Assessing Architectural Aesthetic Character: An ‘Intelligent’ Approach. This project aims to develop ground-breaking insights and software to improve the assessment of architectural aesthetic character by Australia’s designers, councils and courts.
Combining empirical, neurophysiological and machine-learning approaches, this project expects to provide a new level of robustness and repeatability in administrative and legal assessments of building aesthetics.
Planned outcomes include: (i) a uni ....Assessing Architectural Aesthetic Character: An ‘Intelligent’ Approach. This project aims to develop ground-breaking insights and software to improve the assessment of architectural aesthetic character by Australia’s designers, councils and courts.
Combining empirical, neurophysiological and machine-learning approaches, this project expects to provide a new level of robustness and repeatability in administrative and legal assessments of building aesthetics.
Planned outcomes include: (i) a unique quantitative understanding of aesthetic assessment and (ii) a world-first method for measuring and comparing the character of buildings.
This research has the potential to reduce the substantial cost of disputes and provide more certainty and efficiency in the architectural design, approval and appeal processes.
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Determining the social value of extreme, mixed-use urban developments. Using an Adelaide case study, UCity, this project will investigate the social benefit of building mixed-use vertical communities in the Australian urban context. Using an innovative Social Value Framework, the project will establish and demonstrate the multi-dimensional impacts of such developments in practice. The project utilises citizen science for real time auditing of the built environment by residents and users; smart t ....Determining the social value of extreme, mixed-use urban developments. Using an Adelaide case study, UCity, this project will investigate the social benefit of building mixed-use vertical communities in the Australian urban context. Using an innovative Social Value Framework, the project will establish and demonstrate the multi-dimensional impacts of such developments in practice. The project utilises citizen science for real time auditing of the built environment by residents and users; smart technologies for environmental and behavioural monitoring; and data analytics and design automation for spatial analysis of building use. The results will inform new models of sustainable high-rise, mixed-use buildings; providing evidence for a Social Value Framework to become a core consideration in Australian industry.Read moreRead less
Stuck here forever? The dynamics and social consequences of long-term private renting in Australia. A new Generation Rent is emerging in Australia. Already one in 12 Australian households, many families among them, find that private renting no longer leads to home ownership but is a long-term or permanent reality, exposing them to such risks as forced moves at short notice. Despite the group's large and growing size, little is known of its characteristics or the consequences for children and adu ....Stuck here forever? The dynamics and social consequences of long-term private renting in Australia. A new Generation Rent is emerging in Australia. Already one in 12 Australian households, many families among them, find that private renting no longer leads to home ownership but is a long-term or permanent reality, exposing them to such risks as forced moves at short notice. Despite the group's large and growing size, little is known of its characteristics or the consequences for children and adults. The project will probe why people become long-term renters, how far they are able to make a home and exercise some control over their circumstances and the ways in which long-term renting affects their wellbeing. Yielding new analytical insights into the long-term effects of housing insecurity, the study will also inform housing policy.Read moreRead less
Designing offices well. This project aims to describe, quantify and analyse the impact of workspace design on workers’ satisfaction, productivity and health. The Australian market is the fastest adopter of Activity-Based Working (ABW) in the world and impacts arising from this workspace typology on workers will be significant now and in the next decade. This project will develop benchmarking for ABW offices, techniques for monitoring cognitive performance in situ, and design guidelines for healt ....Designing offices well. This project aims to describe, quantify and analyse the impact of workspace design on workers’ satisfaction, productivity and health. The Australian market is the fastest adopter of Activity-Based Working (ABW) in the world and impacts arising from this workspace typology on workers will be significant now and in the next decade. This project will develop benchmarking for ABW offices, techniques for monitoring cognitive performance in situ, and design guidelines for health promotion. By shifting attention to design features that actually perform well, this project will provide the empirical basis needed to transform the way workspaces are designed now and in the future. It will therefore lead to greater productivity in and among workplaces.Read moreRead less
Solving the problem of speech distraction in open-plan offices. The project aims to better understand how irrelevant speech in open-plan offices affects the occupants’ cognitive performance and creates annoyance leading to a loss of productivity. Over 97% of Australian office workers are located in open-plan offices. Without internal walls, open-plan offices are designed to make people interact more frequently, therefore be more collaborative and productive. Yet there is a high level of dissatis ....Solving the problem of speech distraction in open-plan offices. The project aims to better understand how irrelevant speech in open-plan offices affects the occupants’ cognitive performance and creates annoyance leading to a loss of productivity. Over 97% of Australian office workers are located in open-plan offices. Without internal walls, open-plan offices are designed to make people interact more frequently, therefore be more collaborative and productive. Yet there is a high level of dissatisfaction with open-plan layout because of frequent distraction by background speech from co-workers, which has been shown to significantly decrease work performance and productivity. The intended outcomes of the project are the development of powerful new tools to measure, model and predict the degree of speech distraction at work, enabling the establishment of new international standards that will increase work performance and productivity.Read moreRead less
Designing healthy and efficient luminous environments in Green Buildings. This project aims to investigate the relationship between indoor lighting, visual comfort, and office workers’ wellbeing for green buildings in Australia. Around 50 per cent of workers in green commercial buildings in subtropical climates have reported visual discomfort from glass facades and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Visual discomfort could affect people’s performance. It could also increase energy consumption due to ....Designing healthy and efficient luminous environments in Green Buildings. This project aims to investigate the relationship between indoor lighting, visual comfort, and office workers’ wellbeing for green buildings in Australia. Around 50 per cent of workers in green commercial buildings in subtropical climates have reported visual discomfort from glass facades and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Visual discomfort could affect people’s performance. It could also increase energy consumption due to users’ interventions, causing a clear mismatch between design intent and final results. The project aims to relate the luminous environment to occupant responses and to use a novel tool for capturing physical and psychological properties of luminous environments through smart phones. The outcome should be a predictive model of visual comfort for better design of buildings.Read moreRead less
Swarming: micro-flight data capture and analysis in architectural design. The project seeks to generate new knowledge about the safe capture, management and application of big data in sustainable city design. In particular, it aims to investigate the use of micro air vehicles (drones) equipped with diverse lightweight sensing equipment to gather data including atmospheric measurements and building temperatures and reflectivity. This is designed to meet the need for more site-specific and vertica ....Swarming: micro-flight data capture and analysis in architectural design. The project seeks to generate new knowledge about the safe capture, management and application of big data in sustainable city design. In particular, it aims to investigate the use of micro air vehicles (drones) equipped with diverse lightweight sensing equipment to gather data including atmospheric measurements and building temperatures and reflectivity. This is designed to meet the need for more site-specific and vertical environmental information to inform the design of sustainable architecture. The project also aims to research a cloud-based computing framework that will be able to handle very large volumes of data collected over extended time periods and locations. The data would then be used to develop visualisations and design models to inform architecture, landscape and urban design.Read moreRead less
The sound of space: architecture for improved auditory performance in the age of digital manufacturing. This project will combine complex custom architectural surface design with acoustic modelling and simulation to look for novel solutions to the challenges of noisy interiors. It will apply digital modelling in new ways including the construction of high fidelity full scale prototypes for testing in an open office environment and a church.
Investigating social, built and physical environment factors for remote Indigenous communities, and their relationships with cardiometabolic outcomes. This study with 74 remote Indigenous communities will be the first to evaluate features of their social, built and physical environments in relation to cardiometabolic risks and diseases. Policy-relevant results will identify features of environments to be targeted to assist reducing chronic diseases for Indigenous peoples in remote communities.