Nicole Gardner | The University of New South Wales (original) (raw)

Videos by Nicole Gardner

The Japanese architect Shoei Yoh is an internationally recognised figure of late 20th century arc... more The Japanese architect Shoei Yoh is an internationally recognised figure of late 20th century architecture and a pioneer of digital design. In 2019 Yoh deposited his architectural office archive including drawings, digital model files, photographs, project notes, architectural magazines, and physical models with the Faculty of Design at Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan. Since then, a research team from Kyushu University and the University of New South Wales, Sydney have collaborated to digitise archival assets, 3D scan living buildings, and design and populate a new and immersive online Shoei Yoh Archive.

This exhibition celebrated the launch of the online Shoei Yoh Archive. It traced a trajectory of Yoh's experimental design practice across 5 buildings completed between 1979 to 1994 including the Kinoshita Clinic (1979), Music Atelier (1986), Oguni Bus Terminal (1986), Oguni Dome (1988) and the Naiju Community Centre (1994).

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Journal Article by Nicole Gardner

Frontiers in the Built Environment , 2022

The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry is negotiating a slow and fragment... more The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry is negotiating a slow and fragmented shift toward digital transformation (DT). To identify the drivers and barriers to DT in the AEC industry, this article draws on organizational learning theory. More specifically, it investigates learning dynamics related to digital technology knowledge and skills development in organizations in the architecture sector. Adopting an empirical approach, the research has collected data through a series of semi-structured interviews (n = 17) with employees from four large-scale architecture organizations in Sydney, Australia. The article conceptualizes the interviewees’ experiences of engaging with digital technology knowledge and skills in their workplace along a learning loop continuum and in relation to modes of single-, double-, and triple-loop learning. It finds that organizations are primarily fostering modes of single-loop learning and potentially missing opportunities to innovate. The research highlights the hybrid, extensible, and platform nature by which individuals “learn” digital technologies and computational systems in the architecture workplace and identifies opportunities for intervention. The research demonstrates the utility of organizational learning as a method to rethink approaches to DT in the AEC industry.

Journal of Construction Engineering and Management

International Journal of Architectural Computing

In the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, waste is oft framed as an econo... more In the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, waste is oft framed as an economic problem typically addressed in a building’s construction and demolition phase. Yet, architectural design decision-making can significantly determine construction waste outcomes. Following the logic of zero waste, this research addresses waste minimisation ‘at the source’. By resituating the problem of construction waste within the architectural design process, the research explores waste as a data and informational problem in a design system. Accordingly, this article outlines the creation of an integrated computational design decision support waste tool that employs a novel data structure combining HTML-scraped material data and historic building information modelling (BIM) data to generate waste evaluations in a browser-based 3D modelling platform. Designing an accessible construction waste tool for use by architects and designers aims to heighten awareness of the waste implication...

Feminist Review, 2019

As architecture intersects with computer science to engage with large-scale data sets and informa... more As architecture intersects with computer science to engage with large-scale data sets and informational systems, this demands new skills, competencies and commitments. Informed by the findings of an online survey, this article explores how, who and to what extent those in the profession of architecture are investing in technology knowledge and skills, and under what material conditions this occurs. Survey data collected from five large-scale architecture practices in Sydney, Australia finds that while technology-related skills are highly valued in the profession, more men than women are engaging with computationally intensive software and technology skills building remains a largely unstructured and often self-directed enterprise. Drawing on feminist technology studies and digital labour perspectives, it is argued that the drive to computationalise the profession of architecture rests heavily on discretionary, aspirational and invisible labour practices that disadvantage employees with lesser reserves of economic and social capital, and particularly women. This further contributes to revealing neo-liberalism’s influence on the concrete practices of the architecture workplace and highlights how the diminished structural role of employers breeds uneven opportunities and inequitable working conditions.

