In biological terms, the edge between two ecosystems is called an ecotone. In urban habitats, architects and urban planners must understand the importance of this edge as an ecosystem itself. The boundary between landscapes, urban and rural, the edge between different urban fabrics - all those areas have their own specificity and must blend or interact with its immediate environments in a special way. This boundary is not only physical but intellectual, and for instance can be between two cultural inheritances.
This seminar from the 2018 National Architecture Conference EDGE will explore these concepts through several examples of recent works by OAB that confront the circumstances of working at the edge - not only a physical edge, but most importantly an intellectual one.
AACA Competency: Design
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Presenter: Borja Ferrater: Partner, Office of Architecture in Barcelona (OAB) Spain
CPD hours: 1.5 formal
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In this seminar from the 2018 National Architecture Conference EDGE, Moshe Safdie explains how the combination of densification, congestion and the new dominant typologies have brought about a dramatic deterioration of the public realm. He details how the single-use, multi-level mall disconnects from its surroundings and siphons energy off the traditional streets and piazzas, with the latter also severely affected by congestion and traffic. Moshe uses projects from his practice (such as the Habitat 67 complex) as case studies to show how they have tackled the challenge of mixed-use complexes throughout Asia, with the objective of restoring the public realm, befitting our times, culture and economy.
AACA Competency: Design
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Presenter: Moshe Safdie: Principal, Safdie Architects
CPD hours: 1 hour formal
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From the National Architecture Conference 2016: How Soon is Now
In this presentation Thomas Fisher talks about the architectural impact of the media revolution and the importance of architecture in our new economy and social function. Thomas explores concepts such as "Third Wave Thinking" and the "Third Industrial Revolution" and how the design and architectural community can find new ways to meet people's needs.
AACA Competency: Design
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Presenter: Thomas Fisher: University of Minnesota
CPD hours: 1 hour formal
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From the National Architecture Conference 2016: How Soon is Now
What is permanent, and what is the real lifecycle of a building? Nazrine Seraji discusses Design as Agency - architecture as a living agent using historical examples and her own projects to critically review the many approaches to urban planning from small towns to super cities and explores the relationship between public realm amenity and built form that is necessary for sustainable urbanism.
AACA Competency: Design
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Presenter: Nasrine Seraji – Atelier Seraji Architects and Associates
CPD hours: 1 hour formal
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From the National Architecture Conference 2015: Risk
In this session David Gianotten will address the theme of risk and focus on the ways his work engages risk as a productive element within their work.
OMA Projects currently under his design and supervision include the Taipei Performing Arts Centre in Taiwan, the Hanwha Galleria in Busan Korea, the Taiyuan Industrial Heritage masterplan in China, and the Prince Plaza Building in Shenzhen China.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: David Gianotten: Managing Partner-Architect of OMA
CPD hours: 1 hour formal
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From the National Architecture Conference 2015: Risk
Jeremy Till addresses the theme of risk through his work as Head of Central Saint Martins in London, widely considered one of the world’s leading centres for art and design education, and Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of the Arts London.
Jeremy addresses risk-averse authorities and regulations with humour and insight. Case studies include the pioneering building, 9 Stock Orchard Street, winner of the RIBA sustainability prize with Sarah Wigglesworth Architects.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Jeremy Till- Head: Central Saint Martins
CPD hours: 1 hour formal
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From the National Architecture Conference 2015: Risk
Gregg Pasquarelli addresses the theme of risk and focuses on the ways in which his practice engages risk as a productive element within their work.
Since 1996 New York-based SHoP Architects has set the standard for creative exploration in the field of architecture and modelled a new way forward with its unconventional approach to design. The firm’s method centres on a willingness to question accepted patterns of practice, coupled with the courage to expand beyond the architect’s traditional roles.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Gregg Pasquarelli - Principal: SHoP Architects
CPD hours: 1 hour formal
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This course is from the National Architecture Conference 2014: Making.
Making Culture positions architecture as an element of culture, and the process of making architecture an act of cultural production.This approach asserts that the interpretation of and contribution to culture(s) as the primary productive task of architecture, before response to brief, programme, site or other obligations.
