Prototyping Permission: Unlocking Australian Cities Through Digital Architecture
Presented by John Doyle
DETAILS
Free, no booking required
RMIT University Design Hub Level 3 Lecture Theatre
150 Victoria St, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
DATES
Thu 22 May 6 – 8pm
The way we inhabit cities needs to be rethought for the twenty-first century. Developed cities face a paradoxical condition of unaffordability and vacancy. Australian cities are some of the most unaffordable in the world, while large percentages of public and private property remain empty. A recent study concluded that more than 1.4 million square-metres of office space, and 10 per cent of all dwellings were empty in the City of Melbourne. Increased supply through speculative development, particularly of housing, is usually viewed as the solution for affordability. In the context of a worsening climate crisis, to which buildings and cities remain a major contributor, increased construction is simply no longer feasible. It is urgent to find a way to unlock the possibility of cities and maximise the use of existing building stock.
Prototyping Permission is a collaborative project between Dark Matter Labs (DML), The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and RMIT Architecture exploring innovative approaches to urban governance and development. DML has developed a pilot project that explores how a digital permissioning system might provide public access to public land and buildings on a short-term basis. This has been facilitated through a decentralised digital platform in which a series of permissioning protocols take the place of lengthy municipal approvals processes and provide incentives for public land to be utilised for events and activities that demonstrate social and environmental benefit.
Supported by the Australia Korea Foundation, this discussion will bring together designers and researchers from DML Korea, UTS and RMIT, along with built environment experts in Melbourne. Eunji Kang from Dark Matter Labs will deliver a presentation on the digital permissioning platform prototype and will facilitate a public discussion led by UTS & RMIT that speculates on the physical implementation of this system and how it might radically alter Melbourne’s urban environment.
Participants
John Doyle
John Doyle is Associate Dean and Head of Architecture at RMIT University. He is a practising architect and director of Common ADR. He is a member of the SuperUrban research lab in the School of Architecture & Urban Design at RMIT University.
Eunji Kang
Eunji is systems change and experimental products lead at Dark Matter Labs. She is currently based in Seoul Innovation Park, South Korea, on behalf of Dm and leads projects throughout Europe and Asia regions. Her practice uses visual communication and system thinking to identify complex societal challenges which capture collective intelligence in order to develop strategic pathways for the systems change.
Graham Crist
Graham Crist is Associate Professor in Architecture at RMIT University. He is the program manager and head of the Master of Urban Design Program. He is a practising architect and the founding director of Antarctica Architects. He is a member of the SuperUrban research lab in the School of Architecture & Urban Design at RMIT University.
Calvin Po
Calvin Po is a strategic designer at Dark Matter Labs, where he co-leads the Radicle Civics Arc. His work explores institutional and governance systems as sites of design for a new grammar of civics based on agency, entangled relationships, and commoning. He has led projects with the Scottish Government’s Land Commission on land governance reform, the Taiwanese Government on decentralised web3 civic infrastructure, and is developing multi-actor governance approaches for river ecosystems, and in FreeHouse, a commons housing model based on ‘self-owning’ houses. At the Architectural Association School of Architecture, Calvin is a unit master of Diploma 9, ‘Universal Free Housing’, focusing on strategic, policy, and economic pathways for realising housing as a universal human right.
Paul Minifie
Paul Minifie is Associate Professor in Architecture at RMIT University. He is a practising architect and director of Minifie Van Schaik Architects.
Ben Milbourne
Ben Milbourne is a senior lecturer in Architecture at RMIT University. He is the program manager and head of the Master of Architecture program at RMIT University. He is a registered practising architect and a director of Common ADR. He is the co-lead of the housing cluster in the Post-Carbon Research Centre at RMIT University.