Index
Postgraduate – Master of Architecture by Research (by Thesis or Project)
Post-professional research degree
Postgraduate candidates are grouped in small clusters around key research thematics aligned with supervisory interests and expertise as outlined below:
- Architecture (individual research)
- Reflective practice (invited)
- Urban architecture (studio)
- Spatial information architecture
- Advanced architecture
- Sustainable architecture
- Expanded field (cross-disciplinary)
- Architectural discourse
Architecture (individual research)
Master of Architectural Research (by thesis or project) candidate nominated research
- Individual research supervision
Applicants for this degree can nominate the focus of their research. Candidates engage with specialised areas of design research by project or undertake historical and theoretical architectural research investigations in thesis mode.
They should discuss their architectural research proposal with the research coordinator in the relevant discipline area. A candidate will be accepted when the proposed research or area of inquiry can be facilitated by the School.
Contact:
Brent Allpress
RMIT Architecture Research Director
Architecture Postgraduate Co-ordinator
Architecture and Design HDR Administration
Email: AD.HDRadmin@rmit.edu.au
Office: Building 10, level 11, room 01
Phone: +61 3 9925 3505
Reflective Practice - invited stream
Reflective practice - practice-based research stream
Invited postgraduate program:
RMIT Architecture Master of Architecture by Research (by project) - Reflective Practice stream
Architects and designers who have already established a significant direction in their work refine this position through reflection upon evidence of their achievements to date and engage with this evidence speculatively through design projects undertaken as the culmination of their Masters research.
Entry is by invitation and program is curated by Leon van Schaik, Innovation Professor of Architecture.
Invited postgraduate alumni:
RMIT Gallery: Previous and current candidates in the invited stream
Architecture and Design HDR Administration
Email: AD.HDRadmin@rmit.edu.au
Office: Building 10, level 11, room 01
Phone: +61 3 9925 3505
Urban architecture
Urban architectural design research
Studio based supervision
Urban Architecture Laboratory (UAL) research stream
UAL postgraduate program:
Master of Architecture by Research (by project) - Urban Architecture
The Urban Architecture Laboratory is devoted to a direct engagement with contemporary urbanism. Research involves an ongoing inquiry into the diversity of forces that shape the contemporary metropolis with a particular emphasis on Melbourne as a case study.
The program works through a testing of architectural responses to these issues through large scale, speculative design projects that aim to confront difficult urban problems to which there are currently no obvious answers. Research is conducted in an intensive studio environment with yearly themes that are proposed as a framework for the development of each candidate's thesis question which will develop over the duration of their candidature.
In addition to the RMIT staff attached to the program, leading national and international architects are invited as guest professors each semester, and professionals from a range of disciplines that have particular expertise around the issues being researched contribute to the program.
Curriculum/Course Structure:
The course is conducted as a one year, three semester, full-time program. The curriculum is based on three simultaneous and interrelated streams: intensive design studios, focussed research seminars and the ongoing development of an individual design thesis which is the penultimate outcome of each candidate's degree.
Duration:
3 semesters full-time
Master of Architecture by Research (by project) Urban Architecture studio - application information
Architecture gallery: UAL Master of Architecture alumni - recent UAL candidates
Contact:
Nigel Bertram
Director of the Urban Architecture Laboratory (UAL)
Architecture and Design HDR Administration
Email: AD.HDRadmin@rmit.edu.au
Office: Building 10, level 11, room 01
Phone: +61 3 9925 3505
Spatial information architecture
Digital design technologies
Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) research stream
SIAL postgraduate program:
Master of Architecture by Research (by thesis or project) - Spatial Information Architecture
SIAL encourages Masters research into the design implications of emerging digital technologies that investigates the culture and practice of contemporary creative production. The Masters program may be undertaken in a project or thesis mode. As such, modes of investigation may focus on project-based experimental pursuits within the laboratory or take the form of an historical and theoretical investigation.
Duration:
4 semesters fulltime, 8 semesters part-time.
Coursework component:
The course work component of the Masters involves one semester full-time or two semesters part time.
