MPavilion

Pedestrian trauma, attacks in civic spaces, road rage… As our cities become more global and urban populations increase, how do we better share our public spaces and design for safety? Have our safety needs really changed, and if so, what do we most immediately need to be addressing? Does our need for public safety override concerns about decreased privacy? What are the innovative ideas leading the endeavour to keep our cities open to everyone?

This panel discussion is made up of leading thinkers and doers, with speakers including Orlando Harrison, Zoe Condliffe and Maree Grenfell.

Revisit a conversation exploring how existing project procurement models can work for both Indigenous communities and built environment practitioners. How can we modify the models to work more significantly with Indigenous protocols, narratives, communities and Traditional Owners to achieve better partnerships, collaborations, processes and outcomes?

MPavilion’s second annual BLAKitecture forum brought together Indigenous built environment practitioners on the Yaluk-ut Weelam land of the Boon Wurrung people.

The forum aimed to centralise Indigenous voices in conversations about architecture, the representation of histories, the present state and the future of our built environments. BLAKitecture 2018 was curated by MPavilion’s program consultant Sarah Lynn Rees.

How does gender impact the way we perceive inland places? La Trobe University’s Centre for the Study of the Inland presents Dr Nikki Henningham from the University of Melbourne, oral historian and research coordinator for the Invisible Farmer Project. In an era where landscapes are undergoing rapid change—development, degradation, improvement, and climate change—we’re considering how gender impacts those changes and how those changes impact less visible inland populations.

Nikki delivered an overview of the ARC-funded research program into the lack of visibility of female farmers in public consciousness, teasing out how women of the land respond to their places, which double as home and work, and whether gender has any bearing on their response.

Revisit a panel conversation interrogating the role of gender in leadership, presented by Collectivity Talks. ‘Leadership and women’ will interrogate the attributes of good leadership. Should gender enter the discussion? Why the controversy around quotas? Do female leaders have a responsibility to foster the careers of other women?

Following the release of Assemble Papers's print edition (#10: ‘Housing’, available all season at MPavilion 2018), the AP team (editor Jana Perkovic with Eugenia Lim, Cat McGauran and Vlad Doudakliev) hosted a series of panel sessions exploring the intersection between the way we experience, design and plan for a lively and equitable city.

Panel four: Music Makes Cities

How does music shape the city as a civic force? We surround ourselves with it daily but don’t often think of music as something that leads to more open and democratic planning, policy, education and city systems.

Speakers:

Andrea Baker (Monash University), Bec Hornsby (3RRR), Helen Marcou (Bakehouse Studios), Sui Zhen and more.

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Image:

Sydney Opera House under construction, 1966.

National Archives of Australia A1500, K1431

Following the release of Assemble Papers's print edition (#10: ‘Housing’, available all season at MPavilion 2018), the AP team (editor Jana Perkovic with Eugenia Lim, Cat McGauran and Vlad Doudakliev) hosted a series of panel sessions exploring the intersection between the way we experience, design and plan for a lively and equitable city.

Panel three: What would an open city look like?

What would an open city look like? How will we grow old together? Who has the right to the city—and how can this right be more equally shared and distributed in future? From embedding Indigenous knowledge, culture and connection to place into the DNA of contemporary architecture to design with and for a diverse and ageing population, return and hear from active thinkers working towards more people-centred cities.

Speakers:

Sarah Lynn Rees (Palawa/Plangermaireener, Indigenous Architecture and Design Victoria, MPavilion, JCB Architects), Jane Caught (Sibling Architecture) and Bree Trevena (Arup)

Following the release of Assemble Papers's print edition (#10: ‘Housing’, available all season at MPavilion 2018), the AP team (editor Jana Perkovic with Eugenia Lim, Cat McGauran and Vlad Doudakliev) hosted a series of panel sessions exploring the intersection between the way we experience, design and plan for a lively and equitable city.

What have we learnt from apartments we have built in the past? What kind of apartments do we want in the future? What do we know about apartment life in Australia and internationally; about design standards, enforced and common sense; and explore the spectrum of design responses that emerge from both public and private housing projects?

Speakers:

Mitra Anderson Oliver (urban planner and policy advisor), Quino Holland (Assemble, Fieldwork), Monique Woodward (Wowowa Architecture) and Katherine Sundermann (MGS Architects)

What makes a good housing market? Will Melbourne ever become affordable again? What is the future of the Australian dream, and can we do better housing for people? Old and new finance and ownership models are being designed by innovators across architecture, planning and finance. It is time to reconsider everything from housing co-ops to ethical market-based developments, via Baugruppen and other new models.

Speakers:

Andy Fergus (City of Melbourne, Nightingale), Ben Keck (Assemble, Fieldwork), Dr Andrea Sharam (RMIT University) and Dave Martin (The Sociable Weaver)

“Indigenous science is a way of knowing and a way of life. The power of Indigenous science lies in its ability to make connections and perceive patterns across vast cycles of space and time” – Marcus Hughes

Celeste Carnegie, Indigenous STEAM program producer at Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, stands strong on 60,000 years of technological advancement and environmental sciences that shape her exploration into science and technology while sharing the sophistication, richness, and leadership of Australia’s First Peoples within the STEAM space.

She discussed her journey through the STEAM space, her experiences and how she navigates a male-dominated industry as a First Nations Millennial woman.

This event was part of the MPavilion STEM program in partnership with the Australian Government's Office for Women.

Our buildings, interiors and urban landscapes are navigated daily by people with greatly differing access needs—and they often fail many. Our collective awareness of accessibility is increasing, but what do we really mean when we talk about designing inclusive spaces and places? How can we work to overcome ingrained and everyday ableism, from our cultural institutions to our civic spaces and workplaces?

Introduce yourself to this line-up of designers, professionals and activists as they talked about the opportunities and pitfalls when working to make our cities more accessible. Hosted by Alan Pert, director of Melbourne School of Design and director of NORD (Northern Office for Research by Design), speakers included Margherita Coppolino, an inclusion officer and president of the National Ethnic Disability Alliance; disability and LGBTIQ rights activist, writer and educator Jax Jacki Brown; Celeste Carnegie, Indigenous STEAM program producer at Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences; Anthony Clarke, director of BLOXAS, a practice for empathic and experimental architecture; Jane Caught of Sibling Architecture, a collaborative practice that works across a range of scales and sectors, always with an emphasis on the civic; and architect, artist and educator Tania Davidge of OoPLA, a practice that draws attention to the spaces we use every day.

This event was supported by VicHealth.