UNSW academic crosses the boundaries between practice, education and research in genre-busting design projects
Published on 4 August 2025
Senior Lecturer Eva Lloyd has always been fascinated by the intersection of art and society. To her, it was thus a natural step to study interior architecture and architecture. “I was attracted to the field of architecture because I enjoyed creative exploration and liked being able to better understand gnarly societal challenges whilst exploring the really close relationship between people and their environments.”
Once she got involved in the field, she noticed something that got her thinking. “The separate disciplines in which we were taught were not so siloed in practice. Moving from Australia to Southeast Asia, I was excited by opportunities to work across interiors, urban design, landscape and architecture whilst collaborating with economists, engineers, activists and human rights lawyers. I became keen to understand the intersections of these fields through community-centred projects in housing and public space.”
Eva considers the boundaries between practice, education and research to be porous. “As an academic, I find it really hard to say, ‘This is research and this is education and this is service.’ I frame my work with communities through the lens of all of these fields and I am building increasing confidence to say, ‘Hey, this is actually a valid way of working as an academic.’”
Some of the major projects Eva has been working on reflect her fascination with this nexus of design practice, education and community. For example, over the past 10 years she has been working with artists, students and residents in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Her work here seeks to recognise the “everyday” design intelligence that local residents demonstrate in shaping resilient neighbourhoods, amidst a history of significant political challenges. Students from Australia and Cambodia work with residents to understand their daily lives, the ways they have adapted to challenges and their needs and desires looking forward. Through annual three-month internships, students and residents have now responded to some of those needs, co-creating a mobile library, a street mural and a program of monthly young people’s activities in the neighbourhood.
In another project, Eva has come together with fellow Education-Focussed academic Sara Padgett Kjaersgaard to engage students in reimaging hospital terraces at the Royal Hospital for Women as greener, cooler, more biodiverse and more restorative spaces that improve health outcomes for staff. The project is a UNSW cross-faculty initiative engaging the faculties of Medicine and Health, Engineering, and Art, Design and Architecture. Students work with an industry partner, the Indigenous-owned and operated design consultancy Yerrabingin, to ensure that the principals of Country and Indigenous knowledge are at the heart of the project. In 2024, this saw the generation of a concept plan for phase 1 of the project, with students involved in a range of co-design workshops that included hospital staff and community members, led by Yerrabingin.
Ms Lloyd and her students are also collaborating with the UNSW Global Water Institute and a broad network of community, academic, and industry partners in far western New South Wales. For the past three years, landscape architecture students have spent 10-weeks in Bourke, on Ngemba-Baakindji Country, contributing to the development of the Brave Space Garden and the Bourke Community Garden, with nutrition and occupational therapy students from the University of Sydney.
The projects explore how community gardens - and community-led approaches - can support better nutritional, educational, environmental and social outcomes in partnership with Aboriginal people in Bourke.
Students collaborate with a team that includes Bourke High School, the Bourke Aboriginal Corporation Health Service, the Regional Enterprise Development Institute and the Botanic Gardens Community Greening program. They have been involved in a range of activities including workshops setting up DIY wicking beds that decrease water usage, turning carp from the river into compost, and co-designing spaces of refuge for students and community members.
Community-Based Practice
These diverse projects have a common thread, says Ms Lloyd. “I usually frame the string connecting all of these as community-based practice. I use the word ‘community’ in reference to people on the ground, those with lived experience, informal grassroots groups, and sometimes NGOs who support [them].
These projects work well when they are foregrounded by a commitment to sustained relationships, and when there is an intersection of sectors or an interdisciplinary team that works directly with people on the ground, diverse forms of knowledge coming together to tackle what are often complex and multifaceted challenges.
My colleagues and I are working to frame and relay our practice to peers but also to those who are in other positions – that might be city government, boards of hospitals, strategic leaders at the university. We are trying to be in conversation so that this way of working can be recognised and supported as opposed to sitting on the fringes.”
She adds that in pedagogy today this kind of situated teaching practice sometimes sits within the realm of work-integrated learning. In the field of built environment, community-based work-integrated learning has opened alternative pathways for students in what has typically been an area dominated by commercial design opportunities.
The potential for community-based work integrated learning is significant: “At the beginning of my education practice in this field, in Phnom Penh, we involved students as observers, out observing life on the streets. But over the last 10 years, we’ve tried to involve students more actively in really becoming a part of the street life, a part of the neighbourhood, a part of the community rather than detached from it. As a result, the teaching and learning experience is a bit ‘wilder’. Observation is easier to control. You guide the students [by saying], ‘Look at this, this, this, this and this’.
As a part of the street or the neighbourhood, students are now being taught by community members and are running interviews and workshops and local events with residents on the streets. The approach is much more emergent, and what my colleagues and I have appreciated is that this has enriched and deepened the learning.
It has built stronger relationships between students and community members and given students the confidence to find their own way – making them feel more engaged and excited about what they are doing.“
This article was written by Laura E. Goodin.