At the end of last year, on 6 - 19 December, the Emerging City - Visions for Parramatta exhibition was held.

Coordinated by Marc Aurel Schnabel, the exhibition showcased architecture’s next generation of designers, exploring novel techniques to expand the horizons of human habitation.

Graduate students of the Faculty presented us with an architectural vision for Parramatta – the emerging city within the Greater Sydney Area. Exploring digital possibilities in architectural form, media and philosophy, they present a fresh and young city that allows life, culture, work and community to find a confident identity beyond its borders.

The above image is a proposal for Parramatta Cultural Centre (from education to exhibition), by Andrew Davis: 'the design was also a social statement about sustainability and the importance of longevity of life in what we build today through flexibility and adopting change. Views light, social interaction, flexibility and ambiguity of program are key factors'.

Here, in a proposal called 'Digitalics', Theodora Bowering examines a dialogue between the digital and the analogue.

Paul De Sailly's 'New Urbanism' attempts to instigate a new urbanism for the city of Parramatta that will incorporate a level of infrastructure to accommodate an increasingly urban population. It attempts to break down the hierarchy between city, building and people, and facilitate a future emergence of architecture designed at a personal scale.

Trivet Fields, by:
- Alex Jung (Architectural Design)
- Dagmar Reinhardt (Architectural Design)
- Joanne Jakovich (Digital Media)
- Phil Grainger (Manager, Architectural & Technical Services Centre)

It is a a flexible installation constructed from interlocking modules that host a field of sensors and audio-illuminate displays, acting on a sensate memory system that builds on the interactions from visitors over time.

It is a purpose-created sculpture epitomising the veloCITY exhibition, a collaboration between architecture, the allied arts program and digital media program, supported by Phil Grainger's precision laser cutting in the workshop!

The disks are cut from a 2D suface (Perspex sheeting) and bent with individual curvatures. The signature form becomes a 3D module, interlocking into a spatial installation, equipped with computational electronics.

Hence the organism is an interactive adaptive perspex sensory machine (the englightened chandelier) in which memory is registered into a program, and replayed through an LED display: the traces of people who pass through are experienced by others over time.

[Art specs: lasercut, individually formed 3mm perspex discs with 38cm diameter, 110 specimen, black/clear wiring, LEDs. sensors, computer-programming.]

(This entry is a part of our series on the veloCITY graduate design exhibition).

At the end of last year, we launched the VELOcity graduate design exhibition.

The works spanned all disciplines, from audio design, architecture, digital media, illumination, sustainability, urban design, design computing, to urban and regional planning. It encapsulated the newest ideas in art and technology in the graduate design programs at the University of Sydney.

In the next few entries, we'll be looking at works featured in the exhibition.

veloCITY was exhibited at the Tin Sheds Gallery 148 City Road, Chippendale. Oct 12 - Nov 4, 2006. It was curated by Joanne Jakovich, Kirsty Beilharz, Anita Lever and Warren Julian.