On Wednesday 18 September, architects, designers, urban planners and educators came together at the Edge in Melbourne for the first day of the Living Cities Forum. Architecture graduate and multidisciplinary creative practitioner Tope Adesina was one of the hundreds of creatives who entered the lecture hall at the Edge with an open mind, curious and receptive, ready to absorb the wisdom of speakers and some of the industry’s global leaders. Here, Adesina shares his thoughts on architecture as a practical, social and philosophical act through the lens of insights gleaned over the course of the day. 

Architecture is a propositional practice. It is broad-reaching, dynamic and perhaps, consequently, at times undefined, confused and vulnerable.

It treads a precarious edge between arrogance and confidence, between doubt and inquiry, precision and interpretation, and the technical and the theoretical. It is a fragile balance, a Janus-like entity perpetually looking in two directions: forward, towards innovation-driven progress, and concurrently, backward toward tradition and legacy.

In this duality, the architect embodies the tension between the visionary and the pragmatic, utopian dreams and observed realities. How do we, together as a profession, navigate this “knife’s edge”?

At this year’s Living Cities Forum, architects, designers and educators gathered around the theme of ‘common interests’—a timely reflection on civic spaces in a world where the idea of the ‘common’ is increasingly commodified, polarised and weaponised.

As the Honourable Sonya Kilkenny, Minister of Planning in Victoria, remarked in her opening speech “Civic spaces are an indication of our values”. Keynote speaker Kabage Karanja built on this idea, asserting that “architecture is never neutral… it is understated, yet implicit in so much”. These statements raised the critical question: what stories are we telling through the spaces we create? And what values do our designs truly reflect?

In the built environment, architecture opens spaces for contemplation but also serves as an incarnation of societal values, revealing the ideals and inequalities that our profession enables, opposes and sustains.

Lesley Lokko offered a compelling perspective with her statement, “Architecture is the truest form of fiction”.  She emphasises this fiction should be rooted “not just in analysis, but in synthesis”, a bringing together of “who we are and who we must become”. As I reflect on this, I am reminded of Dan Hill’s provocative query: Are buildings the right tool for building commons?’ To this, I remain uncertain.

In her session, Lokko skillfully articulated architecture’s tendency to “want to control” while remaining disconnected from the larger systems it seeks to influence. As architects once again gather over discourse, Lokko’s deeper critique of the profession resonated strongly among many of us who, she said, “took up the profession to articulate complexities and confusion about the world… only to find confusion about the practice”. It has become increasingly clear that our architectural vocabulary is “too weak and unable to grasp the realities around us”, and consequently, our lens and our language — linguistically and formally — don’t match up.

To that end, Lokko posed a crucial challenge: How do we imagine something we cannot articulate? How do we find “common” in a profession of “complexity” where language varies vastly and is increasingly untranslatable in wider contexts? What is the common goal of our profession? Lokko said the tension “begins and ends in language”, we must start there.

The Living Cities Forum succeeded in platforming these critical questions by enabling thinking, wondering, and speculating aloud. Across two sessions and six speakers, a language for this conundrum emerged: environmental language through Marti Franch of EMF landscape architecture and Professor Jill Desimini; material and formal language through Kabage Karanja of Cave Bureau and Nathalie de Vries of MVRDV; and organisational and systemic language through scholars Catherine D’Ignazio and Lokko.

The forum offered a rare space for exploring ‘new knowledge’ while also working to clearly define and dissect its relevance to the profession through panel discussions and adjacencies of speaker presentations. 

As the day progressed, two consistent themes emerged: architecture as a tool for justice and repair, and a strong call for a return to first principles—a re-examination of architecture’s foundational values. Both of which, in Australia’s fraught context, grow increasingly urgent.

Andrew Mackenzie, co-director of Uro Publications, opened the event with the question “How do we address colonial legacies and view the public realm through the lens of social justice?” He called for a shift away from “business-case-driven approaches”, toward those that are rather “vital, not commercial”. This set the tone for Marti Franch’s session and his urgent warning, “summer is coming”, which highlighted the critical need for intimate local (and Indigenous) knowledge and longstanding relationships with land and civic space amidst the growing climate crisis.

