Master Architecutre Studio Offerings
We are pleased to share with you our MArch Studio offerings. While making your course selections, we would like to remind students who commenced prior to 2023 to ensure that you are aware of the MArch program changes in 2023.
Each offering has been listed below. You can click on the topic to find out more or alternatively download the full PDF brochure.
Semester 1 and Summer 2025
ARCH7002 | ARCH7005 | UDAD7006
Semester 2 2025
ARCH7003 | ARCH7004 | ARCH7007 | UDAD7004 | ARCH7015 | UDAD7016
ARCH7002 Advanced Architectural Design: Institutions and Ideology
Course Coordinator
The Museum of the Fake
The history of artistic artistic endeavour traditionally celebrates innovation, originality and authenticity. As such, both the monetary and cultural value of works of art can either escalate or plummet dramatically based on an artwork’s attribution. The public imagination has often been captured by accounts of discovering valuable artworks in attics and flea markets, as well as reports of museums and collectors discovering once-prized works to be copies or fakes. While an undiscovered masterpiece might yield millions of dollars at auction, misattributed masterpieces are usually stripped of their value, sold for a loss, hidden away as an object of embarrassment, and sometimes destroyed.
Taking the long history of copied, faked and fraudulent art as its inspiration, this studio explores concepts of authorship, authenticity and originality in art, architecture and culture—particularly as the rise of AI poses a host of new issues related to authenticity and authorship in the arts. The design studio challenges students to conceive and design an institution to exhibit, house, preserve and study fake, forged, and copied art. Students will be expected to be able to work iteratively and independently and undertake rigorous research. Inventive and imaginative responses will be particularly encouraged.
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 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
Students will produce an architectural design that creatively responds to an important contemporary issue involving social, technical, cultural, economic and environmental challenges. Students will develop and apply critical thinking resulting in a refined and technically resolved design proposal, showing an understanding of social social and community issues, the development context, legislative frameworks, commercial and public demands and construction processes. Learning activities focus on design thinking that demonstrates the application of the relevant professional competencies expected of a graduating architecture student.ﾠ
The studio will connect participants with experts, practitioners and highly experienced professionals, local and globally, who provide tailored support to students, helping to guide them in the creation of a community facility developed through high design consideration and values. The site is located in inner-city West End. The studio will explore challenges and opportunities in the adaptation and augmentation of disparate public infrastructure into an integrated community facility.
The studio will emphasise design principles of (a) building on Country, (b) whole-of-life low- carbon, (c) code compliance, (d) buildability, (e) urban contribution, (f) planning, aesthetic and spatial merit and (g) commercial viability. Outputs are expected to demonstrate an advanced level of design skill across these dimensions.
The course will be delivered partly at the St Lucia campus and partly at the UQ CBD campus in the afternoon/evening with industry practitioners.
UDAD7006 Urban Design: Urban Futures
Course Coordinator
Next Generation Urban Villages: Sustainable urban development using foresight, systems and design approaches
Cairns offers a unique urban context, situated between world heritage-listed environments (the Great Barrier Reef and the Wet Tropics Rainforest), with only a narrow development corridor for the city’s future expansion. Looking towards 2050, the city seeks a new development pathway which enhances liveability, advances decarbonisation, builds climate resilience, and protects biodiversity. The approaches we use to address these challenges – in Cairns and globally – will determine our ability to achieve sustainability goals.
In this Urban Futures Studio, students will pursue this task by weaving together foresight and systems thinking through an iterative design process. We will begin by exploring critical environmental, social, and economic issues and urban strategies. Students will then build on this shared resource to develop an urban design proposition which achieves a ‘triple-bottom line’ outcome.
Throughout this studio, students will develop valuable professional skills and folio pieces. Students will liaise with government and industry leaders and community stakeholders as part of the design process and build on a collaboration between UQ and the Cairns Regional Council initiated in 2022. Students will also benefit from the expertise of an interdisciplinary team of researchers pursuing urban sustainability.