Approx 14 to 23 Architecture Design Electives are offered each semester to Bachelors and Masters of Architecture students. These aim to extend the core curriculum in history/theory, communications and technology, introduce interdisciplinary areas of study, advanced design research and emerging practice specialisations.
Electives are generally project-based, with students working in small groups of around 10-15, with a thematic brief set by the commissioned Elective Leader. Students nominate four preferences in balloting for a place in an elective each semester.
Information on Elective Choices
Information outlining the focus of each elective offering s available on this web site in one on-line booklet, applicable to BOTH Bachelors and one for Masters students.
Please follow this link for semester 2, 2011 electives:
COMMUNICATIONS ELECTIVE CloudNets Elective Semester 01-02, 2008 Elective Leaders: Paul Minifie & Tim Schork with Andrew Burrow and Luke Howson Investigations into Emergent Urbanism and Architectural Form through the use of RhinoScripting
SIAL TECHNOLOGY ELECTIVE LONGSPAN & HIGHRISE Semester 2, 2007 Elective Leaders: Andrew Maher, SIAL Research Fellow Saman De Silva, RMIT Civil Engineering/Innovative Structures Group In Semester Two 2007 SIAL and the RMIT Innovative Structures Group are offering a collaborative seminar between Architectural and Engineering students focusing on conceptual approaches to structural design. This Seminar follows our pilot project, ReEngineering.
RMIT ARCHITECTURE/FASHION THEORY ELECTIVE CONTAMINATED LIFE RMIT Architecture & RMIT Fashion - History Theory Seminar & Design Elective - SIAL Stream Elective Leader: Pia Ednie-Brown, RMIT Architecture Senior Lecturer Semester 1, 2007 Contaminated Life Blog To contaminate is to make impure, unclean, polluted or corrupted. The act of contaminating presents social, cultural and biological dangers that become tangled into ideas of purity, the sacred and moral propriety. Becoming ‘sustainable’ is an increasingly insistent moral imperative.
RMIT ARCHITECTURE THEORY ELECTIVE I-DESIGN RMIT Architecture History Theory Seminar - SIAL Stream, 2006 Tutor: Inger Mewburn Contact: inger@mewburn.net This seminar will investigate the various ideas that have been put forward about ‘human’ and ‘machine’ in the last century and how they might converge around the practice of design; specifically we will be interested in the subject of design automation.
RMIT ARCHITECTURE THEORY ELECTIVE ARCHITECTURAL COMPOSITION - Emergence and Vitality RMIT Architecture History Theory Seminar & Design Elective - SIAL Stream Recurring Offering Coordinator: Pia Ednie-Brown, RMIT Archtecture Senior Lecturer This seminar explores the historical and philosophical relationship between theories of emergence and architectural composition. Both theoretical fields arose as part of conditions of amplified discursive change, playing the role of mediating internal conflicts within turbulent states of affairs. Philosophically, both theoretical fields draw attention to the fold of thinking feeling or embodied abstraction. The nature and development of this emergence-compositional fold is explored for what it might indicate about the state of play of architectural composition in contemporary architecture.
RMIT ARCHITECTURE COMMUNICATIONS ELECTIVE STRANGE PROCEDURES RMIT Architecture Communications Seminar - Advanced Architecture/SIAL stream Recurring Offering Tutor: Paul Minifie - Architecture (AAL) with Kynan Woodman, Peter Ryan Digital techniques to describe the shape of things by the internal methods (algorithms) and to define, manipulate and translate formal representations (data structures), examining to what extent these techniques change the way in which architecture can make sense to us. Software: Visual Basic Scripting with Autocad, Microstation, rhino, and Excel.
RMIT ARCHITECTURE COMMUNICATIONS ELECTIVE ATMOSPHERE Architecture Communications Seminar/General Elective, 2006 Co-ordinators: Foo Chi Sung, RMIT SIAL Research Fellow, RMIT Architecture Alumni Greg More, RMIT Interior Design Lecturer, SIAL Researcher Andrew Burrow, RMIT SIAL Research Fellow +ATMOSPHERE3 explores the use of game engines as a dynamic design media supporting new forms of representation. Participants develop a conceptual and technical understanding of game engine technologies (UnReal2 Runtime), including emerging forms of narrative and interaction. These developments are placed within a spatial design context by a process of re-presenting designs from previous studios to realise a spatial portfolio, with a focus on real-time, atmospheric, and environmental conditions. The outcomes are: a real time spatial portfolio/environment, online journal, progress and a library of parts for further users.
