pavilions aim to be the centre of a Venn diagram, the place where ecological consideration and community prioritisation meet. It is estimated that Singapore has increased in land area by 25 per cent due to the rapid reclaiming of land. Land reclamation processes frequently disregard both environmental and urban ramifications, disrupting existing coastal habitats and communities. Two of the pavilions proposed sit on Singapore coast lines: one the current coastline, and one a historic coastline. The water pavilions tease the idea of reclaiming water rather than land. Together, the pavilions relink the historic coast and the current coast through a pedestrian spine.

Through interrogating the use and underuse of local public space, small innovative design interventions can increase the activation of valued community precincts – such as Marine Parade’s East Coast Park. The design proposes tessellating pontoons, housing mangrove trees. This infrastructure reintroduces endangered mangrove species to Singapore’s ever-changing shoreline, while responding to local use of coastal spaces for fishing, kayaking, and swimming.

From the entrant’s submission:

The project is a re-adaption of an existing industrial precinct located in Altona North, Melbourne. It consists of a masterplan and centres around five case-study interventions within the plan itself: an unmanned aerial systems factory, an apiary and integrated performative and regenerative landscape; a nursery with flexible and lettable workspaces; an innovation hub with commercial and research/learning activities; and an autonomous logistics mega-centre.

Dualistic ideologies that posit human culture as separate from nature have dominated western thinking for hundreds of years. Our cities and the way we inhabit the world are a direct and physical manifestation of these beliefs. By challenging traditional ideals, this project envisions effective non-idyllic integration between human culture, nature and technology through the exploration of built and unbuilt ecologies.

The project treats the site as a proxy or test case aimed at addressing topical challenges relating to climate change and urban sustainability while tackling issues such as food production, water and waste management, sustainable energies and locally-based manufacturing. It speculates on how we might see ourselves living within a broader system of things through an entanglement that seeks to create a symbiotic ecosystem between culture, nature, and technology.

Through careful investigation and treatment, the sites endemic grasslands and related natural and urban ecosystems, waterways and industrial buildings have been repaired and regenerated. By transforming and re-adapting existing volumes and open spaces on the site, new inclusive and beneficial relationships have been created, allowing for a denser and more interconnected ecosystem. Through the project’s methodologies, boundaries have blurred and distinctions have vanished, allowing for the creation of a place where we can shift current understandings of our place in the world to one that encompasses a wider territory.

From the entrant’s submission:

Asbestos has become a carcinogen entangled within the construction industry, in the home, in governance, economies, and in memory, at the hand of human progression. This project, titled ‘On the Edge of Ruin’, questions: how might architecture help to redeem the destructiveness of asbestos production to generate a restorative future in the act of forgetting, and making space for other species to flourish? In the undoing of a material lingering in the past and present, the project presents a chance for future repair to exist by encouraging an ecological equilibrium and return back to natural ecosystems over time through architectural intervention on the edge of the brownfield site of Wittenoom in Western Australia.

The project interrogated multiple issues stemming from the central problem of environmental deterioration, and humanity’s need to consume at the fate of other species. The project attempts to demonstrate how architecture can help to safeguard a multispecies existence in the future and widens the capacity for architects to help cultivate conditions of on-going-ness as a human obligation. The rationale for this project’s name ‘On the Edge of Ruin’ is twofold, referencing the broader and refined scales the project is positioned within. Firstly, it is suggestive of the planet’s future at the hand of human civilisation. It also references the proposition of interim human occupation on the edge of a once heavily contaminated site. It questions: how might humanity behave as custodians of restorative-ness, rather than perpetrators of destruction? As we teeter between the destroyed and repair, how could systems of resurgence be considered as a necessity for all planetary beings? How can this process of making and un-making of place be made more efficient?

From the entrant’s submission:

Every nine days, a woman is murdered by a man she once trusted. This figure is shocking, and yet Australia’s ignorance toward domestic violence continues. As a result, victims often hide these broken aspects of their lives and present a faultless exterior. From the Broken, is a rural refuge which aims to shift this narrative. The architecture takes inspiration from ‘Kintsugi’, a Japanese art form which aggrandises the repair of a broken object through re-bonding with gold. The project expresses how something broken does not infer destruction, but healing and renewal.

