Dezeen School Shows: an art studio focusing on the needs and interests of teenage girls is among the student projects from the University of Melbourne.

Also featured is a wastewater treatment plant that features a birdwatching pavilion, and a bathhouse made from the phragmites australis reed.

University of Melbourne

Institution: University of Melbourne
School: Melbourne School of Design
Courses: Master of Architecture, Master of Landscape Architecture
Tutors: Jane Caught, Emilio Fuscaldo, Rory Hyde, Nancy Ji and Jillian Walliss

School statement:

"The Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning (ABP), incorporating the Melbourne School of Design, is a globally engaged, multidisciplinary faculty where students, researchers and industry partners unite to shape the built environments of tomorrow.

"As part of Australia's leading research institution in the world's most liveable city, we have been shaping the built environment fields since 1919. Today, we uphold that pioneering spirit by continually evolving our curriculum and facilities to address emerging challenges.

"We offer comprehensive education and research programme across architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, construction management, property, urban and cultural heritage, and urban design.

"Our programmes equip graduates with the confidence and technical expertise to tackle complex challenges at every scale – from climate-responsive buildings to sustainable city planning.

"Our collaborative, future-focused learning experience emphasises a multidisciplinary, studio-based approach. Students from diverse backgrounds explore how the built environment fields intersect, gaining a holistic understanding that mirrors professional practice.

"Inspired by passionate researchers and industry leaders, we offer opportunities for local and global engagement, provide cutting-edge facilities like robotics labs and maker spaces, and deliver world-renowned research that drives positive change."

Suburban Dormitory by Charlie Eastwood

"This thesis challenges the persistence of the nuclear family home as the default model for suburban life, arguing that meaningful densification in Melbourne requires more than the miniaturisation of this outdated form – it demands a rethinking of domestic life itself.

"Rather than replacing what exists, the project proposes working within it, envisioning a future that accommodates existing family attachments while introducing new, collective ways of living.

"The approach positions ambiguity as an essential architectural quality, one capable of navigating the tensions and contradictions between what suburban life currently is and what it might become."

Student: Charlie Eastwood
Course: Master of Architecture
Tutor: Rory Hyde
Email: charlie.eastwood[at]outlook.com.au

Arcadia: Three Houses for Port Arthur by Je Yen Tan

"A poetic meditation on Port Arthur's haunted beauty, Arcadia explores themes of trauma, memory and healing through speculative architecture.

"Set on the former boys' prison site at Point Puer, three ritualised dwellings: the House of the Preserver, the House of the Visitors and the House of the Arborist, embody a narrative of dwelling, reflection and cyclical renewal.

"Through drawings, texts, and imagined rituals, the work interrogates conflicting values of heritage, authority and ecology, offering a non-linear, multi-cursal expression of place.

"Arcadia proposes architecture as a vessel for empathy and critical thought, where meaning arises not from solutions, but from the tension between its inherent contradictions."

Student: Je Yen Tan
Course: Master of Architecture
Tutor: Rory Hyde
Email: jeyentan4[at]gmail.com

Mist, Rain and Bodies: Deep Sectional Remediation through the Deployment of Treated Wastewater by Jessica Lin Hall

"This thesis interrogates the distinction between "performativity" and "performance" of regenerative design through the proposal of a Deep Sectional Remediation Centre realised through two key forms: a wastewater treatment plant and a semi-enclosed, dual-purpose pavilion that transforms from a birdwatching tower by day to a theatre by night.

"Toxic-tensions are used directly to communicate our engagement with the climate crisis, for an in-depth regeneration of the site, and a metaphoric regeneration of the psyche.

"Traditionally low lying and sprawled, the wastewater treatment plant is instead vertically expressed and sandwiched between existing data centres and commercial warehouses to tap into their waste streams as material resource.

"Whilst the bird watching programme facilitates a transspecies relationship based on intentional observation and care, allowing tangible space to function as a mediating device between human and more-than-human users.

"The project attempts to redefine our relationship with water, not as a pure, natural resource, but rather in its most undesired black and grey waste forms through the processes of collection, treatment and deployment.

"Digging deep into the undesirables of biosolids and industrial pollutants at atmospheric, surface and subterranean levels.

"As treated water is released into the immediate environment, toxicants generated by local industrial activity are captured in the atmosphere through collision with atomised water particles, returned to the surface and absorbed deep into the terrain where it is filtered, recharged and eventually discharged back into the Birrarung River.

"The functionalities of fogging by day become a sensorial gesture at night, where the mist becomes part of the theatrical experience, supporting the ritual of storytelling.

