Across two days, the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Architecture will present the ‘Future Design Research Symposium’.

Held on Thursday 29 and Friday 30 September, the symposium will see 30 national and international speakers explore how contemporary design practices produce meaningful social and cultural transformation, and how design research and industry create synergies solutions for environmental crises.

Building on the work of the University of Melbourne’s Advanced Digital Design + Fabrication (ADD+F) research hub, a cross-disciplinary hub whose members are practitioners and researchers from architecture, urban design, landscape architecture and construction, the event will see each creative member bring their expertise and “offer amazing cross-section through practice, research and education,” says ADD+F co-director and Symposium co-convenor Dr Rochus Hinkel.

Keynote speakers include Jenny Wu of Los Angeles-based design practice Oyler Wu, widely recognised for its experimentation in design, material research and fabrication.

Wu will be joined by Theodore Spyropoulos, director of the Architectural Association’s Design Research Laboratory and director at Minimaforms, Carroll Go Sam, a lecturer and researcher from the University of Queensland whose work focuses on the intersection of  Indigenous themes in architecture and place-keeping, and Lisa Grocott, who leads the Future of Work and Learning research program in the Emerging Technologies Lab at Monash University. 

“This symposium brings together some of the thought leaders in the field of design research, from robotics in architecture to designing with data, interspecies and First Nation knowledge in design education,” says co-convenor Dr Paul Loh. 

Co-convenor Leire Asensio adds, “the symposium captures a fascinating and broad sample of innovations  emerging across a range of disciplines and industries, from cities to material science and from policy to movie making.”

The Future Design Research Symposium is a collaboration between the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning and the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, and is hosted by the ADD+F Research Hub.  

The Symposium will feature a wide range of presentations, workshops and panel discussions, both in-person and online. 

In-person events will be held on Thursday 29 September at the Glyn Davis Building (MSD), the University of Melbourne, and on Friday 30 September at The Edge, Fed Square.

To register for in-person and online sessions, or to find out more, visit the event page.

Last year, ADR covered ten architecture projects from students at Melbourne University.