RMIT ARCHITECTURE COMMUNICATIONS ELECTIVE BEYOND REPRESENTATION RMIT Architecture Communications Seminar - SIAL stream Offered 2004 Supervisor: Inger Mewburn - RMIT Architecture (SIAL) Digital rendering technique to enable students to bend the rules with impunity. Software: 3dsVis, Photoshop.
PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE ELECTIVE Global Practice Coordinator: Bruce Allen Professional Practice - Architecture Design Elective Balloted seminar recurring offering International architectural practice; professional practice strategies employed by Western architecture firms in Asia; international professional practice case-studies
SPATIAL SOUND ELECTIVE Spatial Sound Composition and Diffusion School of Architecture & Design SIAL Elective Elective Leader: Lawrence Harvey,Director, SIAL Sound Lab recurring offering This course will provide a practice based learning context where participants investigate complex spatial sound composition and diffusion using the SIAL Sound Diffusion System. For performances, the system currently includes around 22 loudspeakers. A smaller array is installed in the Sound Studios and available to participants undertaking this elective for course activities, experiments, and workshops. This course comprises lectures, listening based course work and individual studio time, so participants may conduct their own creative endeavours investigating spatial sound experience in ‘sound-only’ contexts such as concerts, digital media, and mixed mode contexts such as surround sound for film and games and other real-world scenarios not mediated by digital media. With the advent of cost effective technologies for delivery of multi channel audio, the experience of spatial sound is now available via small home based systems, through to large-scale theatres and performance venues. These operation and application of these systems and analysis of associated content – or repertoire – will form a key component of this elective.
SPATIAL SOUND ELECTIVE SSCAD: Spatial Sound Composition and Diffusion Elective School of Architecture & Design Semester 2, 2006 Elective Leader: Lawrence Harvey,Director, SIAL Sound Lab Jeffrey Hannam Michael Hewes, guest lecturer The elective project will be to design soundscapes for an Urban Environment; the 16 channel soundscape system in North Atrium of Federation Square. Course participants will have the opportunity to make a short sound design for this system as the final project outcome of the course. Full details of the SSCAD course are available at: sound.sial.rmit.edu.au
SUSTAINABILITY ELECTIVE Challenges in Sustainability School of Architecture & Design Elective Elective Leader: Judy Rogers In this fully on-line course you will be in regular conversation with other students and the teacher as you further develop and expand your existing ideas about sustainability. poster pdf
SUSTAINABILITY ELECTIVE Contemporary Environmental Thought School of Architecture & Design Elective Elective Leader: Judy Rogers This subject takes as its starting point the fact that environmental thought does not present us with a coherent body of knowledge. Instead, it has its own internal spectrum of debate resulting in a diverse range of approaches to thinking about ’environment’ and environmental ’problems’. In this subject we will explore this diversity, from mainstream environmentalism (including sustainable development), through to more radical environmentalism, including deep ecology, social ecology and ecofeminism. We will critique contemporary environmental thought from a range of different perspectives and consider some of the key contemporary ‘challenges’ to environmental thought from environmental justice to social constructionism to postmodernity.
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE ELECTIVE The Lurujarri Dreaming Trail School of Architecture & Design Elective Elective Leader: Judy Rogers In this course students have the opportunity to learn about, listen to, discuss and engage with indigenous people about their knowledge and relationship to land. Students will spend 9 days with the Goolarbooloo people of Broome W.A. walking the Lurujarri dreaming trail. Lurujarri, meaning coastal dunes, is the Aboriginal name that generally describes the stretch of country from Broome, W.A. to Minarriny, about 90 kms to the north of Broome. The trail follows part of a traditional Aboriginal song cycle that originated from the Dreamtime. pdf poster
