Program
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Parallax will take place over three days, from Thursday 30 April – Saturday 2 May 2009.

Program download as a PDF.

Session description

Introduction
The Creative Directors set out to design a conference that was more than the sum of one-hour lectures by invited guests.  The best conferences build momentum as they unfold over a few days, as key topics emerge in response to the particular cocktail of speakers present and the opportunities they are given to unpack these topics over an extended period.  Thus, we have set out to design a program which focuses on specific issues while also enabling a freer discussion with regular crossovers during the event.

Core to this structure are the six main thematic sessions.  Each session – Studio, Politics, Media, Young Guns, Collaboration and The Cosmopolitan – is built around two speakers who will open with a 40 minute lecture of the selected theme.  Then, to complete the session, a discussion panel led by another keynote will allow for extended discussion and debate between a larger group.

These thematic sessions are countered with ten smaller sessions - split between Friday and Saturday these will be held in parallel, as an after lunch “coffee break”.  In these sessions, each keynote speaker will discuss issues of particular local relevance in conversation with an Australian speaker.

Main sessions

STUDIO
Thursday 30 April, 4.00pm
Peter Wilson & Winka Dubbeldam (with Aaron Betsky)

We live in uncertain times - uncertain politically, environmentally, financially and culturally. Architecture itself is uncertain partly because of its inherently parallax condition as an activity (architecting or making architecture), as an experience (of the user or audience or occupier), and as a material condition (the object material reality or the material by-product of architecting).

Within this uncertainty the studio is a site of architectural investigation, of questioning and perhaps more importantly of proposition. The studio is not the office and the studio is not academia….it is a site of research that is particular in its methods to architecture. What is the potential for practice and academia to collaborate in the studio? 

MEDIA
Friday 1 May, 9.00am
Aaron Betsky & Geoff Manaugh (with Tatiana Bilbao)

The role of the media in disseminating architectural theory and practice has been debated as long as media has engaged with architectural practice and production.  These debates – pitting access to information against authenticity of mediated versus real experience – have become even more complex in the contemporary environment where magazines are joined by blogs, You Tube, Facebook and web alerts.

We are interested in the veracity of these various forms of media and in the types of architectural activity and architects they promote.  Will architectural tendencies change as modes of media evolve?  How are the two related?

Aaron Betsky, former head of the NAI and currently Director of the Cincinnati Art Museum and Geoff Manaugh will lead this session. 

POLITICS
Friday 1 May, 11.15am
Alejandro Zaera-Polo & Veronika Valk (with Slavoj Žižek)

What is the political agency of architecture?  This question assumes ever greater significance as debates rage over work in emerging economies, for non-democratic political regimes and for projects of questionable cultural or ecological impacts.

Are we simply slaves to the economic factors at play or can we realistically offer points of resistance.  Are these attempts at resistance productive, or do they remain statements of intent with no affects in the real space of the project and its context?

Alejandro Zaera-Polo and Veronika Valk will present their own unique perspectives on these issues.

For a little insight into this session you can read the following by Alejandro Zaera-Polo:
'The Politics of the Envelope - A Political Critique of Materialism'. You can also see and join a discussion about the article on Archinect. See discussion.

YOUNG GUNS
Friday 1 May, 4.00pm
Tatiana Bilbao & Sou Fujimoto (with Winka Dubbeldam)

As younger architects working in Australia – which can be a cruel environment for younger architects outside the domestic realm – the opportunity to invite two of the most promising young architects working in public projects was irresistible.

Sou Fujimoto is well known for his unbuilt work and a range of public proposals coming to fruition.  He is an exemplar of the possibilities for young architects on the world stage and prove that young does not mean high-risk. 

Sou will be joined by Tatiana Bilbao to flesh out the opportunities and pitfalls of learning as you go while also revealing something of their ambitions for our future – they will have a major part in building it.

COLLABORATION
Saturday 2 May, 9.00am
Studio Mumbai & Edwin Chan (with Veronika Valk)

One of the most critical aspects of contemporary practice is the need to collaborate, both within practices and between a range of consultants, contractors, politicians and of course the client. 

Traditionally, these relationships have been managed within a paradigm led by the hero-architect – a singular creative genius who led others in pursuing their visions.  Now, the architect is no longer singular as practices comprised of multiple-authors sit alongside collaborations between free agents working on a project-by-project basis. 

Bijoy Jain from Studio Mumbai will lead this session.  He represents a collaborative organisation and his work is a direct product of the particular collaborative contexts in which he works. 

THE COSMOPOLITAN
Saturday 2 May, 11.15am
Slavoj Žižek (with Alejandro Zaera-Polo)

Rapid transport and instant global communication has shifted our understanding of place to one of the 'multi-placed' in a kind of 'post-cultural' condition. We can be in Melbourne on Monday, London on Tuesday and New Delhi on Wednesday. We can be in all three cities at once on a Skype conference. We can be resident across states, physically and digitally. Our notion of place is therefore a layered one where the reciprocity of body and world is founded on a continual kaleidoscope of multiple places rather than a temporal engagement with a single place.  Our ‘culture’ is increasingly defined by the constellation of contacts that we build up through Skype, Facebook and blogs as much as it is determined by geographical boundary or local religion.

