Architecture Vacancy examines real and critical gaps in the knowledge and practice of architecture and architectural education, sites of debate as well as the imaginative possibility, towards defining architecture’s role in the 21st century. Vacancy evokes an approach to this research focus which can be poetic, practical, and provocative/intellectual, but importantly its strength is an intensity and architectural intent.

AV engages the discipline’s body of knowledge – the work of architects, the hierarchies of architectural judgement, architectural histories and theories, and architectural creative processes – with new perspectives. Architecture Vacancy addresses traditions, hierarchies, canons and histories from sites of change, radicality, uncertainty, possibility and imagination – towards new and alternate knowledge, practice, pedagogy.

AV develops around four themes in relation to the gaps in architecture – real, critical, pedagogical and creative design practice. Conversely, the perspective of architecture is deployed to identify gaps in wider contexts of society and built environment.

Depending on the project Architecture Vacancy research is intellectually charged, practice-based, community-centred, and contributes to both traditional and non-traditional academic research.

*AVL Logo created by Juan Hevia, lecturer at Deakin University and member of AVL research team.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The projects loosely align with four focal areas:

  • Industrial Vacancy: Responses to vacant spaces – industrial, urban, rural. Post-industrial landscapes are trans-regional, Geelong acts as a lens for transferable model; adaptive re-use; creative design processes; architecture programme – new identities, new multiple and hybrid briefs; industrial heritage; rural, interstitial spaces and regional industries. Research methods include architectural fieldwork (empirical, quantitative), innovative digital and image-based techniques, with ethnographic and archival methods. These methods highlight experimentation and reflection on data collection through observation and its documentation, through representation and counter-representational data, through experimental design, through propositional projects, and via provocative works.

(Codes: 120101 – Architectural Design; 120102 – Architectural Heritage and Conservation; 120201 – Building Construction Management and Project Planning; 120504 – Land Use and Environmental Planning)

  • Critical Vacancy: In architecture as a discipline. Drawing on critical research and theoretical expertise in socio-cultural theory, visual theory, affect theory in architecture, economic and management theory; urban morphology; heritage, histories of architecture especially global south histories (indigenous, migration, Asian, global, heritage). Interdisciplinary intersections between architecture and critical discourses towards new knowledge, new perspectives and new positions.

(Codes: 120103 – Architectural History and Theory; 120301 – Design History and Theory)

  • Pedagogy: Advances research into architecture teaching; design, design methods, fieldwork and observation methods; history-theory; research methodology, digital communication; and built environment pedagogy informed by architecture. Linking the innovation in our teaching and practice to research, including design research, architecture pedagogy (design, history/theory). Architectural drawing methods, architectural design process methods, extra-architectural methods – modes of narrating and representing architecture to a broader public. Learning architecture.

(Codes: 120101 – Architectural Design; 120302 – Design Innovation; Education 040101)

  • Creative Community Engagement: innovative models in creative community engagement; collaborative research with other schools.

Director: Dr Mirjana Lozanovska, Associate Professor, has successfully led the cross-faculty Vacant Geelong research team (2016-2020), the school socio-cultural ecology cluster (2013-2015). She is CI on ARC DP (with other institutions), she is a member of Deakin strategic research ADI Citizenship and Globalisation, where she leads an interdisciplinary research team, with a project, “Architecture of Belonging”. In this capacity, she has sustained research production, attracted and sustained external research funding, generated strong industry partnerships, managed and supervised RAs and RFs, managed budgets – and generated high standard and high-quality outputs. Mirjana has expertise in grant application and success, a strong publication track record, effective links to the architecture profession, community organisations, and industry. She is also co-editor (2018-2021) of Fabrications, the refereed journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ).