Ho Chi Minh City, VietnamRMIT CAMPUSPHAM NGOC THACH STREETDISTRICT 3Building 5, Level 2, Rooms 02 & 03

We seek out practitioners who have developed a body of work demonstrating mastery of their field, invite them to reflect upon the nature of that mastery within a critical framework, to speculate through design on the nature of their future practice and demonstrate their findings publicly.

We argue that architects and designers have a responsibility to the furtherance of their practice domain and that this examination of the nature of their mastery promotes and extends the

fundamental knowledge base of their profession, and thus its ability to serve society.

CHÚNG TÔI TÌM KIẾM NHỮNG NGƯỜI HÀNH NGHỀ ĐÃ HÌNH THÀNH MỘT TỔNG THỂ CÔNG TRÌNH DỰ ÁN THỂ HIỆN SỰ TINH THÔNG TRONG LĨNH VỰC CỦA HỌ, MỜI HỌ ĐỂ DIỄN GIẢI BẢN CHẤT CỦA SỰ TINH THÔNG TRONG MỘT PHẠM VI CÓ TÍNH PHẢN BIỆN, ĐỂ SUY ĐOÁN THÔNG QUA THIẾT KẾ VỀ BẢN CHẤT HÀNH NGHỀ CÔNG VIỆC TRONG TƯƠNG LAI VÀ ĐỂ DIỄN GIẢI NHỮNG KHÁM PHÁ CỦA HỌ VỚI CÔNG CHÚNG.

CHÚNG TÔI CHO RẰNG KIẾN TRÚC SƯ VÀ CÁC NHÀ THIẾT KẾ CÓ MỘT TRÁCH NHIỆM TRONG VIỆC NÂNG CAO LĨNH VỰC HÀNH NGHỀ CỦA HỌ, VÀ VIỆC XEM XÉT BẢN CHẤT SỰ TINH THÔNG CỦA HỌ LÀ NHẰM ĐỀ CAO VÀ MỞ RỘNG KIẾN THỨC CƠ BẢN DỰA TRÊN NGHỀ NGHIỆP CỦA HỌ, VÀ TỪ ĐẤY LÀ KHẢ NĂNG ĐỂ PHỤC VỤ CỘNG ĐỒNG.

The School of Architecture & Design welcomes the School of Media & Communication, directed by Dr Adam Nash, to PRS Asia. The youngest PRS in the RMIT University PhD program has been growing steadily over the years, as has the richness and breadth of the research. The program is based on peer review—the dialogue between candidates, supervisors, visiting critics and candidates, and interested local and international visitors—in the formal presentations as well as the informal gatherings over lunches, dinners and lectures. We look forward to the contributions of our new candidates and additions to the supervisory team, and anticipate that the conversations will continue to be stimulating.

Professor Sand HelselDirector, PRS Asia

Research through design practice

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07 Visiting critic’s talk Tohru Horiguchi Traveling architecture workshop as a practice to go beyond

08 Overview of events

Program 09 School of Media & Communication 10 School of Architecture & Design

Progress reviews

14 Géraldine Borio PhD (Architecture & Design) 15 F. Carlotta Bruni PhD (Architecture & Design) 16 Johnny Chiu PhD (Architecture & Design) 17 Jhoanna Cruz PhD (Media & Communication) 18 Laurel Fantauzzo PhD (Media & Communication) 19 Holger Kehne PhD (Architecture & Design) 20 Tobias Klein PhD (Architecture & Design) 21 Christian Lange PhD (Architecture & Design) 22 Neville Mars PhD (Architecture & Design) 23 Olivier Ottevaere PhD (Architecture & Design) 24 Alvin Pang PhD (Media & Communication) 25 Rui Miguel Rebelo Leao PhD (Architecture & Design) 26 Ravi Shankar PhD (Media & Communication) 27 Thomas Tsang PhD (Architecture & Design) 28 Tom Verebes PhD (Architecture & Design) 29 Dongwoo Yim PhD (Architecture & Design)

Candidate biographies

32 Géraldine Borio PhD (Architecture & Design) 32 F. Carlotta Bruni PhD (Architecture & Design) 33 Johnny Chiu PhD (Architecture & Design) 33 Jhoanna Cruz PhD (Media & Communication) 34 Laurel Fantauzzo PhD (Media & Communication) 34 Holger Kehne PhD (Architecture & Design) 35 Tobias Klein PhD (Architecture & Design) 35 Christian Lange PhD (Architecture & Design)

Contents

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36 Neville Mars PhD (Architecture & Design) 36 Olivier Ottevaere PhD (Architecture & Design) 37 Alvin Pang PhD (Media & Communication) 37 Rui Miguel Rebelo Leao PhD (Architecture & Design) 38 Ravi Shankar PhD (Media & Communication) 38 Thomas Tsang PhD (Architecture & Design) 39 Tom Verebes PhD (Architecture & Design) 39 Dongwoo Yim PhD (Architecture & Design)

Visiting critic and supervisor biographies

42 Tohru Horiguchi Visiting International Critic, Kindai University, Japan43 Suzie Attiwill Visiting Critic, School of Architecture & Design44 Michelle Aung Thin Supervisor, School of Media & Communication45 Richard Black Supervisor, School of Architecture & Design46 David Carlin Supervisor, School of Media & Communication 47 Graham Crist Supervisor, School of Architecture & Design 48 Sand Helsel Supervisor, School of Architecture & Design 49 Anna Johnson Supervisor, School of Architecture & Design50 Paul Minifie Supervisor, School of Architecture & Design 51 Adam Nash Supervisor, School of Media & Communication52 Jörg Rekittke Visiting Critic, School of Architecture & Design53 Francesca Rendle-Short Supervisor, School of Media & Communication 54 Gretchen Wilkins Supervisor, School of Architecture & Design55 Jessica L. Wilkinson Supervisor, School of Media & Communication

7Visiting critic’s talk

Tohru HoriguchiDr. Eng. Architectural Critic and CuratorAssociate Professor, Faculty of Architecture, Kindai University

Traveling architecture workshop as a practice to go beyond

The talk documents the 1st Asian Architectural Students Summer Workshop in Osaka/Sabae, an architectural design education forum in the Asia-Pacific region where diverse cultural, thinking, and environmental conditions coexist. Students worked with local architectural materials such as cedar and bamboo to make full-scale mock-ups of “Pod Architecture”, places for intimate dialogue with others, with nature, and history.