International Journal of Architectural Computing, 2019

Despite the relative accessibility of clay, its low cost and reputation as a robust and sustainab... more Despite the relative accessibility of clay, its low cost and reputation as a robust and sustainable building material, clay three-dimensional printing remains an under-utilized digital fabrication technique in the production of architectural artefacts. Given this, numerous research projects have sought to extend the viability of clay three-dimensional digital fabrication by streamlining and automating workflows through computational methods and robotic technologies in ways that afford agency to the digital and machinic processes over human bodily skill. Three-dimensional printed clay has also gained prominence as a resilient material well suited to the design and fabrication of artificial reef and habitatenhancing seawall structures for coastal marine environments depleted and disrupted by human activity, climate change and pollution. Still, these projects face similar challenges when three-dimensional printing complex forms from the highly plastic and somewhat unpredictable feed material of clay. In response, this article outlines a research project that seeks to improve the translation of complex geometries into physical clay artefacts through additive three dimensional printing processes by drawing on the notion of digital craft and giving focus to human–machine interaction as a collaborative practice. Through the case study of the 1:1 scale fabrication of a computationally generated bio-reef structure using clay as a feed material and a readily available Delta Potterbot XLS-2 ceramic printer, the research project documents how, by exploiting the human ability to intuitively handle clay and adapt, and the machine’s ability to work efficiently and with precision, humans and machines can fabricate together. With the urgent need to develop more sustainable building practices and materials, this research contributes valuable knowledge of hybrid fabrication processes towards extending the accessibility and viability of clay three-dimensional printing as a resilient material and fabrication system.

City, Culture and Society, 2018

The ‘smart city’ is an oft-cited techno-urban imaginary promoted by businesses and governments al... more The ‘smart city’ is an oft-cited techno-urban imaginary promoted by businesses and governments alike. It thinks big, and is chiefly imagined in terms of large-scale information communications systems that hinge on the collection of real-time and so-called ‘big data’. Less talked about are the human-scale implications and user experience of the smart city. Much of the current academic scholarship on smart cities offers synoptic and technical perspectives, leaving the users of smart systems curiously unaccounted for. While they purport to empower citizens, smart cities initiatives are rarely focused at the citizen-scale, nor do they necessarily attend to the ways initiatives can be user-led or co-designed. Drawing on the outcomes of a university studio, this article rethinks the smart city as a series of urban scales—metropolis, community, individual, and personal—and proposes an analytical model for classifying smart city initiatives in terms of engagement. Informed by the theory of proxemics, the model proposed analyses smart city initiatives in terms of the scope of their features and audience size; the actors accountable for their deployment and maintenance; their spatial reach; and the ability of design solutions to re-shape and adapt to different urban scenarios and precincts. We argue that the significance of this model lies in its potential to facilitate modes of thinking across and between scales in ways that can gauge the levels of involvement in the design of digitally mediated urban environments, and productively re-situate citizens as central to the design of smart city initiatives.

Books by Nicole Gardner

Computational Design: From Promise to Practice, 2019

INTERCHANGING brings together a collection of design projects and interdisciplinary perspectives ... more INTERCHANGING brings together a collection of design
projects and interdisciplinary perspectives on policy,
planning, design, and management issues that currently
– and are set to – shape and influence our expectations
and experiences of urban public transport environments.
With consideration of a range of social trends, but also
emerging responsive and sustainable technologies, the
essays and design projects presented here reimagine, in
various ways, a public transport Interchange of the Future
better suited to address the complexities and conditions
of 21st century urban digital life.

INFOSTRUCTURE presents the vision of interactive and responsive urban public transport environmen... more INFOSTRUCTURE presents the vision of interactive and responsive urban public transport environments where new forms of communication and information access are enabled through an overlay of urban digital media technologies. Featuring research and projects undertaken by master students in architecture at the University of Technology, Sydney and Bachelor students in design computing at the University of Sydney, the book explores the augmentation of existing public transport environments with urban digital media technologies, to set in motion a transformation from infrastructure to 'infostructure(s).' Precedent based research and technology investigations underpin the twenty featured student projects, that address a nexus of space, urban media, sensor, and mobile phone technology. The research presented in this book is a foundation for a series of future infostructure projects.

