Week 6 - Reflecting on Interim Presentations.

Final Product:

We believed we had good constructive feedback from the tutors of the Urban group, it was healthy to have a back and forth about the ethical implications of this scenario. The outcome of the project was better than expected and as a team we were extremely happy with how everything went. Looking at the other presentations within our theme group we found many groups taking the same path of developing vertical farms within the CBD.

Week 6 - Architectural Development Log

Architectural Impression - Queen St, Brisbane circa 2034.

Week 5 - Further Character Development

Below are the daily activities breakdown undertaken by our chosen characters within our architectural scenario.

Week 5 - The Sustainability of Our Economy

When developing the sustainability of Brisbane within our scenario, we had to look at how Brisbane would be sustainable more as an economy and commercially rather than finding how it would be sustainable environmentally.

Our scenario explains five major companies attaining the rights to purchase pockets of Brisbane, in return having complete planning rights of that area. The below diagrams explain the gross profits gained by each of the major 5 within a year and also depict the amount invested in Brisbane.

With such a strong stake hold in Brisbane these companies would find it beneficial to infiltrate the govenrmental system of Australia and therefore having even more of a control over the lifestyles and urban environment. We understand the ethical this would have on Brisbane but with the state of the economy after the recession of all our assets Brisbane would be so desperate they would over look the ethical questions this would raise. Corruption would occur and the major 5 would have their own stake hold within the government.

Week 5 - Assignment Development Log

As our scenario developed, the team found the best way to describe our architectural scenario as it develops from present day Brisbane way via a timeline. We used a Facebook influence to represent major events, thoughts and opinions. We felt this was best way to show the social and cultural influences our architectural scenario was having upon the lifestyles of Brisbane.

TIMELINE AS SHOWN ON FINAL PRESENTATION:

Week 5 - Architectural Possibilities

After developing our characters we looked to find architectural possibilities within their lives, one for each character.

What developed from there was four outcomes that fit within their lives within our scenario.

Diagram from final presentation.

Week 4 - Character Development

From our architectural scenario the group developed four characters during this charette, these characters would help explain our scenarios through their eyes and opinions.

Characters:

• Working Immigrant - moved to Brisbane for work.
• Social/ Activist - part of the underground movement against the corruption and hold of the corporations
• Permanent Resident - living within the social climate of corporate ownership, 
• Teenager - grew up in current society, knows of nothing else

Each team members task after the charette was to develop further chosen character as well as any architectural possibilities for the scenario.

Chosen Character: PERMANENT RESIDENT.

BIO: 
Name: Carol Perkins
Age: 32
Gender: Female

As resident in Brisbane, Carol has always been content with the lifestyle which has developed from the corporate ownership of the 5 major companies.

Her day to day life consists of working at the Samsung experience store in the "New Queen St Mall", going for walks after work and keeping up with her friends both virtually and physically.

Carol has a partner named Dennis Montgomery and they both live in the Ikea quarter of Brisbane in a 2 bedroom apartment.

Possible architectural possibilities include but not limited too:

• Due to the Corporate ownership companies want to enhance their presence within Brisbane, companies build new headquarters
• New government house
• New Brisbane skyline

Other characters within our scenario are;

Parker James Savill

An elite business man who migrated to Brisbane for more job opportunities in P and G. 

Steven Shaw

A journalist working in Brisbane, what most people don't know is that he actually coordinates the underground social activist movement within Brisbane.

Fraya McCann

A teenager who knows nothing else other than "new", content with life as all of her needs are met with the new corporate ownership of Brisbane CBD.

Week 4 - Scenario Development

" Your sets are your own proposed." Yasu Santo

In creating our set we had to develop our chosen scenario from the previous studio exercise. 

Our scenario is the corporate ownership of Brisbane, Brisbane has crumbled after the collapse of the mining industry which is currently a major contributor to Brisbane's economy, with the government struggling to find funds to keep the Queensland afloat a combination of congestion charges and higher taxes have left the sunshine state dry. The government looks outsourcing/outselling inorder to maintain Brisbane as a liveable city,a bid is created for the global dominant countries of the 2020's to potentially buy portions of Brisbane CBD in order for the government to maintain the Brisbane economy. The companies that won the bid for the segments of Brisbane were selected on their produce and capabilities, each presenting a valuable asset to Brisbane. Development and insertion of these companies within Brisbane brought a micro community. Brisbane is ultimately controlled by these companies but they present a lifestyle of self sufficiency and corporate branding. Below is our draft development timeline and thoughts on the culmination of this scenario which looks to be further researched.