These conditions raise architectural questions. Who is architecture for? Where is architecture? How does architecture work? Who does it work for? How are contexts valued, selected, rejected, repressed, and expressed through the activity of making architecture? What is the nature of ground in the cosmopolitan?

Slavoj Žižek will discuss these issues both in terms of a wider cultural context and in architectural terms.

Workshop sessions

Australian speakers will be paired up with an international speaker for the Workshop sessions, where they will engage in conversation about a specific topic current in the Australian context. The conversation format sets up equivalence between the local and international speaker, while the more intimate format will encourage involvement from the floor.

Friday Workshops

1. Peter Wilson and Carey Lyon: Iceberg buildings and the city periphery
The periphery of our cities has become the location for the big isolated blob building, be it an industrial building, retail centre or the like.  These two architects have completed a number of these projects and have written texts thinking through their potential and limitations.  This periphery development is a major issue affecting our cities with environmental, cultural and social consequences

2. Aaron Betsky and Ingo Kumic: Positioning Architecture
What is architecture?  And what is the effect and impact of media on the practice of architecture?  These questions will be addressed by Betsky and Kumic – two thinkers who subscribe to the idea that architecture is not building at all.  Rather, architecture is a research activity which spans writing, lectures, exhibitions, drawings and other propositions.  This will be a controversial lecture certain to draw comment from those with the traditional architect’s view.

3. Geoff Manaugh, Winka Dubbeldam and Andrew MacKenzie: Architectural publishing: The Future
Architectural publishing is undergoing a major upheaval as blogs and other web-based formats overtake traditional magazine publishing in terms of speed, timing and outreach.  The editor of AR will discuss this issue with the author of perhaps the most famous architecture blog in the world today.

4. Alejandro Zaera-Polo and Paul Minifie: Culture and Politics: The Australian context
These two speakers both deal potential for architecture to impact upon or inform cultural or political situations.  Yet, they come from very different backgrounds and have very different architectural heroes.  This should be an incredibly engaging debate about architecture, politics and culture today.  

5. Veronika Valk and Pia Ednie-Brown: Education in the digital age
The impacts of technology on new forms of practice and of the dissemination of these works will be considered by two experts in the field.

Saturday Workshops

6. Sou Fujimoto and Allan Powell: Spatial intelligence
Sou Fujimoto and Allan Powell, while different practitioners, share a spatial understanding or intelligence which opens questions of how these spatial intelligences are formed and what we can learn from them, and what we might gain from their export.

7. Studio Mumbai and Adrian Iredale: Limited means
Both Studio Mumbai and IPH have worked in remote locations with particular logistical difficulties.  These extreme situations have proved not be to a constraint but have opened new creative processed from which great buildings have emerged.  This is a timely lecture given the ongoing problems in the provision of housing in our remote areas.

8. Tatiana Bilbao and Shelley Penn: Young architects
There appear to be great limits on the opportunities given to young architects in Australia today, particularly when compared to their overseas peers who, by their mid 30s, are building massive urban projects.  What underpins our allergy to the involvement of young people in making our cities?  And why are so few women involved?

9. Slavoj Žižek and Adrian Lahoud: Parallax urbanism
Philosopher Slavoj Žižek has been adopted by the architectural profession in recent years as his writing on politics and urban space have been reprinted in various urban design readers.  One of Australia’s young urban design teachers and a great advocate of Žižek’s thinking will discuss his views of topics as vast as the reasons behind (and impacts of) 9/11, the Paris riots and sexual politics on our urban realm.

10. Edwin Chan and Richard Goodwin: Modeling architecture
As computers take over the architects office, the traditional drawing and paper or card model are being questioned as valid design tools.  These two practitioners both use the latest in computer technology but also still rely on the hand-made model and hand drawing to inform their approach.  This should be a great session which continues the debate about how we work and the role of technology and different forms of representation within that.

Parallaxed

Friday 1 May, 7.30pm till late
ZINC, Federation Square
Parallaxed will feature young and emerging architecture practices as presenters. Critics will include International guests Aaron Betsky, Edwin Chan, Bijoy Jain (Studio Mumbai), Geoff Manaugh, Veronika Valk, Peter Wilson and Slavoj Žižek and will be chaired by Leon van Schaik AO. Entry to Parallaxed is included in full conference registrations.

The selected presenters for Parallaxed are:

Presentations will take place on the hour (8.00pm, 9.00pm and 10.00pm) with the critic and discussion following.

Leon Van Schaik AO
Leon van Schaik AO LFRAIA,RIBA, PhD, is Professor of Architecture (Innovation Chair) at RMIT, from which base he has promoted local and international architectural culture through practice-based research. Writings include monographs compiled on Edmond and Corrigan, Ushida Findlay, Guilford Bell, Tom Kovac, Poetics in Architecture, The Guthrie Pavilion, The Practice of Practice, and Sean Godsell.  Recent books, Mastering Architecture and Design City Melbourne are published by Wiley Academy. His latest book, Spatial Intelligence (Wiley) was in released in September 2008.  His next book, Procuring Innovative Architecture will be released by Routledge in 2010.