Project Toria: Five Living Systems from a Near Future looks ahead to the future of Victoria not through grand ideology or technocratic promise, but through five ordinary systems—landscape, city, fashion, extraction and food—that quietly shape everyday life in the state.
About This Book
How do designers learn to look forward when ecological crisis, accelerating technology and fading certainties make the future harder than ever to picture? Project Toria answers by starting with what is already here. Drawn from three years of studio research at the Architectural Association Visiting School at the University of Melbourne, the book follows the hidden networks connecting one of Australia's fastest-growing regions to the wider world: the wind conditions of Melbourne's CBD, the carefully managed wilderness of the Yarra Ranges, the open-cut mines of the Latrobe Valley, and the coastal towns of Ghana where discarded textiles pile up. Through data, design, speculative fiction and firsthand inquiry, it makes the case for a projective design practice grounded in the ordinary—one that traces overlooked links between systems, human and non-human actors, and the places we live, and asks how they might be reimagined.
Key Features
- Five thematic sections—landscape, city, fashion, extraction and food—each framed by a guiding question
- Research developed at the Architectural Association Visiting School at the University of Melbourne between 2022 and 2024
- Richly illustrated with data mapping, models, botanical studies and documentary photography
- Contributions from Leire Asensio Villoria, Miriam Borcherdt, Allison Crank, Lucinda Dryden, Bethany Edgoose, Arnaud Grignard, David S.C. Mah, Lucy Moroney, Christopher Pierce, Mond Qu, Rob Smith, Nicoletta Stecca and Nathan Su
What You'll Discover
- How the landscapes of the Yarra Ranges are mythologised as nature even as they are engineered
- What urban data reveals about movement and density in Melbourne's city centre
- The far-reaching cycles of clothing and textiles, and what they say about identity, consumption and waste
- The hidden costs of the energy that powers the state, read through the Latrobe Valley
- Imagined futures for Victorian food culture, and what growing, gathering and wasting food reveals about us
About the Author
The book is edited by Dr Leire Asensio Villoria, Dr David S.C. Mah and Mond Qu, who bring together the work of a wide group of designers, researchers and writers developed through three years of the Architectural Association Visiting School in Melbourne.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Dimensions: 190 × 250 mm
- Pages: 120
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781922601476
- Publisher: Uro Publications
Perfect For: Architects, urban designers and landscape architects; students and educators in design studios; and anyone interested in speculative design, climate and the future of Victoria.