Editorial by Nicole Gardner

http://architecture.com.au/docs/default-source/act-notable-buildings/spring.pdf?sfvrsn=0

Papers by Nicole Gardner

Blucher Design Proceedings, Dec 1, 2019

Proceedings of the 27th Conference on Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA) [Volume 2], 2022

Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe (eCAADe) [Volume 2]

Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe (eCAADe) [Volume 2], 2022

Feminist Review, 2019

As architecture intersects with computer science to engage with large-scale data sets and informa... more As architecture intersects with computer science to engage with large-scale data sets and informational systems, this demands new skills, competencies and commitments. Informed by the findings of an online survey, this article explores how, who and to what extent those in the profession of architecture are investing in technology knowledge and skills, and under what material conditions this occurs. Survey data collected from five large-scale architecture practices in Sydney, Australia finds that while technology-related skills are highly valued in the profession, more men than women are engaging with computationally intensive software and technology skills building remains a largely unstructured and often self-directed enterprise. Drawing on feminist technology studies and digital labour perspectives, it is argued that the drive to computationalise the profession of architecture rests heavily on discretionary, aspirational and invisible labour practices that disadvantage employees w...

Japan Institute of Architects, 2019

Computational processes are fast becoming central to the production of work across numerous indus... more Computational processes are fast becoming central to the production of work across numerous industries in ways that are shifting workplace practices, as well as the relevance, identity, and value proposition of established professions. In the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry globally, the uptake of digital and computing technologies is ushering in significant changes to long-standing ways of designing, delivering, and constructing the built environment. While architecture has long been computerized, having enrolled computing for administrative tasks and computer-aided design (CAD) software for documentation and representation since the 1980s, it is now negotiating a significant intersection with computer science logic and methods. It is a timely moment then to revisit the work of Japanese architect Shoei Yoh who, from the late 1980s onwards, forged a less-instrumentalist and more collaborative relationship with emerging computing technology. The re-examination of this not-too-distant architectural past is argued here as an important way to advance a critical reconceptualization of architecture’s relationship to technology.

The Japanese architect Shoei Yoh is an internationally recognised figure of late 20th century arc... more The Japanese architect Shoei Yoh is an internationally recognised figure of late 20th century architecture and a pioneer of digital design. In 2019 Yoh deposited his architectural office archive including drawings, digital model files, photographs, project notes, architectural magazines, and physical models with the Faculty of Design at Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan. Since then, a research team from Kyushu University and the University of New South Wales, Sydney have collaborated to digitise archival assets, 3D scan living buildings, and design and populate a new and immersive online Shoei Yoh Archive.

This exhibition celebrated the launch of the online Shoei Yoh Archive. It traced a trajectory of Yoh's experimental design practice across 5 buildings completed between 1979 to 1994 including the Kinoshita Clinic (1979), Music Atelier (1986), Oguni Bus Terminal (1986), Oguni Dome (1988) and the Naiju Community Centre (1994).

1 views

Frontiers in the Built Environment , 2022

The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry is negotiating a slow and fragment... more The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry is negotiating a slow and fragmented shift toward digital transformation (DT). To identify the drivers and barriers to DT in the AEC industry, this article draws on organizational learning theory. More specifically, it investigates learning dynamics related to digital technology knowledge and skills development in organizations in the architecture sector. Adopting an empirical approach, the research has collected data through a series of semi-structured interviews (n = 17) with employees from four large-scale architecture organizations in Sydney, Australia. The article conceptualizes the interviewees’ experiences of engaging with digital technology knowledge and skills in their workplace along a learning loop continuum and in relation to modes of single-, double-, and triple-loop learning. It finds that organizations are primarily fostering modes of single-loop learning and potentially missing opportunities to innovate. The research highlights the hybrid, extensible, and platform nature by which individuals “learn” digital technologies and computational systems in the architecture workplace and identifies opportunities for intervention. The research demonstrates the utility of organizational learning as a method to rethink approaches to DT in the AEC industry.

