The Living Cities Forum is set to return to Melbourne and Sydney, May 23 and 28 respectively, with an impressive line-up of international and local architecture and design innovators.
This year, the Living Cities Forum is centred around the future needs of current Australians, and the living systems we currently use. By 2050, the population of Australia’s major cities is predicted to nearly double, while global warming will alter our urban and regional environments. The Forum will ask questions like “how do we accommodate for this unprecedented population growth?” and ‘How do we plan our cities to be responsive to climate change?”
One such person is the highly esteemed Glenn Murcutt AO — the only Australian to ever receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize. A sole practitioner since establishing his practice in the 70s, Murcutt’s designs respond and interact intuitively to the Australian landscape while respecting Indigenous practices and cultures.
Image: Glenn Murcutt's completed project, Magney House
Mabel O. Wilson will be joining the discussions. Based in New York City, she is a designer as well as a cultural historian who focuses on the impact of social inequalities on architecture and the built environment. She has written Begin with the past: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture (among others) and been a competition finalist for several important cultural institutions such as Lower Manhattan’s African Burial Ground Memorial.
Rachaporn Choochuey will also join the line-up. She is the co-founder and Design Director of all(zone) in Bangkok, an architecture and design studio known for reusing and recycling materials and sourcing products locally while experimenting with new design techniques. The studio’s projects include MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum in Chiang Mai (shown below) and an entry in the Chicago Architecture Biennial 2015.
The last speaker announced, Christopher Hawthorne will be bringing his insight into urban planning and mobility to the Forum. His main role is chief design officer for the City of Los Angeles, but Hawthorne has also co-authored The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture and he has also been an architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times for the better part of a decade and a half.
Living Cities Forum is held at Deakin Edge in Melbourne and Carriageworks in Sydney. It’s a day-long symposium starting with registrations at 8 am with an 8:30 am start. The day finishes at 4:30 pm and is followed by refreshments.
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