“Climate change is not a problem of insufficient information, but of unresolved complexity.”
Despite its long-established presence within global discourse, meaningful action continues to be deferred; rendered urgent enough to acknowledge, yet distant enough to postpone. This condition has produced a spectrum of emotional and ideological responses, each shaping how individuals perceive, process, and react to the crisis.
This project positions architecture not as a solution, but as a spatial mediator. Set within the urban fabric of Sydney’s CBD, Panacea explores how built form can hold tension, contradiction, and uncertainty without forcing resolution. Rather than prescribing answers, the work constructs an environment for confrontation, reflection, and dialogue. Panacea aims to acknowledge that responses to climate change range from denial to paralysis,
from detachment to emotional overload.
By unifying these apparent dichotomies within a single spatial narrative, the project argues that recognition itself is a critical first act. Architecture can become a vessel for collective acknowledgement, inviting occupants to remain present within complexity, rather than retreating from it. In doing so, Panacea reframes climate discourse not as a demand for immediacy alone, but as an insistence on sustained awareness, shared responsibility, and the capacity to engage before action can meaningfully occur.
BDES2026 Architecture Studio at University of Sydney
Featured in the End of Semester Cohort Presentation of Selected Works
DRAMATIC
In contrast, this poster addresses the dramatic response to climate change as an affective condition marked by anxiety, overload, and cognitive paralysis. Fragmented compositions, torn edges, and repeated facial expressions convey volatility and psychological saturation, suggesting a subject overwhelmed by the scale and uncertainty of the crisis.
The accumulation of distressed imagery reflects cyclical overthinking and emotional exhaustion, where urgency collapses into inertia. Red elements bleed into the composition as signals of alarm rather than resolution. While oppositional in tone to skepticism, the dramatic response is similarly positioned as detrimental. Its excess emotion obstructing clarity, agency, and constructive action.
This poster examines the skeptic position on climate change as a condition of deliberate detachment rather than informational absence. Rendered primarily in black and white, the collage establishes rigid visual boundaries between elements, reflecting the skeptic’s preference for certainty, compartmentalisation, and ideological fixity.
Figures with obscured, closed, or averted gazes signify intentional negligence and selective disengagement from widely circulated climate knowledge. The red patterned intervention punctuates the composition as a controlled disturbance; present yet contained. This mirrors how climate data is acknowledged but ultimately dismissed. Skepticism is thus framed as an active posture of avoidance, sustained through clarity, distance, and refusal to engage.
Investigation into the site’s existing condition to establish project framework.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Early conceptual experiment to externalise the climate crisis through the language of human body. The garment is
transformed into a sculptural form, using layered and excess fabric to visualise the accumulation of unresolved
global issues. By engulfing the head and restricting vision and breath, the piece metaphorically simulates
cognitive overload and emotional suffocation.
“The goal is to position the body as the first site of encounter with the climate narrative
rather than a solution-driven response.”
Partner Exhibit: Suyeon Cho
with her ‘Eco-anxiety as Psychological Condition’
A psychological condition arising from constant exposure to climate information. The sculptural imagery frames
anxiety as a state of mental entanglement, where awareness and empathy intensify into paralysis.
“This condition establishes the emotional groundwork of the project, informing subsequent spatial and
architectural explorations that address how individuals navigate uncertainty, fear, and prolonged crisis.”
Partner Exhibit: Suyeon Cho
...
Beginning with a ‘mundane’ public programme, operating as an ‘innocent bait’ to initiate engagement without confrontation.
Beneath this familiar surface, the project unfolds as a downward exhibition journey, where spatial qualities shift
from subtlety to directness, guiding visitors from passive awareness toward clarity and reflection.
The subsequent ascent reconnects users to collaborative spaces, thus framing architecture as a mediating device
that gently navigates emotional and ideological complexity rather than demanding immediate resolution.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
A response to the limited natural light within a dense urban context. Slanted roof geometry and vertical light strategies
are tested to maximise sunlight penetration while maintaining structural clarity.
The comparison between early and final volumes demonstrates a shift toward simplified geometry,
where light optimisation is achieved without unnecessary formal complexity.
FINAL DESIGN
Successive massing iterations, refining circulation, structural stability, and spatial efficiency.
Early fragmented forms are tested and discarded in favour of a consolidated volume that maximises usable area,
improves vertical circulation, and establishes a clearer architectural language.
FINAL DESIGN
Relationship outline between the restaurant and exhibition programmes, clarifying circulation, service flow, and
visitor movement. The restaurant operates as a mundane entry point, while the underground exhibition
establishes a directed journey that separates, guides, and reunites visitors through
a controlled spatial sequence.
FINAL DESIGN
Visitor circulation as a staged journey from a mundane entry point into a sequence of diverging and converging paths.
“Movement through passive, dramatic, and collective spaces frames sustainability as a process of
awareness, reflection, and gradual behavioural shift rather than immediate resolution.”
FINAL DESIGN
Threshold of Engagement
The facade adopts a restrained and opaque expression, establishing a calm and measured presence within the streetscape. Its controlled monumentality resists spectacle, allowing the building to register as part of the everyday city fabric rather than a declared cultural object.
The Vaulted Restaurant
In contrast, the sustainable restaurant reveals itself internally through transparency and light. The optic fibre chandelier amplifies verticality and spatial continuity, while the exposed interior invites incidental engagement from the street. Dining and collaboration are positioned as an accessible, everyday activity that quietly initiates a broader participation from the general public.
“The Vaulted Restaurant actively practices sustainability through everyday operations rather than symbolic gestures.”
Seasonal menus, local partnerships, and efficient equipment reduce resource demand while maintaining economic viability. Waste is actively minimised and redirected through composting and supplier return systems, reinforcing a closed-loop operational mindset. Staff training further extends sustainability beyond infrastructure, enabling informed dialogue between diners and the restaurant, and positioning everyday consumption as an entry point for environmental consciousness, experienced as a normalised, lived practice.
Dramatic — Transitional Dialogue
Exhibition A introduces the first direct and explicit climatic communication, engaging visitors inclined toward acceptance while prompting avoidance in more passive audiences. The adjoining corridor functions as a transitional filter, subtly redirecting movement toward the concealed Exhibition B while framing the meditative space below as an inviting descent.
Passive — Guided Engagement
Exhibition B employs deliberate misorientation as an initial bait, presenting its centrepiece in reverse to provoke curiosity and forward movement. As visitors progress, personalised climatic narratives gradually unfold, guiding them from passive observation toward an active understanding of their role within climate communication.
Convergence Area — Collective Activation
Exhibition C operates as a shared space for collective reflection and engagement, addressing visitors with a renewed and active mindset. An interactive centrepiece enables participants to quantify their individual impact and explore pathways for improvement, translating awareness into initial acts of climatic participation.
Reflection and Restoration
This dedicated meditative space allows visitors to pause and reflect on the journey undertaken. The use of water and reflected light softens the environment, fostering psychological calm and enabling mental fatigue to be gradually restored before re-engagement.
From this point, visitors are offered an alternative return journey, allowing dramatic audiences to re-enter through the passive exhibition and vice versa, thus encouraging reconsideration, empathy, and a reoriented understanding upon ascent.