Research component:
The following two thirds operates in a Masters studio mode, where individual and/or collaborative research in progress is workshopped on a regular basis.
Contact:
Pia Ednie-Brown - RMIT Architecture + SIAL
Spatial Information Architecture Course Area Coordinator
Full details can be found on the SIAL website
Architecture and Design HDR Administration
Email: AD.HDRadmin@rmit.edu.au
Office: Building 10, level 11, room 01
Phone: +61 3 9925 3505
Advanced architecture
Emerging design practices - emerging technologies
Advanced Architecture research stream
Advanced Architecture postgraduate program
There are two studio based postgraduate programs in advanced architecture:
Emerging Practice Studio - Coordinator: Paul Minifie
Liveness Manifold Studio - Coordinator: Pia Ednie-Brown
These are supervisory groups within the architecture program that are affiliated with the SIAL research stream, with a focus on emerging design practices that respond to emerging technologies, particularly digital technologies. The Emerging Practice Studio focuses on architectural design practice research. The Liveness Manifold Studio focuses on interdisciplinary design and art installation practices and related discourse.
Emerging practice studio
Coordinator:
Paul Minifie RMIT Architecture - Advanced Architecture
Practice: Minifie Nixon with Fiona Nixon
Master of Architecture (research by project) - Emerging Practice Studio, Advanced Architecture
- Post-professional research degree, full or part-time
- Studio-based research supervision
Senior Supervisor:
Paul Minifie, RMIT Architecture - Advanced Architecture
Co-supervisors:
Brent Allpress, RMIT Architecture Research Director
Pia Ednie-Brown, RMIT Architecture - Advanced Architecture/SIAL
Greg More, RMIT Interior Design - SIAL
Consultant Supervisors:
Neil Appleton, Lyons
Howard Raggatt, RMIT Architecture Adjunct Professor, ARM
Research Supervision Focus:
Emerging architectural design practice research, in the context of new digital technologies and complex contemporary situations
Rather than understanding architectural activity as finding the solution to problems deriving from an analysis, or a nuanced set of moves stemming from a mastery of canonical knowledge, advanced architectural works are understood as proceeding from a notion of emergent relationships within an expanded design domain.
A design domain can be thought of as coherently related ecologies of knowledge, materials, techniques, actions and circumstances from which advanced architecture is instanced. Informatics, glocal relations, contemporary modes of production, sensibilities and activities become constituent of the incipient domain from which architecture emerges.
Technique is a key term in the structuring of a design domain, as it allows instances of a particular domain to become manifest. Techniques may be analogue processes or digital methods. An interest in digital methods recognises architecture itself as an operative complex of physical and informational relationships. RMIT Advanced Architecture works closely with the RMIT Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory, who research digital techniques of design development and collaborative relationships.
Emerging from the design domain, architectural instantiations come to be in various ways. An expanded notion of composition is developed to account for the qualities of open forms rather than closed designs, emphasising the resonant intensities of processural forces over formal aesthetics.
The RMIT Advanced Architecture Laboratory seeks to make available and manifest the forces operating at the margins of change within the contemporary world, and so acts to reactivate and restimulate.
Contact:
Paul Minifie RMIT Architecture - Advanced Architecture
Practice: Minifie Nixon with Fiona Nixon.
Architecture and Design HDR Administration
Email: AD.HDRadmin@rmit.edu.au
Office: Building 10, level 11, room 01
Phone: +61 3 9925 3505
Livenessmanifold studio - advanced architecture/SIAL
Coordinator:
Pia Ednie-Brown RMIT Architecture - Advanced Architecture/SIAL
Practice: Onomatopoeia
Master of Architecture (research by project or thesis) - Liveness Manifold Studio
Advanced Architecture/SIAL
Post-professional research degree, full or part-time
Senior Supervisor:
Pia Ednie-Brown, RMIT Architecture - Advanced Architecture/SIAL
Co-Supervisors:
Brent Allpress, RMIT Architecture Research Director
Paul Minifie, RMIT Architecture - Advanced Architecture
Master of Design Research (by project or thesis) - Liveness Studio, Advanced Architecture/SIAL
Research degree, full or part-time
Senior Supervisor:
Pia Ednie-Brown, RMIT Architecture - Advanced Architecture/SIAL
Co-Supervisors:
Robyn Healy, RMIT Fashion, School of Architecture and Design
Research Supervision Focus:
Liveness Manifold Studio research projects move through architecture, installation art, sound art, bio-art, theory/philosophy, fiction, haptics, performance art, animation, sculpture...
