Hearing Architecture

This is a special episode of the Hearing Architecture podcast made in collaboration with the Asia Pacific Architecture Festival. In keeping with the APAF 2021 theme "How New Is Now?", in this episode we're speaking about Architectural Education and how traditional knowledge can find a place in the modern university.

In this mini episode of the Hearing Architecture podcast we speak with Andrew Walter about designing for carbon neutrality in the age of climate change.

The built environment is one of the biggest contributors to climate change. We've known for a long time about these impacts and that the way architects design directly effects how much of an impact buildings have on the environment. We talk to Caroline Pidcock, Jenny Edwards, and Jo Best about how architects are designing differently in the age of climate change.

In this mini episode of the Hearing Architecture podcast we speak with Tom Caddaye about designing in bushfire areas of Australia.

Architects in Australia are working to mitigate the devastating effects of bushfires on people and their properties, as this growing seasonal risk impacts our natural landscape. We speak with Katharina Hendel, Kim Irons, and Ian Weir about designing in bushfire areas and what architects can do to provide support for communities before or after being affected by bushfires.

The design of any building is an act of looking into the future. The look of our cities and neighbourhoods evolve with every building that architects design. Throughout history, many architects have had aspirations for what our cities should look like. Some designs have shown buildings interconnected with nature, others are dystopic visions of cities run by machines without any considerations for...

Architects used to draw everything with set squares, compasses, and rulers, then came the mechanical drafting table. During this time architects had to draw every part of their drawings individually, then came dye-line machines and printers. By this time studios were filled with large format drafting tables, printers and plotters, and then computers were slowly introduced so you could do most thin...

Becoming an architect takes a long time. In Australia, a student has to spend a minimum of 5 years at university in order to get an architecture degree. During this time, students learn about the design process, the history and theories that have shaped the profession, and practical building techniques. After graduation, it still takes at least 2 years to get enough experience to become registered...

As Australia's population continues to rise, the demand for housing continues to intensify. To meet this demand, apartment buildings are building built at a rapid pace. Most high streets around the country are growing 6 storeys taller above the existing 2 storey row houses. In some streets, you might notice a single house being torn down to clear space for 2 or 3 townhouses on the same block. All...

One of the things that makes Australia great is our richness of diversity. There are people from so many cultural backgrounds, language groups, and belief systems, which influences the way they want to live and shape their buildings. Allowing for these differences in the architecture process can raise some interesting opportunities. When an architect works with a client from a different background...

In 1980 the median house price in Melbourne was $40,800. Fast forward to 2016 and the median price of a house was $713,000. With property prices rising across the country, the concept of the Australian Dreamhouse on its own block with a front and back yard is becoming more like a fantasy. This was in part because median income didn't have the same rate of growth as property prices, so the gap betw...

Most Australians live in cities. The 2016 census showed that 71% of Australian's live in major cities, and only 10% of Australians live in towns with less than 10,000 people. With this gap on the rise, it's important that the small communities around the country are not forgotten while large cities continue to grow. In order for small towns to function they need access to important infrastructure...

The beginning of an architecture project usually starts with some form of communication. It can be a conversation over a coffee, through an email from a client listing a dozen items that they "must have", or standing in an old building with a bunch of people describing what they can see in their head while they gesticulate in the direction of where new windows and walls could be. After this, every...

Before any architecture project starts, there needs to be a client who has the vision to build something. Once they've committed to build, they'll need some specialists to work through all of the mandatory building requirements. In Australia, these include the local planning scheme, national construction code, and some specific design guidelines. So with all of those requirements being handled by...

Australians love to renovate their homes. You can tell we do because there are so many DIY TV programs that show us how to give it a go. But when you watch programs like Grand Designs, The Block, or House Rules there's rarely an architect to be seen. With many programs like this out there a lot of people might assume that design, renovation, and building can all be easily undertaken by anyone at h...

In 2017 the Australian Institute of Architects awarded Melbourne based Architect Peter Elliot with the Gold Medal, which is the Institutes highest honour. As part of his gold medal tour, he told younger architects "to let the theory come later". Some Architects were taken aback by this because they'd spent so much time studying how to embed design theory into their work.  In this episode of Hearin...

When you start to look for it, architecture is everywhere and it's the stage on which we play out our lives. It doesn't matter whether we're working in it, living in it, or resting in it, it's part of our lives and memories.  In this episode of Hearing Architecture we've asked architects from around Australia to tell us what they think architecture's role is in culture: is it informed by culture o...

Architecture is all around us, almost all of the time. But with so many buildings around us, why don't we know more about how they're designed and what goes into the design of these buildings? Welcome to Hearing Architecture, a podcast about architects, what they do, and why it's important. In this podcast we'll be interviewing architects from around Australia who will tell us about the work they'...