Journal of Construction Engineering and Management

International Journal of Architectural Computing

In the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, waste is oft framed as an econo... more In the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, waste is oft framed as an economic problem typically addressed in a building’s construction and demolition phase. Yet, architectural design decision-making can significantly determine construction waste outcomes. Following the logic of zero waste, this research addresses waste minimisation ‘at the source’. By resituating the problem of construction waste within the architectural design process, the research explores waste as a data and informational problem in a design system. Accordingly, this article outlines the creation of an integrated computational design decision support waste tool that employs a novel data structure combining HTML-scraped material data and historic building information modelling (BIM) data to generate waste evaluations in a browser-based 3D modelling platform. Designing an accessible construction waste tool for use by architects and designers aims to heighten awareness of the waste implication...

Feminist Review, 2019

As architecture intersects with computer science to engage with large-scale data sets and informa... more As architecture intersects with computer science to engage with large-scale data sets and informational systems, this demands new skills, competencies and commitments. Informed by the findings of an online survey, this article explores how, who and to what extent those in the profession of architecture are investing in technology knowledge and skills, and under what material conditions this occurs. Survey data collected from five large-scale architecture practices in Sydney, Australia finds that while technology-related skills are highly valued in the profession, more men than women are engaging with computationally intensive software and technology skills building remains a largely unstructured and often self-directed enterprise. Drawing on feminist technology studies and digital labour perspectives, it is argued that the drive to computationalise the profession of architecture rests heavily on discretionary, aspirational and invisible labour practices that disadvantage employees with lesser reserves of economic and social capital, and particularly women. This further contributes to revealing neo-liberalism’s influence on the concrete practices of the architecture workplace and highlights how the diminished structural role of employers breeds uneven opportunities and inequitable working conditions.

International Journal of Architectural Computing, 2019

Despite the relative accessibility of clay, its low cost and reputation as a robust and sustainab... more Despite the relative accessibility of clay, its low cost and reputation as a robust and sustainable building material, clay three-dimensional printing remains an under-utilized digital fabrication technique in the production of architectural artefacts. Given this, numerous research projects have sought to extend the viability of clay three-dimensional digital fabrication by streamlining and automating workflows through computational methods and robotic technologies in ways that afford agency to the digital and machinic processes over human bodily skill. Three-dimensional printed clay has also gained prominence as a resilient material well suited to the design and fabrication of artificial reef and habitatenhancing seawall structures for coastal marine environments depleted and disrupted by human activity, climate change and pollution. Still, these projects face similar challenges when three-dimensional printing complex forms from the highly plastic and somewhat unpredictable feed material of clay. In response, this article outlines a research project that seeks to improve the translation of complex geometries into physical clay artefacts through additive three dimensional printing processes by drawing on the notion of digital craft and giving focus to human–machine interaction as a collaborative practice. Through the case study of the 1:1 scale fabrication of a computationally generated bio-reef structure using clay as a feed material and a readily available Delta Potterbot XLS-2 ceramic printer, the research project documents how, by exploiting the human ability to intuitively handle clay and adapt, and the machine’s ability to work efficiently and with precision, humans and machines can fabricate together. With the urgent need to develop more sustainable building practices and materials, this research contributes valuable knowledge of hybrid fabrication processes towards extending the accessibility and viability of clay three-dimensional printing as a resilient material and fabrication system.