David Adjaye and his practice Adjaye Associates (founded in London, but since expanded to the US, Germany and Ghana) seek to create “buildings that belong to yet diverge from their contexts, absorbing and animating difference rather than homogenizing it.” Sensitivity to materials, color, shape, and light informs the work on all scales.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: David Adjaye - Principal: Adjaye Associates
CPD hours: 1.5 formal
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From the National Architecture Conference 2014: Making
Making Culture positions architecture as an element of culture, and the process of making architecture an act of cultural production. This approach asserts that the interpretation of and contribution to culture(s) as the primary productive task of architecture, before response to brief, programme, site or other obligations. A series of conversations will explore how the appeal of culture can be used as a tool to enable architecture’s transformative function, to enhance the particularity of place and to stimulate a renewal of institutions.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Andrew Burns - Principal: Andrew Burns Architects, Richard Hassell - Director: WOHA
CPD hours: 1.5 formal
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From the National Architecture Conference 2014: Making
Like “sustainability”, the term “collaboration” has started to become a catch cry for architects – we hear it all the time but what does it really mean? Is collaboration the term we use when we hope that everyone will agree with our idea or is this the art of conversation and conflict resolution? Or so much more?
Making Connections examines projects and practices that generously engage with other ideas, people, environments and situations at a range of scales, to produce unexpected outcomes both formally and culturally.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Emma Williamson-Director: Coda, San Sek Ng- Principal: Sek San Design, Gurjit Singh Matharoo- Principal: Matharoo Associates
CPD hours: 2 hours formal
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From the 2013 Regional Architecture Conference: Spirit of Place
Smallprojects is about a particular way of thinking and the projects that have resulted, grown from the specifics of monsoon Asia and the questions faced by living in dense humidity, strong sun, a gradually developing society, inconsistent building culture, and the tremendous rates of growth and decay that characterise the hot, wet zone. As a departure from formal concerns, its name references neither size nor scale, but the intimate junctions where elements and issues meet; its interests, less in the production of things than the discovery of relationships.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Kevin Low: Small Projects, Malaysia
CPD hours: 1 hour formal
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From the 2013 Regional Architecture Conference: Spirit of Place
Jorge Gracia, architect and founder of Gracia Studio, challenges the conventional architecture in Tijuana, México, fostering a demand for inexpensive and design forward architecture, focusing on prefabrication. Projects like Encuentro Guadalupe and Todos Santos House illustrate the complete process of conceiving a project and actually building it, when challenges as design, structure, budgets, material availability, manpower, communication, engineering expertise, artwork and craftsmanship come together.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Jorge Gracia: Gracia Studio USA/Mexico
CPD hours: 1 hour formal
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From the 2013 Regional Architecture Conference: Spirit of Place
Don Watson's employment with the Interim Committee of the National Estate (predecessor of the Australian Heritage Commission) during the recession of 1974 gave him a lasting interest in the history of Queensland’s built environment. He presents a chronology of Queensland architecture from the colonial beginnings through to the mid-20th century, and focuses on the stylistic influences of each era as adapted to the particulars of Queensland’s climate and locally available building materials.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Don Watson: State Library of Queensland
CPD hours: 1 hour formal
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From the 2013 National Architecture Conference
Lyons is a practice with a long-established history of designing medium to large public and commercial buildings in Australia. Working beyond modernist ideas about structural expression and material authenticity, the work of Lyons demonstrates the ways in which materiality and assembly can be used to achieve surface effects and patterns that communicate at the scale of the city and within the visual chaos of the multi-cultural metropolis.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Carey Lyon: Director, Lyons Architecture
CPD hours: 1 hour formal
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From the 2013 National Architecture Conference
MAD Architects are adept at achieving seductive forms and surfaces within a vast range of construction contexts, from China to Canada, small to large scale. Yosuke Hayano's presentation will paint a picture of resourcefulness through design aspiration.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Yosuke Hayano: MAD architects, China
CPD hours: 1 hour formal
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From the 2013 National Architecture Conference
Through his research and practice Matthias Kohler is renowned for experimenting with new fabrication tools, such as robots, to achieve complex and precise fabrication with common material elements such as bricks and timber. His work celebrates the assembly of component parts and is at the cutting edge of new design possibilities.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Matthias Kohler: Gramazio and Kohler, Switzerland
CPD hours: 1.5 formal
