REALMstudios operates through a design lens
REALMstudios are master planners, urban designers and landscape architects with studios in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Hobart and Brisbane.
We operate through a design lens; from the strategic and advisory through to detailed documentation for external works.
At a project level our focus is on the multidisciplinary field of “City Making & Liveability” where we are guided by our core values that entwine Urban Ecology with Community and Place – making better places to live in, into the future.
At a practice level we value equality, collaboration, participation, diligence and leadership. Weekly cross-studio project reviews with input from all staff define our practice culture and enhance project outcomes.
readings, research and realisation
We deliver this through a framework based on; Readings, Research and Realisation, where projects involve explorative readings of place, infusing research from a broader platform of knowledge (including indigenous), then synthesis through the creative act of design.
Our projects in turn reflect our sets of skills, focus, framework and values and our clients appreciate the creative process and outcomes generated.
We are clear about our focus, values, framework and process:
Readings: Rather than a limited narrative of “tabula rasa,” or the convenience of “empty” sites, we begin with the understanding that the land provides its own foundations of meaning and operational logics. Being on Country, as well as understanding its ecological systems, form the bases of our in-depth investigations. From these insights, we develop comprehensive readings: cultural heritage, environmental factors, movement patterns, social phenomena, economic developments and emerging futures. These readings establish a platform for directed research and considered responses.
Research: We discover the key intentions and express the core meanings within our projects using analytical, narrative and curatorial processes. The research agenda for our work and its evolution includes practice and case-study based investigations
supported by collaborations with leading consultants, critical thinkers and diverse practitioners including Aboriginal advisors, ecologists, hydrologists, economists, urbanists, architects and engineers. We maintain working relationships with many universities and the Monash CRC for Water Sensitive Cities. Each dialogue contributes to integrated and evocative design responses.
Realisation: REALMstudios and our collaborators generate innovative strategies and project responses that celebrate Country, stewardship and cultural heritage; define a site’s performance potentials in response to changing conditions; and establish its future conditions and long-term character. We offer visionary direction to ambitious design challenges, measured by the craft and care of delivering highly refined social infrastructure and civic spaces, using a diverse range of digital, analogue and communicative tools to create clear and compelling narratives of place, people and purpose.
city making + liveability
We know that more than half of the world’s populations now live in cities. With this shift into urbanisation, new and unprecedented place-based design opportunities emerge - with the potential to reshape the way that communities travel, work and live and the way that resources are consumed and managed. In the absence of a systems based design response our cities and urban places become increasingly and unsustainably separated from the natural and built systems that support and maintain life.
Living together in ever-closer proximity and in increasingly urbanised contexts drives the need for sustainable and responsive communities and a reduced footprint that yields more at every level. These cities, these communities, require careful planning and design if they are to thrive as places of wellbeing.
Our cities and corresponding landscapes raise questions about: transport and connectivity, as well as access to services and open space; the natural environment and sustainability, both within and outside of the city; resource and waste use, recovery and reuse; community, its history and cultural identity. These have become the primary drivers of our consideration, our innovation and the principles of our design.
