MSD Director Series: Architecture free from extraction

The leading edges of architecture, design and construction are transforming, beginning to meaningfully explore practices that are not intrinsically dependent on some form of exploitation of people or planet. This work includes a more sophisticated understanding of the potential for biomaterials, using both old and new technologies, as well as circular and ethical principles running across the supply chains, design processes, and forms of labour and production with which we build and care for our world.

Art installations and speculative design, as simulators of such possible worlds, can provide insights for design practices today and tomorrow, whereas new businesses, community groups, policymaking processes, and design schools are all beginning to emerge around these ideas.

Yet the mainstream of policy and industry remains largely untouched by their potential — at least until now.

This panel discussion will range across these the ideas of non-extractive architectures and renewable biobased materials, and their impact in terms of social and environmental justice, and our infrastructures of everyday life.

Special guests of the Living Cities Forum, presented by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation and MPavilion, will join this inspiring panel discussion at the University of Melbourne.

About the speakers

Mae-ling Lokko is an educator, architectural scientist and biomaterials technology researcher from Ghana and the Philippines.

Joseph Grima leads an architecture and research studio, Space Caviar, operating at the intersection of design, technology, politics and the public realm.

Dan Hill is the Director of the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne. He is a designer, urbanist, educator and experienced leader at the intersection of design, technology and cities.

Anoma Pieris is a scholar in architectural history and in geography and has published widely on issues of nationalism, citizenship and sovereignty as viewed through the lens of architecture.

Patrick Cobbinah is an expert in human geography with broad experience in urban and regional planning gained through teaching and research conducted at universities in Ghana and Australia.

Jyoti Shukla is an international researcher in housing and land economics, and is currently designing a ‘resilient compensation mechanism’ for those who are struck by natural and man-made disasters.

Alex Felson is the Elisabeth Murdoch Chair of Landscape Architecture at the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning. His work focuses on climate adaptation, green infrastructure and constructed ecosystems across multiple scales.

COVID Safe Measures

The University is operating under Victoria’s COVIDSafe Settings. All visitors to the University of Melbourne campuses, must be fully vaccinated (or have a valid exemption). Please do not attend the campus if you are feeling unwell.