Publications

Recent Publications

• Archipelagic Views: Vernacular Transformation and Inter-colonial Agricultural Trade Networks in the Late 19th Century Asia Pacific

  Amanda Achmadi, Karen Burns, Paul Walker, 2023 | Book Chapter in Paul Memmott, John Ting, Tim O’Rourke, & Marcel Vellinga, eds, Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Practice and Theory, London: Bloomsbury, 2023.

• Back to the Past: future challenges for better, safer, building design and construction

  Giorgio Marfella & Jeanette Barbaro, 2019 | This article looks at the evolution of the built environment in Melbourne, and considers the origins and appropriateness of the current system of building regulation in Australia

• From exigency to civic pride: the development of early Australian hospitals

  Julie Willis, 2021 | This chapter examines the establishment and development of colonial hospitals in the Australian colonies from 1788 to 1850. It focuses on the conundrum that, while these hospitals were evidently valued highly in these settlements, they suffered from manifestly inadequate provisioning, as if the availability of a hospital was more important than its capacity to function.

• The theoretical inapplicability of regionalism to analysing architectural aspects of Islamic shrines in Iran in the last two centuries

  Faramarz Pour Hassan, Miles Lewis, Qinghua Guo, 2013 | This study examines the ways in which Western Orientalism, even in regionalist language, has failed to present a comprehensive image in analysing architectural works in developing countries, like Iran, in which internationalism did not change every aspect of architectural forms.

• Southeast Asia, Australia and the Pacific, 1780-1914

  Paul Walker & Amanda Achmadi, 2019 | Examining the architecture of Southeast Asia, Australia and the Pacific between 1780-1915, this chapter contributes to the chronicling of Sir Banister Fletcher's Global History of Architecture. This tome, containing 2,200 photographs, documenting thousands of major buildings from around the world, is arranged in 102 chapters for expedited referencing.

• Capturing a Cabinet of Curiosities: 3D Scanning a Building Heritage Collection

  Naomi Mullumby & Meher Bahl, 2021 | The use of 3D technologies in architectural research has long centred on capturing building sites and structures, however at the University of Melbourne a unique collection of heritage building materials has been the focus of an ambitious 3D scanning project.

• NUCLEUS meets the Minimum: Ernest Fooks, the small house and the flat in post-war Melbourne

  Philip Goad, 2019 | An exploratory article for the RMIT Design Archive journal examining the interest in the minimum house demonstrated by Viennese émigré Ernest Fooks, and how these interests translated to the Melbourne context.

• Advertising “the East": Encounters with the Urban and the Exotic in Late Colonial Asia Pacific

  Paul Walker & Amanda Achmadi, 2019 | Following the development of shipping routes from the east coast of Australia to Southeast Asia in the late nineteenth century, innovative architectural solutions to infrastructure surrounding this trade occurred. In concurrence, promotion of tourism by shipping companies advertising exotic and luxurious tourism destinations highlighted remote landscapes, indigenous architecture, and the local peoples represented a divergent reality of the colonial cities that visitors would have inevitably visited.

• Perspecta 9/10 and the Emergence of a Postmodern American Architecture

  AnnMarie Brennan, 2016 | Beginning with an overview of Perspecta 9/10, this paper will examine how the medium of the student-edited architectural magazine assisted in promoting the idea of an American architecture during the mid-1960s.

• Travel á la Mode: Australian Architects and the Changing Nature of the International Tour

  Julie Willis & Katti Williams, 2021 | This paper examines the changing role of travel for Australian architects prior to the Second World War. Six distinct modes of travel emerge: the grand tour; the commercial enterprise; the roaming adventure; accidental tourismthat Kilburn took through the United States saw him directly influenced; educational imperative; and finally, as a rite of passage.

• The work of design and the design of work: Olivetti and the political economy of its early computers.This item is a favourite

  AnnMarie Brennan, 2019 | This essay revisits a chapter in the history of the design and production of early computers in Italy. It looks at the creation of the Olivetti Elea 9003 and the company’s manufacturing of numerically-controlled machine tools in order to examine their effect on transforming traditional modes of production. This essay illustrates the connection between the Olivetti designers and engineers who created these machines and the design of the new type of labor these new machines conjured.

