ARARAT - Ararat is providing the perfect canvas for a group of Master of Architecture students visiting the town as part of an urban design studio.
The group from the University of Technology in Sydney is midway through a two week study tour of Ararat as part of a studio on urban design.
Former Ararat resident Adam Haddow played an instrumental role in organising the visit, which has seen students visit Ararat Rural City Council and businesses to learn as much as they can about the town in a short time period.
Mr Haddow, a director of Sydney-based firm SJB Architects, teamed with Dr Naomi Stead, a senior lecturer at the University of Technology to organise the study tour.
"We wanted students to be able to look at a whole city and understand how a city can be impacted on from an architectural perspective,'' Mr Haddow said.
"Ararat was a nice size which they can get to understand within a two week period.''
The study tour provided an excellent opportunity for students to engage with the community and recognise how to ask the right questions of the community in such a short time.
Dr Stead said Ararat's layered history had challenged students to consider how the ongoing effects of the past impact on the present.
The students have found recurrent issues which trouble large cities also affect Ararat.
"Things like densification and public transport, they're huge issues in Sydney but are also quite big issues here,'' Dr Stead said.
"If you can try and solve or think them through on the scale of Ararat, you can also think New York and Bangkok.''
The first week of the students' tour involved gathering as much information as possible on Ararat and the attitudes of the public towards the town.
Mr Haddow said social, structural and physical perspectives had all been taken into consideration as students consulted as many people as they could in the given time frame.
This week students will look at developing new buildings and strategies to make better use of Ararat and its current infrastructure.
Time spent consulting with the community will play a huge part in deciding what sort of strategies the students propose.
"The things you consider as an outsider coming to town that desperately need to be conserved or desperately need to be changed are often not the things that the community think need to be changed or preserved, so a lot of it's about trying to understand that,'' Mr Haddow said.
Masters students George Massoud, Harriet Weir and Andrew Kulasingham said the opportunity to study Ararat was a chance to put theory into practice.
"In comparison to most of our previous design sessions, this is a really pragmatic task which I think is why most of us are here,'' Mr Massoud said.
In their first week of studying Ararat, the students made the most of their time to meet with council, larger companies in the town and chatting with residents.
"It's been a chance to see which facilities are existing and proposing new facilities and how we can make them work better for the community as a whole,'' Ms Weir said.
Mr Massoud said he was excited to see how enthusiastic the community of Ararat had been towards the students' visit.
"Most rural towns don't want to change a lot, but a lot of the community here sees that as potential for this town to develop something really good,'' Mr Massoud said.
The scale of Ararat had surprised the students, with buildings considered large given the town's population.
The preservation of landmark buildings around the town also caught the student architects' attention.
"Especially for such a small town, the buildings have been maintained quite well, such as Pyrenees House and J Ward,'' Mr Kulasingham said.
The students will get down to business this week, developing strategies to propose to the public at a final meeting on Saturday at Pyrenees House, before returning to Sydney and continuing their urban design studio.
Mr Haddow said he hoped the results of the students' studio would be displayed through an end-of-year exhibition in Ararat.
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