keywords:
tactility, technology, presence, affect, emergence
Liveness is the sense of living presence. This often involves the sense of a presence that is elsewhere, where actions are registered simultaneously across different spaces (geographical, operational, perceptual, disciplinary....). Today, related phenomena are frequently tied up with the increasing perceptual sensitivity of technological operations, often acting to animate objects and events with new kinds of life-like power and complexity. This occurs in quite literal ways through technological invention (such as the proliferation of sensors, artificial intelligence systems etc) and can be felt through the intensified variability, instability and sensitivity of socio-cultural operations.
The Liveness Manifold Studio explores these conditions with an emphasis on the production of closeness across geographic and/or representational distance or, in other words, the sense of immediate, intimate presence through remote means. Attention is focused on ways that affective (qualitative, emergent) dimensions of events might be transduced across distinct media, moments and spaces: how we allow the openness of affectivity to survive (instrumental) shifts of register.
Liveness Manifold Projects
Director: Pia Ednie-Brown
Researchers:
Boo Chapple, Pia Ednie-Brown, Inger Mewburn, Nicholas Murray, Jono Podborsek et al
Contact:
Pia Ednie-Brown RMIT Architecture - Advanced Architecture/SIAL
Architecture and Design HDR Administration
Email: AD.HDRadmin@rmit.edu.au
Office: Building 10, level 11, room 01
Phone: +61 3 9925 3505
Sustainable architecture
Sustainable Architecture Research Stream
Sustainable Architecture Postgraduate Program
Master of Architectural Research (by project or thesis) - Sustainable Architecture
Post-professional research degree
- Individual research supervision
Senior Supervisor:
Graham Crist RMIT Architecture Senior Lecturer
A cohort of students are addressing questions of architectural sustainability through individual research projects, and in doing so, forming a bridge between the RMIT Centre for Design (CFD) and the Urban Architecture Laboratory (UAL). Their questions can not be divorced from the large questions of the contemporary city, and the UAL's well articulated methods for scrutinising it. Questions of sustainability are instantly recognised as global, just as they are discovered to be culturally specific. A key question is how design can render a situation socially, culturally and environmentally viable. As ESD in architecture uncouples itself from a technically determined locus, a very engaging field of knowledge is emerging.
Duration:
4 semesters fulltime, 8 semesters part-time.
Contact:
Graham Crist RMIT Architecture Senior Lecturer
Sustainable Architecture Coordinator
Architecture and Design HDR Administration
Email: AD.HDRadmin@rmit.edu.au
Office: Building 10, level 11, room 01
Phone: +61 3 9925 3505
Expanded field
cross-disciplinary design research
Master of Architectural Research (by project) - expanded field stream
Master of Landscape Architectural Research (by project) - expanded field stream
Master of Design Research (by project) - expanded field stream
Individual Supervision
Duration:
4 semesters fulltime, 8 semesters part-time
Stream Coordinators:
Sand Helsel - Assoc Professor of Architectural Design
Sue-Anne Ware - School Research Coordinator
Supervisors:
Sand Helsel - Assoc Professor of Architectural Design, Senior Supervisor
Richard Black - Senior Lecturer in Architecture, Co-Supervisor
Rosalea Monacella - RMIT Landscape Architecture, Co-Supervisor
Sue-Anne Ware - RMIT Landscape Architecture research coordinator, Senior Supervisors
Expanded Field is a cross-disciplinary design research stream within the RMIT School of Architecture and Design that incorporates project based design research across the disciplines of art, architecture and landscape architecture. Instead of focusing upon the differences between the disciplines, we capitalise on the common ground: the design methods, the scales and nature of engagement, the sites for action, and the methods of production and dissemination of the research. The project is inclusive rather than exclusive. An cross-disciplinary practice can identify the gaps that conventional practice has marginalised – as fertile sites for action. Broad areas of research include public art and public space; ephemeral architectures; social, political and economic infrastructures; and a lateral approach towards social and environmental sustainability.
