Designing the future

Reflecting on a decade of change in built environment education, Professor Tom Kvan, Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, is unequivocal about the dramatic nature of developments across the profession.

“A professional in our fields can explore design potentials with greater creativity, confidence and effect than ten years ago. We can plan and deliver buildings, neighbourhoods and infrastructures with better understanding of the consequences of our decisions.

“Professionals are also less isolated, from each other and from those who live in designed spaces, and demand for our skills is growing as a consequence. We need more people who understand how to design our future places, and who can do this effectively, using resources with care while improving our quality of life. Our graduates have the capacity to work across disciplines to achieve innovative outcomes.”

Professor Kvan sees these changes as reactions to two fundamental shifts in the design realm. Firstly, the integration of activities across the world, largely via the Internet, and secondly, a broadening of our capacity to access and engage with professional services.

While this obviously has ramifications for industry employment, more broadly it requires changes at a Faculty level to ensure that educational outcomes are more directly tied with what the job market demands for architects, urban planners, landscape designers and the like.

The shift has helped drive development of a revamped three-year undergraduate course, an expansion of the research-based Masters offerings in the Faculty’s graduate school, the Melbourne School of Design and, most recently, plans for a new building.

“We cannot address complex issues of the future if we know only about our particular focus of study,” says Professor Kvan, discussing the new undergraduate program that draws from the science, technology, social science and design domains. “We need to think forward and identify the best way to respond to both the current context and possible future contexts. We have taken the Faculty through a significant and important transition since 2008 and are now operating in a new mode. With the recent addition of several new academic colleagues, we have expanded our areas of research and teaching. This puts us in a position to develop and enrich our intellectual environment that demands more and better facilities.

“With its open and inviting composition, the new building will enhance the capacity of our students and staff to appreciate the activities under way in our Faculty. The building itself will be a platform for research for students and academic colleagues in a way that the current building has not facilitated.

“The University has had a new building for the Faculty on its capital plan for over a decade but the time has not been right. It is right now, as we have both the demand and the capacity to benefit from this building.”

Casting an eye over the proposed designs for the building, it’s easy to get a picture of what Professor Kvan means by a building environment that will ‘enhance’ the Faculty experience for both staff and students. The building’s east edge will be particularly active, opening up the ground and first floors to all University traffic across the Student Union’s Concrete Lawn, allowing anyone to participate in what’s going on inside the building, from exhibitions to student studios or workshops. The architectural firms in charge of the design, John Wardle Architects from Melbourne and NADAAA from Boston, have worked closely with the Faculty to ensure that the final construct will be an effective building for teaching and learning.

“Our legacy is always in the growth of those areas of knowledge to which we contribute. While bringing a statement of quality to our campus, the building will invite students to understand how each aspect of the building contributes to this.

“It is an extremely carefully considered structure which engages our heritage while staking out important issues for the future,” Professor Kvan says. “Its transparency will engage our campus community to participate in and appreciate the work of the design professions.

“The building will be incomparable in the city, and appreciated for the many decades over which it will serve as an important element of our campus. It will set the standard for academic buildings.”

However for Professor Kvan, Dean since 2007, the Faculty’s legacy goes beyond just bricks and mortar. “We can only be proud of a world-class graduate school that has ready access for a broad range of students, that is raising standards in professional education, and that generates influential research.”

Designs for the new building will be on display in the Wunderlich Gallery until 17 March.
http://www.abp-unimelb.com/engage/a-new-building