The Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning (ABP) is the leading regional educational institution addressing the design and realisation of inhabited environments. The Faculty prepares students to engage with the future as leaders through educational programs focusing on the planning, design and construction of centres of habitation. ABP maintains excellent and extensive relationships with members of the built environment professions, government, professional associations and the wider community, and actively seeks to extend the linkages between education, research and practice in the built environment.

The Faculty has 150 permanent staff and approximately 1,900 students (one third of which are international). Students currently undertake courses across a range of professional disciplines including Architecture and Urban Design, Landscape Architecture, Property, Construction and Urban Planning.

The Faculty fosters an active and collegial research environment that brings together staff and students to exchange knowledge and engage in debates on key topics. Current research centres on several key themes, including sustainable built environments; urban futures, with particular focus on housing, transport and communities; design, technologies, management and practice; and built environment history, heritage, theory and social critique in the Asia-Pacific region.

As a result of the implementation of the Melbourne Model the Faculty is currently undergoing a period of significant change. New incoming undergraduate students enter into the Bachelor of Environments (BEnv), a cross-faculty degree into which the Faculty teaches whilst teaching out the current undergraduate degrees. This undergraduate entry program offers majors in eleven pathways, including the five relevant to the Melbourne School of Design. Members of ABP teach into the BEnv programs and lead curriculum development in these five pathways. More information about the faculty can be found at: www.abp.unimelb.edu.au

As part of a renewed focus on postgraduate studies, the Faculty launched its graduate school, The Melbourne School of Design (MSD), in 2008. The MSD is the first graduate school in the Asia-Pacific region devoted to design professions responsible for habitable environments. It is distinctive from its competitors in its aim to inspire discovery enhanced by interdisciplinary reflection, and its integration of research, teaching, and practice around the environmental demands of all forms of urbanisation.

The Melbourne School of Design is a dynamic, collaborative and interdisciplinary community of students, academics and professionals with a mission to develop leading practitioners and scholars. Engaging the most advanced studio and seminar-based teaching and research, MSD students will develop new methods and perspectives, critical reflection and modes of action to address the environmental, social and aesthetic challenges in producing sustainable centres of habitation, locally and internationally. More information about the Melbourne School of Design can be found at: http://www.abp.unimelb.edu.au/graduate-school/

The Faculty currently occupies the Architecture and Old Commerce Buildings near the north-eastern corner of the Parkville campus. The buildings are reaching the end of their serviceable life, and are no longer adequately meeting the needs of the faculty as it delivers programs into the Melbourne School of Design. The nearby Baldwin Spencer Building is currently being redeveloped into a student centre that will provide administrative service to students in both the Bachelor of Environments and Melbourne School of Design programs. (see map below).

In 2008, the University approved funding for the construction of a new building for the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning in order to provide appropriate high-quality spaces for teaching and learning for staff and students within the Melbourne School of Design and spaces in support of undergraduate teaching in relevant pathways.

The environment created for the Melbourne School of Design and the teaching of Bachelor of Environments design programs will be student-centric, facilitative of a strong studio culture, equipped with the most appropriate technology and equipment and nurturing of strong staff-student relationships. At the same time it will continue to provide facilities to nurture the research on which the Faculty’s reputation rests. Above all, it will be designed for change as the faculty continues to develop its research and teaching programs to retain its position of leadership in the Asia-Pacific region.

The process for appointing the architects to work with the University and the Faculty to design the new building will be an international competition. The University has elected to undertake a competition because this is deemed to be a significant new project for the Parkville campus, with a well informed and demanding user group and the potential to create a distinctive and highly innovative building that will set a new standard for campus facilities in the region.

Detail of Parkville Campus map showing Baldwin Spencer (113)
Old Commerce (132) and Architecture (133) Buildings indicating
approximate site boundary (red dashed line). Campus maps can
be found at http://www.unimelb.edu.au/campuses/maps.html