Next week I will be travelling to Singapore to attend the World Architecture Festival (WAF).
WAF is a fantastic opportunity for the Institute to promote the work the organisation and our members are doing to an international audience.
While there, I will be promoting the Institute’s bid to host the UIA Congress in 2020, ahead of the official lodgement date in November. The UIA Congress represents an incredible, even once-in-a-lifetime, opportunity for Australian architects and architecture, so it is important for us to garner early support from international colleagues. I look forward to letting you know more about some of the events we have planned for the congress soon.
Back to WAF, the International Area Committee, along with EmAGN, is hosting a networking event at the festival on 2 October. Boarding Pass explores the value of being connected. I will have the pleasure of sitting on a panel that includes Julie Eizenberg (Koning Eizenberg), Ian Moore (Ian Moore Architects) and Chris Bosse (LAVA).
Incidentally, the IAC is also hosting an event in Hong Kong on 15 October for guests to view the entrants for the Institute’s Jorn Utzon Award for International Architecture. You can find more information on both of these events on the website.
WAF culminates in the awards ceremony 4 October. The shortlist features a strong Australian presence across the categories. I wish all of our members with shortlisted projects the very best.
Last Friday, the Institute along with Chartered Accountants Australia, Engineers Australia and the Law Institute of Victoria published an op ed in The Australian. This piece, headed ‘Don’t Silence Experts: Professional Bodies Add Oomph to any Debate’, was written in response to a column published in that same newspaper on Tuesday by Judith Sloane. In ‘Leaning Left by association’, Sloan questions and dismisses the involvement of professional bodies in policy matters. In our column, we outline the roles organisations like ours have in the public debate and state why these roles should be encouraged, not dismissed. You can read our response here.
Kind regards,
Paul.
Paul Berkemeier
National President