Urban Realities: Symposium by Urban Realities

U R B A N / R E A L IT I E S : landscape urbanism 3 day design challenge july 25th - 30th 2011 melbourne

urban/realities

S Y M P O S I U M

SCHEDULE session

session

introduction

politics

9.00

9.10-11.00

9.10

9.40

10.10

discussion/chair 10.35

craig

clark

maarten

esther

dr.vivian

douglas

thenhaus

buijs

anatolitis

mitsogianni

OUTR / Urban Realities Australia

Endemic USA

West 8 The Netherlands

Melbourne Fringe Australia

RMIT Design Research Institute Australia

OUTR is a network of professionals from RMIT University in Melbourne that utilize research as a focus for design practice. OUTR understands design practice as an agent of cultural change within an increasingly complex cosmopolitan world. OUTr’s research endeavors to assist in the emergence of design opportunities specialising on the topics of expanded field, urban environments and advanced technologies. Our network of designers reveal a diverse background of Landscape Architects, Architects, Urban Planning, exhibition design, spatial analysis, brief formation, programming, project management and academic development, however as a research laboratory our common language is Landscape Architecture, Architecture and Urbanism.

Clark Thenhaus is founder of Endemic, a design and drawing studio. Clark graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his Master of Architecture as the 3-year Fideli Fellow. Since founding Endemic Clark has lectured internationally and his work has been exhibited widely. Clark has previously published work in 306090, VIA, KERB Journal, and Especial’Z-Ecole D’Architecture in Paris, France and has contributed to many other forthcoming books and journals. Clark is currently an Associate Lecturer in the Landscape Department at The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). Clark’s work explores mock-history, fiction, fabrication in both the virtual and digital realms, and affective environments while also engaging in the practice of built work and design services.

Maarten Buijs joined West 8, urban design & landscape architecture b.v. in January 2007 and is employed in the role of Senior Manager. Even though Maarten obtained his qualifications at Wageningen University in The Netherlands, most of his professional experience was gained in Australia. The Australian connection began with a student exchange to RMIT in 1985 and after graduation his professional career ‘took off’ at the Victorian Public Works Department, ‘School’s Division’. In 1990 he joined Gerner & Sanderson where he worked on broad-scale rural and regional development planning including projects in Bulla, Mernda, Warrnambool and Collingwood. The base for his return to The Netherlands was laid in the latter half of 1998, when he worked for West 8 whilst ‘on holidays’. At the Symposium he discusses a project which was started then and is yet to be implemented.

Esther Anatolitis is CEO of Melbourne Fringe, Victoria's leading organisation for the independent arts, and co-curator of Architecture+ Philosophy. Esther has worked on various cross-disciplinary projects across a range of media and locations, with a focus on the identification of interstitial spaces for new work. Her academic background is in European philosophy, and she also holds the postgraduate Zertifikat BauhausDessau for her work on the architectural “Serve City” project, for which she was awarded a DAAD Künstlerprogramm residency. Esther’s past professional roles span craft and design, literary arts, multicultural arts, publishing and broadcasting, and she has consulted with numerous arts organisations on their strategic planning and programming. Across all such involvements is an abiding interest in those special spatial and cultural configurations that are responsible for the emergence of the new.

Dr Vivian Mitsogianni is Associate Professor in Architecture at the School of Architecture + Design RMIT University and a director of M@ STUDIO Architects. She is also the Research Leader of the RMIT Design Research Institute’s Future Fabric of Cities Flagship program which undertakes transdisciplinary practice based design research. Vivian was also the founding RMIT Masters of Architecture Program Community and Industry Projects Coordinator, responsible for the implementation of new and innovative curriculum models to facilitate engagement with community, industry and government organisations. Within that role she initiated a series of projects that resulted in producing design research and built projects. Vivian has also run numerous studios in Docklands, the first one in 1998 looked at a possible Docklands Masterplan.

urban/realities

S Y M P O S I U M session

SCHEDULE

02 discussion/chair

information/ technological 11.30-1.30

11.30-11.55

11.55-12.20

12.20-12.45

12.45-1.10

1.10

marti

dr.flora

sam

millie cattlin

tim

franch

salim

rice

joseph norster

schork

EMF Spain

SIAL/RMIT University Australia

March Studio Australia

The Projects Australia

Monash University and MESNE Germany

Marti Franch is a Catalan landscape architect who has studied in Barcelona and Greenwich, England and trained in the offices of Buro Keifer in Berlin and Buro B+B in Amsterdam. Franch established his office Estudi MartĂ Franch EMF in 1999 to independently pursue his interest in designing the landscape. Presently, EMF is composed of landscape architects, architects and agricultural technical engineers and works on projects spanning a wide range of scales, clients and functions. Franch teaches in the Masters Program for Landscape Architecture Masters in both the School of Architecture in Barcelona (ETSAB) as well as in the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).

Flora Salin is a Research Fellow at Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL), RMIT University. She received her PhD in Computer Science from Monash University. Prior to her PhD, she was a senior application developer with a responsibility to design and develop scalable distributed media servers in a number of broadcasting/TV stations worldwide. As a computational designer, she is interested in applying computational approaches, particularly distributed and mobile computing, data analysis, augmented reality, and tangible interactions to architecture and urban design problems. She co-led the SmartGeometry 2011 Workshop Cluster Interacting with the City, Copenhagen, and with her collaborators and workshop participants, a series of multidimensional tangible table prototypes for urban design and planning were made and exhibited in April this year.