City, Culture and Society, 2018

The ‘smart city’ is an oft-cited techno-urban imaginary promoted by businesses and governments al... more The ‘smart city’ is an oft-cited techno-urban imaginary promoted by businesses and governments alike. It thinks big, and is chiefly imagined in terms of large-scale information communications systems that hinge on the collection of real-time and so-called ‘big data’. Less talked about are the human-scale implications and user experience of the smart city. Much of the current academic scholarship on smart cities offers synoptic and technical perspectives, leaving the users of smart systems curiously unaccounted for. While they purport to empower citizens, smart cities initiatives are rarely focused at the citizen-scale, nor do they necessarily attend to the ways initiatives can be user-led or co-designed. Drawing on the outcomes of a university studio, this article rethinks the smart city as a series of urban scales—metropolis, community, individual, and personal—and proposes an analytical model for classifying smart city initiatives in terms of engagement. Informed by the theory of proxemics, the model proposed analyses smart city initiatives in terms of the scope of their features and audience size; the actors accountable for their deployment and maintenance; their spatial reach; and the ability of design solutions to re-shape and adapt to different urban scenarios and precincts. We argue that the significance of this model lies in its potential to facilitate modes of thinking across and between scales in ways that can gauge the levels of involvement in the design of digitally mediated urban environments, and productively re-situate citizens as central to the design of smart city initiatives.

Computational Design: From Promise to Practice, 2019

INTERCHANGING brings together a collection of design projects and interdisciplinary perspectives ... more INTERCHANGING brings together a collection of design
projects and interdisciplinary perspectives on policy,
planning, design, and management issues that currently
– and are set to – shape and influence our expectations
and experiences of urban public transport environments.
With consideration of a range of social trends, but also
emerging responsive and sustainable technologies, the
essays and design projects presented here reimagine, in
various ways, a public transport Interchange of the Future
better suited to address the complexities and conditions
of 21st century urban digital life.

INFOSTRUCTURE presents the vision of interactive and responsive urban public transport environmen... more INFOSTRUCTURE presents the vision of interactive and responsive urban public transport environments where new forms of communication and information access are enabled through an overlay of urban digital media technologies. Featuring research and projects undertaken by master students in architecture at the University of Technology, Sydney and Bachelor students in design computing at the University of Sydney, the book explores the augmentation of existing public transport environments with urban digital media technologies, to set in motion a transformation from infrastructure to 'infostructure(s).' Precedent based research and technology investigations underpin the twenty featured student projects, that address a nexus of space, urban media, sensor, and mobile phone technology. The research presented in this book is a foundation for a series of future infostructure projects.

http://architecture.com.au/docs/default-source/act-notable-buildings/spring.pdf?sfvrsn=0

Blucher Design Proceedings, Dec 1, 2019

Proceedings of the 27th Conference on Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA) [Volume 2], 2022

Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe (eCAADe) [Volume 2]

Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe (eCAADe) [Volume 2], 2022

Feminist Review, 2019

As architecture intersects with computer science to engage with large-scale data sets and informa... more As architecture intersects with computer science to engage with large-scale data sets and informational systems, this demands new skills, competencies and commitments. Informed by the findings of an online survey, this article explores how, who and to what extent those in the profession of architecture are investing in technology knowledge and skills, and under what material conditions this occurs. Survey data collected from five large-scale architecture practices in Sydney, Australia finds that while technology-related skills are highly valued in the profession, more men than women are engaging with computationally intensive software and technology skills building remains a largely unstructured and often self-directed enterprise. Drawing on feminist technology studies and digital labour perspectives, it is argued that the drive to computationalise the profession of architecture rests heavily on discretionary, aspirational and invisible labour practices that disadvantage employees w...

Japan Institute of Architects, 2019

Computational processes are fast becoming central to the production of work across numerous indus... more Computational processes are fast becoming central to the production of work across numerous industries in ways that are shifting workplace practices, as well as the relevance, identity, and value proposition of established professions. In the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry globally, the uptake of digital and computing technologies is ushering in significant changes to long-standing ways of designing, delivering, and constructing the built environment. While architecture has long been computerized, having enrolled computing for administrative tasks and computer-aided design (CAD) software for documentation and representation since the 1980s, it is now negotiating a significant intersection with computer science logic and methods. It is a timely moment then to revisit the work of Japanese architect Shoei Yoh who, from the late 1980s onwards, forged a less-instrumentalist and more collaborative relationship with emerging computing technology. The re-examination of this not-too-distant architectural past is argued here as an important way to advance a critical reconceptualization of architecture’s relationship to technology.

