Bond University has appointed Professor Philip Follent as the founding head of its School of Architecture.

Professor Philip Follent

Bond University has appointed Queensland Government Architect Professor Philip Follent as the founding head of its new Soheil Abedian School of Architecture.

The New Soheil Abedian School of Architecture will take its first students in January 2011.

Professor Follent says the opportunity to shape a refreshing architectural course for students who might one day exert a significant, positive influence over the world’s built environment attracted him to Bond.

“The Gold Coast has been my home for 30 years and I have watched Bond University grow to a point of maturity that sees it now ready for a School of Architecture and it is a great event to participate in the shaping of the new course,” Professor Follent says.

Professor Follent says his vision for the School is to produce architectural graduates who are highly regarded by the profession for their strong theoretical understanding, their design skills and leadership capacities.

Professor Follent is on the 2011 International Urban Design Conference Commitee

Enabling A Resilient Future – Spatial Political Economy and the Crucial Role of Place Management and Development in Knox

Dr Ingo Kumic

In the not too distant future Australian cities will exist as material evidence of the massive and at times, catastrophic re-birthing of the capital which currently underpins our economies. There is an increasing sense that those that control the capitalisation of energy, food and land will give way to those that control the capitalisation of technology, infrastructure and knowledge.

Accordingly, power will attempt to shift to ‘the local’ as domestic energy security, amongst others, becomes a reality. With this we will also see a de-coupling of local communities from the foundational grid of the industrial economy to become truly post-industrial. While this shift will bring many benefits, it also brings with it many challenges which will materialise nowhere more potently than in our cities.

We must innovate the economy (the cycle of production, distribution and consumption) to be dependent on this new hierarchy of emerging capital and in so doing ensure that the city exists as material evidence of this innovation, a task which by its very nature is spatial.

Grounded in the body of knowledge that constitutes ‘spatial political economy’ we must employ local ‘spatial investment and development programs’ to enable the re-production and re-accumulation of value in a way that prioritises the health of our planet and our society, and gives greater legitimacy to the intervention of local government in the generation of wealth.

Dr Ingo Kumic  Knox City Council

http://www.urbandesignaustralia.com.au/

Ecosystem Resilience

"Ecosystem resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to tolerate disturbance without collapsing into a qualitatively different state that is controlled by a different set of processes. A resilient ecosystem can withstand shocks and rebuild itself when necessary. Resilience in social systems has the added capacity of humans to anticipate and plan for the future. Humans are part of the natural world. We depend on ecological systems for our survival and we continuously impact the ecosystems in which we live from the local to global scale. Resilience is a property of these linked social-ecological systems (SES). "Resilience" as applied to ecosystems, or to integrated systems of people and the natural environment, has three defining characteristics:

• The amount of change the system can undergo and still retain the same controls on function and structure
• The degree to which the system is capable of self-organization
• The ability to build and increase the capacity for learning and adaptation"

Source: The Resilience Alliance Website

The national objective for the future strategic planning of our cities is centred on Resilience in Urban Design and the ability for cities to adapt to a vast array of challenges.

The theme for the 4th International Urban Design Conference is Resilience in Urban Design through measures such as supported interconnectivity, appropriate densification within urban footprints, multiple transit modes and walkability, socially inclusive design, economic resilience, and adaptive built environments.  visit the website here: http://www.urbandesignaustralia.com.au/



Call for abstracts now open!

Call for abstracts now open!