Earthship Futures: Radical Design for Community and Life
Presented by RMIT
DETAILS
Free, booking required
Garden Building RMIT University, Melbourne VIC, Australia
Earthship Futures: Radical Design for Community and Life is a live conversation between Oliver Vodeb and Daryl Taylor, recorded as part of the Radical Design Podcast. The discussion focuses on Taylor’s Earthship project in Kinglake, Victoria – an experimental natural building initiative developed through international participatory workshops following the Black Saturday mega-firestorm, Australia’s worst natural disaster.
The session explores how community-led design and architecture can support socio-ecological restoration and regenerativity, post-disaster community recovery and discovery, and social and emotional resilience. Drawing on lived experience, the speakers will examine undisciplined and fringe design knowledge, co-liberatory climate-responsive design processes and practices, and the role of design in rebuilding both physical and social infrastructure in disaster-vulnerable and -impacted regions.
The event takes the form of a moderated dialogue followed by audience Q&A and discussion. The conversation will be recorded and later released through the Radical Design Podcast, extending the discussion beyond the live session.
Participants
Daryl Taylor
Daryl Taylor is a pioneering Melbourne-based builder, educator, and community leader, known for constructing Victoria’s first council-approved Earthship in Kinglake—a radically sustainable, fire-resistant home built from recycled materials after losing his own in the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires. As a lived-experience mental health and neurodivergency advocate, he has shaped policy and education in community development, disaster resilience, and participatory design across government, NGO, and academic sectors, teaching at five Melbourne universities and co-authoring influential works on post-disaster recovery. Daryl’s work—spanning eco-design, permaculture, and community-led resilience—has earned national awards and features in ABC News and Grand Designs Australia, while his initiatives like Facing Fire, Biocultural Futures, and Retro-Futures continue to inspire sustainable, adaptive living in the age of climate change.
Dr Oliver Vodeb
Dr Oliver Vodeb is an academic at the RMIT School of Design and principal curator of the Memefest Radical Design network and the relational food art project Lipstick+Bread. Oliver has published several well regarded book including Radical Intimacies (Intellect) and Food Democracy (Intellect). He is renowned for his work at the intersection of design, activism, and social justice.