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Friday 7 October5:30 to 6:30pm PRS Asia Welcome Drinks6:30 to 7:30pm Visiting Critic’s Talk7:30pm Drinks

Propaganda Vietnamese Bistro21 Han Thuyen. Q1,Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Saturday 8 October, 9:15am - 6:00pm PhD Progress Review and Milestone Review Presentations (by prior arrangement)RMIT Campus, 21 Pham Ngoc Thach Street, District 3, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

PRS Dinner (by invitation only)

Sunday 9 October, 9:15am - 5:00pmPhD Progress Review and Milestone Review Presentations (by prior arrangement) RMIT Campus, 21 Pham Ngoc Thach Street, District 3, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Overview of Events

9School of Media & CommunicationRMIT Campus (Building 5, Level 1, Room 3)

Saturday 8 October

12:30 - 13:30 Lunch

13:30 - 14:25 Ravi SHANKAR PhD Progress Review Panel: Adam Nash, David Carlin, Francesca Rendle-Short, Laurene Vaughan

14:30 - 15:25 Alvin PANG PhD Progress Review Panel: Adam Nash, Michelle Aung Thin, Francesca Rendle-Short, Laurene Vaughan

15:30 - 16:00 Tea & Coffee

Sunday 9 October

12:30 - 13:30 Lunch

13:30 - 14:25 Jhoanna CRUZ PhD Progress Review Panel: Adam Nash, David Carlin, Jessica Wilkinson, Laurene Vaughan

14:30 - 15:25 Laurel FANTAUZZO PhD Progress Review Panel: Adam Nash, David Carlin, Jessica Wilkinson, Laurene Vaughan

15:30 - 16:00 Tea & Coffee

PANEL MEMBERS Adam Nash, David Carlin, Francesca Rendle-Short, Jessica Wilkinson, Michelle Aung Thin, Laurene Vaughan

10School of Architecture & DesignSaturday 8 OctoberRMIT Campus (Building 5, Level 2, Room 2 & 3)

9:15 - 9:30 Tea & Coffee

9:30 - 9:55 Welcome and Introduction

10:00 - 10:25 Andrew STIFF Pre-Application Presentation Panel: Sand Helsel©, Adam Nash©, Laurene Vaughan, Richard Black, Anna Johnson, Graham Crist

10:30 - 11:25 Dongwoo YIM Confirmation of Candidature Panel: Graham Crist©, Sand Helsel*, Anna Johnson, Richard Black + visiting critics

11:30 - 12:25 F. Carlotta BRUNI Milestone 3 Review (Completion Seminar) Panel: Paul Minifie©, Sand Helsel*, Graham Crist, Richard Black + visiting critics 12:30 - 13:30 Lunch

13:30 - 14:25 Rui Miguel REBELO LEAO Milestone 3 Review (Completion Seminar) Panel: Paul Minifie©, Sand Helsel*, Graham Crist, Anna Johnson + visiting critics 14:30 - 15:25 Neville MARS Milestone 2 Review (Mid-Candidature) Panel: Paul Minifie©, Graham Crist*, Sand Helsel*, Gretchen Wilkins + visiting critics 15:30 - 16:00 Tea & Coffee

16:00 - 16:55 Tom VEREBES Milestone 2 Review (Mid-Candidature) Panel: Sand Helsel©, Paul Minifie*, Graham Crist, Gretchen Wilkins + visiting critics 17:00 - 17:55 Christian LANGE Confirmation of Candidature Panel: Sand Helsel©, Paul Minifie*, Gretchen Wilkins, Graham Crist + visiting critics

11School of Architecture & DesignSunday 9 OctoberRMIT Campus (Building 5, Level 2, Room 2 & 3)

9:15 - 9:30 Tea & Coffee

9:30 - 10:25 Tobias KLEIN Confirmation of Candidature Panel: Graham Crist©, Sand Helsel*, Anna Johnson, Paul Minifie + visiting critics 10:30 - 11:25 Olivier OTTEVAERE Confirmation of Candidature Panel: Graham Crist©, Sand Helsel*, Anna Johnson, Paul Minifie + visiting critics 11:30 - 12:25 Thomas TSANG Milestone 2 Review (Mid-Candidature) Panel: Graham Crist©, Sand Helsel*, Richard Black, Anna Johnson + visiting critics 12:30 - 13:30 Lunch

13:30 - 14:25 Géraldine BORIO PhD Progress Review Panel: Sand Helsel©, Anna Johnson, Richard Black, Graham Crist + visiting critics 14:30 - 15:25 Holger KEHNE Confirmation of Candidature Panel: Sand Helsel©, Paul Minifie*, Graham Crist, Richard Black + visiting critics

15:30 - 16:00 Tea & Coffee

16:00 - 16:55 Johnny CHIU PhD Progress Review Panel: Graham Crist©, Sand Helsel, Richard Black, Paul Minifie + visiting critics

PANEL MEMBERS Adam Nash, Anna Johnson, Graham Crist, Gretchen Wilkins, Jörg Rekittke, Paul Minifie, Richard Black, Sand Helsel, Suzie Attiwill, Tohru Horiguchi

©Chair*Supervisor (when not Chair)

Progress Reviews

October2016

14Géraldine Borio PhD (Architecture & Design)

Parallel Works: Micro-scale strategies for macro-scale impact

In today’s overbuilt environment what can be the contribution of architects? As their strength is their ability to understand simultaneously the users’ needs at the micro-scale as well as macro-scale agendas, perhaps they should enlarge their traditional skillset. The research is about strategies and systems developed by practitioners to enable people to reconnect with the fragmented context.

