Minh Tam Cao

Master of Architecture & Urban Design

My journey in architecture and design is inspired by my family, particularly my grandfather and father, who taught me to appreciate the balance between aesthetic value and functionality. I recently completed my Master of Architecture and hold a Bachelor of Interior Architecture from Swinburne. Passionate about innovation and sustainability, I create spaces that balance beauty and function. Architecture goes beyond fulfilling a brief; it reveals the unspoken needs of spaces and their users. My work reflects this, focusing on the human experience and connecting design with Australia’s cultural and historical context.

The Inter-change

The Inter-Change is an innovative project that combines student housing with a secondhand market, barter trade space, and a makerspace, all focused on sustainability and community engagement. Located in Hawthorn, the design preserves the heritage facade while reflecting the area's evolving cultural and social landscape. The name symbolizes the intersection of people, goods, and ideas. The secondhand market and makerspace foster a circular economy, encouraging upcycling, recycling, and creativity. The Inter-Change is not just student housing, but a dynamic, sustainable community space that blends history with modern living.

Hybrid Layout: Barter Market and Student Housing

The plans demonstrate the integration of student housing, barter market, and makerspace in a hybrid layout, with the barter space connecting directly to the adjacent train platform to enhance community engagement. Separate access points ensure security, while the building’s program encourages sustainability and fosters community interaction by creating seamless processes for residents.

Mem · ory

Mem · ory project is centered around harnessing the power of visual stimuli to guide movement and create an immersive experience for visitors. Located in North Melbourne, it’s poised to inject new energy into the PROV, transforming it into a lively community hub. This metamorphosis not only improves access to the archive but also celebrates Victoria’s vibrant cultural and artistic heritage. Through design elements like captivating curved shapes and interconnected spaces facilitated by wall blades, Mem · ory offers a mesmerizing visual journey through time, encouraging exploration and engagement. With features like wall blades adorned with cutouts, vibrant coloured glass strips, and sleek concrete louvers, the design orchestrates visitors’ movements, leading them on an unforgettable exploration of history, making it relevant and accessible to all.

Interconnected Spaces

Through a series of interconnected spaces, the design offers a captivating visual journey that guides visitors through time, encouraging both exploration and engagement. The design utilizes wall blades with intricate cutouts, vibrant colored glass strips, and sleek concrete louvers, which not only enhance the aesthetic appeal but also direct the flow of movement throughout the space. These features create a dynamic and immersive experience, leading visitors on a path that brings history to life in a way that is both relevant and accessible.

Harmony Grove

Wetland Area View: The project promotes adaptable housing solutions to meet changing family dynamics and smaller households. It integrates green biophilic design with inclusive neighborhoods, offering strong public transport, safe streets, and higher density. This approach enhances sustainability, well-being, and fosters a connection to nature, creating vibrant, resilient communities.

Acknowledgement of Country

The School of Design and Architecture respectfully acknowledges the Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners and knowledge-keepers of the lands, waters and sky that surround us, where we work, learn, create, communicate and make place. We recognise that sovereignty has never been ceded and this always was and will always be Wurundjeri Country. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who continue to make a better world through design.

We extend our acknowledgement to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff, students, alumni, real-life clients, and knowledge keepers, who have contributed to our own education diversity and growth. We will continue to ensure that staff and students respectfully honour ancestral connection to Country and Place in everything that they do.

We are dedicated to the notion of design to make a better world and we acknowledge that making tools, shaping place, sharing stories, making meaning, wayfinding and collaborating have long been and continue to be both central and integral to First Peoples' cultures. We recognize that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ cultural contributions have continued relevance to design practice and commit to: reconciling ancestries of design and contemporary practice as well as pursuing culturally and professionally appropriate ways to engage with a diverse population of colleagues, industries and clients. In a time of treaty-making and voice we understand that there are overlaps between caring for Country and the sustainable production of goods, services, experiences, products and buildings.

Guided by the principles of respect, reconciliation, and reciprocity we undertake to indigenising and decolonising design practice by dismantling colonial structures and challenging biases that have marginalised Indigenous voices and design.

As students of SoDA you will be given opportunities to both engage with and educate yourself in Indigenous creative practices and cultural protocols through a lens of inclusivity, diversity, respect, mutual understanding, inter-cultural dialogue in all aspects of design practice. Indigenous people have been telling stories, making tools, and connecting to Country through visual media, placemaking and place marking for more than 60,000 years and these practices are part of an ongoing, evolving and live tradition.