Utopian Edge
MAPA led an Interdisciplinary Design Lab for UTS students to develop spatial proposals for Katoomba’s overlooked spaces.
The group of students came to Katoomba to learn about the place by intensively exploring some of the intriguing urban spaces.
The lab sought to uncover what future potential these spaces have by researching deeply their past and present uses.
Katoomba is a city where the mundane and the magical are in constant conversation. It has a richness of contradictions and a density of potentials. It is both a centre and a periphery, a museum and a laboratory, a collection of fictions and a cluster of hard truths.
In groups which brought together different disciplines, skills and knowledge, the students reimagined some of Katoomba's overlooked spaces. They explored the town and learned from local experts, creatives and residents to design 'realistic utopias' – pragmatic yet transformative ideas for some of Katoomba’s roads less travelled.