A building but also a piece of furniture or a newspaper edition are tools that are directly engaging an audience in a location while at

the same time supporting a large-scale vision. In many cases, the physical and metaphorical gaps or buffer zones in a context are the starting points from which architects can develop strategies that turn negative constraints into positive opportunities. On-site research, built projects, idea competitions and some of my teaching will be the base for exploring and reflecting upon the Asian context I am working within.

15F. Carlotta Bruni PhD (Architecture & Design)

Architecture in context, designing the un-purposed space

“Architecture in context” is a research project aimed at finding how the relationship between my personal context and Macau’s context has enriched the type of spaces that I am capable of imagining and feel comfortable in designing.

How the interaction between the specificity of the city of Macau and my personal cultural background has led to a unique architectural response that is a fundamentally informed by my personal trajectory, my context.

In reaction to the overly densified and functional environment of the city, a series of public spaces appear in the designs: spaces of circulation that enlarge and gain shape and size, connected spaces in plan and section that are “un-purposed”.

These un-programmatic spaces are an expansion to the design brief, spaces of freedom where life can happen creatively in a less functional way.

16Johnny Chiu PhD (Architecture & Design)

Packaging the Commodities of Architecture

Due to the downturn of economies in Taiwan, developers look for new sales solutions. This is where JCA started, designing in a very aggressive market to catch the attention of buyers. The market turns out to have little respect for authenticity in design, and more towards the shell of material between inside and outside: packaging the Façade.

The reality of sales means how fast you can get your products on the market, with developers asking for designs in as little as 3 days, and budget as low as $US400/m2.

Architecture was no longer permanent; the architect is only a tool for sales.

Can authenticity still be maintained if speed is a constrain? How does architectural practice reinvent itself for the purpose of time and money, and how do we push our work so its beyond a commodity experience?

17Jhoanna Cruz PhD (Media & Communication)

Taking Place in Mindanao

While my past practice was mainly inward-looking and my current practice still personal though anchored on a sense of place, my future writing will consciously look outside of myself, towards an understanding of my geo-historico-social context, in order to construct my Mindanawon identity. My proposition is that an active engagement with the larger community (migrant, Muslim, and

Lumad) will make my writing more relevant and expansive, without losing sight of my personal advocacy for LGBT rights. In this PhD program, I undertake to educate myself by community immersion beyond Davao City in order to explore how my writing can truly become Mindanawon.

18Laurel Fantauzzo PhD (Media & Communication)

Archipelagic

This moment - with my debut book publishing soon, and my development of two more book projects for wider international audiences - is a rich opportunity for me to examine and share my past practice. I would also like to examine my role as narrator. I am a mixed-race, Asian American author who left the United States but always has it in mind as I delve into difficult sociopolitical subjects. It would be instructive to see how James Baldwin’s own self-exile to France in order to

discuss race in America, for example, parallels my own self-exiled, international practice, or how the Filipino writers Gina Apostol and Eric Gamalinda’s own moves to America brought them closer to difficult truths about the Philippines. All three writers coped with deep personal traumas that connected with greater political traumas within their native and chosen homelands; I am curious to explore how I am doing the same.

19Holger Kehne PhD (Architecture & Design)

The systemic basis for complexity in contemporary architecture

This project proposal sets out to analyze and situate the work by the architecture practice Plasma Studio within a cultural, historical and social framework. It will reverse-engineer from design work undertaken by the practice sets of underlying aims, drivers and influences, and align, compare and contrast these with the wider cultural and social context. The focus will be on unearthing fundamental concepts and diagrams that are shared among a variety of applications to further an understanding of architecture as a systemic organizational praxis, mediating and indexing

internal and external parameters and forces as opposed to expressive and representational means.

The research will question the pluralist and iconic tendency of architectural culture by highlighting commonalities, inherent linkages and shared systemic underpinnings and drivers that can be found within actual contemporary architectural design processes by Plasma Studio, predecessors and contemporaries.

20Tobias Klein PhD (Architecture & Design)

Digital Craftsmanship

Fueled by modernism and industrialization, the growing separation between form making and material condition has opposed craft production, Sennet’s definition of a process in which the practitioner is deeply invested in the outcome and takes care to do excellent work.

In the fields of architecture, there is a global discourse about digital craftsmanship, with a plethora of views on the applicable terminology – ranging from digital bravado, parametric assembly, craftsmanship as construction or material behavior. Remarkably, most views though take only marginally into account craftsmanship as a cultural heritage with extensive relationships between art and technology.

Looking back, in the era of Rococo, all aspects of craftsmanship and design were geared together to create a total work of art. Open to different cultures, the architects and designer of Rococo understood the value of combining technology and art into an interdisciplinary approach. Based on this interplay of forces and cultures of the Rococo, this research will examine the factors of design as well as transfer these methods and strategies to a digital craftsmanship. The form-finding process, as visualized in the role model of the Rococo, can be seen as an initial point, which opens up, hitherto undiscovered spaces of action and intervention in design and architecture.

21Christian Lange PhD (Architecture & Design)

Serial Architectures, Systems of Multiplicities and Adaptability – Towards an Architecture of heterogeneity

Can Architecture be thought as species? Can Architecture become variable and adaptable and offer alternatives to the edge of mass production?

In the last two decades, the use of computation has significantly informed and changed the conceptualization and production of architecture. Today, by using the computer and calculus-based software, architecture can be realized as algorithmic prototypes first. As a result, it is possible to generate many different versions out of the same information. With this approach and computer aided manufacturing procedures

at hand, the conception of modularized architecture constructed out of nearly identical industrially mass-produced components has been challenged. We are now witnessing a shift from an architecture of modularity towards an architecture of variability and adaptability.

The research takes on these issues through a set of projects that have been developed in recent years and focus on the development of innovative computational design techniques in order to overcome the limitations of the generic architectural production of today.

