A Creative Community Centre among Monash University Architecture Projects
Dezeen School Shows highlights a proposal for a creative community centre in Canterbury, Australia, among the range of projects from Monash University. The features also include a feminist critique of architecture and a design for a new housing system in Melbourne.
Monash University
Institution: Monash University
School: Architecture
Programs: Bachelor of Architectural Design and Master of Architecture
Tutors: Tom Morgan and Laura Harper
School statement:
Architecture at Monash emphasizes the broader picture. We view architecture, urban design, and urban planning as an integrated whole. We place buildings within their larger urban or regional surroundings and consider cities in the context of a changing planet. Architects envision the environments of the future, and our graduates contribute to the common good by pursuing a sustainable and equitable world through their work. Great design is essential for exemplary architecture, but architecture also extends beyond buildings to influence other industries and forms of spatial thinking. At Monash, we recognize the unique value that an architectural thinker can bring to fields beyond the built environment.
Wood Marsh Architecture Prize, Annabelle Shaw
Creating Comfort is set in Canterbury, a low-density suburb with a pressing need for more housing to meet council and state housing-density targets. The project addresses not only social housing amid today’s housing crisis but also the residents’ sense of comfort and agency within their homes. A modular steel-frame exterior supports generous balcony spaces while allowing residents to personalize their homes. Courtyards and shared areas—gardens, play spaces for children, a central library and café adapted from an existing church—encourage spontaneous social interactions. These strategies aim to destigmatize social housing within Melbourne and across Australia while fostering strong community ties among residents.
Student: Annabelle Shaw; Award: Wood Marsh Architecture Prize; Course: Bachelor of Architectural Design; Tutors: Jack Lee, Tom Morgan, Charity Edwards, Tina Atic
The Peter Elliott Architecture and Urban Design prize: Best drawings spanning traditional to forward-looking approaches; Chloe-Gabrielle Fuller
The prize acknowledges that money can unduly influence who shapes architecture. It questions the rush toward a singular, outcome-driven practice, a trend amplified by rapid AI-assisted image generation. In this moment of technological upheaval, there is a clear need for new ideas and methods to counteract tunnel vision and prevent stagnation. My work serves as both a critique of our relationship with technology and a reflection of my student experience: when pressured for productivity, I chose process; when coherence was demanded, I offered contradiction. Every line represents a refusal, and each form emerges through struggle. Rather than resolving everything, my aim with this final drawing is to preserve its potential.
Student: Chloe-Gabrielle Fuller; Award: The Peter Elliott Architecture and Urban Design Prize; Course: Master of Architecture; Tutors: Jacqui Alexander, Laura Harper
Architects’ Registration Board of Victoria – Professional Practice Award, Chelsea Kate Fisher
Australia faces a housing shortage shaped by years of underbuilding and restrictive planning. This reality fuels a passion for community-centered design, as explored in Intersect House. Intersect House is a multi-dwelling project in Preston that transforms a 1920s weatherboard home into housing for four households. The objective is to raise density without sacrificing neighborhood character or affordability. The design balances opportunities for social interaction with private space, offering residents choices about connection and seclusion. The existing house was critically assessed and refurbished to improve functionality while keeping costs in check. The new scheme sits alongside the original structure, using materials that echo the textures and tones of the surrounding environment.
Student: Chelsea Kate Fisher; Award: Architects’ Registration Board of Victoria – Professional Practice Award; Course: Master of Architecture; Tutor: Jean-Paul Rollo
Hayball Award for the Top Graduating Student in the Master of Architecture, Raquel Trapler
This project offers an embodied, feminist critique of architecture by merging performance, image-making, and speculative storytelling to examine how bodies are controlled, erased, or reimagined within spatial systems. Through experimental fieldwork and the use of apparatuses, the artist uses her own body as a site of resistance and inquiry, challenging architectural traditions rooted in patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist logics. By building a community of practice, she demonstrates how diverse creative methods—spanning performance, installation, film, and spatial experimentation—can function as critical tools to provoke, reveal, and imagine alternative futures. The work reveals that architecture is not fixed or merely functional; it is performative, affective, and always connected to the human body. By practicing gestures of slowness, repetition, and discomfort, she aims to uncover hidden infrastructures of waste, consumption, and control and transform them into spaces of care, critique, and possibility.