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From the 2013 National Architecture Conference
PHooEY Architects are sustainable building professionals concerned about sustainability, upcycling, energy efficiency, and the recapture and reuse of materials. Emma Young demonstrates through her practice's projects: the reprogramming of existing developments, their adaptation and their re-use. Her presentation reminds us to not start our design with a clean sheet but to see the potential in the existing and to retain what is possible.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Emma Young: Director, PHooEY Architects
CPD hours: 1 hour formal
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From the 2013 National Architecture Conference
Whether driven by extreme sites or their own formal aspirations, the work of Aste’s practice LAAC, is characterized by its determined manipulation of familiar materials such as steel or concrete beyond conventional, even reasonable, limits. LAAC are also known for their skilful re-framing of historic materials and sites to open up new associations and social opportunities.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Kathrin Aste: Principal, LAAC, Austria
CPD hours: 1 hour formal
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From the 2013 National Architecture Conference
Cesare Peeren’s presentation focuses on the creative use of recycling and upcycling of locally found waste in architecture. He demonstrates the abundance of material available for recycling, and discusses the regulatory and industry frameworks which can constrain or enable its re-use. The projects of his practice Superuse Studios shows how we can design and build beautiful, functional and potentially reusable structures for future generations, and how sustainability begins from the designer.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Cesare Peeren: Superuse Studios, Netherlands
CPD hours: 1 hour formal
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From the 2013 National Architecture Conference
Virginia San Fratello's presentation is concerned with familiar materials, including materials we often fail to notice, used in novel ways.
With partner Ronald Rael, Rael San Fratello is at the forefront of a reconsideration of traditional materials such as earth and straw, using new digital techniques of production.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Virginia San Fratello: Founding Director at Rael San Fratello
CPD hours: 1 hour formal
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Rachel Neeson presents the recent work of Neeson Murcutt Architects including the Castlecrag House, winner of the 2011 Robin Boyd award. Rachel’s projects with her late husband Nick Murcutt can be characterised by a strong tactility. The distinctive qualities of the materials, textures and geometries of the site and those of the building are treated respectfully and heightened by association.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Rachel Neeson: Director, Neeson Murcutt
CPD hours: 1 formal
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In this course, Anu Mathur and Dilip Da Cunha present their thematic landscape and environmental design research. Of particular interest, after a year of intense weather events in Australia, are their studies based on the historic flooding of the Mississippi and the contemporary investigations into the changing seawater, fresh water, groundwater and atmospheric environments of the great city of Mumbai. Their presentation provides salutary insights into natural and cultural fluxes and flows.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha: University of Pennsylvania, Parsons School of Design, New York
CPD hours: 1.5 formal
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Wang Shu's Amateur Architecture Studio in Hangzhou represents a thoughtful and considered response to the rapid contemporary urbanization of China. The Studio’s projects employ landscape responses, spatial organisations and material qualities that resonate with China’s long history and explicitly challenge the placeless and graceless presence of many recent ‘international’ projects.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Wang Shu: Amateur Architecture Studio
CPD hours: 1.5 formal
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Through a combination of case studies and sound technical information, this seminar considers how the building envelope needs to deal with water in its various forms and how considered design and detailing can minimise and prevent damage.
AACA Competency: Design and Documentation
Presenter: Andy Russell: Proctor Group Australia
CPD hours: 2 formal & 2 GBCA
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Be inspired as Hermann Kaufmann shares some of the challenges, learnings and strategies he has experienced and developed through years of sustainable design for private, public and commercial buildings.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Hermann Kaufmann: ZT GmbH, Austria
CPD hours: 1 formal & 1 GBCA
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Carbon positive wood and wood products are enabling architects and designers to create buildings with low or zero (negative is possible!) carbon footprints.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Fabiano Ximenes, NSW Department of Primary Industries
CPD hours: 1 formal & 1 GBCA
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New design concepts using engineered timber products are promising to increase sustainability and construction efficiency. Cross laminated timber (CLT) and other laminated products are appearing in multi-level building designs of 10 storeys and more.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Liam Dewar, Director - Eurban Limited UK
CPD hours: 1 formal & 1 GBCA
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Internationally and locally, timber and wood products are increasingly specified for major construction projects as a fire safe building material.
