President's Report – 2012

Happy New Year! As we look forward to the year ahead, I'd like to say thank you for your support this year and take a moment to reflect on the activity of 2012.

Thanks especially to last year's steering committee, which was made up of:

Beatriz Maturana - Vice President
Soledad Maldonado – Secretary
Kamil Muhammad – General member
Katherine Sampson – General member
Edith Wong – Treasurer
Anthony McInneny – General member and words@bld50 coordinator

Volunteers Soledad and Katherine have embraced their roles in the pro bono team and the steering committee with gusto. A new volunteers session is planned for early 2013.

Pro bono service 

EOI's were recently called for a pro bono architect for the Ligingi Community Centre brief development. We are currently evaluating applications. Thank you to Katherine, Soledad and Pauline for their continuing initiative and leadership. Also thanks to new members Michael, Glenda and Nicole who have become involved this year and welcome to Zin Mee. This year we planned to expand our reach to target more communities in need, through a multi-pronged approach of promotion, research and evaluation. Some initiatives that resulted include an ad in The Big Issue published in May and a meeting with Paul Pholeros of Healthabitat to discuss possible future collaboration. An online form has been created to make applications easier and posted online in September.

Talks 

A huge thank you to Anthony McInneny and Kamil Muhammed, who ran the series this year. Thanks also to Farah, Dina and Nicole. There were 7 events this year:
Diego Ramirez-Lovering – Housing Tactics
Soumitri Varadarajan – Saying No to the Prima Donna
Panel Discussion: Public Art, Spatial Practices and the City, with John Vella, Dr Mick Douglas, Dr Ruth Fazakerley and chaired by Dr James Oliver
Dandenong Night Walks
Mirjana Ristic - Sarajevo warscapes
Black wave cinema film screening - Specijalno Vaspitanje (Special Education)
Grace McQuilten, The Social Studio - Creativity, design and social change

Change is afoot for the Words series – in 2013, we will be partnering with the Victorian College of the Arts Centre for Cultural Partnerships, to deliver talks at VCA's Southbank campus. We have been chatting to researcher/lecturer James Oliver at the CCP over the past few months and look forward to bringing you the first talk this year in the last week of February. Stay tuned for more details!

News and editorials 

Beatriz has led the editorial group this year. The news team continues to grow, with contributions from A4P members worldwide. We're very proud of the critical dialogue that goes on through our website, newsletters and facebook page and we encourage your input! Thanks to Ajith Kuruvilla and Peter Johns who have managed the newsletter this year.

Melbourne and Santiago 

Beatriz is now based at Instituto de la Vivienda (Institute of Housing) at the University of Chile, where she is spreading the word about A4P. She was interviewed in August on the University of Chile Radio about her teaching. The program is called " Arquitectura da que pensar" (architecture makes us think...). We bade farewell a short while ago to Anthony McInneny who has now joined Beatriz in Chile. We are keen to strengthen links between our two cities, and this has happened to an extent so far through news exchange online.

In other news.. 

Our application for special consultative status with the UN was approved, granting us the opportunity to engage with the UN's operations and other NGO's throughout the world. References to A4P work appeared in the book Momentum, published by the Office of the Victorian Government Architect, in an article by Anna Tweeddale titled 'An architectural ecology: speculations on emergent practices'.

Plans for 2013 

Welcome to the steering committee for 2013:

Beatriz Maturana - Vice President
Katherine Sampson – Secretary
Kamil Muhammad – General member
Peter Johns – General member
Edith Wong – Treasurer

I will be continuing in the role of president and look forward to working with the team to continue promoting social justice in the built environment profession. Thanks are due to our supporters, including Architeam, Visionary Design and Development (especially Mary Ann Jackson and Ralph Green) and the RMIT Public Art Department (especially Geoff Hogg and Ceri Hann) for hosting the talk series – this year and the five years prior – and to those who spoke at words@bldg50.

