Architecture's Elusive Impact on Vitality
NPT Ednie-Brown
How do the spaces we create affect our well-being, our creativity and cultural vitality?
We often have a sense that certain places help us feel happier, stronger, more relaxed and more energised, but struggle to pinpoint exactly what makes us feel this way. While the history of architectural design could be seen as a long-term investigation into how the built environment can affect us, the highly contextual and complex nature of architecture continues to elude aspirations to design for reliable, measurable impacts.
In this lecture, Professor Pia Ednie-Brown will argue that the nature of environmental complexity requires us to forego the desire for final answers. Instead, she outlines how architectural practice can offer positive outcomes by shifting attention away from the ‘finished’ built product, and toward the cultivation of relationships with built environments that foster care and respect.
About the Speaker:
Pia Ednie-Brown is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her funded projects have investigated relationships between creativity, emergence, ethics and innovation. She has a creative research practice, Onomatopoeia (http://onomatopoeia.com.au), and leads the cross-institutional Affective Environments Laboratory (ael.org). Her creative work and writing have been published widely in international contexts, and she has edited two books: Plastic Green: designing for environmental transformation (RMIT Press, 2009), and The Innovation Imperative: Architectures of Vitality (AD, Wiley, 2013).
The lecture recording is now available to stream here on SoundCloud.
The University of Newcastle acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands within our footprint areas: Awabakal, Darkinjung, Biripai, Worimi, Wonnarua, and Eora Nations. We also pay respect to the wisdom of our Elders past and present.