Supertight: Models for Living and Making Culture in Dense Urban Environments

Supertight is an exploration of high-density urban life and reducing the footprint of cites through adaptations in design and behavior. 

Tightness is a positive urban quality, examined through the observations of designers, with a focus on the cities of Asia. The rapidly growing large cities of Asia are critical to understanding our future footprint. Asian cities provide insights into new ways of being densely urbanised. The by-product of this unprecedented metropolitan convergence will be the emergence of new urbanisms and new architectures, new models for living and making culture. 

The Supertight refers to the small, intense, robust and hyper-condensed spaces that emerge as a by-product of extreme levels of urban density. Tightness arises as consequence of density, but tightness itself is not density. Tightness is a series of social, economic and cultural practices that have developed in cities as a response to the rapid growth and consolidation of cities. While architectural models of density have been heavily explored, this project investigates the culture of tightness that has emerged in Asian cities over the past thirty years, and the role that designers play in the material and social behaviours of tightness. To be tight is to be small and constrained, but also to be open to the economies and social intimacy of being close. Ultimately this project aims to unpack and convey both the delight and difficulty that emerges through the close occupation of large cities. 

With Contributions of Yoshiharu Tsukamoto / Atelier Bow-wow Atelierco Rafael A Balboa with Yasemin Sahiner Sanuki Daisuke Drawing Architecture Studio Desiree Grunewald Sue Hajdu Tohru Horiguchi Alban Mannisi, Yazid Ninsalam, Charles Anderson Minsuk Cho / Mass Studies New Office Works Archie Pizzini Andrew Stiff Superimpose Taishin Shiozaki / Shiozaki Lab WOHA

Graham Crist is Associate Professor of Architecture at RMIT University in the School of Architecture and Urban Design. He is a founding director of Melbourne based practice Antarctica: Architects. Graham is currently director of RMIT’s Practice Based Research Symposium PhD program in Asia and directs international engagement and recruitment for the architecture discipline. He is formerly discipline head of the RMIT Master of Architecture program in Vietnam, and of the Master of Architecture program in Melbourne. He recently curated along with Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and John Doyle, the major exhibition Supertight in Melbourne, themed on hyper-density in Asia. His work has been published in, amongst other places, Architecture Australia, Architecture Review and Monument, and has been featured in major exhibitions including Melbourne Now and the Australian Venice Biennale show `Abundance’. His writing in academic environments and for professional journals Architecture Review Australia and Architecture Australia is focused on pressing issues facing cities and their design.

John Doyle is a permanent faculty member and Senior Lecturer in the Architecture and Urban Design Programs at RMIT University. He is a practising architect and a director of COMMON. He has taught at numerous schools in Australia and internationally. He is a visiting professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. He is Program Manager and Head of the Master of Architecture program at RMIT, and President of the Association of Architecture Schools of Australasia. He was the co-curator, along Graham Crist and Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, of the 2019 Supertight exhibition at the Design Hub in Melbourne, and contributor to the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, 2019 Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, 2019 The Shenzhen Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture and 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale.