12 September - 4 October, Wunderlich@ 757

The second exhibition in our 2013 ABP Alumni Survey Series, this exciting show profiles the design ideas of a young practice consisting of eight ABP alumni. ON / OFF will challenge visitors to think about the digital world we live in and the social encounters we make on and off line.

The Wunderlich@ 757 will be transformed into ON and OFF, spaces of connection and disconnection, and the directors will host a series of events to consider the propositions;

Have we lost the right to get lost?

Can architecture facilitate an 'other' impulse: to switch off, to disconnect, to disengage, to disassociate?

Full calendar of events available here

1-6 October, University of Melbourne

Join the University of Melbourne in discussing and debating the art and science of wellbeing as we ask "Is it possible to sustain a healthy society and a healthy planet by 2050?"

The six day program of thought-provoking discussions, debates and performances, exploring the complex social, cultural, political and environmental challenges facing humanity into the future and the innovative solutions that might overcome them brings together some of the best minds in the world.

Together with Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, ABP will host Environments Day on Wednesday 2 October, considering issues such as a healthy and sustainable post carbon world, the liveable city, and country, place and wellbeing. 

Get involved

20 Minute City Student Competition Enter Now

Congratulations to Nicole Henderson, Emily Palmer and Jordan Simcock, all second year students at the Melbourne School of Design (MSD), who have won the 2013 SONA Superstudio for their entry, Confronting Boundaries.

Superstudio is a 24 hour design competition run by SONA, the student arm of the Australian Institute of Architects, that fosters studio culture, networking and support between students from different universities and years of study.

In response to the competition brief, refuge of discomfort, the University of Melbourne team devised a series of urban interventions around Melbourne. The challenge was to set up a duality of opposing concepts; to conceive of a proposition that provides comfort, whilst also acknowledging the history of tension or injustice, particularly towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Nicole, Emily and Jordan's aim was to "instigate an open dialogue amoungst all Australians about the difficult history of colonial and Indigenous people."

They invited public interaction at a number of sites throughout Melbourne including, the University of Melbourne's Parkville Campus, the Exhibition Centre and Melbourne Women's Hospital.

Jefa Greenaway is Co-Creative Director of SONA Superstudio 2013. "There is much to be said for a simple yet powerful concept well executed," he said. "The clarity of thought and engagement was clearly evident and readily explored. It was agreed by the jury that the scheme was a brilliantly transformative form of anti-architecture which got to the heart of the brief quickly. It tested the idea within the public realm with the most modest of means, with simple thought provoking text mediated through a transformative space - a quietly understated, yet deeply powerful idea."

Read more about SONA Superstudio

Win announced on ArchitectureAU

Time and Landscape - Register NOW
6 August @ 7pm, Carrillo Gantner Theatre,
Sidney Myer Asia Centre

Portuguese Landscape Architect, João Nunes joins us as the third guest of the 2013 Dean's Lecture Series to present, Time and Landscape.

João Nunes is founder and CEO of the Landscape Architecture Studio PROAP, which gathers professionals in a cross-disciplinary team with expertise in landscape architecture. As International Director, João is responsible for the strategic, executive and tactical leadership of the three international offices: Lisbon (Portugal), Luanda (Angola) and Treviso (Italy). He develops PROAP’s conceptual and creative design and defines the strategic orientation of the research processes. Over the past twenty years, the PROAP team have dedicated themselves to investigating ways to understand and communicate with landscape through national and international projects including Parque do Tejo and Trancão, Lisbon, Forlanini Park, Milan and Cordoaria Garden, a historic garden rehabilitation in Porto.

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Garden Voices. Australian designers - their stories, edited by ABP alumna, Anne Latreille, considers people and the spaces they create.The publication looks at the ideas of current and historic garden designers and landscape architects.

Anne will speak about Garden Voices at the Australian Landscape Conference on 22 September in the Melbourne Convention Centre.

Anne Latreille is a leading Australian writer with special interests in gardens, landscape and the environment.  Her books include garden identities Ellis Stones, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, Jean Galbraith & Joan Law-Smith. Her Environs column for The Age won a Royal Australian Institute of Architects award, and she was a long-serving editor of that newspaper’s garden page. As a freelance journalist she has been involved with specialist reports in areas such as urban planning and transport. 

Garden Voices. Australian designers - their stories is published by Bloomings Books and will be available mid September.

The AppleBOX Theatre by Eduardo Velasquez, Manuel Pineda and Tanja Beer.

PhD student, Tanja, and recent MSD graduates, Eduardo and Manuel are making waves both locally and internationally. Tanja's passion for sustainable stage design brought us the Living Stage, and Eduardo and Manuel recently won the People's Choice Award in the Flinders Street Station Design Competition.

Their most recent success sees this ambitious trio shortlised in the sustainable theatre competition at the World Stage Design Exhibition in Wales and their intervention, The AppleBOX Theatre, will be displayed from 8th September at the World Stage Design Congress in Cardiff.

The AppleBOX Theatre will explore the intersection between architecture, scenography, ecology, community engagement and performance.

Read on

Stephanie Morgan
Manager, Environments and Design Student Centre

My favourite urban space in Melbourne is the suburb of Abbotsford, specifically the fragment bordered by Clarke Street, Johnson Street and the Yarra River. 

I lived in this location from 1994 to 2012. When I first moved in, the Convent property was blocked off, the gardens untended, and the buildings full of squatters. There was no walking path along the Yarra and, whilst the Farm was in existence, it was a shadow of its current self. In the last 10 years, significant renewal of this precinct has been undertaken, with the convent buildings now refurbished and housing a range of cultural associations, art galleries, educational institutions, restaurants and cafes. The path along the Yarra has been planted with species indigenous to the area, as well as a range of fruit trees and grapes vines on the edge of the Children’s Farm. I must have walked my dogs along this path a thousand times and each time felt fresh and new and a million miles from the city. The baby lambs and goats kicking around the fields in springtime were always an added bonus.

I am particularly drawn to the Abbotsford Convent’s heritage-listed formal gardens whose original structure - reminiscent of Guilfoyle's layout of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne - has survived almost intact.  It is a pleasure to sit under the garden’s 19th century oak trees and to see the enormous grevillea robusta, when in flower in spring, glowing yellow-orange.