Unlocking Physical Spaces
type: CreativeWork
description: 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.
abstract: 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.
author: Le Messurier, Richard Joseph
language: en
keywords: Research by design, creative practice research, architecture, urbanism, public space, small-scale interventions
date published: 2022
date modified: 2026-07-24T00:51:08Z
provider: University of Adelaide
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Adelaide

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/2440/136732