The Future Suburb Symposium

The Australian suburb is changing faster than the architectures, infrastructures and planning models that continue to shape it. While suburban life today is complex, diverse and inventive, the environments we are building too often remain generic, repetitive and under-serviced.

The Future Suburb Symposium brings together leading architects, urban thinkers, researchers and practitioners to explore one of the defining challenges of Australian cities: how can we create suburbs that better reflect the real needs, ambitions and potential of the communities who live there?

Through six interconnected themes — Life, Image, System, Practice, Design and Provocation — the Future Suburb Symposium will challenge assumptions, examine contemporary suburban conditions, and imagine new possibilities for the future of Australian suburban life.

This year's symposium welcomes an outstanding line-up of local and international guests, including:

• Martino Tattara – Architect, researcher and educator, and co-founder of Brussels-based practice Dogma, whose work explores architecture's social and political potential.
• Pier Vittorio Aureli – Architect, educator and co-founder of Dogma, internationally recognised for his work on urbanism, domestic space and large-scale architectural interventions.
• Dr Willow Lung – Scholar specialising in equitable community development, economic inclusion, suburban transformation and urban policy.
• Ryan Conroy – Los Angeles-based architect and principal of Hair Conroy, working at the intersection of architecture and the broader disciplines that shape the built environment.
• Kaylie Salvatori – Designer whose practice centres on reconnecting with Country, Indigenous knowledge and community through design.

Session Highlight: Suburban Provocations

Presented by Naarm Architecture Foundation

A dynamic Pecha Kucha-style showcase featuring ten emerging practitioners, academics and recent graduates presenting bold, speculative visions for the future of the suburb.

These rapid-fire provocations will not simply ask what the suburb is, but what else it could become — stranger, denser, greener, more collective, more generous, more unruly and more alive.

View the Symposium program