Monash Architecture, Level 2, Building F, Sir John Monash Drive, Caulfield East (2026)

15/10/2026

Department of Architecture & the Australian Institute of Architects Guest Lecture

LI Hu + HUANG Wenjing of OPEN Architecture
10th November 2026
OPEN Architecture

6-7.30pm
AIA Victorian Chapter, 41X Boardroom, Level 2, 41 Exhibition Street
Melbourne, VIC 3000
Public, free

Taking its title from the practice itself, this lecture reflects on the evolving meaning of “open architecture” for Li Hu and Huang Wenjing. Through a selection of cultural, educational, and experimental projects, they trace this evolution from the early influence of open systems, to open as a distinctive spatial operation and a way of being, and ultimately to a broader worldview grounded in the interdependence of people, nature, culture, and the environment. The lecture will explore how architecture can challenge convention, cross cultural boundaries, and open new possibilities for a shared future.

LI Hu (Hon. FAIA) + HUANG Wenjing (AIA), founding partners of OPEN Architecture, Howard A. Friedman Visiting Professors in the Practice of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, Kenzo Tange Design Critic in Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, visiting professors at Tsinghua University and China Central Academy of Fine Arts.
Some major projects by OPEN include: Sun Tower, Shanfeng Academy, Chapel of Sound, UCCA Dune Art Museum, Tank Shanghai, Shanghai Qingpu Pinghe International School, Pingshan Performing Arts Center, Tsinghua Ocean Center, and Garden School/Beijing No.4 High School Fangshan Campus.
This lecture is hosted by the Department of Architecture Monash University Guest Lecture Series and the Australian Institute of Architects. The series presents the diverse guests who visit us to talk, teach and research the complexities of architecture and urban design today.

Register via Eventbrite
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/open-architecture-li-hu-and-huang-wenjing-doa-guest-lecture-tickets-2002768445333

14/10/2026

Department of Architecture & the Australian Institute of Architects Guest Lecture

Reinier de Graaf
04th November 2026
Architecture Against Architecture

6-7.30pm
AIA Victorian Chapter, 41X Boardroom, Level 2, 41 Exhibition Street
Melbourne, VIC 3000
Public, free

Architecture, as we know it, is in crisis. The authority of architects is crumbling, their methods no longer tenable. In his new book Architecture Against Architecture Reinier de Graaf demands we rethink both how and why we build, challenging readers to question the fundamental assumptions of the discipline. How do we end the feudal veneration of starchitects? When will architects finally recognize that it is in their own best interest to unionize? Why aren’t more practices collectively owned? Why do so many architects over sixty-seven refuse to retire? How do we stop buildings from being copy-righted? What will remain of architecture after AI? What can prevent iconic structures from being embroiled in money laundering? What projects should architects refuse on moral grounds?

Reinier de Graaf is a Dutch architect and writer. He is a partner in the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and the co-founder of its think-tank AMO. He is the author of Four Walls and a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession, architect, verb.: The New Language of Building, the novel The Masterplan, and the recently published manifesto Architecture Against Architecture. He lives in Amsterdam.

This lecture is hosted by the Department of Architecture Monash University Guest Lecture Series and the Australian Institute of Architects. The series presents the diverse guests who visit us to talk, teach and research the complexities of architecture and urban design today.
Copies of Reinier’s book will be available for purchase after the talk, courtesy of URO Bookshop

Register via Eventbrite
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/architecture-against-architecture-reinier-de-graaf-doa-guest-lecture-tickets-2002400917046

05/10/2026

Department of Architecture Guest Lecture

Ari Seligmann
14th October
Imag(in)ing Japanese Architecture
6-7.30 pm
G1.04 Lecture Theatre
Public, free

Please join us to hear from Ari Seligmann.
Engage with splendid images of architecture and consider their constructions.
This presentation focuses on how Japanese architecture is presented and understood through words and images. It introduces ongoing studies of how media has shaped the ways people see Japanese architecture and recent publications examining important Japanese photographers, architectural and photographic developments. The talk also explains the wider network of people, outlets, and processes involved in producing architectural images, demonstrating the powerful roles of photographers influencing how audiences interpret architecture. The talk invites everyone to think more carefully about how images affect the way we read, understand and imagine Japanese architecture.

Ari Seligmann is the author of KA ME RA Japanese Modern Architecture Through the Photographer’s Lens (2026), Japanese Modern Architecture 1920-2015 Developments and Dialogues (2016), and editor of the forthcoming Handbook of Japanese Modern Architecture (2026); as well as Professor at Monash University and the Associate Dean Education for the Art Design & Architecture Faculty.
The Department of Architecture Guest Lecture Series presents diverse guests who visit us to talk, teach and research the complexities of architecture today.

Register via eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/imagining-japanese-architecture-ari-seligmann-doa-guest-lecture-tickets-2002598627403?aff=oddtdtcreator

05/10/2026

Curated by Monash Architecture Associate Professor Kathy Waghorn and Kim Paton (Objectspace), In the image of the city documents the edges of the built environment, revealing what artists, architects and designers observe and experience at the borderlines of the city.

These thresholds are where things come together: literal edges where fringe suburbs meet productive land; internal edges, where islands of possibility erupt within the suburban blanket; and far-flung edges, where the vast resources that serve cities are marshalled. For the practitioners in this exhibition, these are sites where land, buildings and infrastructural elements are shaped to mobilise resources, organise human settlement and transform ecologies.

A conversation between Naarm Melbourne and Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, the exhibition documents a series of architectural frontiers through photographic and moving-image works. The artists and makers take us from the edge lands of Melbourne’s outer suburbs, to the invisible line of Auckland’s closed regional border, to the flourishing of new life in what were once urban voids. Multiplying peripheries and overlapping centres emerge, in which visions of monotony and surveillance exist alongside community, ancestry, refuge and sanctuary.

