MAIN SESSIONS
extra/ordinary PEOPLE
Friday 23 April, 9.30am AND 11.30am
In making sense of the city and its inhabitants, architectural practitioners are increasingly operating within an interdisciplinary terrain, collaborating with artists and other cultural activists to produce a range of outcomes from informal and temporary installations to buildings and urban spaces. Characterised by participatory engagements with real people these collaborations expand the potential remit of the architect beyond the building.
Peter Corrigan, Edmond & Corrigan
Liza Fior, muf architecture/art
Sean Griffiths, FAT: fashion architecture taste
Richard Goodwin, Richard Goodwin Pty Ltd
extra/ordinary LIVING
Friday 23 April, 2.15pm AND 4.15pm
An increasing frustration for architects is their poor penetration into the mass-housing market, and this is coupled with increasingly inequitable societal divisions in property ownership and wealth. Such is the woeful current status of architecture’s relationship to shelter. Lessons from both extremes of this inequity can offer clues for more radical change. Architectural collaborations with the opportunistic practices of the urban slum dweller, or the savvy developer can offer the potential for new ways of operating on the intractable norms that characterise housing ‘design’, sustainability and social injustice.
Alejandro Aravena, Elemental S.A.
Tom Bloxham, Urban Splash
Professor Richard Weller, University of Western Australia
extra/ordinary THINGS
Saturday 24 April, 9.00am AND 11.00am
As methods of manufacturing become increasingly specialised in the developed world the potential of mass-customisation becomes increasingly viable. The custom and crafted product begins to become as easily manufactured as the ‘off-the-shelf’ mass-produced item. In contrast to this global trajectory, architects working at the margins and in developing countries are increasingly returning to materials and techniques of economy, contingency and do-it-yourself. What do these divergent economies bring to architectural making and form? Concerns for limited resources, cultural specificity and modesty are evolving a new aesthetic of the everyday.
Jeremy Edmiston, SYSTEMarchitects
Peter Ho, PHOOEY Architects
Diébédo Francis Kéré, Kéré Architects
Dillon Kombumerri, NSW Government Architect's Office
extra/ordinary CITIES
Saturday 24 April 3.00pm AND 5.00pm
Our complex and congested city environments are increasingly seen as a domain for design-led innovation: innovation which grapples with unprecedented urban growth against a backdrop of limited resources. Yet the prevalence of small-scale, everyday, adaptive occupational practices in the city demonstrates the complexity of the contemporary metropolis: a place in which informal infrastructures, temporary uses and sheer inventiveness play as important a role in enhancing live-ability as built form. How can architecture contribute to a reflexive and responsive city, and what might this city look like?
Ole Bouman, Netherlands Architecture Institute
Teddy Cruz, Estudio Teddy Cruz
EXPANDED PRACTICE FORUMS
Saturday 24 April, three con-current sessions at 1.30pm
The Forums will be panel discussions debating possible models of expanded practice within the profession. Taking inspiration from examples of collaboration, improvisation and innovation that are showcased within the conference speaker sessions, the forums are an opportunity to discuss how to value alternative and integrated modes of practice beyond our current normative definitions.
Forum 1: Women, Architecture and Models of Practice
Women have taken an active part in architectural practice in Australia for more than one hundred years. Nevertheless, women remain strikingly under-represented at the highest levels of the profession today.
Studies show that women are more likely to work within government or academia, more likely to juggle diverse types of ‘marginal’ architectural work, more likely to experience career interruption, less likely to actively seek out promotion, and much less likely to occupy a senior role. But rather than seeing such career patterns as aberrant or unconventional, what if the particular challenges faced and overcome by women architects could become a spur to innovation and change in the profession more broadly?
Speakers will include; Sandra Kaji-O’Grady, Justine Clark, Hannah Tribe, Karen Burns, Liza Fior, Melinda Dodson and Ninotschka Titchkosky.
Forum 2: Design Research and the Profession
The future of the profession will be expertise-driven and highly-integrated. To build this future, expand its relevance and leverage its design strength, the profession needs a shared knowledge base defined by open exchange between academic institutions, research centres, practice and the construction sector. This demands a shift from individual to joint approaches, creating fluid relationships between education and practice, and developing models of collaborative, active and embedded research. How can integrated design research strategies lead to the alternative models of architectural practice?
Speakers will include; Laura Lee, Dan Hill, Leon van Schaik, Jane Andrew, Hamilton Wilson and Tomas Skovgaard.
Forum 3: Humanitarian Architecture
Architects have struggled to be relevant in providing assistance for humanitarian disasters and crisis situations. On the one hand, architectural ideas and competitions are criticized for being fanciful and even unhelpful in the face of disaster. On the other hand a direct intervention can produce mundane and inappropriate results. With the frequency and ferocity of disasters likely to rise, and social inequity increasing globally, there should be a means by which architects can contribute to coordinated efforts to rebuild communities. But while there are increasing examples of architects working in this area and there is growing knowledge and experiences, there are no established practice pathways into it.
This forum will bring together a panel of three Australian organisations (Architects Without Frontiers, Emergency Architects Australia and Healthabitat) that have developed successful, but different models of action. It will offer the opportunity to discuss how architecture has been successful, the modes of practice employed to achieve this, and the pitfalls encountered en route. Can architects help communities rebuild their lives in the wake of such devastation, and is there even a place for architects in these situations?
Speakers will include: Paul Pholeros, Guy Luscombe and Esther Charlesworth.