This paper outlines a research project that explores the participation in, and perception of, adv... more This paper outlines a research project that explores the participation in, and perception of, advanced technologies in architectural professional practice through a sociotechnical lens and presents empirical research findings from an online survey distributed to employees in five large-scale architectural practices in Sydney, Australia. This argues that while the computational design paradigm might be well accepted, understood, and documented in academic research contexts, the extent and ways that computational design thinking and methods are put-into-practice has to date been less explored. In engineering and construction, technology adoption studies since the mid 1990s have measured information technology (IT) use (Howard et al. 1998; Samuelson and Bjork 2013). In architecture, research has also focused on quantifying IT use (Cichocka 2017), as well as the examination of specific practices such as building information modelling (BIM) (Cardoso Llach 2017; Herr and Fischer 2017; Son...

Proceedings of the 39th International Conference on Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe (eCAADe)

Proceedings of the 24th Conference on Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA) [Volume 2]

The drive towards increasing productivity through collaborative ways of working has spurred a par... more The drive towards increasing productivity through collaborative ways of working has spurred a parallel trend in flexible and adaptable workplace environments. Mobile desks are one feasible solution to this but workplaces that adopt mobile desks risk creating spatial inefficiencies. These range from overcrowding or underutilization, to potential compliance issues in terms of fire egress requirements and health and safety regulations. While there is a need to understand mobile desking configurations there are currently no well-established ways to track the location and orientation of mobile desks within workplaces. Consequently, this paper describes a research project that adopts an action research methodology as an iterative and participatory framework to investigate and develop a unique method for capturing the location and orientation of freely moveable desks in an open workplace environment. This uses an ensemble of Bluetooth location beacons and computer vision techniques to prov...

CAADRIA proceedings

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) provide designers with new visual mediums through... more Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) provide designers with new visual mediums through which to communicate their designs. There is great potential for these mediums to positively augment current visual communication methods by improving remote collaboration. Enabling designers to interact with familiar computational tools through external virtual interfaces would allow them to both calibrate design parameters and visualise parametric outcomes from within the same immersive virtual environment. The current research outlines a workflow for parametric manipulation and mesh replication between immersive applications developed in the Unity game engine and McNeel's Grasshopper plugin. This paper serves as a foundation for future research into integrating design tools with external VR and AR applications in an effort of enhancing remote collaborative designs.

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) provide designers with new visual mediums through... more Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) provide designers with new visual mediums through which to communicate their designs. There is great potential for these mediums to positively augment current visual communication methods by improving remote collaboration. Enabling designers to interact with familiar computational tools through external virtual interfaces would allow them to both calibrate design parameters and visualise parametric outcomes from within the same immersive virtual environment. The current research outlines a workflow for parametric manipulation and mesh replication between immersive applications developed in the Unity game engine and McNeel’s Grasshopper plugin. This paper serves as a foundation for future research into integrating design tools with external VR and AR applications in an effort of enhancing remote collaborative designs.

Digital cultural heritage is new field that seeks to creatively disrupt and transform heritage pr... more Digital cultural heritage is new field that seeks to creatively disrupt and transform heritage practices using contemporary digital technologies. This symposium will explore the definitions, opportunities, and future directions of digital cultural heritage practices by drawing on architectural project examples in Japan and Australia. It brings together scholars who are engaging with a range of digital technologies to augment the accuracy, scope, sustainability, and interpretive possibilities of cultural heritage documentation and representation. This event celebrates the launch of the Revisiting Shoei Yoh Exhibition and the new online Shoei Yoh Archive.