Aroma Imran

Between 2013 and 2024, 220,000 people have immigrated to Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics). Along with them they have brought tangible and intangible objects; culture, language, food, memories and mementos. The Quiet Storm is a social housing project designed for Preston, Melbourne with the intent of centring the immigrant experience and finding a space for their tangible and intangible objects. The project explores space as a movable and living entity that becomes a holder of memory, emotion and experience.
Melbourne is in the throngs of a housing crisis. Immigration is utilised as a quick and incorrect talking point while the political and economic bodies in charge, politicians and major corporations, are not held accountable. However, housing un-accessibility directly affects immigrants too and according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 40% of immigrants who arrived in Australia between 2012-2021 spend more than 30% of their total income on rent and mortgage. Furthermore, 30% of immigrants who have immigrated in the last 10 years require one or more extra rooms at some point. This statistic speaks to the larger issue – the housing market from an economic to an architectural point of view, does not centre the immigrant experience.
Immigrant housing and renting as a new arrival is dauting; the architecture is distinctly Western, and the landscapes are foreign. The Quiet Storm embraces the fresh start of the immigrant experience and presents the units as blank canvases. With time, consultation and unpacking, the spaces become unique reflections of the resident. To really centre the resident experience, tectonic elements within the project are stripped back; the structure, slab and ceiling are exposed, and communal spaces are designed ambiguously – the residents take charge. The wall becomes a functional plane that moves, stores, organises, displays and conceals. Designed as a 300 mm ‘cabinet’, the wall takes on various typologies; a study nook, a window seat, a cupboard, a shelving unit or even a mug organiser. The immigrant experience is complex, painful, happy, confusing, rewarding and comprising. Forever a set of juxtapositions, the project does not aim to impart a certain, linear narrative onto the resident regarding their past and future. Rather, the architecture is presented in its most raw form and resident oversees their space; they decide what show and to hide.
The Quiet Storm addresses a key demographic of the middle-ring suburbs of Melbourne. Not just a passive body moving through space, my project propels the immigrant to the role of a designer, the organiser, the opinionated and the decision maker.