MPavilion

Tune in to hear Fieldwork, the architects behind Collingwood Yards, hosting a panel conversation looking at how to foster connection and collaboration through architecture. Using Collingwood Yards as their case study, this discussion explores how physical space, materials and design can foster communication and collaboration. From community consultations to approaches that focus on minimal interve...

As permanent visitors, working in professions that reshape Country, what if every person on a team shared the responsibility to look after Country by following a kinship to Country model? What would be the benefits and the potential pitfalls? Where would the line need to be drawn between appropriate and appropriation? MPavilion’s sixth annual BLAKitecture forum aims to centralise Indigenous voices...

This discussion celebrates innovative, cutting-edge design by Australia’s small architecture practices and hears from some of the winners of the 2022 ArchiTeam Awards. Learn more about the innovations behind this year’s winning designs, which rethink housing typologies, blur the edges between the indoors and the outdoors and facilitate new relationships with light and the space around us. Honourin...

How can planners and developers design precincts that don’t just look good, but that truly make us feel like we belong somewhere? This stimulating panel, hosted by Six Degrees Architects, delves into the importance of connection and emotional well-being in place-making. They use different case studies to look at how to creatively transform a place—rather than destroying and rebuilding it—and at ho...

The Parlour for the Summer Salon is a lively intergenerational conversation between Marika Neustupny and Suzanne Dance. Marika and Suzanne set the scene with a public conversation about life, architecture and everything in between.

Dan Hill curates a discussion with Mae-Ling Lokko, Xu Tiantian and Joseph Grima to discuss the commonalities between them and their work in more detail. After delving into the specifics of the highly-localised nature of Mae-Ling’s and Tiantian’s work,the panellists turn to a broader discussion around whether a local response can contribute to a global response. Questioning how we can factor extern...

Joseph Grima takes a step back, literally, to show us an image of the earth taken from the Apollo 17 space shuttle. This is the moment when we realise that we operate within a finite, closed ecosystem while coming to terms with the fact that our economies depend on exponential growth. Discussing the historical, entrenched views humans have towards the environment – notably dominated by our economi...

Introducing us to the concept of ‘architectural acupuncture’ Xu Tiantian presents four projects in rural China, where small projects have created big opportunities for revitalising rural villages. Each project is vastly different, an outcome of the highly-localised approach to design using traditional materials and building techniques. In this way, materials and their production are a cultural exp...

How can dealing with waste become less of a punishment and more of an opportunity? Sharing her work in Ghana, Mae-Ling Lokko explores three key material flows, involving the land, the plate and the building. Using coconut husks and mycelium – a type of fungus used to compost food waste – as examples of alternative building products, Mae-Ling demonstrates a transformational pathway in which agricul...

In this summative discussion, Mel Dodds is joined by Dave Wandin, Indy Johar, Jane Mah Hutton and Vo Trong Nghia, as together they crystalise the common themes throughout the morning’s presentations. Emphasising our need to examine our relationship to materials, panellists discussed how to re-orient our focus from ideas of ownership towards ideas of material stewardship and responsibility towards...

Vo Trong Nghia’s approach to architecture embodies mindfulness towards materials which demonstrates the possibilities of thoughtful, considered designs. Join Vo Trong Nghia as he presents a series of projects created by his practice – each one a powerful testament to his belief that we need more greenery in our cities for the health of our urban environments, as well as our own. Building predomina...

Have you ever paused to consider where all the materials around us come from, and what will happen to them? Walking us through her recent book – Reciprocal Landscapes – Jane Mah Hutton shares her research tracing the origins, labour practices and regimes required to bring five key materials to the streets of Manhattan. Guano fertilizer, granite, steel, trees and wood provide examples of how materi...

Climate change is a symptom of the failure of our systems: systems in which humans have constructed a theory of dominion and viewed the planet as an infinite resource to be exploited. In a fast-paced and provocative talk, Indy Johar presents a worrying overview of the climate crisis and global systems which have resulted in a fundamental transition in the way we relate to the world around us. But...