22Neville Mars PhD (Architecture & Design)

CHINA BACK-UPTowards an Evolutionary Planning System for pressured urban landscapes

Asia’s urban revolution is unique. Characterized by expansion at an unseen scale and rolled out under tremendous pressure, the new landscape manifest itself as a rural-urban amalgamation. This harsh and complex hybrid typology leaves planners floundering without the methods to objectively plan healthy new cityscape. The widening gap between urban theory and commercial planning culture demands the discipline to recalibrate even its most basic notions, and ask what is urban or rural and how can their codependent and

intertwined condition by guided? Asia Back Up investigates these questions through case studies that follow alternative models not based on new town planning or even outward expansion, but on upgrading, densifying, and diversifying Asia’s established cityscapes. Understanding urban growth as fundamentally organic, in these experiments the planner is a mediator of the ongoing clash between top-down forces and bottom-up urbanization, whose goal is to streamline growth inward and upward.

23Olivier Ottevaere PhD (Architecture & Design)

Liquid States and Concrete Uncertainties: Prototyping formwork at incremental scales

My research focuses on innovating procedures of construction that challenge typical generic forms of building. Through developing unique methods of fabrication the aim is to create designs that have the potential to impact and influence the monotony of mainstream construction systems. Each design is considered as a prototype that adheres to the limitations of material and structural logics.

My research projects seek to understand how material, site and industry inform the practice of architecture while also pushing architectural design in new and innovative directions.

The practice work involves laboratory experiments with materials such as concrete, applies knowledge gained from different types of material experiments to site-specific design-build structures and investigates the economic feasibility of realizing larger scale architectural projects through the specific industrial production practices found in the Pearl River Delta.

How some of the conducted material experiments and invented prototyping techniques inform the making of architecture at larger building scales, constitutes the main research question.

24Alvin Pang PhD (Media & Communication)

The harvest of plurality: palimpsests, poetry, publishing, and literary practice

My PhD proposal reflects on my practice, past present and future with an emphasis on projects in the field of literary creative writing. My creative practice has involved a diverse, concerted, often multidisciplinary engagement with both aesthetic and material aspects of language use: broadly, as a writer, as well as a literary catalyst (involving service to my community of practice, through advocacy, curation, editing, translating, publishing and education).

25Rui Miguel Rebelo Leao PhD (Architecture & Design)

The civic role of public space in post handover Macau

I intend to show how every project is a trajectory of negotiation and how that negotiation between Architect, client and end-user becomes a further understanding of the city and its needs of transformation leading to new policy for the city.

As designers, we have been acting as agents of change. It is typical for the architect to act as a servant to the masterplan and the brief. In the particular case of Macau, because there isn’t much work invested into the brief and into commissioning, my activism is an

expanded role for the architect; a contribution for a society that was not administratively prepared to deal with the complexity of its political agenda in the period of integration with China. I have expanded the role of the Architect by acting as entrepreneur, as negotiator, as an agent of change, as provocateur, as conservationist, advisor, policy-maker, as activist and always as a designer.

26Ravi Shankar PhD (Media & Communication)

Using a Golden Shovel to Dig Up Books: An Exploration of Memory, Syntax and Poetic Form

My PhD proposal reflects on my practice, past present and future with an emphasis on projects in the field of creative writing, more specifically in poetry and poetics, editing, and nonfiction. I am at work at a memoir, a collection of new and selected poetry and am editing a couple of anthologies of international literature and innova-tive form.

27Thomas Tsang PhD (Architecture & Design)

Unbuilt: Un-Accumulated Archives of the Miniatures

Unbuilt reintegrates and explores disappearance, absence, as well as merging the spatial and atmospherics of the site with a rooted historical position and perspective. This chapter focuses on the short history of unrealized specifics, while it goes unnoticed and little facts are revealed, with no exception addresses the difficult moment between artist’s intention and its realization, construction and demolition, lost and found, protection and corrosion. This particular work fosters artistic abstraction in milieu of crisis aimed at reinhabiting the boundaries, and explores how uncarried works can respond to inhabitation—both informed and reformed—of the unbuilt.

The PhD addresses, resists and upholds the disciplinary practices in architecture. The work examines and questions the nature of imagination and ambition in plans without a predetermined “object”. The archive of these relationships will result in a future-archeological artifact named as such because it documents a building process that will never become a built body, or construction, never intended to end.

28Tom Verebes PhD (Architecture & Design)

URBAN-isms: Paradigmatic Narratives & Instruments

The model of practice in this PhD is as much engaged with design propositions as it is with textual narratives in various formats expressed through editorial and curatorial practices – oscillating between designing, writing, curating and teaching. This PhD queries the relation of the description of conceptual paradigms as ontologies for urbanism, to their associated experimental design approaches and methodologies, and the ways in which both are related, communicated and disseminated. As such, instrumental and operational modes of design practice, together with descriptive narratives of urbanism are understood to

be mutually substantiating modalities, and are thus, articulated in this PhD as past, present and future paradigms. My research on Parametric Urbanism, The Adaptive City, and Mass-Customised Cities, are now seen as inter-dependent, rather than independent ontologies with discreet methods. In the debates which have arisen, a research problematic on the limitations of urban masterplanning forms the core of this investigation on the notion of an interactive, intelligent urban model, and the emerging discourses and methods of the Smart City.

29Dongwoo Yim PhD (Architecture & Design)

Microdistrict as Sustainable Housing District Model

The research is to propose a housing project that reflects the idea of microdistrict and responds to the current movement of maker culture. Microdistrict is a socialist urban planning strategy to structure residential complexes along with production facilities. Socialist cities developed this concept to build on sustainable society by constructing a social chain between producer and consumer. The idea is strongly attached to two recent trends in established cities in the western world; local production/consumption and maker movements. Similar to the socialist idea, local production and consumption

movements are growing in western cities to build sustainable communities. Therefore, production facilities are becoming more local in scale to fit into neighborhoods. Also, since the mass production era has ended, micro production with various customization era is coming along with an emerging generation of makers. Thus, the proposed project in the research will tackle the question of what will be the future housing model that responds to this emerging transition, and it will be investigated by understanding the concept of microdistrict.

