Masters Studio Offerings
2026
Please see the Semester Studio course information and offerings for the 2026 Master of Architecture program.
Each offering has been listed below. You can click on the topic to find out more.
Semester 1 Studio Course Offerings
ARCH7002, ARCH7005, ARCH7043 and UDAD7006
Semester 2 Studio Course Offerings
ARCH7003, ARCH7004, ARCH7007/UDAD7004, ARCH7015 and UDAD7016
ARCH7002 Advanced Architectural Design: Institutions and Ideology
Course Coordinator
Mark Hiley
Site Museum and Centre for Archaeology: Re-examining Early Urban Cultures
In Archaeology, the concept of “urban revolution” refers to the process by which small, kin-based agricultural villages were transformed into large, socially complex, urban societies. In this studio, we are going to be using Gordon Childe’s seminal essay “The Urban Revolution”, as a common framework to explore different urban cultures. There are six sites: Uruk (Iraqi), Memphis (Egypt), Erlitou (China), Harappa (Pakistan), Caral (Peru) and La Venta (Mexico).
Students will be required to research a particular urban culture, and propose a site museum and centre for archaeology, comprising three components:
- A permanent base for ongoing archaeological research of a particular site and associated river system.
- A field school for archaeology, with facilities for teaching staff and postgraduate students, and accommodation for international students.
- A site museum dedicated to a particular urban culture.
In addition to the focus on a research-based design methodology, this studio presents a number of interesting challenges.
- How does architecture engage with the scale of the landscape, in terms of both the physical dimensions of the site and the duration of time?
- How does the practice of archaeology inform architecture?
- How does the museum tell the story of a particular urban culture?
ARCH7005 Advanced Architectural Design: Landscapes and Architecture
Course Coordinator
Hydrological Futures: Altered Liveability and Ecological Re-Imagining for Climate Change in Chandigarh
Backgrounded by our recurrent discussions on the aftermath of Climate Change and the Anthropocene, this Urban-Landscape Studio engages with the contested ecological futures of Asian cities. How would new and additive urbanities envisage ‘comfort and liveability’ within such this challenging scenario? What would be the spatial changes imperative to the city fabric and its urban landscape? How could available resources be conserved, and new resources identified?
Our efforts in the ARCH7005 studio will tackle these multiple questions through a paradigmatic shift of interconnected experimentations within the tabula rasa of India’s modern city of Chandigarh. Located at the transition between the Himalayan foothills and the Gangetic plains, the alluvial tracts that pre-dated Chandigarh’s development between 1951-66 were star-architect Le Corbusier’s inspiration for an unprecedented ‘ecological urbanism’ – a modern city in harmony with its natural landscape. Our efforts will recover this harmony via selective interventions within the city plan, through singular and ensemble adjustments, scales of urban spaces, and elements of infrastructure.
ARCH7043 Architectural Practice: Design
Course Coordinator
Aaron Peters
Prerequisites - BLDG7021 and one of: ARCH7002, ARCH7003, ARCH7004, ARCH7005, ARCH7007 or ARCH7015
Tabula Plena: strategies for urban repair and reuse
In his essay, Tabula Plena, Graeme Brooker writes, ”to wipe the slate clean is not just the easy way out, it is the failure of intellect, of an economic system, of political thought and purpose. […] if Tabula Rasa was the leitmotif for 20th-century modernity, Tabula Plena is the lingua franca for the 21st century and beyond.” ARCH7043 will explore themes of close observation and critical adjustment, working within an established urban setting to enhance an existing building and extend its productive life.
Students will conduct detailed site recording and brief development, working under the direction of Vokes and Peters, an established Brisbane-based architectural practice. The studio will focus on the design techniques employed by Vokes and Peters in their project work, providing participants with an opportunity to learn directly from practising architects.
UDAD7006 Urban Design: Urban Futures
Course Coordinator
Yohei Omura
Urban Creek Landscape – Relational Space for Agency
The Norman Creek catchment, located near Brisbane’s inner city, stands as the city’s most urbanised creek, characterised by complex flood risks. The Great Flood of 1974 revealed the limitations of post-war flood mitigation based on artificial structures. Since the 1990s, community-led initiatives have consistently worked towards the rejuvenation of its waterways. Today, under the pressure of further urbanisation and densification, the catchment has become a focal point for rapid population growth and intensive redevelopment. This shift presents a unique opportunity to envision communities defined by a more intimate engagement between urban life and ecosystems.
The creek environment encompasses multiscalar spatial dimensions—from local vegetation to regional hydrological cycles—while simultaneously operating on its own temporal rhythms. Historically treated as an urban periphery, the studio aims to redefine the creek as a strategic anchor. It explores incremental urban development schemes that mediate the spatio-temporal dynamics of the creek with the complexities of everyday urban life.
In this studio, we conceptualise the creek landscape as a field of networks where actors, humans and non-humans (nature, objects, technology) shape one another. By synthesising diverse media to map networks of the past and present, students will analyse transformations and envision a future network that fosters richer interactions among diverse actors. This involves identifying pivotal nodes within the broader catchment and proposing tactical sites, programs, and spaces.
The studio proposes a Relational Space which offers opportunity for actors to find agency.
ARCH7015: Advanced Architectural Design: Generative Structures
Course Coordinator
Dr Cathy Keys and Fred Teixeira
Under the Generative Structures umbrella the studio will couple digital and analogue forms of computation to study aggregate reciprocal structures. Through the use of mass-customised frames as correspondent building blocks, the studio will produce self-supporting structures based on the use of small sized interlocking components. Through an iterative design process of applied tectonic performance, the studio explores a direct relation between material and form, where system thinking provide an informed knowledge between structural properties and spatial logic. By focusing open acts of experimentation, the studio examines and deploys computational design, optimised fabrication and creative tectonic propositions for the production of a large-span project.
Due to its technical content the studio will run hands-on computational workshops and prototype experimentation periods.
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