Card Practice is an architectural & urban design practice from Melbourne, Australia.
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info@cardpractice.com.au
Registered Architects in Victoria (ARBV 600280)
Nominated Architect in New South Wales, James Connor (NSWARB 12246)
We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of country throughout Australia and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture.
CARD PTY LTD
ⓒ 2023
Kebab Urbanism
Kebab Urbanism is a self-initiated research project looking at the importance of Kebab vans in activating underutilised urban areas & providing social mobility for migrant workers.
The ubiquitous kebab van has become part of the urban character of Melbourne over the past three decades. Long before the food-truck craze hit Melbourne, inner-city dwellers knew the kebab van: a food outlet of modest scale, temporary construction (most often existing within a van or trailer), and typically located within car washes or petrol stations at the intersections of busy arterial roads.
Almost by stealth, the kebab van filtered through suburban road networks and car-service businesses. Mainstream culture tolerates them because they occupy unattractive, undesired urban voids and provide alternatives to the corporate likes of McDonald’s. Despite the kebab van’s subculture status, the practices of “kebab urbanism” can teach policymakers and planners a lot about placemaking.
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Type: Research Project
Location: Melbourne, Victoria
Published: The Conversation, The University of Melbourne
Patterns of Footscray
‘Patterns of Footscray’ is an ongoing research and design project. It is an ethnographic
and visual exploration of the spaces, economies and cultures that constitute the urban environment of Footscray.
The research project
began in July of 2016, with the intense mapping of Footscray’s urbanism- applying an observational and analytical approach as a method of
understanding the different urban patterns of the suburb. A large portion of the project has been spent drawing and understanding the practice of
the ‘everyday’. Through applying this methodology, urban elements which often appear invisible to the walker-by are made apparent. It became clear that
the suburb’s architecture is a collection of hybrid typologies that are constantly being morphed and appropriated to suit evolving functions and uses. Bus shelters also act as temporary market stands, ethnic restauraunts co-exist as civic centres for different local communities, and sidewalks provide opportunities for informal economies to sprout spontaneously.
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Type: Research Project
Location: Footscray, Victoria
Published: The Conversation, Architects for Peace
Milk Bars & Melancholia
Milk Bars & Melancholia is a photographic essay that explores the decline of the suburban Milk Bar typology. With photos taken between 2015-2019, the photo essay documents over 200 inactive and active milk bars across Melbourne, Victoria.
The story of the Australian milk bar does not have a happy ending. The humble icon of australian suburbia has been in decline since the turn of the century. Few still operate today, forced out of business by corporations and decimated by the effects of neighbourhood gentrification.
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Type: Research Project
Location: Melbourne, Victoria
Published: The Guardian
Urban Infrastructure as a Generator
Urban infrastructure can range in scale, from the metropolitan to the human, from highways to bus-stops, dams to drinking fountains. These elements provide the overarching organisational structure that ensures our cities run smoothly.
Discussion of urban infrastructure often revolves around two categories – ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ infrastructure. ‘Hard infrastructure’ refers to the physical networks that are required to service large metropolitan areas, including sewerage, energy, transport, waste management and telecommunications systems. ‘Soft infrastructure’ refers to the less tangible networks of places, policies or strategies that are designed to support the economic, health, cultural and social needs of cities.
Too often, a purely hard approach results in urban infrastructure that fails to address the social and human dimensions of living in an urban environment. From the regulation-standard fire hydrants that litter our urban streetscape, to the anti-terrorism concrete bollards that fortify our public space, the design of urban infrastructure can often detract from the ideal urban experience.
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Type: Research Project
Published: Foreground