• Robin Boyd and the Vernacular

  Philip Goad, 2019 | An exploratory article for the RMIT Design Archive journal exploring Robin Boyd's rationale behind his writing and architecture, its links to the vernacular, and its influence on the single-family house.

• Shifting health paradigms and infrastructure in Australia in the 20th Century

  Karen Daws & Julie Willis, 2021 | One of thirty-six interdisciplinary essays analyzing the mutual relationship between historical epidemics and the built environment. The outbreak of COVID-19 in late 2019 brought the effects of epidemic illness on urban life into sharp focus, exposing the vulnerabilities of the societies it ravages as much as the bodies it infects.

• The four pillars: the architecture of the public school in Australia 1835-1885

  Julie Willis, 2021 | The government school has held an integral part in the Australian idea of progressive society, a locus of community definition and pride that is the backbone of social infrastructure. Yet, it took decades from the establishment of the Australian British colonies from 1788 to establish a system of general education. The Australian school had modest beginnings, founded on the Irish National School system in the 1840s. This paper examines the architecture of Australian government schools between 1835–1885, charting the evolution of their design including the use and development of common plans, the influence of rules and regulations, and their position in a civil society.

• The Labyrinth as immersive multimedia environment: Marshall McLuhan at Expo 67

  AnnMarie Brennan & Johnathon Lovell, 2020 | This article examines the Labyrinth, a multi-screen pavilion created by the National Film Board of Canada for the Montréal World Exposition in 1967. Based on archival and primary sources, our research traces the design development of the Labyrinth and interprets its significance by employing Marshall McLuhan’s concepts of visual and acoustic space.

• Telling Transnational Histories of Women in Architecture, 1960–2015

  Karen Burns, Lori Brown, 2020 | This essay uses an emergent transnational research project — a global encyclopaedia of women in architecture — as a site for unsettling the terms, chronology, and geography of feminist histories of architecture

• Measure, Modulation and Metadesign: NC Fabrication in Industrial Design and Architecture

  AnnMarie Brennan, 2019 | Exploring the current relationship between architecture and industrial design is forged through the innovative use of Computer Numerical Control fabrication and the parametric procedures and software invented for its use, this article investigates the history of designing and fabricating complex, curved surfaces in industrial design and establishing transfer of technological knowledge across disciplines over a period of 40 years – the research claiming the origins of parametric architectural design can be found in the development of computationally and numerically controlled machines.

• Teaching Memory: Digital Interpretation at the Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne

  Steven Cooke & Hannah Lewi, 2020 | Examining the employment of digital interpretation experiences, new regimes of bodily experience from the nexus of architecture and digital technologies, changing and evolving expectations of behaviour and engagement, and curatorial challenges in the context of war memorials, using the Shrine of Remembrance as a case study. This paper explores the benefit and influence these technologies have on active participation in the role of memory, the visitor as ‘witness’, and their ability to ‘teach memory’ and critique experience.

Graduate Research Papers and Theses

• The untold story of modernism: a critical analysis of the post war church in Victoria, Australia, 1950-1970.

  Elizabeth Anne Richardson, 2020 | This thesis investigates how the church became modern after the Second World War through a critical examination of the architectural design of church buildings in Victoria, Australia, c.1950-1970, transforming the typology to one that became increasingly diverse and individualistic, as societal values towards religion, architecture, and the role of the church in society began to change.

• At the intersection of heritage preservation, urban transformation, and everyday life in the twentieth-century Australian city

  James Phillip Lesh, 2018 | A global urban history of the Australian city, an analysis of its urban and heritage places, and the preservationists who shaped those places through during the twentieth century.

• Queering Heritage: How can Informal Collections be Safeguarded for Enriching Community Heritage?

  Dillon Webster, 2020 | This research develops a conceptual framework for contemporary queer community groups to use for the creation of a place-based digital archive, arguing that a combination of contemporary digital technologies and informal memory catalogues can be used to redefine archival and heritage practices, regulations, and legal frameworks. While virtual environments provide a technical framework for interacting with digital reproductions of space, issues of authenticity, representation, and information retrieval arise.