Visiting Critics:
Paul Carter - Visiting Professor, Co-Supervisor, Ephemeral Stream
Richard Goodwin - Adjunct Pofessor, COFA, UNSW; X-Field Alumni
Janet Lawrence, Artist; Ephemeral Alumni
Dr. Gini Lee, HoS Landscape Architecture, University of Adelaide; Ephemeral Alumni
Dr. Jenny Lowe, HoS Landscape Architecture, Bath; Ephemeral Alumni
Louise Lavarack
John McGlade
Leon van Schaik - Innovation Professor of Architecture, Senior Supervisor, Ephemeral Stream
Architecture gallery: X-Field Postgraduate Alumni
Contacts:
Sand Helsel - Assoc Professor of Architectural Design
Senior Supervisor, Expanded Field Program
Sue-Ann Ware - RMIT Landscape Architecture Research Coordinator
Senior Supervisor, Expanded Field Program
Architecture and Design HDR Administration
Email: AD.HDRadmin@rmit.edu.au
Office: Building 10, level 11, room 01
Phone: +61 3 9925 3505
Architectural discourse
Architectural Discourse research stream
Architectural Discourse postgraduate program
Master of Architectural Research (by project or thesis) - Architectural Discourse
Post-professional research degree
Individual Supervision
Duration:
4 semesters fulltime, 8 semesters part-time.
Senior and Co-Supervisors:
Brent Allpress, RMIT Architecture Research Director, Architecture Postgraduate Coordinator
Peter Downton, Prof of Architectural Theory, School Research Director
Harriet Edquist, Prof of Architectural History, Director of the School History & Critical Studies Interdisciplinary Cluster
Pia Ednie-Brown, Senior Lecturer, RMIT Architecture/SIAL
Dr Helene Frichot, Senior Lecturer, RMIT Architecture
Current affiliated Co-Supervisors in the School from other related disciplines:
Suzie Attiwill, RMIT Interior Design Postgraduate Coordinator, History Theory Coordinator
Dr Robyn Barnacle, RMIT Research and Innovation Research Fellow
Dr Paul Carter, Visiting Prof, University of Melbourne
Conrad Hamann
Robyn Healy, RMIT Fashion Postgraduate Coordinator
Dr John MacArthur, Visiting Prof, University of Queensland
Dr Juliette Peers, RMIT Lecturer in Architecture and Design, Fashion
The Architectural Discourse postgraduate research stream encompasses architectural history, architectural theory, design discourses and architectural criticism. Postgraduate candidates in this stream undertake individually supervised research on candidate proposed and negotiated topics.
RMIT Architecture has maintained a particular focus on the archiving of local architectural practice histories, and on the theorising of emerging design practices, particularly in the context of contemporary urban conditions and in response to emerging digital technologies. Architectural discourse candidates are primarily working in one of these areas.
Most discourse candidates are working in the thesis mode and submit a written thesis. A small number of candidates are engaging in research by project, or in a hybrid model of a thesis with a project-based research component.
Contact:
Brent Allpress
RMIT Architecture Research Director
Architecture Postgraduate co-ordinator
Architecture and Design HDR Administration
Email: AD.HDRadmin@rmit.edu.au
Office: Building 10, level 11, room 01
Phone: +61 3 9925 3505
Key related pages:
Application information for Architecture programs
Postgraduate, research streams, projects, publications, exhibitions, conferences, grants, staff activities and outcomes, research resources, School research information
Research and Postgraduate Streams
PhD in Architectural Research (by thesis or project)
Applying, degree structure, supervision models, research streams, resources, projects