Media Release | 10 September 2009
Resolving ordinary problems in extraordinary ways is the promise of the 2010 national architecture conference presented by the Australian Institute of Architects, under the creative direction of Melbourne-based architect and academic, Melanie Dodd.
Dodd's provocative program will draw together local and international guests that are in the habit of turning convention on its head. Lateral approaches by practitioners adjusting to new ways of operating, says Dodd, are what characterise innovative overlaps and collaborations in architectural practice.
Dodd has, in part, shaped her program in response to the staggering acceleration in the sophistication of information systems and manufacturing processes from which processes, products and services have emerged that threaten to marginalise the profession of architecture.
“There is an increasing demand for architects to make a shift in how they go about their practice. Architects are rising to the challenges, rejecting the detached gaze, rolling their sleeves up and fighting back. Innovative, groundbreaking and profoundly useful solutions are resulting from enforcing or stimulating collaborations with others," said Ms Dodd.
Taking its shape around four main themes - people, things, living, cities - the 2010 conference will showcase architects from Australia and abroad who are opening up fresh possibilities and definitions of practice.
"These practitioners are inventing their own projects and systems of operating: they don't wait for conventional clients, commissions or budget but instead see opportunity or necessity as their client," Ms Dodd said.
Above all, Dodd wants to bring the conversations about how architects practice down to earth, and reveal the renewed enthusiasm for operating from the bottom up.
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extra-ordinary - 2010 National Architecture Conference
22-24 April, Sydney
The 2010 national conference program is taking shape around four main themes:
extra / ordinary people
extra / ordinary things
extra / ordinary living
extra / ordinary cities
About the Creative Director : Melanie Dodd
Melanie is an architect and academic, currently Associate Professor and Program Director in Architecture at RMIT University and previously at London Metropolitan University, the Royal College of Art and Cambridge University. She is a member of the international art and architecture collaborative, MUF, a multi-disciplinary and research based practice operating across socially-engaged art practice, landscape architecture, urban design and architecture. She has co-authored This is What We Do: A Muf Manual (2002), and the work of MUF has been included in numerous international architectural
publications including 10x10_2 by Phaidon (2006). muf.co.uk
Australian Institute of Architects | Media Contacts
Ms Trish Croaker (Sydney) - mobile 0408 756 163
Ms Kirsten Trengove (Melbourne) - mobile 0439 555 427
The 2010 National Architecture Conference acknowledges its sponsors, principal corporate partner BlueScope Steel; supporting corporate partners Lockwood, Dulux, Virgin Atlantic, Autodesk and Kingspan; and, event sponsors Form & Function, Viridian, Knauf Plasterboard and Architectural Window Systems.
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