All that is public melts into air

Brief

Taking its title from Marx and Engels, this studio examined the diminishing role of public housing in Victoria through design research centred on the Atherton Gardens Estate in Fitzroy — Melbourne's oldest suburb and a site of ongoing displacement and gentrification. Nine students worked with First Nations cultural advisors and community organisations to contest government 'renewal' models under Victoria's Housing Statement 2024–34, exploring how surrounding public infrastructure might support community needs and resist neo-colonial power structures. Projects ranged from adaptive reuse and cultural pavilions to investigations of temporal inhabitation and intergenerational place-making. Building on the 2024 investigation of the Atherton Gardens Estate, this expanded studio critically examined the Victorian government's plan to demolish all 44 public housing towers under the Big Housing Build. Fifteen students worked across sites in Fitzroy and Prahran with First Nations cultural advisors, integrating climate resilience, Indigenous knowledge systems, alternative housing models, and intergenerational space-making. The studio positions design research as a form of policy advocacy — contesting the erasure of public housing and the displacement of communities who have called these estates home for decades.