As architects face increasing economic pressure and growing questions about the industry’s future, how can they challenge the long-held notion that architecture is a luxury only available to the few? Speakers in this symposium explore how systems thinking, cost-management strategies, open-source construction, and other design approaches can enable the delivery of thoughtful, high-quality homes for those who have traditionally lacked access to architectural services.
The event invites an open conversation about the value and accessibility of good design and examines how architects can play a meaningful role in shaping an inclusive built environment for the 99%.
Header Image
Pixel by Panov Scott Architects. Image courtesy of Panov Scott Architects.
Program.
9 am
Delegate arrival
9.30 am
Welcome to Country
9.40 am
Introduction
Katelin Butler and Georgia Birks, Architecture Media
9.50 am
How do for-profit and pro-bono work together? Clare Cousins, Clare Cousins Architects (Melbourne), and Tone Wheeler, Environa Studio (Sydney), in conversation
10.20 am
Deliver the Whole, See It Through James Henry, Housing Choices Australia (Melbourne)
10.40 am
Who is the 99%? Kali Marnane, Urbis (Brisbane)
11 am
From Standard Spec to Safe Home Emily Taylor, Core Collective Architects (Hobart)
11.20 am
Morning tea
12 pm
Volume housing – what are the challenges? Jeremy McLeod, Breathe (Melbourne), and Oscar Stanley, LAWD Development Advisory (Melbourne), in conversation
12.30 pm
Making it Real: Delivering the NSW Housing Pattern Book Abbie Galvin, Government Architect NSW (Sydney)
12.50 pm
From Infill to Fringe Matt Delroy-Carr, MDC Architects (Perth)
1.10 pm
Getting the Numbers to Work: Architect as Developer Milly Gamlin, Ys Housing (Melbourne)
1.30 pm
Lunch
2.30 pm
What do we need? And what can we do without? James Legge, Six Degrees Architects (Melbourne), and Jemima Retallack, Retallack Thompson Architects (Sydney), in conversation
3 pm
Relinquishing Control Oscar Sainsbury, Oscar Sainsbury Architects (Melbourne)
3.20 pm
Where the Light Gets In Anita Panov, Panov Scott Architects (Sydney)
3.40 pm
Rooms, Walls, Windows, Gardens, Streets Stuart Vokes, Vokes and Peters (Brisbane)
4.00 pm
Closing comments
Katelin Butler and Georgia Birks, Architecture Media
Clare Cousins established Melbourne practice Clare Cousins Architects in 2005. Based on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Eastern Kulin Nation, the studio is engaged in projects large and small including housing, workplace, and cultural projects. Each project is an opportunity for the studio's team to explore what they value; a nuanced sense of place, embedded with a responsibility to our environment.
Actively involved in the broader design community, Clare is a life fellow and past national president of the Australian Institute of Architects.
Matt is a registered architect and principal of MDC Architects, a practice established as a platform to research and advocate for an improved status quo in the quality of our housing, with particular focus on the affordable and sustainable, including single homes and multiresidential developments. MDC Architects’ work has evolved to challenge the delivery model of architectural practice in an attempt to reach a broader audience.
Matt’s core aim is to create more liveable environments through a simple understanding of materials and space. He fundamentally believes that good architecture should be for everyone and is central to an improved quality of life.
Milly Gamlin is co-founder and design director of Ys Housing, a Melbourne practice working as both architect and developer on medium-density infill housing. She leads the studio’s design work across a growing pipeline of social and market projects, including housing for Aboriginal Housing Victoria and Homes Victoria. Her focus is on how repeatable design-systems and supply chain decisions can raise the quality of medium-density homes while keeping them attainable.
Ys operates across design, development and finance, with the ambition of delivering 1,000 homes by 2030. Through her work, Milly tests how architects can shape not only individual buildings, but the systems that determine how housing is designed, financed and delivered.
Abbie Galvin is the twenty-fourth NSW Government Architect, a role which has been in effect for over 200 years.
Using her skills and knowledge from 30 years of leadership in architectural practice, Abbie is responsible for championing design quality across the state, through advice, programs, policy and advocacy.
Interim Executive Group Director – Business Strategy and Corporate Services, Housing Choices Australia
James is the interim executive group director – business strategy and corporate services at Housing Choices Australia, where he leads a newly established executive portfolio responsible for delivering corporate support across the organisation.
A registered architect with extensive experience in property development, James previously led Housing Choices Australia’s development portfolio for over a decade before his current appointment. During this time, he played a key role in expanding the organisation’s residential portfolio into one of the most innovative and diverse affordable housing portfolios in Australia.
