Naomi Milgrom Foundation presents Living Cities Forum 2022

July 21, 2022

The 2022 theme of “Material Flows” will be explored by eminent architects and urban thinkers at the return of the Living Cities Forum.

The sixth annual gathering of eminent architects and urban thinkers investigating how design, planning, and architecture shape our society will take place on Thursday, July 21, from 9 am to 5 pm at The Edge in Fed Square, according to a press release from the Naomi Milgrom Foundation.

Materials have flowed for as long as people have traded. The “Material Flows” theme for the 2022 Living Cities Forum will look at the international material flows that support our expanding built environments. The Living Cities Forum will present its fifth series of keynote lectures, with talks from internationally renowned thinkers including Vietnamese architect Vo Trong Nghia, Ghanaian educator and architectural scientist Mae-ling Lokko, Dutch architect and educator Joseph Grima, Canadian landscape architect Jane Mah Hutton, British architect and co-founder of Dark Matter Labs Indy Johar, and Chinese architect Xu Tiantian, who will give cross-disciplinary talks throughout the day.

The discussion will examine if the current disturbances to material movements around the world—caused by the global pandemic, wars, and other destabilizing factors—might be our opportunity to reconsider the materials we have taken for granted.

Speakers who are accomplished in their disciplines include:

Awarded Vietnamese architect Vo Trong Nghia’s goal is to include greenery into all of his designs to reestablish a connection between humans and nature. He also uses plants as building materials to incorporate traditional knowledge into contemporary design.

Mae-ling Lokko is an architectural scientist and educator from the Philippines and Ghana. In her work, Mae-ling explores the potential applications of biopolymers and agricultural waste in the construction sector.

Writer, curator, and architect, Joseph Grima. He co-founded the research firm Space Caviar and serves as the creative director of Design Academy Eindhoven.

Landscape architect, academic, and co-founding editor of Scapegoat: Architecture, Landscape, Political Economy Jane Mah Hutton. The expanding relationships of the act of building—from material flows to labor movements—are the subject of Jane’s research.

The founding Director of 00 and Dark Matter Labs, Indy Johar, is an architect. Indy, an architect by training, is a visiting professor at the University of Sheffield and a senior innovation associate with the Young Foundation.

Beijing-based architect Xu Tiantian founded DnA _Design and Architecture, which has built a solid reputation in China for a number of cultural initiatives. Prior to joining OMA as a senior architect, Xu completed his education at Harvard. The current exhibition at MOMA, “Reuse, Renew, Recycle: Recent Architecture from,” includes DnA.

Industry experts, students, and everyone else interested in the future of cities should not pass up the chance to network, share ideas, and collaborate at the Living Cities Forum 2022.

About Living Cities Forum
Since 2017, the Living Cities Forum—an initiative of the Naomi Milgrom Foundation—has had a substantial influence on the thinking, discourse, collaboration, and policy-making that determines approaches to urban development across Australia. While including established experts, Living Cities Forum actively seeks out and invites voices from across society to take part in deep and critical analyses of our cities. The dialogues are lively, rigorous, scientific, personal, productive, and always inspirational, testing out old thinking, ushering in new perspectives, and paving the way for new, better design approaches, in all aspects of urban life.

Key information for Living Cities Forum 2022
Date: Thursday, July 21, 2022
Time: 9am–5pm
Location: The Edge, Fed Square, Melbourne
Speakers: Joseph Grima, Mae-ling Lokko, Jane Hutton (virtual), Indy Johar, Vo Trong Nghia, Xu Tiantian (virtual)
Tickets: 150 AUD (100 AUD concession) includes Living Cities Forum day-pass, with morning tea and lunch.
Information: livingcitiesforum.org and naomimilgromfoundation.org