Images courtesy of Georgia Parr.

Week 4 - Further Research

Rising Unemployment Rate.


Mining Bust.


Economy Crash.


Selling of Queensland Assets.


Privatised Cities. 

Week 3 - Further Research

After developing a plausible scenario I chose to further research the effects of corporate ownership and how this could develop into new societal norms and culture. One thing became prevalent through this research, without a level of transparency from the companies sponsoring Brisbane there could be possible outcomes of the city turning into a micro communist culture. One thing that we have decided to remain constant is that even though these major corporations have a major hold on Brisbane the Queensland government should still be a ruling body above them in order to maintain civility, democracy and a level of morality. Even with the government ruling of the stakeholders of Brisbane political history leads to show that there is a possibility of corruption.

Week 3 - Reading

Week 3 - Urban Scenario Investigations

Trying to predict the future is hard at the best of times, the best way i understand it to be is using events and societal norms from the past and develop them for future. It in a sense is just like the world of fashion every twenty years or so you see the same trend being revived and evolved ever so slightly from its previous time. A film clip shown in the Week 2 lecture "Metropolis" depicts an urban dystopia where Fritz Lang's vision of the future was a glorified city gone wrong, trailer below.

Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=metropolis&oq=metropolis&gs_l=youtube.3...461.707.0.841.2.2.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0...0.0...1ac

So how do we create scenarios without creating science fiction, By ensuring it is a logical path to follow while maintaing a level of imagination. The Week 3 studio was an architectural fiction charette in which we were to come up with logical scenarios for assignment 1. Without having a predetermined outcome my group found it initially difficult to create scenarios leading from logical points from past and present. The approach we chose to take was starting at the end point and working backwards, we trialled a few scenarios this way and found the scenarios to be more logical. 

By maintaining logical and reasonable events in the predicted future we were able to resolve any issues that arise about sustainability. We developed four main scenarios in order to test their sustainability and found the most probable one being the corporate ownership of Brisbane. I will divulge more details on this scenario as we develop it in the coming weeks.

Week 2 - Readings.

Reading: Urban form and Locality.

This reading allows us to understand the effects of multiple strategies in relation to the dynamic expansion of urban sprawl, noting that within urban form there are four main dimensions. Dispersal and concentration, segregation and inter mixture, low versus high density and shape, all dimensions culminate into strategies that lead to urban form interlocking within each other often creating confusion. One strategy of the creation of urban sprawl the reading suggests to be the idea of Eco-idealism, the application of an Eco system to the neighbourhood plan, often resulting in the ideology of "Small is beautiful."

Using research and current urban analysis we are able to apply strategies and ideologies to the architectural scenarios being developed. Current Brisbane urban sprawl conveys a disorientated approach to the strategies demonstrated in the reading mentioned above. The mixture of low and high densities and the confusion dispersal and urban sprawl have led to a conglomerate of areas with an overworked public transport system and a road network that has been predicted to not be sufficient for the growing population within Brisbane. Addressing this issue along with the population growth will add to other triggers that will help justify our architectural scenario.

Week 2 - Initial investigations

Design charette exploration of proposed themes for assignment one. As our group of four progressed through the four themes of Urban, Suburban, Regional and Virtual, we found underlying similarities within the exploration, mainly of technology advancements and the influence of the Internet in these future scenarios. Below are the four visual representations of our exploration during the charettes.

Urban Exploration

Suburban Exploration

Regional Exploration

Virtual Exploration

After the design charette it was clear to see our four perspectives and opinions taking hold of our imaginations. What resulted was a combination of ideas compressed to the roll of paper, thoughts of sustainability, urban sprawl, economy and governmental influence also influenced our outcomes for each thread of thought following the relevant theme groups. What appealed to us as a group and what we found the most relatable was that of the Urban theme, we were all able to let our minds run free through this charette while still being able to focus on the previously mentioned contexts.