Sam joined March Studio as an architect in 2010, cementing a relationship that had been developing since 2007 through a series of collaborations and shared studio spaces. Since joining, he has worked on several retail, residential and installation projects, bringing to March's already well-developed sense of the affect of multitudes of things, an interest in the legibility of how such things are ordered. Prior to this, Sam has worked at Minifie Nixon Architects and Ashton Raggatt McDougall, on a variety of medium and large scale commercial and institutional projects. Before that, he obtained a degree in engineering that he eventually realised he was never really going to put to practice. Sam has been developing his ability to articulate what it is he seeks in architecture by leading design studios and tutoring at RMIT since 2008.

These are The Projects we do together (The Projects) was formed as a result of a combined interest in design, the built environment and public space and is committed to participation and consultation in the development of projects. We are interested in the occupation of public space. We hope for unexpected results. We believe a project exists in the interaction that takes place between designer and the public. The project is strongest when this distinction is blurred. Touching spaces gently and being light on the ground are key to our working practice. We believe that through thoughtful design and execution there can be minimal infrastructure required in the projects we undertake. Portable, rechargeable, demountable, flexible and at a human scale are attributes we see as valuable to our design outcomes.

Tim is an architect, lecturer, design critic and author. In 2005 he co-founded the trans-disciplinary design firm Mesne Design Studio and he is currently a lecturer in the Department of Architecture at Monash University. His work examines the potential opportunities for architectural design and practice through an informed engagement with digital technology and the benefits this represents to contemporary life and culture. His work is trans-disciplinary and encourages as well as fosters connections between and across disciplinary domains such as architecture, other art and design disciplines, as well as industry, in order to innovate in design, often challenging the aesthetics, formal and conceptual, of what is regarded to be a standard in architectural design.

urban/realities

S Y M P O S I U M session

SCHEDULE

03 discussion/chair

closing

2.00

2.30

3.00

3.30

4.00

gareth

eamonn

craig

chris

kathryn english

doherty

fennessy

douglas

sawyer

tom harper

Harvard University Ireland

City of Melbourne Australia

OUTR / Urban Realities Australia

Site Office Australia

OUTR / Urban Realities Australia

Gareth Doherty's research and teaching have focused on issues of landscape, urbanism, ecology, and design anthropology. In fall 2009, he taught studio with Gary Hilderbrand, Designing the Ecology of Democracy, and in fall 2008 seminars on Curating Ecological Urbanism and Scalar Urbanism, the latter with Stephen Ramos and Neyran Turan. He has worked with Chora/Raoul Bunschoten in London, and taught at design schools in Europe, North America, and Australia. He is a founding editor of the New Geographies journal edited by doctoral candidates at the GSD, and editor in chief of volume 3, "Urbanisms of Color." In 2010 Ecological Urbanism edited by Mohsen Mostafavi with Gareth Doherty was published by Lars Muller Publishers. In addition to the D.Des. from Harvard, Doherty has an M.L.A. and Certificate in Urban Design from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.Agr.Sc. and B.Agr.Sc. from University College Dublin.

Eamonn is a Landscape Architect with almost 20 years experience in the planning, design and management of both natural and urban landscapes. He has worked as a consultant landscape and urban designer, coordinated visual resource management, planning and design in National Parks for the Department of Conservation in Western Australia and taught landscape planning and design at the University of Western Australia and RMIT University. Over the past decade Eamonn has managed urban open space planning and design in local government in Victoria. He is currently Team Leader Parks Planning for the City of Melbourne’s City Design Directorate. He has a strong interest in ensuring open space values and provision are maintained with increasing urban population, the role of open space for climate change adaptation and the importance of community engagement in public space planning and design.

Craig Douglas holds a Bachelor of Architecture from RMIT University, and has recently completed a Masters in Landscape Architecture entitled ‘re-making’. His research explores representation as a process that engages the dynamic medium of landscape through diverse communication technologies. In this manner ideas are challenged and transformed through their becoming that embraces the various phenomena of change in the landscape. Craig is currently lecturer and communications coordinator in Landscape Architecture at RMIT. OUTR is a network of professionals from RMIT University in Melbourne that utilize research as a focus for design practice. OUTR understands design practice as an agent of cultural change within an increasingly complex cosmopolitan world.

Chris Sawyer is a Director of Site Office, a landscape architectural consultancy specialising in public space design. Site Office is interested in public spaces that move beyond limiting oppositions such as Nature and Artifice and accept that landscape is as much a cultural construct as architecture. They celebrate the expressive potential of terrain and the Australian condition; explore the relationship between internal and external and acknowledge the dissolving boundaries between disciplines. They seek specific solutions for specific problems, and avoid generalisations. They embrace the rich, new terrain that geometry has opened up, allowing a sculpting of landscape in three dimensions not two. Site Office seeks out collaborations wherever possible, and develops flexible working models that break through traditional standards. Finally, they have a commitment to innovative, quality design that is a reflection of a complex, diverse and ever-changing society.

ecological 2.00-4.00