A privately-funded foundation by architect Carey Lyon will support research, publications and residencies for Melbourne’s design community.

Founded as a way of giving back to the city that shaped his career, the Naarm Architecture Foundation (NAF) by prominent architect Carey Lyon officially launches on Tuesday 16 June as a charitable organisation dedicated to promoting discussion and research around architecture in Melbourne. 

Lyon, co-founder of the architecture firm Lyons and Professor of Architecture at the School of Architecture and Design at RMIT, has spent over four decades working on award winning, multimillion-dollar projects, including New Academic Street at RMIT and the New Student Precinct at the University of Melbourne, alongside his teaching and research commitments. Despite this extensive body of work, Lyon identified a gap in the public conversation around architecture in Melbourne and founded NAF in response.

“Melbourne is an amazing creative city, but you can’t take that for granted,” Lyon says. “Design gets better, the culture gets better, the more you talk about it.”

A home with architectural history

Rather than choosing a generic office space, NAF will be based at Level 2, 46 Little La Trobe Street, a building with considerable significance for Melbourne’s architectural history as the former home of Edmond and Corrigan, the firm widely credited with introducing postmodernist architecture to the city and known for hosting many late nights of spirited design debate. With this history in mind, NAF will carry the legacy of the building forward as a base for three core activities.

Beyond its physical home, NAF’s establishment reflects a broader appetite within the profession for spaces where architects can interrogate their practice outside the constraints of client work and project deadlines. Lyon’s decision to privately fund the Foundation removes the pressure of external stakeholders shaping its agenda, allowing NAF to pursue questions that may not yield immediate commercial outcomes, but could prove valuable to the profession over the long term. For a city that has long prided itself on architectural ambition, the Foundation offers a structured avenue for that ambition to be examined, debated and documented.

The grant program will see NAF hand out approximately eight grants of $10,000 each year to support research projects focused on architecture and the urban environment, with applications for the first round opening on 15 July. The Naarm Architectural Papers, a biannual publication, will showcase commissioned texts and material drawn from the grant program, contributing to critical discourse about architecture in the city, while also forming an archive of the Foundation’s activities. The Office of Speculative Practice will provide up to 10 early-career creative practitioners with subsidised desk space at the Little La Trobe Street building as part of an 18-month residency, alongside a regular program of activities, mentorship and peer support.

Addressing the big questions facing Melbourne

For the early-career practitioners selected for the Office of Speculative Practice, the residency offers more than subsidised desk space. Working within a building so closely associated with one of Melbourne’s most influential architectural movements places these emerging voices in direct dialogue with the city’s design history, while the accompanying program of mentorship and peer support is designed to help them develop their own critical positions early in their careers. It is an approach that mirrors NAF’s wider ambitions: building connections between Melbourne’s architectural past, present and future.

Among the issues Lyon hopes NAF will address is how architects can meaningfully embed Indigenous knowledge into their work, with the Foundation having received formal permission from the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation to use the name Naarm, the Wurundjeri word for ‘place’ that is often used as a substitute for ‘Melbourne’.

Other questions NAF hopes to explore include which design principles create successful public spaces in a rapidly growing city, how architects can design effectively for Melbourne’s distinctive climate and how good architecture may help ease the housing crisis.

Given the scale of these challenges, Lyon believes that big ideas are needed to address them, and NAF intends to play a role in supporting the development of such ideas through its grant program, publication and residency offering.

With its launch this month, the Naarm Architecture Foundation marks the beginning of what promises to be a significant new chapter in Melbourne’s architectural culture, with a full year of events and opportunities planned for the design community to look forward to.

Photography: Colby Vexler and Rory Gardiner.