Auditorium 1 and Queensland Terrace, State Library of Queensland
Stanley Place
South Brisbane Queensland
— Google Maps
Tickets
Ticket sales for this event are closed.
Program Info
Fourteen lauded and experimental practitioners will come together for this one-day symposium that explores the innovative thinking and transformative projects that are creating new world cities for the emerging Asian Century.
The speakers reflect the diversity of the countries, cities and people of the Asia Pacific and the breadth of its architecture. They will address the way communities from across the region are responding to the demands of the future and the pivotal role that architecture plays.
CHAT architects will show the relationship between its research of Bangkok Bastards, the city’s existing street vernacular and its built and theoretical designs, which it also refers to as Bangkok Bastards.
The research components will include construction worker housing, illegal markets and settlements, and Bangkok’s locally famous, but internationally unknown, “curtain sex motels.”
The projects that will tie into the research will be the Ekamai Residence, SslaAreeya - residence and yoga community, Nanda Heritage Hotel, TONY – hostel converted from a curtain sex motel, and Loom House – a hybrid of the textile loom and the traditional Thai house on stilts.
Wise Architecture focuses on the value of everyday life. Though we may think of the everyday as something that we are so used to, so normalized as to often forget about its very existence, it is in fact continually repaired and reinterpreted in the flow of time. This two-sidedness of the everyday is interesting for the architect. The term has implied ease, comfort, relaxation, insight and affordability. Architects have to observe the ordinary and then, with their insight, imbue it with extraordinariness before returning it again to everyday life.
Brick is something that we easily access. Around my neighborhood or yours, brick buildings are a common scene of our times in Korea. Louis Kahn asked that we respect its unique characteristics. We agree with Kahn that material beauty is realized when the material’s true character, rather than its secondary personality, is respected. At the same time, the issue with brick lies not in whether they are structural or ornamental. We approach it as a means of embodiment within a specific landscape. Thus, when we ask the brick what it wants to be come, it will perhaps give a different answer from the offer to Louis Kahn.
PTW Architects first actively pursued international collaboration as a mode of practice in the 1970s when the "Peddle Thorp" group of companies formed partnerships with offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, New Zealand and Papa New Guinea.
The focus on China began around 1980 when PTW undertook a large commercial development in Shenzhen, in collaboration with a local Chinese practice. A Wholly Owned Foreign Entity (WOFE) was established in the mid-1980s when PTW, in collaboration with ARUP and CSEC, won the competition for the swimming centre for the 2008 Beijing Olympics (known as the Watercube). A similar pattern occurred in Vietnam in the 2000s. PTW now has offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, in addition to its head office in Sydney.
The international business journey is a long one and takes patience and perseverance.
Commitment to the local context and a love of being there, a deep appreciation of the culture and embrace of cultural differences are critical. Diane will explore how PTW work to ensure that the intellectual contribution of design ideas and innovation are not subsumed by the business of architecture when practicing in the Asian context.
RTA Studio has a strong interest in the relevant context that surrounds each unique project it works on. The studio works in a variety of typologies over the full extent of urban and rural New Zealand. Design director Richard Naish will talk about his recent work in three of these areas: mixed-use urban renewal, the suburban family house and new public school work in provincial New Zealand.
We think architecture should be one continuous experience – from town to architecture and from architecture to town. When we encounter a piece of architecture, the experience begins before we even enter the building – from which path we chose that led us there, who we met along the way, what emotions we felt, how we approach it, and how we exit this piece of architecture.
When we consider architecture as a part of this whole experience – the way the building is positioned on site, the relationship between the exterior and interior, and the creation of the space itself – it should all fall into place. This is how a piece of architecture that responds so naturally to its townscape is made possible.
Architect Li Hu will share with the audience his observation on the challenges facing our environment, and humanity today. Through some of his studio’s latest projects on culture and education, he will present how architecture can be the medium to react to the challenges today and offer the hope for the future.
LOT-EK focuses on the upcycle of manufactured objects and systems — not originally intended for architectural use — and the way they proliferate, accumulate, overlap, and interfere with the built and the natural environment. Like a skilful butcher, who respects the precious complexity and subtlety of the animal he is dissecting, we try to find economy and sustainability in how we cut and combine, to find a way to facilitate eating “the whole pig” from nose to tail.
Our intention is to explore a new equilibrium between the built environment, and the natural and industrial systems from which that environment is sourced. We exploit the existing economies of scale, inhabit the existing carbon footprints, and creatively divert the delivery point of existing manufacturing, shipping, and operating systems. Beyond mere recycling or adaptive reuse, we try to catalyze new cycles of use.
We divert, convert, invert, and pervert, in order to perfect.
Briar Hickling and Alex Mok are founding partners of Linehouse, an interdisciplinary architectural design practice based in Shanghai, China established in 2014.
Young Jang and Sook Hee Chun are co-directors of Wise Architecture, a firm in Korea focusing on using ordinary materiality to create extra-ordinary architecture.
Richard Naish is founder of New Zealand-based RTA Studio. Under his design leadership the practice has created some of New Zealand’s recent most important buildings in fields of education, mixed-use urban precincts and housing.
Koos de Keijzer, founding partner and principal of DKO Architecture, has built a highly regarded role as an urban designer and architect, with a particular expertise in residential developments. As principal of DKO, Koos is actively involved in all projects throughout Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia.
An unambiguous passion in typology research has given rise to a number of innovative apartment and housing typologies which embrace and enrich the Australian residential lifestyle. This passion, coupled with a firm commitment to architectural integrity, delivers a strong emphasis on contemporary sustainable communities and is being adopted as benchmarks for contemporary residential development.
Koos is currently leading a Masters Design Studio at the University of Melbourne and is on the Victorian Design Review Panel assisting the Victorian Government Architect. He is also an active member of the Australian Institute of Architects.
In 2012, Chat Chuenrudeemol formed Bangkok-based studio Chat Architects, which explores the processes of research-based design at every level. While practicing, he has also taught design studios at various Bangkok universities, including Chulalongkorn University, Rangsit University, and KMUTT.
Li Hu is founding partner of Open, former partner of Steven Holl Architects, and director of Columbia University GSAPP’s Studio-X Beijing. During his partnership at Steven Holl Architects, Li Hu was responsible for some of the firm’s influential urban projects in Asia, including Linked Hybrid in Beijing and Vanke Center in Shenzhen. LI left SHA at the end of 2010 to focus on the practice of OPEN with partner HUANG Wenjing.
Kelly Shannon teaches urbanism at the Department of Architecture, University of Leuven. She has also taught at the University of Colorado (Denver), Harvard’s GSD, University of Southern California, Peking University and The Oslo School of Architecture and Design amongst others.
Maki Onishi and Yuki Hyakuda are co-directors of Tokyo-based firm Onishimaki + Hyakudayuki Architects. Onishimaki + Hyakudayuki Architects' office is located in Nihonbashi Hamacho, a downtown neighborhood of Tokyo that still retains the old Edo atmosphere.
LOT-EK is a design studio based in New York. Founded in 1993, the practice is suspended between art, architecture and design, varying in scale and scope, and including work for major cultural institutions and museums internationally. LOT-EK’s founding partners, Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, have an architecture degree from the Universita’ di Napoli, Italy (1989), and have completed postgraduate studies at Columbia University, New York (1990–1991).