Children living in our current Domestic Violence (DV) facilities don’t understand why good people are being put in cages, while perpetrators remain free. Locking people away for protection simultaneously inhibits their ability to regain control of their lives and establish relationships with others. This project returns power to survivors by balancing the private and communal. The architecture is a series of broken pieces, allowing each individual to have a secure space. These havens are connected through a weaving deck, a metaphor for the gold, creating shared open spaces. It is this encouragement for interaction and respect for vulnerability that is a new approach to DV facilities.

The design ambition was to allow occupants to feel part of a community and help one another recover from their experience. The architectural sensibility created through breaking the accommodations apart and reconnecting them is akin to establishing a neighbourhood street. Through separation, this negative space has become positive, it is where light, nature and people converge. As the accommodations open onto this deck, there is always a tangible yet safe opportunity to engage with the refuge community.

From the entrant’s submission:

China’s aggressive development has swallowed up tens of thousands of historic sites. This demolition has made Shenzhen – where a city has not only replaced individual towns but a complete spatial history – a city without history. Working with the remaining heritage buildings of Shenzhen is not purely the restoration of the physical. By ‘mending an old man’ in Chinese medicinal practices has been used as a metaphor for repairing, rebuilding and bringing meaning to the heritage site of Guanlan Old Town. These old buildings have been redefined by using Chinese cultural references, such as traditional landscape paintings, movies, opera and fiction to bring new meaning to these structures. These interventions create a cinematographic journey through the old town and are mild enough for the old buildings to be rich with expression, it can be summed up as: Repair is a kind of poetry. This is the story of mending.

This project proposes an alternative strategy for heritage sites in China, by seeing architecture’s role in revealing history and culture. The proposal exceeds the two common modes of conservation in China, namely restoration to the original state or minimal intervention.

The proposal of this project exceeds the two common modes of conservation in China, namely restoration to the original state or minimal intervention. The project gives value to the gaps, overgrown ruins and dilapidated façades as found conditions worthy of preserving. Careful interventions and additions curate a journey through, over and between old buildings. A concealed world is constructed to understand cultural meaning and metaphor; from ancient Chinese medicine, classical theatre and arts to contemporary Chinese cinema. A layered cinematic experience is created by day and an immersive and other worldly stage set by night.

From the entrant’s submission:

It has been generally accepted in architectural history that Pacific architecture has its origin in Southeast Asia (SEA) architecture; however, the connection between the two regions has seemed to deteriorate after Western imperialism. The proposed speculative project aims to reconstruct the Pacific’s consanguinity with that of Southeast Asia by speculatively reimagining Indonesia’s capital city’s relocation plan- from Java to Borneo. The narrative of this project displays the continuum of visionary thinking of Oceanic philosophy and sophisticated engineering of indigenous Oceanic tectonic which are explored to solve the ‘contemporary problems’ like the sea level rise, deforestation and indigenous community gentrification.

This project was inspired by the rich and long history of Oceania, taken from the ancestral stories that always injected a beautiful dream to those who listened and sought it. Some stories preach about the legendary heroes that evoke a sense of innovation and creation. Some warn about the potential threats if we did not protect nature, and some teach about our identity, uplifting our rootedness and identity. As designers, we are responsible for outlining this into practicality. Undeniably, a few things will be rationalised and simplified, but as long as the core values could be retained, it will make our current world a bit more like our dream.

This thesis aspires to embrace the sense of empowerment in architecture and there are three building typologies investigated in this project; meeting house, living house and storehouse, which were inspired by the shared typology found in SEA and Pacific. The project will try to reimagine the relevance of Oceanic indigenous solutions in our contemporary world.