Candidate Biographies

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October 2016

October 2016

October2016October 2016

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Géraldine Borio

Géraldine Borio is a Swiss Registered Architect and co-founder of Parallel Lab, an architectural office and laboratory for urban research based in Hong Kong. She is currently teaching at the School of Design, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Prior to that she has been working with various firms in Tokyo, Beijing and Hong Kong and has taught architecture at the Hong Kong University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her work has been exhibited at the Vitra Museum; Rotterdam Architecture Biennale; St-Etienne Design Biennale; Beijing Design Week; Zurich University of the Arts and ICI Curatorial Hub, New York. She is the co-author of the book “Hong Kong In Between” (MCCM | Park Books, 2015).

F. Carlotta Bruni

I. E.D. - Diploma in Photography - 1992Politecnico di Milano, Facoltá di Architettura - 1995 Founder of LBA. Based in Macau

Carlotta has designed a wide array of projects from master plans to interior designs. Recipient of the Arcasia Gold Medal for Architecture 2006 and UNESCO Heritage Award 2012, her architectural work has been widely published internationally. Her design, architecture and urban design works have been exhibited in the Milan’s Salone del Mobile, at Lisbon Biennale, at the 10th Biennale di Architettura di Venezia and at the 7th Bienal de Arquitectura de São Paulo.

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Johnny Chiu

Founder of a multidisciplinary design firm JC Architecture. Their works span from architecture, interior, industrial, jewelry to hospitality and service. The award winning projects include National Taipei University Library and Les Bebes Cupcakery. They operated as a studio think tank where they research and experiment new design possibilities. JC has lived, worked and taught in NZ, Australia, Sweden, Japan and the US and believes that a good design should take inspirations from the individuals, the society, and the interaction between human and brand. Johnny is also the founder of OUTscholarship, daring Taiwanese students to dream far and travel far, and Room 144, a exchange platform for disciplines to share their professional knowledge.

www.johnnyisborn.com

Jhoanna Cruz

Jhoanna Lynn B. Cruz is the author of Women Loving (2010), the first sole-author anthology of lesbian stories in the Philippines, also available as an eBook entitled Women on Fire (2015). She is Associate Professor of creative writing at University of the Philippines Mindanao. She is president of the Davao Writers Guild. She represents Eastern and Southern Mindanao in the National Committee on Literary Arts. Her work has been published extensively in the Philippines. She has presented her work in literary events in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore, Vietnam, Australia, and Tokyo. Her recent work appears in the “New Asia Now” issue of Griffith Review.

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Laurel Fantauzzo

Laurel Fantauzzo grew up in California with a Filipina mother and an Italian American father. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Esquire Philippines, and The Rumpus, among other venues. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Nonfiction Writing at the University of Iowa, and she has earned grants and residencies from Erasmus, Fulbright, and Hedgebrook. Her debut nonfiction book The First Impulse (Anvil Publishing, 2016) explores a love story and a mystery in Metro Manila. Her book projects are currently represented by Writers’ House literary agency in New York City. She teaches at Yale-NUS College and lives between Singapore and Quezon City, Philippines.

Holger Kehne

Holger Kehne is an architect trained in Germany and the UK. He aims at engaging practice and academic research in unison, beginning in London where he gained extensive academic experience as unit master in the Diploma School of the Architectural Association while setting up and developing the architectural practice Plasma Studio, winning numerous accolades such as BD/ Corus’ Young Architect of the Year Award and Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard in 2002 and 2004 respectively. He relocated to Hong Kong, where he has been teaching at the University of Hong Kong since 2011. His academic research is context-and material driven and explores the systemic relationships between urbanism and architecture.

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Tobias Klein

Tobias Klein works in the fields of Architecture, Art, Design and Interactive Media Installation. His work generates a syncretism of contemporary CAD/CAM technologies with site and culturally specific design narratives, intuitive non-linear design processes, and historical cultural references. Before joining City University Hong Kong in the role of interdisciplinary Assistant Professor in the School of Creative Media and the architectural department, he was employed at the Architectural Association and the Royal College of Art. Works of his studio are exhibited internationally with examples in the Antwerp Fashion Museum, the London Science Museum, the V&A, the Bellevue Arts Museum, Museum of Moscow and Vancouver.

www.kleintobias.com www.facebook.com/studiotobiasklein

Christian Lange

Christian J. Lange is a founding partner of Rocker-Lange Architects, a research and design practice based in Hong Kong and Boston. He is a registered German architect and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong, where he teaches architectural design and classes in advanced digital modeling. A strong emphasis in his work is the implementation of computation in the design and construction process. His work and research has been published internationally and featured in over 30 exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale 2010 and the Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi city Biennale 2012 and 2014.

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Neville Mars

Neville Mars is the principal of MARS Architects Shanghai and director of the urban research platform Dynamic City Foundation. MARS Architects is an award winning firm with projects in Asia, Europe and Latin America. The office focusses on progressive public buildings and sustainable planning, such as Shanghai 2040, the Sino-Dutch Ecocity Shenzhen, Beijing 798, Caofeidian, and future vision Mumbai for BMW Guggenheim. Currently MARS is developing the masterplan for UN HABITAT in Tacloban, the city ravaged by typhoon Haiyan. Mars is an INK fellow and the author of The Chinese Dream - a society under construction (010 Publishers, 2008) and the upcoming ecocities planning manual Manifesto of Mistakes (NAi 010 Publishers, 2017).neville@burb.tvoffice www.MARSarchitects.asia foundation www.BURB.tv

Olivier Ottevaere

Olivier Ottevaere is an architect and educator whose work investigates new procedures of construction that seek greater structural logic and more active participation of material, through prototyping. Since 2012, he is the founding principal of Double(o) Studio, an architecture practice based in Hong Kong.He is the recipient of several international awards and his built work has been exhibited and published widely. Prior to teaching at the University of Hong Kong, Olivier has taught design studios at various universities such as the AA in London, SUTD in Singapore, EPFL in Switzerland and at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. He graduated from the Cooper Union and from the Bartlett School of Architecture.

