Australia’s most famous architect leads the list of Australian speakers announced by the Australian Institute of Architects ahead of the 2017 National Architecture Conference.
Pritzker laureate Glenn Murcutt will be joined by fellow Australians Emma Williamson (CODA), John Wardle (John Wardle Architects), Neil Durbach (Durbach Block Jaggers Architects), Rachel Nolan and Patrick Kennedy (Kennedy Nolan), Rodney Eggleston (March Studio), Megan Baynes (Room 11), and Penny Collins and Hu Turner (Collins and Turner).
These architects will also join a list of international designers from China, India, Netherlands and Ireland already announced as speakers for the event.
Organised by the Institute and curated by National President Ken Maher and Professor Helen Lochead, this years’ National Architecture Conference returns to Sydney for the first time in seven years. It will be called ‘Praxis: Process. Propositions. Production’ and will be one of the first events to be held at the new International Convention Centre Sydney designed by Hassell and Populous.
Glenn Murcutt
Glenn Murcutt is Australia’s only Pritzker Laureate (2002) and the recipient of numerous significant awards including the Gold Medal of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (1992), the Alvar Aalto Medal (1992), and the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal (2009). He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1996. Highly awarded, Murcutt’s work is best known for its distinctive Australian character and environmental sensitivity.
Emma Williamson (CODA)
Emma Williamson is a co-founder and Director at CODA, a multi-disciplinary practice based in Fremantle. Whilst overseeing the growth of CODA over the past twenty years, Williamson has developed a keen interest in the culture of practice. She has established a reputation as a leading voice on equity in architecture, particularly the improvement of pathways for women in practice. As founding Chair of the AIA’s National Gender Equity Committee, Williamson has been pivotal in generating a movement of change in practice across Australia.
John Wardle (John Wardle Architects)
John Wardle established his architectural practice in Melbourne and has led the growth of the practice from working on small domestic dwellings to university buildings, museums and large commercial offices. He has an international reputation as a design architect and has developed a design process that builds upon ideas that evolve from a site’s topography, landscape, history and context and a client’s particular aspirations and values.
Neil Durbach (Durbach Block Jaggers Architects)
Graduating from the University of Cape Town, South Africa in 1978, Neil Durbach set up practice in Sydney after winning the National competition for the new Royal Australian Institute of Architects headquarters building at Tusculum, Sydney in 1983. He has worked as the principal design architect on all of the projects of Durbach Block Jaggers. In 2005 Durbach was made an Adjunct Professor at University of NSW, and has taught, lectured, exhibited, judged awards and been published both nationally and internationally.
Rachel Nolan and Patrick Kennedy (Kennedy Nolan)
Patrick Kennedy and Rachel Nolan established Kennedy Nolan in Melbourne in 1999. Kennedy Nolan is an architecture practice which has established a strong reputation for making architecture with a distinct approach to built form and highly considered interiors. The work of Kennedy Nolan is informed by the socially progressive aspects of modernism and seeks to engage with landscape and memory to engender meaningful relationships between people and their environments.
Rodney Eggleston (March Studio)
Rodney Eggleston is a founder and director of March Studio, a Melbourne-based architectural practice launched in 2007. Architectural studies at RMIT led Eggleston to a part-time lecturing role there, and then on to a two-year internship working for Rem Koolhaas at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam. Returning to Melbourne in 2007, and after establishing March Studio, Eggleston was commissioned to design and deliver projects for residential and commercial projects both in Australia and overseas.
Megan Baynes (Room 11)
Room 11 has a reputation for creating exquisite and specific architecture in Tasmania and Victoria. A sensitivity to, and preoccupation with, the superlative Tasmanian landscape typifies Megan Baynes’ work which includes D’Entrecasteaux House, Lighthouse, GASP! and her own Little Big House. The architecture of Room 11 has been widely awarded, prolifically published and can be found in books by Taschen, Gestalten and Thames & Hudson. Baynes is currently working on a small concrete summer house for her family in Southern Tasmania.
Penny Collins and Huw Turner (Collins and Turner)
Collins and Turner is a Sydney based studio established by Penny Collins and Huw Turner in 2002. Born in Sydney, Collins studied at the University of Sydney and worked for the department of public works, before a 10-year period in Europe working for Grimshaw, Richard Rogers, and Foster and Partners. Born in Wales, Turner studied architecture at London’s South Bank University, and worked in the studios of Eva Jiricna, Richard Rogers, and Norman Foster over a 12-year period prior to emigrating to Australia in 2000, and working for Hassell in Sydney.
