Melbourne Metabolising is a temporal morphological study of Melbourne/Naarm’s Hoddle Grid that can be updated in the coming years and used in a variety of ways. Naarm sits on the land of the 5 clans of the Kulin Nation. The research borrows from the extension of dynamic legacies of Metabolist thinking relating to processes that affect urban growth and decline.

Research tactics:

• Collating fragments of Melbourne’s Hoddle Grid through research into historical maps and photographs using public archives.
• Exploring narratives through parallel timelines of economic forces, planning, and extractive resource booms that affect the morphology and typology.
• Future speculations using dynamic algorithmic simulation.

Format
The contribution is an ongoing open-source project 50% finished, conducted by students at Monash University. The intended format is GIS shapefiles with data fields, embedded in a web page where users can scroll to a timeline to any point and view the state. Data fields include year constructed, demolition, height, program, and material. The research provides various lessons and trajectories, with the aim of providing critical commentary on probable future directions.