Eleanor Chapman

Architects for Peace President, 2012

Instigating Change with Common Ground

By John Southern

This article was originally published on Archinect and has been re-published with the consent of its author.

In the age where cultural production has usurped industrial production as the driver for Western economies, the Venice Architecture Biennale represents a special kind of affair. This three month-long bonanza of architecture and urban design represents a collection of diverse principles produced under a unified curatorial umbrella. Despite the trash-talk that has proliferated in certain circles since the opening of the event in late August, this year’s Biennale doesn’t have much to be cynical, negative, or nasty about.

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RIO+20: Thoughts from an outsider

Rio+20
Thoughts from an outsider

Conversations you have in the hot pools at Ngawha Springs, in the north of New Zealand, have an air of unreality about them. Precisely because they are real. People say what they think without any attempt at manipulating or massaging the message. These conversations can be as informative as they are startling. You look at life right in the eye, and then are left to ponder what to do about it.

I asked one individual what he had been up to during the day. “Shooting ducks.” “You like eating ducks then?” “No, it’s the killing I enjoy.” I must have looked startled, even through the steam. He wanted to set my mind at ease. “I’m into conservation too.” he went on. “One of my mates has set aside 500 acres where the pheasants are protected so they can breed.” He thought wistfully, and then added “When they open it up the shooting will be fantastic.”

Banner: “The waste-pickers and recyclers of the world are doing more for 
the environment than all of Rio+20.” Photo: Colin Miller

Rio+20 was a world in denial, confused by all the smoke and mirrors of green economics, and completely lacking the honesty you find at Ngawha Springs. At UNCED in 1992 we were eyeballing life and getting on with it. Those of us involved in ending the Cold War believed that anything was possible, and sorting out the environmental mess was just a process of getting on with the job. Tough, but possible. We knew you had to be focused and to see clearly.

Rio+20 seemed to be only pretending to be concerned about the environment. Rather like those academic conferences where participants are focused on advancing their careers rather than changing the world. Before UNCED 1992 we had done our homework, and afterwards we followed through on what had been achieved. In Rio we convinced Susan Maxman to bring the issues forward to the UIA/AIA Congress the following year, and New Zealand played a leading role in that Congress. Back home the 1993 Papatuanuku Conference polarised the architectural profession. The seeds for Enviroschools were planted. All over the world Agenda 21 offices were opened up as local governments everywhere tackled the issues we had raised.

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Here-Say: State of Design Re-Cap

(photo by Tobias Titz)

We partnered with the Department of Counter Culture to bring you 'Here-Say': a speakers forum during the State of Design Festival in July. In case you missed out, video footage of the program will be available on the website soon, but in the meantime, we've got the following summary of the week for you, a smorgasbord of inspiring contributions from practitioners addressing socially and environmentally conscious design in various ways.

Professor Kim Humphrey officially opened the program by speaking of extreme consumerism and how the fashion industry has the opportunity (and a responsibility) to counteract the habit of consumers to buy and discard possessions haphazardly, with little consideration of the sacrifices made by people involved in making the product or for the natural environment – and all for the sake of appearing “fashionable”.

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‘If you want to fuck with the falcons, you’d better learn how to fly’

By: Rory Hyde

This article was first published on Archis' Action! Blog

A brief roundup of ‘extra/ordinary’, the Australian Institute of Architects national conference, Sydney, April 2010

Although delivered simply as an amusing anecdote, when taken out of context, this crude piece of wisdom from the elder statesman Peter Corrigan seemed to capture the essence of ‘extra/ordinary’. This was a conference about engaged practitioners; engaged in the ‘ordinary’ messy reality while still managing to scratch out something ‘extra’. Architects presented innovative (and often idealistic) approaches to complex problems, while not afraid to go beyond the discipline to engage with the pragmatics of financing, policy or public engagement in order to see them executed.

