Loren Adams
Doctor of Philosophy candidate
Architecture, Urban Studies, Technology
Biography
Loren Adams is a disciplinary-promiscuous-feminist-architect(ish)-roboticist-and-computational-dominatrix from Mandjoogoordap, Binjareb Noongar boodja (Western Australia). She is trained in architecture, public policy, and teaching for higher education. In her practice, Loren explores the murky ethics of planetary ownership by planning hypothetical heists, hacks, hijacks, hoaxes, and other socio-spatial exploits. She does this to make visible the invisible power structures that commodify and control our shared urban planet.
Until recently, Loren taught architectural design and professional practice at the RMIT School of Architecture and Urban Design, where her award-winning “Regulatory Nonsense” studio ran for eight consecutive semesters. Previously, she led the Australasian computational design team at Grimshaw Architects and was the inaugural coordinator of the Melbourne School of Design Robotics Lab. Loren began her career working as a ghost artist in Los Angeles.
Thesis
Bondy and The Bot: An Anthology of Heists, Hacks, Hijacks, Copycats, and Other Socio-Spatial Exploits
Loren is currently completing a PhD in architecture, technology, and urban studies at the University of Melbourne Centre for Cities and Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning using archival, ethnographic, and creative practice research methods. In this research, Loren offers the ‘socio-spatial exploit’ as a novel conceptual, empirical, and methodological object for understanding power and capital in everyday urban situations. For Loren, researching heists, hacks, hijacks, hoaxes—all species of socio-spatial exploit—can reveal both flaws and possible alternatives in urban situations, especially where there are slippery boundaries between entrepreneurship, governmentality, and criminality.
Across a two-volume anthology of heists, heists, hijacks, hoaxes, and copycats, Loren is exploring two reciprocal approaches for researching the socio-spatial exploit: learning from past exploits (retrospective-creative) and planning new exploits (speculative-creative). Along the way, she is mentored and tormented by (in)famous tricksters, tycoons, artists, and con artists who straddle the entrepreneurial and the criminal.
In 2022, she was awarded the SAHANZ David Saunders Founder’s Grant to support her ongoing urban and architectural history of notorious Western Australian trickster-developer, Alan Bond (1938-2015).
Contact
- Email loren.adams@unimelb.edu.au
- Linktree linktr.ee/radhoc
- ORCID Profile ORCID