As a founding director of Six Degrees Architects, James has shaped the firm’s trajectory over the past three decades with a focus on community-minded and sustainable housing.
Leading numerous award-winning projects, he challenges traditional housing models and advocates for better housing design across Australia. His expertise spans urban design, policy development, and master planning. He will always champion initiatives that prioritise the urban realm.
Kali Marnane is a registered architect, researcher, and 2025 National Emerging Architect Prize winner whose work centres on equitable, community-led design. Holding a PhD on the architecture of informality in India's informal settlements, she brings deep research expertise and a strong co-design practice to questions of housing, social justice, and who the built environment serves.
Currently associate director at Urbis and adjunct research fellow at the University of Queensland, Kali works closely with Indigenous communities, youth, and women to ensure their voices shape the places they call home.
Jeremy is the founding director of Breathe Architecture, a studio recognised as one of Australia’s leading architectural practices through the receipt of over 20 Australian Institute of Architects awards.
With over 25 years’ experience delivering innovative and sustainable large-scale multiresidential and commercial projects on time and on budget, Jeremy is recognised as a trusted and capable design lead who advocates for and consistently achieves best practice outcomes and design excellence. He is driven by an unwavering pursuit of a net zero emissions future, and believes that architects, through collaboration, can drive real positive change.
Anita Panov established Panov Scott together with partner Andrew Scott in 2012. They work in the realm of public and private buildings, landscapes, exhibitions, strategic planning and research-based speculations.
Their practice seeks to engage meaningfully in the shaping of the physical and cultural world. In this sense they believe working with the everyday is the most profound offering of design, and that their role is to establish a new normal that enables joyful engagement with communities and environments, while retaining a position of empathetic sensitivity to the existing character of the places in which they work.
Jemima Retallack is a director of Retallack Thompson, a Sydney-based architecture office working from Gadigal land. The practice is concerned with how buildings are arranged, constructed, and how they age. Jemima works across private residential projects, small-scale commercial and public works. Through both her practice and research, Jemima has an interest in examining the housing issues facing contemporary cities. Retallack Thompson’s work looks to celebrate an Australian regionalism whilst continuing to question notions of “home” and “housing” and the ways in which we live together.
Oscar Sainsbury is the director of architecture practice Oscar Sainsbury Architects (OSA) as well as a part time contributor to academia, design research projects and teaching roles.
OSA undertakes work in diverse urban, rural and coastal locations, and practices across a variety of scales, seeing a value in linking the ideas of a single residential project to larger scale environmental and urban considerations. OSA values research into the existing site, surrounding landscape, cultural and personal contexts, and combines this with experience and understanding in the process of making and building. This method is both theoretical and practical, and results in buildings that are thoughtful, honest in their resolution and that celebrate the value of everyday life.
Oscar Stanley is a leading figure in Australia’s land development and housing industry, with more than two decades of experience guiding the acquisition, structuring and delivery of some of Victoria’s most prominent and complex projects. His experience has ranged from large-scale masterplanned greenfield communities to high-density infill developments.
As national director of LAWD Development Advisory, Oscar brings a deep understanding of housing delivery, combining strategic insight, market expertise and innovative capital solutions to unlock successful outcomes. He is particularly recognised for his work in affordable and attainable housing, helping bridge the gap between government policy, private investment and real-world project delivery.
Emily is a partner at Core Collective Architects: a collaborative, research-based practice located in Nipaluna/Hobart. Emily is driven by a belief that quality, affordable housing is key to our wellbeing and that everyone deserves a home.
As a registered architect, Emily has led the design and construction of apartments, community buildings and social housing throughout Tasmania.
Stuart Vokes is an architect and co-founder of Vokes and Peters, based in Kurilpa, Brisbane.
In 2015 Stuart and long-time collaborator Aaron Peters established Vokes and Peters to focus on projects that respond to prevailing settings, cultural narratives, human occupation and the presence of nature. Vokes and Peters is recognised for its private houses and sustained research into suburban Brisbane, however the practice also works across a range of cultural and commercial projects, including social housing and heritage conservation, furniture and teaching.
Tone Wheeler is the director of Environa Studio, and an architect, academic and author who designs to the triple bottom line: social, environmental, and financial considerations. His focus is on sustainability and affordability in multi-dwelling and community projects.
Tone has won the Australian Institute of Architects’ Milo Dunphy Sustainability Award and Leadership in Sustainability Prize, and the Sustainability Awards’ Lifetime Achievement Award. Tone is also the president of the Australian Architecture Association.
