Dr Sarah Breen Lovett

Sarah Breen Lovett was born on Dharug and Gundungurra Country, grew up on Darkinjung Country and now lives on Worimi Country. She spends her time working as a creative-research practitioner and academic, engaging in practice-led, socially-engaged, and industry-collaborating research projects. 

Across all of these modes of engagement, Sarah’s current interest focuses on shifting consciousness toward a heightened sense of interconnectivity with the self, community, built and landscaped environments through a combination of mindfulness, earth building, DIY architecture and eco-social practices. Sarah is actively seeking PhD candidates across these research areas to supervise.

Sarah's practice-led research began following her architectural and interior design career which spanned 10 years on numerous residential, commercial, and industrial projects in Sydney and London. Sarah returned to academia to carry out a practice-led PhD called "Expanded Architectural Awareness: The Intersection of Expanded Cinema and Architecture." This focused on our habitual and haptic relationships to place through moving image installation. Her own films and installations made during this research have been exhibited extensively in venues such as: Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, Western Plains Regional Gallery, Cementa Festival Kandos, Everglades Gallery, Scenic World Katoomba, Woodford Academy, Chauvel Cinema, Blake Prize Sydney, National Art School Sydney, Powerhouse Brisbane, Trocadero Art Space Melbourne, Eclectic Film Salon Dublin, Visual Deflections London, Kommunales Kino Freidburg Germany, Directors Lounge Berlin, and Abstracta Film Festival Rome.

During her PhD research, she also curated many exhibitions of creative-research, most notably through the direction of the Expanded Architecture Exhibitions, which were held over four years as part of the Sydney Architecture festival; and co-curation of the Cinecity Architectural Film as part of the Australian Institute of Architects Conference for four years. During this time, engaged with architects such as Zaha Hadid, Bernard Tschumi, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Penelope Seidler on curation. These exhibitions were held in venues such as CarriageWorks, Performance Space Clubhouse, Seidler CBD Buildings, MCA Sydney, VIVID Ideas Sydney, Federation Square Melbourne, Melbourne Convention Centre,  Melbourne Testing Grounds, The Street Theatre Canberra, State Theatre Centre Perth, Whitecliffe College of Arts & Design New Zealand, Architecture Film Festival Lisbon and ArqFilm Festival Chile.

Socially engaged research projects began through her creation and curation of many regional contemporary art exhibitions and performances focused on the built and landscaped environments. These were held on Gadigal, Wiradjuri, Dharug and Gundungurra Countries. This was mainly while she was a member of Modern Art Projects in the Blue Mountains and Kandos School of Cultural Adaptation, where she also worked on co-designed architectural projects with local communities, academic collaborators and Atelier Bow-Wow. Works and curations from these socially engaged projects were exhibited in venues such as Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, Braemar Gallery Springwood, Clandulla State Forest Gallery, Wayout Art Space, Woodford Academy, BigCi Bilpin, Centennial Parkland Sydney and Gaffa Gallery. The results of many of these collaborations can be heard on her podcast hereness.org.

Experience with Industry-collaborating research has been with a number of Tier 1-3 Industry Partners, Peak bodies, Government bodies, Educational Institutions and SME’s. This has been through her roles as:  Engagement & Education Leader at Building 4.0 CRC, Lecturer and Lab Manger at Future Building Initiative, MADA Monash University, as well as Post-doctoral Researcher and Lab Manager of the Innovation in Applied Design Lab at The University of Sydney. All of these industry collaborating research organisations focused on making architecture more efficient through prefabricated architecture.

Sarah also co-curated and co-directed many other exhibitions and conferences around practice-led and Industry-collaborated research through: the first Annual Design Research Conference at The University of Sydney, Open House in Melbourne, and Building 4.0 CRC Annual Showcase and Annual Conferences and CRC exhibitions at various Industry Partner venues, and in Parliament House.

Sarah’s publications include "Expanded Architecture: Temporal Formal", published with the Bauhaus Foundation Dessau, by AADR; and a chapters in “ "Flow: Between Interior and Landscape” published by Bloomsbury;  "Inter and Transdisciplinary Relationships in Architecture" by AITNER; "Mediated Identities in the Futures of Place: Emerging Practices and Spatial Cultures" and “Effective Architectures” by Springer; "Architecture Filmmaking" by Intellect, as well as articles in Architectural Science Review,  Scroope Cambridge Architecture Journal, and the Journal of Architecture and Related Arts; as well as forthcoming "Routledge Handbook of Architecture, Urban Space and Politics, Vol II: Ecology, Social Participation and Marginalities”.