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Alvin Pang

Alvin Pang is a poet, author, editor and translator. He has over a dozen books to his name, and has been translated into over fifteen languages. He is Editor-in-Chief of a public policy journal, ETHOS, and has taught creative writing at Yale-NUS College. He was Singapore’s 2005 Young Artist of the Year for Literature, and was conferred the 2007 Singapore Youth Award (Arts and Culture). Recent publications include Tumasik: Contemporary Writing from Singapore (2010), Other Things and Other Poems (2012), When The Barbarians Arrive (2012), and UNION: 15 Years of Drunken Boat / 50 Years of Writing from Singapore (2015).

Rui Miguel Rebelo Leao

Rui Leão is an architecture and urban planning practitioner, an urban policy advisor and a heritage conservation activist. His design for Nam Van Square was awarded the Arcasia Gold Medal in 2006, and has been exhibited in the 10th Biennale di Venezia and at the 7th Bienal Internacional de Arquitectura de São Paulo. His reading room in the Portuguese School of Macau received a UNESCO Laureate for Innovation on Heritage Conservation in 2012. He is Vice-President of the Architects Association of Macau, Vice-President of CIALP, the International Council of Architects from Portuguese Speaking Countries, current Chair of Docomomo Macau Research Centre, and a nominated member of the CPU, the Urban Planning Committee of the Macau.

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Ravi Shankar

Ravi Shankar is founding editor of Drunken Boat, one of the world’s oldest electronic journals of the arts. He teaches at New York Writers Workshop and City University, Hong Kong. He has published 10 books and chapbooks of poetry, most recently The Autobiography of a Goddess, translations of 9th century Tamil poet Andal, and What Else Could It Be, collaborations with contemporary artists and poets. He co-edited Norton’s Language for a New Century, won a Pushcart Prize and a Glenna Luschei Award, and has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Corporation of Yaddo, and the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts.

Thomas Tsang

Founder of DEHOW PROJECTS, practice work integrates artistic practice with architecture in installations, exhibitions, and curations. His curatorial projects include Cloud of Unknowing: A City with Seven Streets (2014) at Taipei Fine Arts Museum (with Roan Ching-yueh.) He recipient of numerous awards, including the Shinkenchiku-sha Prize, and the Rome Prize by American Academy in Rome, Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, and Mellon Visiting Artist at the Susan and Donald Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College, research project entitled Sounding Architecture. Taught at the Cooper Union and China Academy of Art, and an Associate Professor at the University of Hong Kong.

www.dehow.com

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Tom Verebes

Tom Verebes is the Provost of Turenscape Academy and Director of OCEAN CN, Hong Kong and Turenscape, Beijing. Currently Visiting Professor at U Penn and the Director of the AA Shanghai Summer School (2007-2017). Former roles include: Associate Dean for T&L (2011-2014), and Associate Professor at HKU (2009-2016); Co-Director of the AA DRL (1996 to 2009); Guest Professor at ABK Stuttgart (2004-2006). In 2016 he was Visiting Professor at RMIT, SUTD, and University of Tokyo. His more than 150 publications include Masterplanning the Adaptive City: Computational Urbanism in the Twenty-first Century; an issue of AD, Mass Customised Cities; and SHANGHAI TEN FOLIO. He has exhibited in over 50 venues worldwide, and lectured extensively internationally.

ocean-cn.org

Dongwoo Yim

Dongwoo Yim is principal and co-founder of PRAUD, visiting professor at Washington University in St. Louis and Rhode Island School of Design. He received his Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard University, and bachelor’s degree from Seoul National University. He is the award winner of Architectural League Prize 2013 and co-author of North Korean Atlas, Pyongyang, and Pyongyang After, and I Want to be METROPOLITAN. His works have been exhibited worldwide including at the award winning Korean Pavilion in Venice Biennale 2014, Museum of Modern Art New York, DNA Galerie Berlin, International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, and Design Center Seoul.

www.praud.info

Visiting Critic & Supervisor Biographies

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October 2016

October 2016

October2016October 2016

42Tohru HoriguchiVisiting International Critic

Tohru Horiguchi is an architectural critic, curator and researcher currently teaching full-time at Kindai University, Faculty of Architecture in Osaka. Tohru received his Doctoral Degree from Tohoku University with his dissertation on the notion of Single Surface proposed by architectural theorist Jeffrey Kipnis, who he met as his mentor at Ohio State University. After earning his Doctoral Degree, Tohru has taught as an Assistant Professor at Architecture and Urban Design Lab at Tohoku University led by Professor Hitoshi Abe. Tohru has been a close collaborator of Abe for more than 15 years mainly in the field of urban design, exhibition design, publications, and most importantly in architectural design education. Tohru had been a member of “World Architecture

Workshop” organized in collaboration between Tohoku University, ENSAM and RMIT as a cross-cultural architectural design workshop, with which he co-received the Architectural Institute of Japan Education Award. Tohru has been also a frequent visitor in foreign universities worldwide including UCLA, SCI-Arc, HKU, RMIT, Monash, ENSAM, and is now preparing a comparative study on the emerging architectural design education platforms in Asia-Pacific regions. Tohru is also active in the architecture/film projects in which he discusses film as a platform where our collective memory and future perspectives collide.

http://ikenchiku.jp

43Suzie AttiwillVisiting Critic, School of Architecture & Design

Suzie Attiwill is Associate Professor of Interior Design and Deputy Dean of Learning & Teaching, RMIT School of Architecture and Design, Melbourne Australia. Since 1991, her freelance practice has involved exhibition design, curatorial work and writing on interdisciplinary projects in Australia and overseas. Her practice poses questions of interior and interiority in relation to contemporary conditions of living, inhabitation, subjectivity, pedagogy and creative practice. Research is conducted through a practice of designing with a curatorial inflection attending to arrangements (and re-arrangements) of spatial, temporal and material relations. Suzie is recognised internationally for her contribution to the discipline of interior design. Most recently, she was invited to present workshop intensives: Radical

Learning, Milan International Architecture Week (MIAW), School of Architecture and Urban Planning, 2016. She has published book chapters, conference presentations, and journal and magazine articles. Recent publications include: ‘interiorizt’, Brooker, G & L, Weinthal (eds), The Handbook of Interior Architecture and Design, 2014; and ‘Urban and Interior: techniques for an urban interiorist’, Hinkel, R (ed), Urban Interior. Informal explorations, interventions and occupations, 2011. Other roles include: artistic director of Craft Victoria (1996-99); board member/chair, West Space Artist Led Initiative (2006-10); program director, RMIT Interior Design (2005-2012); chair, IDEA (Interior Design/Interior Architecture Educators Association, 2006-12) and executive editor, IDEA Journal (2014-15).

