Japanese architect Kengo Kuma will headline the Australian Institute of Architects’ 2016 regional conference, titled Evoke, set to take place in Townsville, Queensland from 8–11 September.
The conference will focus on architecture and ideas that surpass function and connect with the human condition as art does, through experience of light, place, landscape and time.
Creative directors of the conference, Stephen Guthrie and Lindy Atkin, explain that architecture has the ability to elicit human responses that move, touch and excite us, just as art is able to stir and appeal to our emotions. Evoke seeks to draw upon this idea, not simply through integration, or as a two-dimensional parallel, but to coalesce architecture “as” art.
Evoke aims to create a diverse conversation, with speakers from a wide range of backgrounds. Speakers include Kengo Kuma (Kengo Kuma and Associates, Japan), Shimul Javeri Kadri (SJK Architects, India), Ana Maria Pinto and Matthew Flynn (Vida Architecture, Costa Rica and Australia), Anu Puustinen (Avanto Architects, Finland), Toan Nghiem (A21Studio, Vietnam), Tim Hay (Fearon Hay Architects, New Zealand), Kate Cullity (Taylor Cullity Lethlean, Australia), and Robyn Backen (Robyn Backen, Australia), with more to be announced.
Through conversation, speakers will share projects and philosophies that stimulate the crossover between architecture and art. Positioning the architect as an artist of human emotion, an exploration into space as “atmosphere” and “experience” will unfold.
Guthrie and Atkin are founding directors of Bark Design Architects. In 2005, their studio was awarded the Beatrice Hutton Award for Commercial Architecture at the Australian Institute of Architects’ Queensland Architecture Awards. The practice was also selected for the 2008 Placemakers exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane.
Their curation of Evoke draws on personal connectivity, a critical element for regional architecture practice, through Atkin and Guthrie’s experiences in architecture and life.
Kengo Kuma’s first Australian project The Darling Exchange, part of the New South Wales government’s $3.4 billion redevelopment of Darling Harbour, is expected to open in 2018 if the development application is approved.
For further information and registration details visit the Evoke website.
