Featured keynotes
We are pleased to announce the keynote speakers for the 2026 Australian Architecture Conference, bringing together practitioners and thinkers whose work is reshaping how architecture engages with place, culture and systems across Australia and internationally.
Bringing together voices from design practice, research, and cross-disciplinary collaboration, this year’s keynote lineup reflects the conference’s commitment to critical dialogue, innovation, and real-world impact.
Ilze WOLFF and Heinrich Wolff
Wolff Architects was established by Heinrich Wolff and Ilze Wolff in 2012. The work of the studio is driven by a philosophical concern for developing an architectural practice of consequence. This concern is embedded in the various outputs of the practice: the design of buildings, landscapes, scenographies and events, advocacy for spatial justice, research, films and curatorial practice.
Heinrich Wolff is an architect and project manager, whose work has received many awards, including the Daimler Chrysler Award for Architecture (2007), and the Lubetkin Award (2005). In 2011 he was elected as the Designer of the Future by the Wouter Mikmak Foundation. He has held several academic appointments; he has been a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (2021 / 2022), University of Goa (2017), ETH in Zürich (2014-2015), IUAV in Venice (2013), Washington University in St. Louis (2015) and has been an adjunct associate professor at UCT, Cape Town.
Ilze Wolff is an architect and scholar with experience in design, teaching and heritage consulting. She received a M.Phil. in Heritage and Public Culture from the African Studies Unit at UCT. Ilze co-founded Open House Architecture in 2007, a transdisciplinary research practice which she continues to direct parallel to Wolff. She has led an Advanced Architectural Design Studio at Columbia University GSAPP (2023) and is currently a Professor of Practice in Architecture at the School of Architecture at Liverpool University (2023 – 2026).
Both principals have taught and lectured internationally including Switzerland, Germany, Italy, USA, Canada, Japan, and India and continue to do so. The work of the practice has also been included at various international exhibitions including the Venice Architecture Biennale, Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, the Chicago Architecture Biennale, the São Paulo Biennale, and the South American Architecture Biennale. In 2023 the studio was awarded an honourable mention for their work ‘Tectonic Shifts’ at the 18th Venice Architectural Biennale. The Biennale exhibition content formed the basis of their subsequent book by the same name.
Simon pendal
Simon Pendal Architect is a small practice based in Fremantle working on projects including single houses, additions and outbuildings, to small public works including the St Thomas More Columbarium, and larger projects such as Reclaiming Kalyenup for the Menang Noongar and Museum of the Great Southern. The practice is best known for making small, thoughtful projects from humble opportunities. Our model of working seeks to establish memorable places through observation of their context which linger in the minds of users long after visitation.
Simon is an Associate Professor and Co-Chair of the Studio Programme at The University of Notre Dame in Fremantle and is a former curator of a monthly newspaper column in the West Australian. Simon completed a practice-based PhD through the invitational Stream at RMIT in 2016 entitled Entrainment: An Architecture of Feeling and Thinking.
Increasingly the work of the practice has sought an enhanced relationship with the natural world whereby Simon is working with acclaimed regenerative farmer Ron Watkins to develop alternate approaches to making suburbia from a land-care basis. Simon and Ron meet weekly to record Ron’s knowledge for future publication. Simon is working with Notre Dame’s head librarian to establish an archive of significant Western Australian architects.
Patrick Kennedy
Patrick Kennedy is a founding partner of Kennedy Nolan. He helped establish, and continues to lead the practice’s distinctive design direction. In addition to practice, Patrick is an active contributor to the Australian Institute of Architects, has taught at the University of Melbourne and regularly engages with the design world through talks and writing. Patrick was a foundation member of the Boyd Circle and is now on the board of the Robin Boyd Foundation, which seeks to influence public policy in the progressive spirit of Robin Boyd.
Over several decades, Patrick has helped guide the steady growth of Kennedy Nolan to be an established design and thought leader.
Rachel Nolan
Rachel Nolan is a founding partner of Kennedy Nolan. Rachel is crucially involved in the design direction of the practice, but also in building and maintaining a positive and creative workplace. Rachel is curious about people, culture and the mystery and magic of place. Her work is conceptually driven but realised with pragmatism and humour.
Over 25 years in practice Rachel has contributed more broadly to the architecture profession through lectures, teaching, mentoring and collaborations. She has served the Australian Institute of Architects as a lecturer, juror and committee member. She is currently a member on The Victorian Design Review Panel and a founding member of The Boyd Circle.
She likes to talk and draw.
Jimmy Frank Jupurrurla and Simon Quilty
Jimmy Frank Jupurrurla is a Warumungu man from Tennant Creek whose knowledge of housing and community life is grounded in lived experience, not formal training. His understanding is deeply embedded in Country — in climate, culture, and the everyday realities of how people live. Over a lifetime, Jimmy has witnessed the systemic failure of housing for his people, and yet continues to bring insight, humour, and clarity to conversations about what needs to change.
Simon is an accidental doctor and storyteller, shaped by a background entwined with privilege and the ongoing legacy of colonisation. His work is driven by a growing understanding of the relationship between land, culture, and the built environment — and the ways in which contemporary housing often ignores both.
Together, Jimmy and Simon represent two perspectives separated by experience and connected by a shared commitment to truth-telling. Between them lies an important space — one that reveals the reality that housing systems in Tennant Creek and across Australia have not failed by chance, but through long-standing structural design.
They are not architects, and they don’t claim to be. Their perspective is grounded in lived experience — in what it means to inhabit a home. Their work challenges conventional thinking, calling instead for deep listening and for Aboriginal people to lead the agenda in shaping housing futures.
Bringing fresh insight, honesty, and a commitment to meaningful change, their approach is not about disruption for its own sake, but about pursuing justice through new ways of thinking and doing.
Carroll go-sam
Carroll Go-Sam is Dyirbal gumbilbara bama of Ravenshoe, North Queensland. She is a graduate in architecture from the University of Queensland. Carroll is an honorary fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects (AIA). A senior lecturer in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Queensland, with diverse Indigenous focused research projects. Currently undertaking studies in Indigenous social housing, health and climate resilience centring on communities of Yarrabah (Qld) and Tennant Creek (NT).