44Michelle Aung Thin Supervisor, School of Media & Communication

Michelle Aung Thin began her writing life as an Advertising Copywriter in London, England. Her novel, The Monsoon Bride (Text 2011), was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and received a Readings Foundation/Wheeler Centre Fellowship. She was the first Asialink resident to Myanmar in 2014 (funded by Arts Victoria), where she researched her current project - a story that traces the parallels between contemporary Yangon and historical Rangoon and addresses questions of home and belonging. Michelle holds a PhD from The University of Adelaide and teaches both creative writing and writing for advertising at RMIT.

45Richard BlackSupervisor, School of Architecture & Design

Dr Richard Black is a registered architect and Associate Professor at RMIT University where he is director of the Bachelor of Architectural Design degree. Richard’s design practice, teaching and research activities explore overlaps and adjacencies between architecture and landscape. His practice includes installations, built works and speculative projects that have been nationally and internationally recognised through exhibition and publication. Mappings of the Murray River floods, fieldwork and associated design projects (part of his PhD) were exhibited at the Aedes Gallery Berlin and have been acquired by the Centre for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, USA. As an architectural writer he has also co-authored two books on his RMIT design studio teaching. His current book to be published by Thames & Hudson and co-authored with Dr Anna Johnson looks at the

critical relationship between landscape and houses in non-urban settings. Richard is also a founding member and contributor to the X-Field group in the School of Architecture & Design – a touring exhibition supported by symposia and collected contributions to this dialogue began in Melbourne, followed by Seoul, Beijing and Taipei before returning to Melbourne in an expanded format. Prior to his position at RMIT, Richard worked in practice in Western Australia and Austria. He obtained his B.Arch (first class honours) from Curtin University (WA), and has completed post-graduate study under Professor Sir Peter Cook at the Städelschule Art Academy, Frankfurt, Germany. He completed an M.Arch (by Research) in 1998 and a PhD (2009) both at RMIT University.

https://xfieldexhibit.wordpress.com/

46David CarlinSupervisor, School of Media & Communication

Associate Professor David Carlin, co-director of the NonfictionLab research group, is a writer and creative artist. He works on questions of memory, narrative, design and collaboration, and in nonfiction forms including essay, memoir and biography. As co-director of the NonfictionLab, David leads a multidisciplinary team of researchers. His field of research connects creative writing, cultural studies and digital media under the umbrella of nonfiction studies. The common thread is examination of the politics, poetics and practices of nonfiction, attempting to trace and analyse the network of connections between memory, the archive, observation and desire. David has a professional background as a writer, director and producer in film, theatre and circus. His essays and articles have appeared in Griffith Review, Overland, TEXT, Newswrite, Continuum and other journals. David is co-chair of the international NonfictioNOW Conference.

47Graham CristSupervisor, School of Architecture & Design

Graham Crist is a senior lecturer in design at RMIT and a member of the design practice Antarctica. He was educated at UWA and taught there before coming to RMIT. Prior to founding Antarctica he has practiced at Donaldson Warn, and Denton Corker Marshall as well as commencing the practice of Harrison and Crist.

At RMIT he has formerly been the program director of architecture, coordinator of professional practice and coordinator of higher degrees by research. He is currently coordinator of the Master of Design studios.

http://antarc.com.au/

48Sand HelselSupervisor, School of Architecture & Design

Sand Helsel is Professor of Architecture at RMIT University, and Director of the PRS Asia, RMIT’s PhD program located in Ho Chi Minh City. She received her architectural qualifications from the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) and her MArch (by Research) and PhD from RMIT. Prior to her current academic role, Sand has been Deputy Dean International in the School of Architecture & Design and Head of the Department of Architecture at RMIT, and a Unit Master at the AA. Her design research practice ranges in scale from installations to urban design. She is a founder member of X_Field, an informal group of international practitioners who work in the margins of the disciplines of art, architecture, landscape architecture, interior,

industrial and urban design. She has co-curated a suite of exhibitions of this work in Melbourne, Seoul, Beijing and Taipei; a book is in progress. Her work has been included in group shows at URS 126 in Taipei, the Seoul National University Museum of Art, and the Center for Art and Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art. The Asian city is the current focus of her international lectures, conferences, publications, exhibitions and design workshops. She is a founding member of Urban Flashes, an international group of artists, architects and educators established in Taipei in 1999, and her book, Taipei Operations, documents one of her collaborative design workshops with a focus on bottom-up design techniques.

49Anna JohnsonSupervisor, School of Architecture & Design

Dr Anna Johnson is a senior lecturer in the School of Architecture & Design at RMIT University. She is Asian Architecture and Urbanism coordinator in the Masters of Architecture, and International Student Coordinator. She completed her PhD in 2014 which focused on the critical and generative relationship between writing and drawing as explored through her practice. Her design work has been speculative and engaged in potential relationships between generative drawing, allegory, narrative and the strategic employment of writing as a design driver equal to drawing.

She is an established architectural writer with over 10 published books on Australian contemporary residential architecture, South East Asian architecture and design practice research. Her current book to be published by Thames & Hudson, co-authored with

Associate Professor Richard Black, looks at the critical relationship between landscape and houses in non-urban settings. This book explores contemporary architectural strategies and thinking concerning site - the landscape - and what that now means in Australia and New Zealand. The term landscape itself is interrogated for its scenic, picturesque associations that, by default, establish a particular distance and indeed hierarchy between land and building. Johnson and Black propose a more immersive, qualitative and engaged relationship with landscape that draws on a spectrum of influences from indigenous patterns of occupation and use, to climactic and historical readings as well as looking to broader cultural, artistic and architectural trajectories that inform our reading and hence landscape/architectural relationships.