"In this way, the aesthetic values of the sublime are architecturally explored, using the medium of water to paint a dystopian landscape that appeals to our emotions."

Student: Jessica Lin Hall
Course: Master of Architecture
Tutor: Jane Caught
Email: jessicalinhall[at]gmail.com

Reed Commons by Nicholas McDonald

"This project envisions architecture as a living, breathing system – an active participant in the slow healing of landscapes marked by extraction, loss and decades of anthropogenic systems of control.

"Rooted in Westgate Park, it asks: can material reform become a quiet resistance, a way to restore care and reciprocity where industry has severed connection?

"At the heart of this vision stands phragmites australis, the common reed. Neither passive material nor ornament, it becomes a mediator and catalyst for cleansing water and soil, weaving cycles of renewal, time and seasonality through place.

"Four interdependent spaces grow from this reed: a forum, bathhouse, sauna and reed farm, each distinct yet deeply intertwined. The forum, as a space for creative ecologies to emerge, gathers people into dialogue, adapting to the shifting needs of locality and seasons, as well as the uncertainty of the future climate.

"The bathhouse and sauna turn what are often private rituals, like bathing, into acts of reciprocity – water is drawn, shared and then returned enriched to nourish the wetland and freshwater lake.

"The floating reed farm cultivates and renews, purifying water while offering shelter to birds, insects, and unseen life below the surface.

"Together, these architectures do not seek permanence or perfection. They embrace decay and transformation as essential, recording the passage of salt air and rain, the slow silvering of timber, the soft return of reed to earth.

"In centring this humble plant, Reed Commons gestures toward a different kind of architecture – one that listens, adapts and participates in the unfolding story of place.

"From extraction to reciprocity, from dominance to care, it offers a quiet invitation: to build as though the land itself were kin."

Student: Nicholas McDonald
Course: Master of Architecture
Tutor: Jane Caught
Email: nicholasmcdonaldarchitecture[at]gmail.com

Youth Art Club by Tahli Hogberg

"Youth Art Club is a public art studio for teenagers, focusing on the needs and interests of teenage girls who feel excluded from existing public spaces, such as skate parks and sports fields, dominated by boys.

"It offers an arts-based alternative to the existing sports infrastructure available to teens in the suburbs.

"The project repurposes a vacant block of corner shops in Deer Park, Melbourne, into a public space for teenagers to gather, claim ownership and make a mess.

"Functional art studios are supported by informal hangouts, where art lessons occur alongside loitering, dreaming and play."

Student: Tahli Hogberg
Course: Master of Architecture
Tutor: Emilio Fuscaldo
Email: tahliliana[at]gmail.com

Edge of the World by Ysobelle Lane

"This thesis project realises a bold new vision for Tasmania's north-west, calling for its designation as a National Park and World Heritage Wilderness area, co-managed with the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania.

"This shift prioritises authentic community consultation and Aboriginal land rights, steering away from extractive tourism toward sustainable, eco-cultural experiences.

"Anchored by the Tarkine, key sites like Corinna and Dismal Swamp would be revitalised under this model.

"The proposed North West Coast Track would invite visitors into a deeper engagement with the landscape's layered history – colonisation, conflict and conservation – transforming tourism into a meaningful journey of reflection, education, and environmental stewardship."

Student: Ysobelle Lane
Course: Master of Landscape Architecture
Tutor: Jillian Walliss
Email: ysobelle.lane[at]gmail.com

Kamijima Salvage, Repair, Archive by Jasmine Lam

"Situated in the soon-to-be vacant Ikina Elementary School, the project proposes a salvage, repair and exchange centre where residents disassemble vacant homes before upcycling them for new renovations.

"The centre acts as a social hub, hosting DIY skills workshops, strengthening social networks through collective labour, at the same time facilitating housing provision in Kamijima.

"A response to Kamijima's lack of road access to the mainland and subsequent difficulties in procuring and disposing of waste, the project takes a rigorous approach to material re-use.

"The principles of collage guided the design process, "cutting" and "pasting" existing and new parts to synthesise a hybrid whole that embodies the mosaic of Kamijima's built environment.

"The project does not aim to create a perfect building, rather upcycle and reinvigorate existing spaces without erasing its original character."

Student: Jasmine Lam
Course: Master of Architecture
Tutor: Nancy Ji
Email: lamjy[at]student.unimelb.edu.au

Partnership content

This school show is a partnership between Dezeen and the University of Melbourne. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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