Integrating design principles and fire engineering can ensure the required performance and compliance with relevant building codes.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: David Barber, Principal, Australasia Fire Leader, Arup
CPD hours: 1 hour formal
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The projects of Chilean landscape architect Teresa Moller convey an ambivalence which recognises the paradox that we cannot appreciate the landscape without altering it. Her work embodies a fearful restraint: sometimes there is nothing to see, at others the intervention is disarmingly stark.
AACA Competency: Design, Project Delivery
Presenter: Teresa Moller: Principal, Teresa Moller and Associates
CPD hours: 1.5 hours formal
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This course is based on Fumihiko Maki’s presentation at Natural Artifice, the 2011 National Architecture Conference.
Architect Fumihiko Maki has written eloquently on the subject of Inner Space: the transferral of nature from the hilltop shrines of the rural village to the innermost recesses of contemporary urban life. The attempt to locate nature within such confines parallels another of Maki’s preoccupations: his quest to provide the experience of solitude within public spaces.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Fumihiko Maki: Principal, Maki and Associates
CPD hours: 1.5 hours formal
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This course is based on Sebastián Mejia and Luis Callejas’ presentation at Natural Artifice, the 2011 National Architecture Conference.
Callejas and Mejia are co-directors of Paisajes Emergentes (Emerging Landscapes). Paisajes Emergentes has come to the fore through rediscovering Romanticism within the technological constraints of virtual architecture. This interplay between architecture and landscape is reflected in projects which blur the lines between buildings and their environments, and which incorporate ecological processes, power generation and temporal change.
AACA Competency: Design and Project Delivery
Presenter: Sebastián Mejia and Luis Callejas: Co-directors of Paisajes Emergentes
CPD hours: 1.5 hours formal
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This course is based on Juhani Pallasmaa's presentation at Natural Artifice, the 2011 National Architecture Conference. Juhani Pallasmaa sees the task of architecture as 'the defence of the authenticity of human experience'. He asserts the importance of a ‘primary’ human condition which predates any notions of nature or artifice.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Juhani Pallasma, Principal, Architect SAFA, Hon. FAIA, Int FRIBA
CPD hours: 1.5 hours formal
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In this presentation, Michael Green presents some of mgb's earlier and award-winning work in order to discuss how evolving systems and designs in wood can be used to lessen the significant negative effect of buildings on the environment. He demonstrates how new uses of wood technology can be used to construct efficient and affordable structures that cause less harm to the environment, whilst maintaining functionality and aesthetic appeal.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Michael Green (mgb ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN)
CPD hours: 1.5 formal & 2 GBCA
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This course is based on Sam Jacob's keynote presentation at the 2010 Australian Institute of Architects' National Conference extra/ordinary.
Kill the Modernist Within! is a thoroughly entertaining, captivating and challenging discussion of some unusual ideas and projects that will take you out of your architectural comfort zone and leave your brain buzzing.
Click here to get a taste of what this course has to offer...
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Sam Jacob, Founding Director, FAT (Fashion Architecture Taste)
CPD hours: 1 hour formal
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This course is based on Richard Goodwin's keynote presentation at the 2010 Australian Institute of Architects' National Conference extra/ordinary.
Richard Goodwin's keynote presentation explores the boundaries of architecture, investigating how it intersects with art, the body and the city. Using examples—including parasitic, guerilla-action, and commissioned projects—he explodes these boundaries. He explains his ideas on "porosity" and "parasitic architecture", and gives an unexpected, innovative and thought-provoking perspective on what architecture is, and what it means.
AACA Competency: Design
Presenter: Professor Richard Goodwin, UNSW College of Fine Arts
CPD hours: 1 hour formal
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This course is based on Alejandro Aravena's keynote presentation at the 2010 Australian Institute of Architects' National Conference extra/ordinary.
Given as a part of the extra/ordinary LIVING stream of the conference, Alejandro's presentation encourages you to think outside the social housing 'box'. His innovative approach to thinking about, designing, and implementing all elements of social housing initiatives is fascinating, and opens up a whole new way of thinking about not only social housing, but also the basic assumptions we, as architects, make about the city, urban communities, and housing options. He analyses the role of the architect in the mass housing market, finally demonstrating that architects can, and sometimes do, have an important part in the provision of mass housing of all kinds.
AACA Competency: Design and Project Delivery
Presenter: Alejandro Aravena, Director, Elemental SA
CPD hours: 1.5 hours formal
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