If we can re-conceptualise material flows as flows of energy – from the land, during use, and back to Country – we open the door to a conscientious stewardship of materials by acknowledging that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. After welcoming us to Country, Uncle Dave Wandin discusses how the financial cost of material acquisition ignores the ecological costs of material c...

Mae-ling Lokko is an educator, architectural scientist and biomaterials technology researcher from Ghana and the Philippines whose work centres on the upcycling of agrowaste and biopolymer materials. Her research integrates a broad range of criteria that questions contemporary material-value systems to evolve life cycle design to meet generative justice criteria. Chris Bourke, the Melbourne bureau...

The Melbourne Awards Alumni Breakfast Panel Discussion. A panel conversation exploring the topic of redefining leadership in turbulent times, featuring Lord Mayor Sally Capp, Peggy O’Neal AO (President of the Richmond Football Club and Chancellor of RMIT University), Dr Linny Phuong (Founder of The Water Well Project) and Daniel Manly (Brand Director, Arbory Bar & Eatery/Arbory Afloat/HER Bar/BKK.

For the entirety of the period architecture and design have been part of university curriculums, Indigenous culture and heritage, First Nations perspectives and understandings of Country have been largely absent—or if present viewed through an anthropological lens rather than as a living culture. In recent times it has become clear this is not good enough. Yet with already packed curriculums where...

Older women’s lived experience of different housing types is not well understood or documented. How do we design housing for older women at risk of homelessness? What do these women need to make a place they can call home? In the coming years, Victoria’s Big Housing Build will deliver thousands of homes for vulnerable Victorians. It is important that we get this right. Recent research by architect...

Listen to a conversation where we unpacked a group of images to expose the covert narratives of colonialism and slow violence embedded in extractivism. Focused on coal mining in Australia, but also looking into instances in the UK, South Africa and the Americas, we cross-examined visual narratives that expand our understanding of coal mining beyond its economic and environmental repercussions — an...

This podcast expands existing knowledge on the environmental impact of resource extraction, listen as they examine the spatial and scalar implications of lithium mining. Presenting alternatives to dominant extractivist socio-political narratives, they explored design’s value regarding the formulation of sustainable post-carbon futures. The Global Extraction Observatory (GEO) is a research collecti...

Too often, through expediency, ignorance or habit, the design profession shapes environments to suit the needs and experience of an ‘average’ human being. However, designing for ‘average’ results in average design that meets the needs of some, while a diversity of people can be made to feel uncomfortable or unwelcome in a place. To create the space for different approaches to how we plan and desig...

The world has changed. What imprint has the unpredictable, sometimes unfathomable, global pandemic left on who we are as ‘the public’? Over the course of their prolific careers, our panel members have each, in different ways, been tasked with understanding who ‘the public’ is, and how place and space can respond to public needs and wants. Listen as as we explore what we can see and understand from...

Listen to experience masterplanners FreeState and guests have a conversation around the critical nature of co-design in the creation of better places. How does using a narrative structure help to define clear user journeys in public places and encourage transdisciplinary practices? Can it provide a catalyst for participatory programs and engender genuine diversity and inclusion?

This podcast is a conclusion of ‘The Excellent City Series’ hosted by the City of Melbourne. The discussion reflects on the key themes explored in the series: · Inclusivity and intersectionality (Designing Equity) · Melbourne as an Aboriginal place (Design Yarning) · Urban resilience in the context of the climate and biodiversity emergency (Designing Resilience) An interdisciplinary panel discussi...

Hear the story of how five Melbourne female creatives have generated a studio space—churning out some of Melbourne’s most well-known goodies. The panel discussion features the duo behind SISTER Studios, the pair responsible for Blazed Wax, the creator of Hello Sisi, Textile Designer Megan McNeill, and the brains behind Kannava Jewels will explore the importance of collaboration within their commun...