Nature Festival - Together X Tomorrow: Art and Architecture Symposium

Together X Tomorrow explores architecture and landscape architecture across intersections of nature, art and design. Just as these creative practices lie at the centre of our social contract, they also have the power to interconnect us in contract with nature. We are not only part of nature, but part of the many processes which shape our relationship to nature; such questions of existence are both ethical and ecological.

The enormous complexity of life and landscape on the earth’s surface requires us to construct an analogous world that we can visualise. As Root-Berstein writes, 'this ability to imagine new realities is correlate with what are traditionally through to be non-scientific skills - skills such as playing, modelling, abstracting, idealising, harmonising, analogising, pattern forming, approximating, extrapolating and imagining the yet unseen…'

So, can we use our professional modalities to better explore these relationships and imagine new realities? Can they lead us to a better relationship with the living world? 

The day will be divided into two parts: Ecologies + Practices.

Ecologies 

10.30am - Alison Page 

Alison Page is an award-winning creative at the forefront of contemporary Australian Aboriginal design and storytelling.

A New Australian Design: There is a new awakening fueled by ecological necessity to redesign our future and the relationship that we as people have with nature and each other. We can design our built environments to be a part of the managed landscapes that formed the basis of First Nations ecology since time immemorial.  This New Australian Design, which started over 65,000 years ago will improve the wellbeing of people and create places that ultimately mean more to all of us. 

11.30am - Elizabeth Farrelly 

(Founder & CEO The Better Cities Initiative Columnist, essayist, broadcaster, author
Presenter THE SYDNEYIST 89.7FM)

CITY AS SURVIVAL DEVICE: the dance between nature and culture: Cities are often regarded as antithetical to nature but all cities are fashioned from nature to protect us against her, and the best cities do this in a way that also renders nature more resilient.

Practices 

1.30pm - Sam Spurr (GEO, University of Newcastle)

1.50pm - Mladen Zujic (Architects Ink)

2.10pm - Kiri Bowmer (JPE)

2.30 - Panel Discussion (Moderated by Athanasios Lazarou, University of Adelaide)

This event is presented by Nature Festival.