NEXTGEN



SIAL Team:
    Mark Burry
    Barnaby Bennett

This course is called NextGen and will focus on the next generation affordable Australian home, and the (re)generation of vibrant neighbourhoods.  Australia currently has the least affordable housing of anywhere in the world and a patchy record with urban design.

The students will be transforming medium scale vacant/derelict inner city neighbourhoods in Sydney and Melbourne and experimenting with design typologies, materials and construction, density and vibrancy, cultural shift strategies, modes of ownership, amenities, actionable neighbourhood design and city integration.

The most striking examples of housing in Australia show ingenuity – but often ingenuity which is serving lifestyles, rather than formalistic predilections.  NextGen will tighten up and hone this argument, both in terms of the urban rationale and the passion for the home.

The scale of the design problem demands radical solutions.  For example, Pritzker panellist Alejandro Aravena’s “half-built” housing (Chile), Urban Ecology Australia’s Christie Walk with shared amenities and food gardens (Adelaide).  The era of fat plots of land for single dwelling urban homes is long over, but badly designed higher density apartments have resulted in ugly, ill-considered schemes, poor neighbourhood integration and a lack of vibrancy. 

Fundamental to this course is a commitment to the socio-cultural transformative capacity of architecture.  To provoke and facilitate design excellence, the course has contributions from a number of external experts.