Completed Projects
HomeAustralia’s top photography students are using socially engaged photography to amplify the voices of citizens on the Great Ocean Road who have responded to social and environmental challenges with positive, community-building projects. This work aims to raise awareness of the power of local action to shape the future, even in the face of disruptive challenges, such as pandemics and climate events, and a relentless pressure to expand the economic returns from tourism.
Six citizen group projects have been documented: Spring Creek; Angair; Anglesea Estuary; Coastal Erosion; Hooded Plover; Back Burning for Fire.
Initial visual work: ANGAIR short documentary
Article on Spring Creek: https://medium.com/@lewiscook_5346/the-battle-for-regenerating-spring-creek-da143fd240ff
Images and exhibition details to follow soon.
Apollo Bay is located three hour’s drive west of Melbourne on the Great Ocean Road. The site for this studio is currently used as a nine-hole golf course and incorporates an active harbour with associated structures related primarily to fishing, boating and other recreational activities. The harbour also supports an active commercial fishing industry. The overall site’s size is approximately 16 hectares, including the current golf course, foreshore and dunes, beaches, pier, and rock breakwater. There is also an approximately 400-meter-long rock platform and associated beach along the outermost shoreline. The golf course landscape is dominated by slightly undulating topography dominated by lawn and large existing trees. The Braham River, which runs adjacent to the site between Apollo Bay and the associated settlement of Marengo to the west, originates from areas inland that are home to spectacular temperate rainforests.
See the work here – https://www.msdx-gallery.com.au/2022/s1/studios/studio-5-sustainable-urbanism/
Subject: Studio 5: Sustainable Urbanism
Master of Landscape Architecture, The University of Melbourne
Design Research Staff: Professor Ray Green
Studio Leaders:
Professor Ray Green (Apollo Bay)
Madhu Lakshmanan (Lorne)
This studio focuses on the coastal town of Lorne on the Great Ocean Road, with a site that includes the foreshore area from the Erskine River to the east, the pier to the west, and the shops along the Great Ocean Road to the sea. Originally, this was part of the traditional lands of the Gadubanud people. Lorne’s first European settlers, who arrived in the 1800s, were timber-cutters, but today, tourism is a critical activity in the town and vital to the local economy.
See the work here – https://www.msdx-gallery.com.au/2022/s1/studios/sustainable-urbanism-studio-2-future-proofing-the-lorne-foreshore/
Subject: Studio 5: Sustainable Urbanism
Master of Landscape Architecture, The University of Melbourne
Design Research Staff: Professor Ray Green
Studio Leaders:
Professor Ray Green (Apollo Bay)
Madhu Lakshmanan (Lorne)
Master of Design, Swinburne University
Open Studio: Theme ‘Detourism’ – Jane Connory and Soren Luckins
This Masters of Design studio will have students responding to the themes of detourism and deeptourism. With detourism, tourists are encouraged to take detours away from well-worn tourist areas to experience the lesser-known features of a region. Deeptourism involves deeper, immersive experiences at a specific location so tourists don’t merely pass through the area taking a few travel snaps along the way. This studio features an industry-led contribution by Soren Luckins of prominent Melbourne experience design studio, Büro North.
Master of Architecture and Master of Urban Planning and Design Studios, Department of Architecture, Monash University
The On Edge studios will broadly consider the effects of climate change on regional coastal settlements, in particular the dual threat of sea level rise and bushfire.
The studios will focus on the Victorian southern coastal townships of Skenes Creek, Apollo Bay and Marengo, where these threats will continue to have a significant impact on the urban fabric of the town and indeed the long-term viability of these places as somewhere to live and to visit. The studio aims to develop students’ awareness of and design skills in response to complex ecological problems.
Studio Leaders:
Ross Brewin, Catherine Murphy, James Harbard
The famous road has become an obstacle for the human and nonhuman inhabitants. But even bigger issues loom large. Environmental degradation and sea level rise demand careful planning and vision to protect the region. Our long-term view reveals the need to re-think the relationship between human and natural systems. Are the human and natural systems completely at odds with each other, or can we find a new way forward through in-depth understanding of these systems and identification of leverage points?
Design Research Staff member: Dr Pirjo Haikola
Possible Futures for the Great Ocean Road. Designing something that will allow for something else to happen. This begins by abandoning the preconception that humans are constantly under threat from nature. The GOR name reflects a culture in which human activity dominates. Extensive evidence calls for a recognition that human and natural eco-systems should be considered as a continuum not as a disjuncture. The GOR must be approached as a Complex Adaptive System; one that requires periodic perturbance to stay healthy.
Design Research Staff member: Prof Justyna Karakiewic
Interdisciplinary groups of Master of Design students conducted research into overtourism impacting the Great Ocean Road. Collaborative, integrative design proposals were developed using data collected by the groups. Each student framed their project in response to a research question, leading to design outcomes that responded with a range of innovative solutions, including detourism and agritourism initiatives.
Design Research Staff members: Dr Andrew Haig & Dr Christopher Waller
Broad scale landscape planning is an integrative component of landscape architecture. This studio introduces the conceptual framework for regional landscape assessment and planning; and a working knowledge of the GIS techniques applied to visualise and analyse demographic, ecological, cultural, and socioeconomic data for sustainable landscape planning.
In this studio, students will investigate one of (but not limited to) the following topics relevant to broad scale landscape planning – reconfiguration of sprawling suburbs into communities of real neighbourhoods and diverse districts, conservation of natural environments and biodiversity, designing climate responsive landscape, linking existing urban centres and towns using green infrastructure to foster a coherent urban region. A basic question underpinning this studio is: how to generate robust landscape planning strategies based on credible evidence? Using various metropolitan and regional landscapes in general and an identified ‘hotspot’ landscape in particular, this studio introduces the conceptual framework for regional landscape assessment and planning; and a working knowledge of the GIS techniques applied to visualise demographic, ecological, cultural, and socioeconomic data for sustainable landscape planning. Emphasis will be given to idea generation, conceptual design, and formation of integrative and cohesive landscape strategies informed by GIS-based spatial analysis at multiple spatial scales.
Design Research Staff member: Dr Siqing Chen