Urban Architecture Laboratory

Urban Architecture postgraduate program

Staff and visiting professors and critics

Architecture gallery: Urban Architecture Projects

About the Urban Architecture Laboratory

The Urban Architecture Laboratory is devoted to a direct engagement with contemporary urbanism. UAL research involves an ongoing inquiry into the diversity of forces that shape the contemporary metropolis with a particular emphasis on Melbourne as a case study.

The Urban Architecture Laboratory undertakes grant funded research, urban design consultancy, publications, conferences, and exhibitions. A full time cohort of UAL Master of Architecture by Research (by project) postgraduate students are supervised in a studio context. A range of urban design and history theory courses are offered each semester in the UAL stream within the three year undergraduate Bachelor of Architectural Design and the two year postgraduate Master of Architecture (Professional Coursework) degrees.

Recent UAL research projects have investigated babyboomer retirement housing, high density housing, densification of suburban municipalities in the context of the 2030 Melbourne development plan, socially sustainable urban planning for rural towns in the Mallee region, coastal sea change development pressure on beach towns, revised context character guidelines for historic inner city Melbourne fabric, and analysis of urban infrastructural ecosystems in Melbourne and Tokyo.

Shane Murray and Nigel Bertram of the UAL curated the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2006, resituating exemplary recent Australian architectural built projects in relation to their urban and suburban contexts and conditions.

Architecture Home