50Paul MinifieSupervisor, School of Architecture & Design

Associate Professor Paul Minifie is Director of RMIT School of Architecture and Design’s Centre for Design Practice Research, called d__Lab, and is a Senior Lecturer in the Architecture program. He directs the firm MvS Architects (started in 2000 as Minifie Nixon Architects) with Jan van Schaik. Constructed projects include the Victoria College of the Arts Centre for Ideas, the Healesville Wildlife Health Centre and the Edithvale-Seaford Wetlands Discovery Centre. MvS is also known for their unbuilt and theoretical projects which have been widely published and exhibited in Australia and overseas.

Prior to MVS Architects, Paul worked at Ashton Raggatt McDougall for ten years. He was a design architect under Howard Raggatt’s direction on various notable

projects including RMIT’s Storey Hall, the St Kilda Town Hall and the National Museum of Australia.

Paul has taught at RMIT in an ongoing capacity since graduating in 2001. He is a leader of the ‘Advanced Architecture’ stream of design practice, which places emphasis on speculative modes of practice, often engaging with technological, social and economic drivers of architectural and urban transformation. Most recently, his research projects examine connectedness, exchange and differentiation - properties that can be tested by modelling - as fundamental drivers of urban morphology.

http://www.mvsarchitects.com.au/doku.php

51Adam NashSupervisor, School of Media & Communication

Adam Nash is an artist, composer, programmer, performer and researcher in digital virtual environments as audiovisual performance spaces, data/motion/affect capture sites, artificially intelligent, evolutionary and generative platforms. His work has been exhibited in prestigious galleries, festivals and online worldwide. He is director of the Playable Media Lab in the Centre for Game Design Research, and program manager of the Bachelor of Design (Digital Media), both at RMIT University.

52Jörg RekittkeVisiting Critic, School of Architecture & Design

Jörg Rekittke is a skilled nursery gardener. He studied landscape architecture at the Technical University Berlin and Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Paysage Versailles and received his doctorate from RWTH Aachen University. He worked as a landscape architect in Berlin and Cologne and was cofounder and art director of Lenné3D GmbH. Recently, he has been appointed to Professor and Deputy Dean, Landscape Architecture, at the School of Architecture and Design, RMIT University, Melbourne. From 2009 to 2016, he was Associate Professor in the Master of Landscape Architecture Programme, National University of Singapore. He has also held positions at RWTH Aachen University and University of Wageningen.

53Francesca Rendle-ShortSupervisor, School of Media & Communication

Dr Francesca Rendle-Short is an award winning novelist, memoirist and essayist based in Melbourne, Australia. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, co-founder and co-director of non/fictionLab and co-director of WrICE (Writers Immersion and Cultural Exchange). Her books include the critically acclaimed memoir-cum-novel Bite Your Tongue (Spinifex), Imago (Spinifex), The Near and The Far (Scribe), and the forthcoming 100 Love Letters (University of Philippines Press). Her work has appeared in anthologies, literary journals, online and in

exhibitions including Best Australian Science Writing, Killing the Buddha, Just Between Us (Pan Macmillan), Overland, Bumf, Rabbit, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Queensland Historical Atlas, New Writing, Life Writing and The Essay Review (Iowa). Her artwork is in the collection of the State Library of Queensland. She has a Doctor of Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong, was the recipient of an International Nonfiction Writers’ Fellowship at the University of Iowa, USA (2013), and was showcased in the Outstanding Field at Victoria College of Arts, University of Melbourne (2015).

54Gretchen WilkinsSupervisor, School of Architecture & Design

Gretchen Wilkins is Director of the Master of Urban Design program, Senior Lecturer in Architecture and leader of the D-Lab Cities research unit in the School of Architecture & Design at RMIT University. She received a PhD in Architecture from RMIT University in 2012 entitled Manufacturing Urbanism: architectural practice for unfinished cities, and a Master of Architecture from the University of Michigan. She is the editor of the book Distributed Urbanism: Cities after Google Earth (Routledge 2010) and Entropia: Incremental Gestures Towards a Possible Urbanism (Champ Libre, 2009). Her design

work has been published and exhibited internationally, including Architectural Design (AD), Ottagono, Metropolis Magazine, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui and the Storefront for Art & Architecture. She has received research grants from the Japan Foundation, the James L. Knight Foundation, the Australia China Council and the Holcim Foundation. Her ongoing research explores architectural and economic relationships between manufacturing and cities, through design.

55Jessica L. Wilkinson Supervisor, School of Media & Communication

Jessica L. Wilkinson is a poet, critic and editor, who has published two poetic biographies - marionette: a biography of miss marion davies was published by Vagabond Press in 2012 and shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards; Suite for Percy Grainger was published in 2014, a poem from which won the 2014 Peter Porter Poetry Prize. She is working on a third book, on the life and work of choreographer George Balanchine, with a side section on Australian prima-ballerina Lucette Aldous. In 2011, Jessica founded

Rabbit: a journal for nonfiction poetry, which will celebrate its 20th issue in 2016. Rabbit also publishes small single-author collections in the Rabbit Poets Series, which supports work by new Australian poets. She has recently co-edited the Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry anthology (Hunter Publishers, 2016) with Bonny Cassidy. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and Literary Studies from the University of Melbourne and is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at RMIT University, Melbourne.

For more information about the Practice Research Symposium please visit us at:

Creative Practice Research Portalhttps://creativepracticeresearch.info/

RMIThttp://www.rmit.edu.au/about/our-education/academic-schools/

architecture-and-design/research/practice-research-symposium-prs/

Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/rmitpracticeresearchsymposium

Examinationshttps://vimeo.com/user3911530

SAVE THE DATE!PRACTICE RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM

Ho Chi Minh City, VietnamFriday 7- Sunday 9 April 2017

Friday 6 - Sunday 8 October 2017