Impactful original research
The architecture, engineering and construction sector is often cited as a global player in driving economic growth. At the School of Architecture and Built Environment, we aim to develop a robust and agile ecosystem for our sector and its related industries.
Our researchers explore the role of architects and built environment professionals in shaping the future at a time when digital technology and innovations are disrupting the ways we think, live, work and do business. We also look at ways of adapting the sector’s methods of approaching problems, to make an impactful contribution to a socially, economically, and environmentally viable future.
Our design framework
Embracing industry-driven, practice-based, and applied research, we have developed a transformative research framework – the Integral Design Framework (IDF) – to identify where we can effectively create impact.
The four areas of impact for the architecture, engineering and construction sector that we have identified for improvement through our research include the following.
Products and processes: analysing and improving performance (e.g. around products such as buildings).
People and end-users: improving user experiences through new interactions between people, information, buildings, spaces, and technology.
Society and culture: developing new policies and practices to improve how society and culture operate.
Economy and ecology: developing new services and business models that work within current economic and ecological contexts.
Our researchers also explore the interdependencies across these four areas, with our knowledge and research output often living at the intersection of these ideas.
Research laboratories
Live+Smart Research Lab
The Live+Smart Research Lab is a multidisciplinary research hub that focuses on applied research for a rapidly urbanised world. The vision of the lab is to investigate real problems around rapid urbanisation and the decline of rural areas, which is seen as one of society’s biggest issues of the 21st century.
MinD Lab
The MinD (Mediated Intelligence in Design) Lab is a practice-based and trans-disciplinary research group based in the School of Architecture and Built Environment. The Lab explores how design and technology can innovate for an agile, adaptive, responsive, and intelligent ecosystem.
Through close partnerships with industry and research networks, including the Resilient Urban Ecosystem (RUE) network and the European Institute of Design, MinD Lab researchers explore new models of imagining, creating and operating for a socially inclusive, and economically and environmentally viable built environment
Associated research bodies
HOME
HOME is a research centre with a single core aim of a home for all. Bringing together experts from architecture and urban planning, the humanities and social sciences, and health and social development, HOME seeks to address the causes and outcomes of social polarisation in the built environment.
#VacantGeelong
#VacantGeelong is a creative exploration of Geelong’s industrial identity with a focus on redefining Geelong as a 21st century city. Research explores questions of how industrial buildings can contribute to a city like Geelong, and the value of industrial architecture once its original function is removed.
Our current projects
Building Ampara, Sri Lanka
Exploring how the process of design and constructing community buildings can be used to improve community development in rural contexts.
Charting pre-design sustainability indicators
Recognising that construction projects may impose a detrimental impact on the environment, both socially and economically.
Heal the scar
Finding long-term ecological and sustainable rehabilitation options for closed or exhausted quarry and mine sites.
Simulation environments for integral sustainable design and construction
Developing prototype software where quantitative sustainable performance feedback can be balanced against qualitative, experiential and cultural evaluation.
Explore simulation environments for integral sustainable design and construction
Strategic assessment of potentials for university campus sustainability
Investigating the futures of university campuses as inseparable components of the society, economy, and environment in their local cities or towns.
Explore the Strategic Assessment of Potentials for University Campus Sustainability project
Accessible & Inclusive Geelong feasibility study
Envisioning a city designed so that it can be accessed, understood and used to the greatest extent possible by all people regardless of their age, size, ability or disability.
Contact us
Associate Head of School, Research
Associate Professor Richard Tucker
+61 3 5227 8308
Email Assoc. Prof. Tucker