From the Chapter President – Tuesday 18 October 2016
A short but action packed President’s Message for this month.
Our big focus right now is the SA Chapter’s involvement in Open State that kicks off today through to 27 October. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s an amazing array of speakers, both international and local, all looking at the challenges of the future and how we might come together to collaborate and innovate to address them.
The Institute is proud to be hosting several events during Open State. Much of the content is relevant to the future of architecture as a profession and it would be great to see a strong show of support and interest from our profession.
Some events will be delivered outside the city, but many will be delivered at ArtBox, a temporary facility that will be located in the forecourt of the museum. ArtBox itself is an innovation, being developed as a collaboration of several people including this year’s Emerging Architect Anthony Balsamo.
Highlights hosted by the Institute include:
- Indy Johar this Thursday – I heard Indy at the Sydney Festival of Architecture a couple of weeks ago and his take on the future of architectural practice and our role as designers of cities is compelling. If you heard Tom Fisher wrap up the National Conference in April, Indy’s talks continue that theme. If you didn’t hear Tom, then Indy is a must see.
- Future Cities on 25-26 October – the Institute is proud to be hosting a series of discussions about the nature of our cities, including topics such as modularization and future transport, all with some great speakers. Come and be inspired about the potential for the place that most of us work in
- Launch of the Adelaide Design Link (ADL) at lunchtime at the Future Cities Forum on 26 October (formerly known as the Adelaide Design Alliance). Our tagline is Liveable Solutions for Future Cities, and we now have over twenty businesses participating in this initiative which is focused on exporting our state’s design expertise to countries in our region.
We are especially pleased that the Department of Premier and Cabinet has recognized the role that our profession has to play in these discussions about our society, a role that goes straight to the topic of the relevance of our profession. Tickets are free, but we need your attendance – please reinforce our efforts by supporting these events. For more on Open State, see here
On another topic, we are hosting several workshops for practices involved in the Schools STEM project program that commenced a short while ago. With so many practices involved, we thought it would be worth having a workshop to share experiences, and then follow up with a workshop with DPTI and DECD representatives to look at how we can iron out the bugs and collectively deliver great value for the program.
The first workshop was held yesterday afternoon and was by all accounts a worthwhile exercise. A second workshop with key DPTI personnel will be held later this week. For details, contact the Chapter Office.
Finally, we have expanded the Development Plan Task Group in response to a consultation paper put out by DPTI on the 30 Year Plan. The update of the plan includes content on design aspirations that directly affects us as designers. The Institute will be providing a submission on the plan update in early November. Thanks to those of you who have contributed to date.
This is likely to be the start of a more detailed involvement in helping the government to put the detail into the new Development Act that was passed earlier this year. As a reminder, our lobbying was successful in ensuring that design is embedded into the act as one of only a handful of key guiding principles. If you are interested in contributing, or even just in what’s going on in this regard, get in contact with the Chapter Office.