extra-ordinary
The 2010 national conference program is taking shape around four main themes:
- extra / ordinary people
- extra / ordinary things
- extra / ordinary living
- extra / ordinary cities
extra/ordinary will dwell on the culture of the extraordinarily ordinary.
As an antidote to the incessant abstractions of globalisation, we will be gathering together those who have an enthusiasm for engaging with the contingency of the everyday: inventing new ways of operating; embracing collaborative approaches and initiating direct action on the ground. Producing outcomes that are innovative and utilitarian, provocative and pragmatic. Resolving ordinary problems in extraordinary ways.
Bringing architecture down to earth: national conference
Resolving ordinary problems in extraordinary ways is the promise of the 2010 national architecture conference presented by the Australian Institute of Architects, under the creative direction of Melbourne-based architect and academic, Melanie Dodd.
Dodd's provocative program will draw together local and international guests that are in the habit of turning convention on its head. Lateral approaches by practitioners adjusting to new ways of operating, says Dodd, are what characterise innovative overlaps and collaborations in architectural practice.
Dodd has, in part, shaped her program in response to the staggering acceleration in the sophistication of information systems and manufacturing processes from which processes, products and services have emerged that threaten to marginalise the profession of architecture.
“There is an increasing demand for architects to make a shift in how they go about their practice. Architects are rising to the challenges, rejecting the detached gaze, rolling their sleeves up and fighting back. Innovative, groundbreaking and profoundly useful solutions are resulting from enforcing or stimulating collaborations with others," said Ms Dodd.
Taking its shape around four main themes – people, things, living, cities – the 2010 conference will showcase architects from Australia and abroad who are opening up fresh possibilities and definitions of practice.
"These practitioners are inventing their own projects and systems of operating: they don't wait for conventional clients, commissions or budget but instead see opportunity or necessity as their client," Ms Dodd said.
Above all, Dodd wants to bring the conversations about how architects practice down to earth, and reveal the renewed enthusiasm for operating from the bottom up.
Delegates will visit designEX and Form & Function as an essential element of the conference.
www.architecture.com.au/extraordinary
designEX is co-located with
