Housing community resilience

This Research & Knowledge Exchange Doctoral Project brief summarises our priority areas of research interest under the heading of: Housing community resilience: an architectural research-through-design project on the design of 21st century homes.

We welcome all research degree applications aligned with and in response to this brief.

Lead image credit: Sarah Riviere

Discourse on residential architecture highlights the impact of the design of homes on those who dwell there. The architecture of a home is acknowledged as having agency, including by enabling and empowering or restricting and stifling the lives of its residents (Dörhöfer, 1978; Wall, 2017; Simbürger & Riviere, 2021). While the methodology of architectural research-through-design has been increasingly adopted in the design of contemporary urban public space, an equivalent level of research feeding into the architecture of housing appropriate for 21st century lives is currently lacking.  

This doctoral research project is located at the intersection of architectural design with narrative performance. The research will be based in speculative design practice and may proceed through methodologies of either performative theatre in a community location, stop-motion animated performance, or through coding a virtual space of performance using a gaming engine such as Unity.  

With our local communities now living under intersecting housing, climate and economic insecurities, the project expands discourse and practice on the future design of homes as resilient and supportive bases where modes of dwelling appropriate for active and engaged 21st century lives can play out.  

Projects deriving from this brief are expected to sit within the Research & Knowledge Exchange strategy and the following department.

All successful research degree project proposals must emphasise a clear alignment between the project idea and our Research & Knowledge Exchange strategy.