Dr Hugo Moline

Dr Hugo Moline is an architect, artist, urbanist and researcher. He is co-director of MAPA Art & Architecture.

Central to Hugo’s architectural work is the ongoing question of why only those with money and power should decide on how the city is made, and seeking ways to make the products and processes of architecture radically democratic. His specialisation is in working with collective client groups, from the tight knit communities of migrant housing cooperatives to the complex, interwoven interest of diverse users of public space. Hugo has worked for HealthHabitat in remote Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander communities and has designed community-led housing and public space projects in Australia, Thailand, Fiji and The Philippines. 

Hugo’s speculative arts practice, an ongoing collaboration with Heidi Axelsen, critically examines the current way we arrange our world by designing for other ways of relating. They are interested in how humans organise ourselves collectively, as families, communities, societies, nations and species and how we relate to other collectives. They question these relationships, asking why are the things our lives depend on the most (eg. plant life, or care work) so undervalued? As a response to these questions they make work which speculates on other ways of organising ourselves or relating to others and build fragments of these other worlds, tools, furniture, shelters and systems which may enable these alternate relations to flourish.   

Their work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including by: Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (Sydney), RMIT Design Hub (Melbourne) and the Echigo Tsumari Art Triennale (Japan). Their work has also been featured in Architecture AU, Architecture Bulletin and Architectural Review Asia Pacific. 

Hugo's research is concerned with ways to make the products and processes of architecture more open and democratic; to enlarge the possibilities for buildings, cities, and landscapes to be designed with and for the many overlapping publics and communities who will use and engage with them.   

This takes several forms. Firstly, as discursive research into the history and theory of practices, processes, and products of speculative, critical, and participatory forms of architecture. Secondly, as applied research in formulating design processes to collaborate with collective clients and multiple stakeholders within real-world projects of public space and affordable / social / public housing, and assessing their impacts. Thirdly, as speculative design research which critically examines the current ways in which we arrange our world by designing for other ways of relating; to the land, to each other and to the complex networks of human and non-human actors on which we depend.