Student: Raquel Trapler; Award: Hayball Award for the Top Graduating Student in the Master of Architecture; Course: Master of Architecture; Tutors: Jacqui Alexander, Laura Harper
María Fullaondo Memorial Prize in Bachelor of Architectural Design and Communications, Pham Nhat Truong Danh
This piece explores weaving as both structure and movement. The central exploded drawing expands in four directions from a core figure knitting at the center. Threads spiral outward like a growing yarn ball, guiding circulation across the page. These strands weave into the title itself, turning the text into a dotted knitted pattern. Around the center, the plan, elevation, section, and isometric views orbit like particles, reinforcing rhythm and motion. Figures contribute to this movement: children throw a ball that loops through the layout, and a small monkey weaves through open space. Knitting sticks emphasize the idea of a forming yarn. Each drawing is connected through a single continuous woven gesture.
Student: Pham Nhat Truong Danh; Award: María Fullaondo Memorial Prize in Bachelor of Architectural Design and Communications; Course: Bachelor of Architectural Design; Tutors: Aqil Arif, Dani Tinios, Jhana Pfeiffer-Hunt
Monash Architecture Award – Masters of Architecture, Louis Magree
Melbourne’s housing affordability crisis is not merely a policy shortfall but a systemic condition that prioritizes property speculation over universal access to shelter. Design solutions must confront a landscape shaped by historical land accumulation, suburban individualism, and economic systems that elevate private wealth above public wellbeing. The uniformity of Melbourne’s housing stock—predominantly detached homes on large lots—has intensified spatial and economic exclusion. Northcote serves as a case study, reflecting some of the sharpest affordability challenges in inner Melbourne. The project, “Anabolic Urbanism,” proposes a replicable strategy to initiate Community Land Trusts (CLTs) in exclusive suburbs by adapting underutilized backyard and laneway spaces. These peripheral sites become gateways for systemic change through an enabling phase that seeds small dwellings and grows a CLT. A novel policy framework paired with a pattern book of affordable, flexible ADUs provides architectural and regulatory tools to drive widespread transformation.
Student: Louis Magree; Award: Monash Architecture Award – Masters of Architecture; Course: Master of Architecture; Tutors: Jacqui Alexander, Laura Harper
Positions and Dialogue Award, Bachelor of Architectural Design, Abigail Julia Ramanathan
This project envisions a holistic revitalization of Veg Out Community Gardens in St Kilda. It prioritizes accessibility and permeability across the site and surrounding streets (Spenser Street and Chaucer Street), while introducing new community facilities to encourage year-round activity and engagement. The existing artist studios and vegetable plots are currently rented; the proposal adds a community hall and café that integrate with these functions. The hall offers a flexible venue for workshops, art and design events, neighborhood meetings, and educational programs, reinforcing Veg Out’s cultural identity. The café provides a garden-oriented, casual space that supports daily activities, fosters longer site engagement, and strengthens the garden’s connection to nearby housing and residents. Both new elements are designed to blend with the landscape and built heritage, creating strong visual links to the vegetable plots.
Student: Abigail Julia Ramanathan; Award: Positions and Dialogue Award; Course: Bachelor of Architectural Design; Tutors: Charity Edwards, Jacqui Alexander, Alex Brown
Student Engagement Prize, Shantel Gilmore
This project treats architecture as a tool to support psychological recovery and social reintegration for individuals with schizophrenia re-entering society after psychiatric institutionalization. The work critiques traditional control-centric approaches and emphasizes autonomy, choice, and dignity. Through design experiments, a transitional, mixed-use housing facility is planned to provide short-term specialized support for people living with schizophrenia. The research explores socially responsive urbanism to show how architecture can function both as a building and as a care system, proposing models of therapeutic healthcare environments through material choices, programmatic layouts, and emotional clarity.
Student: Shantel Gilmore; Award: Student Engagement Prize; Course: Master of Architecture; Tutors: Jacqui Alexander, Laura Harper
Overall Best in Studio, Bachelor of Architectural Design, Lewis Howarth
The Canterbury-based micro-community reimagines how existing buildings can form a network of shared spaces for community gathering. The traditional sacred grounds—green areas, seating, and walkways—have been reimagined as distinct programs with circulation moving underground. The project translates the acoustic qualities, scale, and function of the churches into a versatile space for broad community use beyond worship. Instead of treating the site as a single monument, it is connected through an underground network of tunnels, guided by light. The subterranean routes invite visitors to engage with light as a媒 modality, creating moments of connection that feel almost divine.
Student: Lewis Howarth; Award: Overall Best in Studio; Course: Bachelor of Architectural Design; Tutors: Tom Morgan, Charity Edwards, Tina Atic
Notes on partnership
This school show is a collaborative effort between Dezeen and Monash University. For more about Dezeen partnership content, see the partnerships page.
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