House Precinct Territory: Design Strategies for the Productive City

The book departs from a reflection on contemporary issues of environmental and social sustainability.

With buildings and cities being one of the primary accelerators of climate change, the tightening of urban environments is one of the mechanisms by which architects and urban planners can affect change. To date, models of urban densification and compact cities have been focused on sites of urban consumption—residential, commercial, civic and social spaces. Little thought has been given to the vast productive hinterlands around the world that support cities, through the growing of food, generation of power, production of goods and disposal of waste.

Working through three scales of analysis, across three cities in the Asia Pacific Region, and deploying varying design research techniques ranging from critical observation to speculative scenario modeling, the book presents a series of projects that seek to retro-fit an existing urban environment with a productive program.

The purpose of this project is to describe a series of models for the folding of production into our cities, with ambition of consolidating all components of human inhabitation within a smaller overall physical and environmental footprint. 

Dr. Rafael Luna is the co-founder of the architecture firm PRAUD and Senior Lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney. He received a Master of Architecture from MIT (2010), and his Ph.D. from L’Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio, Switzerland (2022).

Dongwoo Yim is the co-founder of the architecture firm PRAUD and Assistant Professor in Architecture and Urban Design at Hongik University. He received a Master of Architecture and Urban Design from Harvard University, and his undergraduate studies from Seoul National University.

Dr. John Doyle is a senior lecturer in the School of Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT University. He is the director of the Master of Architecture program, and a Visiting Professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. He is a practicing architect and partner at Common.

Dr. Graham Crist is an associate professor of Architecture at RMIT. He is a founding director of Melbourne based practice Antarctica Architects. Graham is currently the program manager and head of the Master of Urban Design.

Dr. Silvia Micheli (BArch Politecnico di Milano; PhD, IUAV, Venice) researches and teaches contemporary design and history of architecture at the University of Queensland, where she is senior lecturer. Silvia's design research focuses on the productive city and how small-scale projects can enhance livability and resilience in our communities.