During semester 1 of 2026, students from the University of Canberra’s School of Design and the Built Environment produced speculative design proposals that explore the current challenges and opportunities in Captain’s Flat. This town‘s layers of biodiversity, enduring legacy of the Ngarigo people, its mining history, development, de-industrialisation, subsequent decline and residual contamination, are emblematic of many similar towns in Australia. The students’ briefs were framed through the concepts of repair and re-pairing, and the aim of the studio was to contribute towards proposals that reconnect the town to the former mine and its wider region, and to develop approaches towards decontamination in the town itself.
The work was produced by students from the ‘Studio [re]pair’ option (led by Mike Louw) in the Master of Architecture program, and students from the ‘Repair, Reconnect, Reconfigure’ vertical studio (led by Gay Williamson) in the 2nd, 3rd and Honours years of the Landscape Architecture program. These speculative design projects were developed in collaboration with the Captain’s Flat Community Association.