• The architecture of Newman College, 1915-18: the office of Walter Burley Griffin

  Jeffrey John Turnbull, 2017 | This new manuscript is developed from two volumes submitted for the degree of D.Phil, 2004, amended 2005, revised 2014, and 2017 exploring the work of Walter Burley Griffin at the University of Melbourne.

• Boom Mannerism: The Architectural Practice of Gerard Wight and William Lucas from 1885 to 1894

  Jennifer Fowler, 2020 | An analysis of the Boom era firm of Wight and Lucas from 1885 to 1894, in the context of the historiography of the Boom Style and its impact on the built environment of Melbourne.

• Ballarat’s Pride: Leading Architects from 1857-1895

  Erin Wood, 2020 | Inspired by the works of William Bramwell Withers, this thesis asserts the role of Ballarat’s architects beyond its borders, inviting a closer consideration of these architects and regional architectural practice more generally.

• The cultural significance of wood fired Scotch ovens and the poetics of olfaction as a preservation strategy for bakeries in Victoria

  Domenica Presa, 2020 | An investigation of how baking has changed historically in Australia, from Australian Aboriginal origins to colonial settlement, the present day, and the return to craft baking techniques, typologies and preservation through the technique of olfaction as a heritage factor.

• Making Civic Space: A Comparative Study of Civic Space Design in the Contemporary Settler Societies of Australia and New Zealand

  Fiona Claire Johnson, 2019 | This thesis explores the state of decolonising practice in design, examining the textual, conceptual, spatial and architectural modes of practice which together collectively ‘make’ civic space. It draws comparisons through two exemplary projects - Adelaide’s Victoria Square/Tarndanyangga and Wellington’s Waterfront.

• Depicting Boom Urbanism: A critical investigation of Kalgoorlie and Boulder, Western Australia, 1893-1903

  Philip David Goldswain, 2019 | This thesis considers the spaces, events and processes of boom urbanism and industrialisation in the East Goldfields of Western Australia between 1893 and 1903 through a series of written and drawn investigations,.

• Values of the Thai architecture from the last period of the absolute monarchy (1925 – 1932)

  Chaipat Ngambutsabongsophin, 2020 | This thesis used an updated, broader framework of the International Charter to value case studies of public buildings commissioned by the Thai Government in the transition period between Rama VI’s Nationalism-style (1910- 1925) and the modern architecture of the People’s Party and beyond (1932 -). Using case studies, the study contributes to filling a gap in knowledge about the hybrid style that manifested, combining traditional Thai architectural styles with Western planning and stripped Thai ornaments, initiating architecture characterised by modern functionality, durability, and pared back approaches to public program.

• Howard R Lawson: the architect who built

  Virginia Blue, 2020 | This article, also the subject of Viriginia's MUCH Minor Thesis, explores some of the myths surrounding the early twentieth-century Victorian architect, Howard R Lawson. Known today as the eclectic architect who designed the highly dramatic Beverley Hills flats at South Yarra (c. 1935–1936), his reputation has suffered over the decades due to misinformation and a misunderstanding of events.

• Melbourne flats: Marne Street, South Yarra: a micro case study

  Hong Wagg, 2021 | Following the discover of a photograph of "Mayfair" on Marne Street, South Yarra, in early 2021 whilst undertaking research on Edwin J Ruck, Wagg investigated the street in person. After finding "Mayfair" demolished, the street piqued interest in the realisation of Marne Street, South Yarra, serving as a micorcosm to the history of interwar flats in Melbourne.

• Nomination of Dheisheh Camp of Palestine: potential implications towards heritage practises and border thinking

  Chamathya Gunawardena, 2022 | The paper examines the Dheisheh camp to understand how it confronts this challenge by rethinking heritage and conservation through different perspectives which transcend the expectations of spectacular architecture with Outstanding Universal Value, that aids in the commodification, consumption and long-term viability through tourism revenue of specific cultural heritage sites.