Creative director Mel Dodd’s vision for the conference included the words ‘contingency’, ‘compromise’, ‘complexity’, ‘concession’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘constraint’ – a clear endorsement for tentative conclusions and grappling with the real as opposed to the confident presentations of crisp and complete buildings by architectural stars as we have seen at past conferences. This is at once a reflection of our ‘no frills’ economic times – an end to the age of excess – but also a statement of urgency for the profession. If we continue to hitch our future on offering rarefied aesthetics instead of participation in the complex mechanisms of the city, our days are surely numbered.

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Re-cap: Impromptu-2: Sabbagh Architects, Recent Projects

Juan Pedro Sabbagh became partner of Sabbagh Architects in 2001. Opened in 1984, Sabbagh Architects is today one of the most influential architectural practices in Chile. The typology of their architectural work covers industrial, commercial, housing, educational and heritage projects.

Sabbagh Architects is one of the most influential architectural offices in Chile, not only because of the 1.5million sqm of architecture they’ve constructed, but also because of the quality of their architectural language. The magic began with Juan Sabbagh, founder of the office and national architectural prize-winner, through his definitive architecture and academic teachings at the University of Chile.

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Recap on The art of architecture in making community, words @bldg 50, 6 August 2009

The presentation at last Thursday's words @bldg50 was on Professor Silvia Acosta's work with students from the Rhode Island School of Design, in the context of using architecture as a tool for social and communal engagement. She presented examples on how a collaborative design model could be used to promote similar actions.

Sivlia presented her projects in Mexico, the US, Japan and Costa Rica. In all projects she worked with her students and the locals.  All projects involved a very tight time frame, in which an initial period of observation, and input from local acquaintances familiar with the area, was followed by an intense design process and hands on construction.  Silvia recounted the setbacks she faced during the many construction phases, such as torrential rain in Costa Rica which put her team's work on hold for several days!  It was evident that time and geographic constraints prevented the undertaking of an extensive community consultation process in some cases.  Nonetheless, engagement with each local community inevitably occurred in each project - through the use of local materials and vernacular construction techniques and the ultimate realisation of a piece of architecture that was a distinctive, functional response to its place, to be used and enjoyed by the local people.  A housing project in Mexico, in an impoverished area on the outskirts of the town San Miguel de Allende, was initially met with skepticism from the locals, however the sentiment gradually diminished and not long after, the local community showed their support by taking part in the construction process.  27 similar houses have since been built by the community in the region.

At the moment, Prof. Acosta is a visiting academic in the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Art + Design, at Monash University. She will be conducting a similar program with her students in Kinglake, as part of the temporary village for bushfire affected communities. We wish her team well with their project and hope to get out on site to see what they're up to in the next few weeks.

If you missed this presentation, Architects for Peace is currently editing the presentation video of the night, which will be ready soon. And if you haven't yet, join our facebook pages where we will post our activities and work!

See you in September!

Re-cap on 'R + R: A Tale of two cities', words @bldg 50, July 2009

The urban renewal and revitalisation processes currently playing out in Footscray and Dandenong were the focus of last week's words @ bldg 50 talk. Anthropologist Dr Maree Pardy presented early findings from a pilot research project begun this year, documenting the opinions and values of the users of the suburbs undergoing R + R.

Maree has taken a grassroots approach to her investigation to date. Public consultation has happened on the street and in the public spaces that in some cases have become contested spaces: the ground targeted for renewal. Maree related her exploration of Footscray and Dandenong in tandem, noting the similar historical background that has shaped these suburbs (a history of early development around industry, the settlement of large numbers of immigrants) which has led to other established shared traits today. It's a connection that may not be around for much longer: as Maree points out, Footscray is at a critical point in its development. An inner-city suburb that has until now somehow resisted the creeping affluence that has come to characterise surrounding suburbs like Seddon and Yarraville, the current push for urban renewal likewise looks to spell imminent gentrification.