From the entrant’s submission:

Inspired by the traditional Chinese bracket system; the Dou gong(斗拱), the thesis explores to revive this artistry through the means of modern fabrication. By following the process of research, design, build and application of an architectural installation the project critically questions: ‘how can we employ the advancement of modern technology to revive a long-lost ancient building technique of the traditional Chinese joinery system, and create a monumental piece in commemoration of the COVID-19 global pandemic?’ In response, two different scaled architectural installations are designed to commemorate this historic event: the realisation of the ‘Hashtag Wish Tree’ for the annual Auckland Art Week and Kaipara Coast Sculpture Gardens Exhibition and the ‘Sentimental Piece’ proposal as one of the top finalists for the 2020 Brick Bay Competition.

As one of New Zealand’s first research projects that encapsulates the theme of COVID-19, the installation takes a new perspective on a global crisis and translates it into an architectural language where world/nationwide data and curves are extracted and intertwined throughout the design as an inimitable symbolic experience.

Dou Gong is vastly used across historic Chinese architecture. The beauty of this ancient artform lies within the craftsmanship that demands high precision for each joint to interlock in harmony together. Without a single nail or drop of glue, the dense, complex brackets form a robust and aesthetically pleasing structural system for the overhanging roofs. The installation reinterprets this technique to a lightweight spaceframe design that reveals the potential of a versatile self-supporting structure. The notion of the installation marks this historic event, bridging the traditional and the modern; the east and the west; architecture and sculpture poetically together as one entity.

From the entrant’s submission:

The primary outcome of this thesis project is a 15-minute short film that is folded out of a question of ‘what life do these projects have beyond an examination?’ The film addresses the legitimacy of public buildings across three discrete outcomes: the Dandenong Mechanics’ Institute hall, Dandenong Company Broadcasting (DCB) media park/data centre, and a Dandenong Post suburban distribution centre – each conceived as belonging to the past, present and future respectively. Dandenong was an important regional city, before it was swallowed up by Melbourne’s sprawl. The film here imagines that it retains this autonomy.

The project breaks new ground in challenging the accepted domains of architectural representation and, by extension, the domain of the architect. In eschewing the orthodoxy of traditional drawing convention, the adoption of film (and the moving image) seeks to engage the myriad possibilities and opportunities offered to a thesis project completed entirely under lockdown and thus presented exclusively over the internet. These multiple viewpoints suggest an exciting and democratic tool for communicating with (and about) architecture. The ambition being that this would influence the outcome, engaging a built form closely attuned to human perception and understanding.

The design is a collection of public buildings, presented in montage as a counterfactual history of Dandenong. These multiple viewpoints convey an idea of how human beings might augment their relationship to the built and natural landscape. Rivers, forests, and beaches are required to perform as commercial entities and recreational hubs. This expectation assumes primacy over its status as ecosystem, or in Australia – Country, as sacred landscape. If we could reassert these assumptions on those conditions of the built landscape that equitably contain aspects of the natural – we might be better placed to reduce our strain on those things that are separate to us.

From the entrant’s submission:

The project facilitates the relationship of interdependence between crabs and rice that rises out of huge disparities in food production between the two Koreas. The project proposes multiple sites that farm crabs and rice situated both sides of the Imjin River. The idea of reciprocity can then be explored as the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) condition allows for an architectural intervention that suspends the friend and enemy distinction by relying on the neutrality of the water body as a critical resource in order to maintain the operation of the farms on both the North and South. While the channelling, distribution and mixing of water must be specific for the operation of the farm there was an opportunity to break from an engineered functionalism to insert the idea of swimming as double program

The idea of reciprocity is a unique conception to explore within the DMZ with the architectural intervention attempting to suspend the friend and enemy distinction that the demarcation creates. The site of water, rather than being the site of war dramatized by the DMZ is complicated by the idea of sharing in order to maintain operations

To facilitate a joint farming process that redirects the downstream migration of the crabs into adjacent rice paddies. Creating a precedent in sustainable and co-dependent farming culture to combat starvation in the North and overproduction in the South. In populating both sides of the river divide with a similar horticultural intervention that depends upon the neutrality of the brackish waters it sets up connections between two sets of farmers who depend upon negotiating this resource within the contested DMZ zone