This research examines how an architect might contribute to the social and public dimensions of contemporary Australian cities through small-scale, low-tech, object-based interventions. Employing a research-by-design methodology, original interventions that invigorate everyday, abandoned and overlooked city spaces are created and interrogated. The unlocking of behaviours and corresponding explosions of social activity reveal a latent public potential, suggesting an untapped spatial determinism. Intervention sites are conceptualised as ‘micropia’ which are anomalous yet beneficial ruptures in the urban fabric that emerge from an organic engagement with everyday life. These ‘micropia’ put into question ‘grand designs’ devised and imposed from the preserve of a detached professionalism.
Research by design, creative practice research, architecture, urbanism, public space, small-scale interventions
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