Meet me in the City - AIA National Conference

PRAXIS - Australian Institute of Architects National Architecture Conference 2017. Urban-ism, cities, and grass-root reflections.

Going with the Flow - cities of emotion at this year's conference

Australian architects congregated last weekend for their annual conference in Sydney. Gathered inside the darkened auditorium of Sydney's latest PPP project - the International Convention Center ICC Sydney, over 1200 architects, notebooks clutched, readied themselves for inspiration and reflection. 

Headlining concepts of this year's conference again explored the integration of cities, people, and how our practice effects this relationship - from Winny Mass (MDRV) who brought an international look at urbanism and contemporary culture, to Room 11's reflection on timber vernacular in rural Tasmania, to a conversation with Glenn Murcutt on how we fundamentally create these lasting legacies.

Commencing in an energetic and engaging style, Winy Maas (MDRV)  took an 'XXL to XXS' approach, looking at cities and their sustainable 'planet' metrics, and then down to their constituent parts - their material experience and expression which nods at tradition and to the future. Exemplifying this as in the Market-hall in Rotterdam and the Glass bricked Chanel Store in the UNESCO cobbled streets of Amsterdam.

Meet me in the city was the theme with Rahul Mehrotra leading a great panel line-up with the Planning Institute of Australia.  Questioning and probing our city planning and social metrics undeniably reiterated architect's role in being a part of this challenge.

Eva Castro (Plasma Studio) met everyone in the city - namely taking a grid and skewing it. Skewing our orthogonal's at either building level (Madrid Hotel) or across the acres of China's new cities and macro-generation project's 'greening'. Going with the flow - water, land, and emotions.

Events like these are important - we all need to meet in the city, whether to share our projects, reflect on what we are actually doing (and whether it's worth it), or to draw a collective plan with our design and planning peers. The view from the ICC is not bad one either.

In Conversation - Australia's Glenn Murcutt sharing critical insights, reflections and inspiration

Let's walk through the City - Conference Fringe event tour of Barangaroo with project architects