While community consultation has formed part of the urban renewal framework, and a stated objective is to maintain the 'culturally diverse' and 'artsy' feel as a branding tool that characterises Footscray, it is perplexing to see that the newly-designed public spaces now emerging seemingly reflect less of the existing community's diverse values and aspirations and more the white middle-class locals that local government and developers hope to attract. Maree noted that Dandenong, on the other hand, is free of these inner-urban development pressures and shows signs that its urban renewal program may achieve outcomes that respond to and resonate with the values and needs of the existing residents.

In the end, the audience was left with more questions than answers, and they're certainly big questions. What does the future really hold for these suburbs, for the migrant groups that make them unique, for the very meaning of that multiculturalism? Can a renewal process allow for difference and conflict, rather than striving for the erasure of these undesirable elements of otherness? As Footscray stands at the brink of a critical shift, they're questions that need to be asked.

Maree's passion for the project really came through and it was a refreshing approach and perspective that she presented. The project is still only at a flegling stage and we wish the team well with their planned extended research, for which funding is being sought, and look forward to touching base again further down the track. The gentrification of the suburbs has generated much interest and discussion since this event and will doubtless be a theme we'll explore in future talks.

See you in August! We'll be joined then by Cuban-born architect and professor from the Rhode Island School of Design, Silvia Acosta.

Re-cap on 'Learning from Ampilatwatja', words @ bldg 50, June 2009

The lessons learnt from an RMIT design studio based in an indigenous community were the focus of this month's words @ bldg 50 talk. A crowd of over 50 turned out on a chilly June night to see Brendan Jones (Antarctica Architects) and Ian Watts (former General Manager of the Australian College of General Practitioners, now a full-time architecture student) present their experiences.

Brendan and Ian have run three community-engaged design studios at RMIT since 2007, each unique, but generally linked by a use of design as a means of improving healthcare environments. The talk focused on the 2008 'Home away from home' studio that set a group of 10 students the daunting task of designing a health clinic for the remote Northern Territory indigenous community of Ampilatwatja.

This challenging project received an enthusiastic response from the audience. Students from the studio fielded tough questions in regard to their design response and the challenges of designing for a community with its own deeply-rooted and complex system of values and needs without imposing Western assumptions and aesthetics.

Thanks to all who participated for a memorable and insightful discussion and to Brendan, Ian and students for their active contribution to the work in progress of bridging the divide between indigenous and non-indigenous populations and restoring cultural and physical health to Aboriginal communities.

A video recording of the talk will be available on the website soon and we intend to present more projects addressing this theme in 2010, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, we hope you'll join us next month, when anthropologist Dr Maree Pardy will look at urban renewal + revitalisation approaches in Footscray and Dandenong.

Download the flyer for next month's talk here

Review of last month's words @ bldg50...

Mel Bright and Tarryn Boden from emerging Melbourne practice MAKE architecture studio presented the Bird Hide design project that they are currently developing for Friends of Westgate Park on Thursday 7 August.

The project, a proposed bird-watching structure to be sited in the wetlands below Westgate Bridge, was originally run as a design studio within the RMIT architecture department. This allowed for an extensive investigation of the site to take place, while presenting the students with a real-world project. Mel showed fragments of several student projects; pointing out that such a thorough and creative site analysis would not have been possible within the time constraints of a typical office environment; neither would students typically be exposed to the challenges of working with a real client group and brief.

The possibilities that emerged from the studio were presented to Friends of Westgate Park, before MAKE took the project into the office. Tarryn, who studies architecture at RMIT as well as working at MAKE, has received credit towards her studies for her role in the project.

Tom from Friends of Westgate Park spoke highly of the client group’s relationship with MAKE and their delight at seeing the project evolve.

MAKE was matched with Friends of Westgate Park through the arch-peace probono service. We’re very excited to see the pro-bono process working so well. Thanks to Mel and Taz for their presentation and congratulations on a beautiful project; we look forward to seeing the bird hide built some time in the future!

We will be posting further info on the website as the project develops. Please check back at http://www.architectsforpeace.org/probono.php