MPavilion MPavilion

We all know green spaces are good for us, but could they offer a cure for loneliness?

Tune in to this panel discussion and hear more about how our city-makers (and others) have contributed to a “lonelygenic environment” that makes connection difficult, and hear about ways that could change this.

Hear from panelists like epidemiologist Thomas Astell-Burt, who shared research he co-authored with fellow epidemiologist Xiaoqi Feng—that suggests that more quality green spaces could reduce our chances of loneliness by up to a quarter. Data analyst Angela Ryan (land supply and redevelopment analyst in the Department of Transport and Planning, formerly at AURIN as a social data scientist) discussed the importance of incorporating health and spatial data when making decisions around land use and city planning.

The panel was moderated by AURIN’s Lara Brown, a writer-turned-urbanist who has studied urban loneliness and its causes. She guided this panel discussion that aimed to show why the pathway to more urban togetherness should be green.

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How can we collectively shift away from widespread experiences of exploitation in the architecture industry to that of a new, empowered and future-proof profession?

Architecture and related design fields are professions where ‘passion’ is sometimes used to excuse an exploitative workplace culture. In light of emerging movements around the world to counter the worsening plight of architectural workers, Professional Architects Australia presented a talk between local and international practitioners, advocates and academics.

Hear from a diverse selection of guest speakers about their experiences.

Tune in to hear a panel discussion with regards to speculating our shared futures, the contemplation of possible urban trajectories, and the ways that diverse and creative perspectives intersect to imagine future environments.

Learn as we explored new possibilities that emerge from interdisciplinary, artistic and experimental approaches.

This was the final event in The Excellent City Series, listen in for an opportunity for both individual and collective interrogation on the future of our city.

Future thinkers and creative collaborators include:

Jocelyn Chiew – Director of City Design, City of Melbourne [she/her]
Bebe Backhouse – Head of Strategy Policy and Programs, City of Melbourne [he/him]
Tegan Kop – Head of Smart City Incubator, City of Melbourne [they/them]
Xan Coppinger – Musician, DJ, podcast producer and radio presenter [they/them]
Bronwen Hamilton – Design Manager, City of Melbourne [she/her]

The Excellent City Series:
City of Melbourne’s Excellent City Series is back in 2022/23. The series explores four key themes that are shaping Design Excellence conversations in Melbourne.

The City of Melbourne’s Design Excellence Program reinforces the city’s commitment to enhance the function, liveability, sustainability and public contribution of our buildings and urban spaces.

Aldo Rossi, in The Architecture of the City, describes the urban artefact as a permanence, “a past we are still experiencing.”

Rossi proposes permanence’s present two aspects: “they can be considered as propelling elements or as pathological ones: artefacts that enable us to understand our city in its totality, or artefacts that appear as a series of isolated elements that we can link only tenuously to an urban system.”

Tune in to a discussion that focused on our built heritage and how it can be interlinked with urban design imperatives and opportunities.

Are they appropriately interlinked? If not, why not? What might it be like to have these spheres more productively entangled? What policy and other changes in approach might better enable heritage to be integral to a vital and lived future within the context of a broader urban system?

Join KTA and our panelists—Christine Phillips, Dan Hill & Felicity Watson—in conversation with compere extraordinaire Stuart Harrison.

Curated by Kerstin Thompson Architects. KTA is the 2022 Urban Design winner for the Melbourne Awards, proudly supported by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation.

What makes good architecture or a good architect? Tune in as we dove behind the scenes of the architectural profession and examined the roles and responsibilities of those who work in the field.

Architecture is often judged by aesthetics, but this does not always distinguish one architect from another, nor a good one from a bad one.

What does the licensure, the regulations and contractual systems that surround architecture actually cause? How do these legal mechanisms allow architects to be accountable, to have a duty to the public, and a decision-making process regardless of whether they are good or bad?

Based on discussions from the RMIT Architecture ‘Professional Practice’ area of research and teaching, this discussion looked at the ethics and standards of the architecture industry and to find the ‘good’ of architecture.

Held within a 140-year-old sandstone quarry in Beech Forest within the Otway Ranges, on the traditional lands of the Gadubanud people, Quarry Pedagogies Camp brought together a community of designers and creative professionals to consider the site and its post extractive condition, rehabilitation as an expanded practice and how to foster cultures through place.

This inaugural Quarry Pedagogies Camp included a program of talks, workshops, daily activities and group discussions. Participants were invited to initiate projects in response to the site and were provided time, space, materials and tools to do so. The Camp was an experiment in culture building, group work and ecologies at the edge.

One month later, please tune in as we reflected through conversation about what emerged, what lessons we learnt and how we might collectively consider alternate modes of design and creative practice through sites and projects such as these.