Title: Informal Design
Introduction: Katie Hepworth(AUS)
Speakers: Hugo Moline(AUS), Ben Milbourne(AUS)
Time: 19H, 22.05.07
Are infrastructures of informality possible? Can the informalism of the 3rd world mega-city be applied to the 1st world city?
Ben Milbourne and Hugo Moline are young, up and coming Australian architects, working in a global context. While their approach to architecture differs significantly, dealing with First world desires and Third world needs respectively, they share an approach to urbanism which embraces the informal and the chaotic in order to create and maintain dynamic, vibrant and changing communities and urbanisms. This focus marks a dramatic shift from that traditionally associated with Australian architecture and urban design, as represented in the DAZ exhibition in September. Ben and Hugo will discuss their own work in the context of contemporary Australian architecture and a wider global context.
ben is an urbanist, and for better or worse a globalist. he is not convinced it is a good idea, but he masterplans large and small parts of cities for cultures not his own, quite often for people he has never met and places he has never been.
the ever expanding international design competition system, a decade or more of foreign architect urban experimentation in china and increasingly the middle-east, local urban design for larger projects has been superseded in favor of google-earth urbanism.
ben has worked in europe and australia on projects in beijing, moscow, st petersberg, chang-sha, dubai, paris, jeddah, the hague, nanjing, hamburg, lausanne, the cape verde islands, goa, london, sydney and claims no definitive approach for intervening in contemporary urban conditions, rather argues for urban design strategy rich with programmatic complexity and juxtaposition, flexibility for organic growth, change and local invention during implementation.
ben is currently employed at lab architecture studio as a design architect working on a variety of projects in china,