Objectspace, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
11 September - 15 November

In the image of the city includes works by:

Edith Amituanai
Safa, Emina and Fatima El Samad
Matthew Galloway
Monash Urban Lab with Baracco+Wright
These Are The Projects We Do Together
Emily Parr and Arielle Walker
David Straight

In the image of the city is curated by Kathy Waghorn and Kim Paton.

Kathy Waghorn is co-director of HOOPLA, a Tāmaki Makaurau based social enterprise developing place advocacy, and an Associate Professor in architecture at Monash University.

Kim Paton is the director of Objectspace. Her interest is in exhibition making and writing across the fields of craft, design, architecture and contemporary art.

Research supported by the Department of Architecture in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Monash University.

Photos by Sam Hartnett

30/09/2026

Great to have students from Tianjin University visiting Monash Architecture, together with Yingfan Zhang of Atelier Alter Architects, Beijing.

A pleasure to welcome them to Melbourne and to the Department of Architecture at Monash University.

ArchitecturalEducation Melbourne Beijing

10/09/2026

We’re thrilled to share that Negative / Positive has been shortlisted in the 2026 Landscape Australia Awards!

Small Project Category
Negative / Positive
Monash Architecture with These Are The Projects We Do Together and Gilby Brewin Architecture

A pair of gathering spaces forming part of the ongoing rehabilitation of a former arkose sandstone quarry in regional Victoria. The project reuses materials salvaged from former National Gallery of Victoria summer pavilions, giving new life to materials from the site’s past.

Landscape Australia

31/08/2026

MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE MID SEMESTER REVIEWS | Design Studios

Wednesday 2 September

See posters for session times, room numbers, and the amazing guest critics joining us on the day.

23/08/2026

Last week the First Nations Advisory Committee (FNAC) and Cultural Reference Panel of the Australian Institute of Architects released Walk Together: Design Guided By Country – a new, freely accessible resource supporting architects and built environment professionals to engage meaningfully with First Nations Peoples and Country in their projects.

Developed collaboratively over several years, Design Guided by Country will support architects, graduates and students to enact culturally responsive approaches and design methodologies that prioritise the health and wellbeing of Country, respect for cultural authority, protect and celebrate cultural heritage, and strengthen First Nations communities’ capacities to care for Country. It also assists architects in meeting competency requirements set out in the National Standards of Competency for Architects 2021.
Design Guided by Country is freely available to architects, clients and the broader built environment industry.

FNAC is currently co-chaired University of Sydney Associate Professor Michael Mossman (Kuku Yalanji) and Dr Shaneen Fantin. Former co-chair, architect and Monash Architecture staff member Sarah Lynn Rees initiated this important work, supported by the full FNAC committee including our Monash colleague Bradley Kerr. Monash Architecture are hugely proud of their ground breaking work and tireless advocacy.

Image
Professor N’arwee’t Carolyn Briggs AM (left) and Sarah Lynn Rees (right) at the launch ofWalk Together: Design Guided By Country.
Photo Kathy Waghorn
Sarah Lynn Rees
winsor kerr
Djinjama

21/08/2026

Department of Architecture Guest Lecture

31st August 2026

Søren Pihlmann

Material Journeys

6-7.30pm
Caulfield Campus
FG1.04 Lecture Theatre
Public, free

Please join us to hear from Søren Pihlmann, the founder of Pihlmann Architects in Copenhagen. His work focuses on transformations, adaptive reuse, and biobased materials, developing architecture from existing buildings and production logics. He approaches each project through studies of given conditions and the implications of working with what is already there, treating structures as material banks and residuals as architectural resources.

He studied architecture at the Royal Danish Academy, graduating in 2014. Since establishing the studio in 2021, he has contributed to exhibitions, publications, films, and lectures internationally. His work includes Thoravej 29, where 95% of the existing materials were reused on site; House14a, where three masonry cores reorganise a 1951 house into a fluid floor plan; and Build of Site, the Danish contribution to the Biennale Architettura 2025. The latter initiated a long-term restoration of the Danish Pavilion, addressing recurrent flooding and using surplus construction materials as the basis of the exhibition.

The Department of Architecture Guest Lecture Series presents the diverse guests who visit us to talk, teach and research the complexities of architecture today.

Register via eventbrite : https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/material-journeys-sren-pihlmann-pihlmann-architects-doa-guest-lecture-tickets-1997804917287

17/08/2026

Summer School Travel Opportunity | Ōtepoti Dunedin, New Zealand

In this four-week summer school, architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and planning students from across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, leverage design-research methodologies to explore climate impacts, proposing and testing a range of resilience, adaptation, and mitigation strategies for Ōtepoti Dunedin, a small coastal city in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Application Deadline: 31-Aug-2026

6pt Studies Unit, open to (2027) Bachelor year 3, Masters of Architecture all years, Master of Urban Planning and Design all years

Staff A/Prof Kathy Waghorn with staff from collaborating schools

Dates: Summer Semester B :
Week 1, Jan 11-17, online
Weeks 2 + 3 , Jan 18-31, on location, Dunedin, New Zealand
Week 4, Feb 1 - 7, Melbourne, self directed

Supported by guests from community, local government, industry, climate researchers, local architecture and landscape architecture practitioners and Mana Whenua (traditional custodians), the school models collaboration through interdisciplinary, experiential learning in place, fostering a deep ethical awareness, sense of responsibility and built environment practice knowledge towards supporting communities affected by climate change.

Students may be eligible for a Monash travel grant of $1250

See QR Code for application info

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