Franch advocated for a collective shift towards seeing “our natural systems as part of our public space, and our public space as part of our natural systems”. He likened our existence to “living on a loan”, a sobering metaphor for the finite resources and ecological relationships we rely on. Franch argued that now more than ever, the focus should not be on formal, grand gestures but on “methodical, place-based actions” rooted in deep understanding and care for the environment.

This approach to methodical responses aligned with Karanja’s insights. Through his work at Cave Bureau, Karanja beautifully illustrated the anthropological depth of our relationship to land, tracing it from ancient impulses for shelter and gathering spaces, to modern expressions of identity.

He argued that our interactions with land are not merely utilitarian but deeply cultural and symbolic. The way we occupy and shape space has always been a “reflection of our collective identity and values”, further reinforcing the need for architecture to transcend superficial gestures and reconnect with the language and information found in anthropological studies.

Karanja expanded on these themes from a “historical lens, in a present vantage point”, stating that, “the past, the present and the future are inseparable”. One cannot fully grasp the future without understanding the gaps between past realities and current structures. This recognition is crucial, particularly In the context of Australian history. Karanja further reflected that buildings can serve as a way to address “what was, what is, and who we truly are, beyond the ruins of greed and injustice”.

Following Karanja’s reflections, Desimini naturally posed the pressing question, “How can we undo the immense harm that we’ve done?” This poignant inquiry challenged us to reconsider architecture’s role, not just in building, but in unbuilding — one that dismantles harmful systems through precise incisions based on deep knowledge of these systems. From this perspective, Desimini provided a blueprint for how architecture could become a tool for repairing the ecological, and consequently, the social.

Similarly, D’Ignazio, through her incisive acts of data-driven protest, touched on the themes of justice and social repair. Her reframing called on architects to be conscious of the biases “we inherit, and how it’s perpetuated”, to enable us to reimagine the “default setting” of the built environment and its embedded inequalities.

As the forum drew to a close, de Vries took these abstract notions of justice and reform and grounded them in the material inhabitations of buildings, cities and communities.

Using “methodology as dialogue”, de Vries’s session shifted the focus to how we can design physical, habitable environments that nurture the ‘commons’ we aspire to. De Vries’s praxis is grounded in an ethos of “ambiguity as a form of generosity”, emphasising the importance of designing structures that are porous, adaptive and responsive to change, rather than rehashing static monuments. This aligned with D’Ignazio’s call to reimagine the defaults of the built environment.

This fluid, responsive approach extended the conversation from the systemic critiques offered by D’Ignazio and others at the forum, returning to the level of lived experience. Through her practice, de Vries demonstrated how architecture can serve as a platform for social interaction, reinforcing that ultimately, buildings “are the right tools for building commons”.

As I reflected on the conversations at the Living Cities Forum, I came to the resolution that architecture, and how we choose to express it, emerges not only as a challenge but as a source of optimism. I am encouraged by the words of Lokko that “hope is our common interest”. Architecture, with all of its complexities, when vulnerable may be receptive to orthodoxy and its biases. However, when it is confident and expanding in its definition of design, it can articulate a new possibility to those who pass through it, provided we as architects and designers work from a place of humility, adaptability, and a sense of justice.

While there is hope, and we must all hold fast to this in an increasingly unstable physical and social environment, Lokko cautioned that “the end result of a genuinely rigorous project or re-imagination may be more uncomfortable than we thought”. In our efforts to bring together these things, we may find ourselves risking the loss of both tradition and innovation as we know how to express it. Perhaps, then, through a return to first principles, the role of architects is not to craft the narratives we long to tell, but to serve as mirrors, reflecting who we are back to us. In accepting the role of mirror, it’s possible for architecture to retain its capacity for optimism and to reflect the future to those with their backs turned to it. It is this act of reflection, more than storytelling, that drives meaningful change.