Conference Agenda | Australian Placemaking Summit

Speed Networking

This speed networking session will allow delegates to introduce themselves and swap business cards with other conference attendees.

Setting the Pace for Placemaking in Australia

This keynote will provide insights into the history and future of placemaking in Australia; where we have come from, where we are now and what does the future hold? 

In the last 20 years Australian placemaking has evolved from a predominantly grass roots movement to an established profession embedded in government policy and private sector investment strategies. Placemaking practice has also diversified to meet the demands of a wider range of clients and objectives. This has led to a growing tension within the profession, as well as community, as focus shifts from communal benefit to economic. Will the next generation of placemakers align the profession around profit or purpose or can a balance be established to benefit all?

Kylie Legge, Founder & CEO, Place Score/Place Partners

A Nordic architecture practice sets new standards for placemaking in Sydney

The Quay Quarter Tower is one of the most innovative projects in Sydney, reimagining the office high-rise for contemporary needs, with “campus style” offices and stacked vertical villages that break down the massing of the tower. The comprehensive approach to sustainability considers the tower’s impact across its full life cycle, from recycled structural materials to high-performance façades, all leading to an exemplary energy rating.

The Sydney Fish Market will establish a world-class “foodie” destination. The project seeks to set in place an exemplary example of integrating the public realm and contemporary market space that will become a landmark in Sydney’s unique harbour-based urban landscape. The new market will place people at the centre of the architectural response, with an emphasis on place-making to foster a strong sense of community at Blackwattle Bay.

The placemaking strategy for 3XN’s latest projects on Australian soil is set to redefine the public realm by activating the plinth, enhancing accessibility and nurturing the community through the studios notion that architecture shapes behaviour.

Fred Holt, Architect, Partner, 3XN, Denmark

Illustrating San Francisco’s Unique Expressions of Placemaking

• Imagining, Redesigning and Reclaiming Public Spaces – the story from San Francisco 
• How the city’s varied constituencies are working together to transform public spaces
• Expanding Placemaking through Tactical Urbanism

Robin Abad Ocubillo, Director, San Francisco Shared Spaces Program, City and County of San Francisco

Bridging the gap between engineering design and the community

Rail, roads and power supply infrastructure is a vital set of services that both connect and sustain our cities. Shaping how we travel, live and engage with community, the infrastructure that surrounds us is traditionally delivered as a purist engineered solution. Seeing the opportunity to disrupt the norm and impact how infrastructure curates the world we live in, Heath brings the end user to the forefront of project outcomes, challenging multidisciplinary design teams to think beyond the brief and the process to realise future focused, connected people centric solutions which create elements of play, elegance and ergonomics in our urban realms, leaving a lasting legacy.

Heath Gledhill, Architectural and Urban Design Interface Leader, Aurecon

PANEL DISCUSSION

Landscape Design and its key Role in Urban Placemaking

• What makes a great place?
• The role of landscaping in the placemaking process
• Designing for the public realm
• Creating meaningful experiences for people in public spaces

Anna Chauvel, Director, Place Laboratory
Claire Martin, Associate Director, Oculus
Deborah Kuh, Place Ecologist, Landscape Urbanist, All is Design
Dr Beau Beza, Associate Head of School - School of Architecture & Built Environment, Deakin University
Kirsten Bauer, Director - Melbourne, ASPECT Studios

How We Plan and Build Communities through Placemaking

We will draw on a range of successful examples which demonstrate how Placemaking can inspire the broader industry to think differently about how we plan and build our communities.

Placemaking has taken the development industry by storm over the past few years. But for many, it’s a discipline that is still not well understood. It is often cast as short-term, ephemeral improvements that will make our public spaces more comfortable and increase visitation. There is a focus on activation and grassroot-led initiatives, and strategic opportunities that leverage more compelling commercial benefits, are overlooked.

As Australia’s only national planning, design and place making firm, adopting a place focus at the outset has embedded a transformative approach in the way we approach our work, and is challenging the way our clients have traditionally operated – within the context of both infill and greenfield developments.

The premise of our focus is that places strategically positioned as destinations with a competitive, commercial edge at the outset will realise stronger financial returns. Communities with a well-considered vision up front are more likely to feel real. They will have a richer sense of personality and offer a more fulfilling lifestyle. This approach also provides a more detailed brief for our designers to better customise planning to place, and a framework that de-risks early investment decisions and builds confidence for investors.

Louise Ford, Senior Place Strategist, Urban Solution, Hatch RobertsDay
Tom Oliver Payne, Senior Urban and Place Planner, Hatch RobertsDay

Exploring Movement and Place: Making Human-Centred Transport Planning a Reality

• How the concept of Movement and Place is gaining momentum cross Australian Cities
• Recognising the dual function of streets as both through corridors and destinations in their own right
• Case Studies

Will Fooks, National Transport Planning Lead, GTA Consultants

PANEL DISCUSSION

Indigenous Placemaking and the Built Environment 

• Urban design, public art and architecture by, for and in collaboration with Aboriginal people 
• Contribution of aboriginal artists to cities’ urban fabric
• Encouraging architects and designers to be more engaged with Indigenous culture

Dr Emily Potter, Associate Professor, Deakin University
Dr. Meghan Kelly, Associate Professor, Deakin University
Gregory Burgess, Director, Gregory Burgess Architects
Jefa Greenaway, Director, Greenaway Architects
Mark McClelland, Creative Director, Cultural Capital

There Is No Such Thing as an Infrastructure Project: Creating Future Ready Places for People

The focus on people and place as part of planning and delivering infrastructure projects is hit and miss, and we are failing communities and businesses as a consequence. Graham Pointer has been exploring people and place as a policymaker within government and more recently with audiences in Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney and Singapore. He will share his perspective from collaborating across all disciplines, from engineering to town planning to place activation to new mobility designers. What is clear, is that we are all placemakers. In his presentation Graham will also explore four place-focussed mindsets we are increasingly seeing from successful city leaders.

Graham Pointer, Future Ready Lead Australia, WSP

The Woolley Street Project -  A Pavement to Plaza Experiment

Woolley Street in Dickson ACT is Canberra’s Chinatown. It is well known locally for being family friendly, multi-cultural and having a mix of great inexpensive food. Recognising the effect of years of neglect and changing public expectations of how an eat street could be experienced, led local traders and residents to identify Woolley Street as requiring a major upgrade. Grounded in place-based principles, the ACT government has chosen action orientated planning approaches to transform tired open spaces. As lead landscape architect Anna Chauvel will step through the iterative process of place planning, experimentation, measurement and consultation as part of reimagining Woolley Street.

Anna Chauvel, Director, Place Laboratory

How can Placemaking Change the Status Quo?

We know that placemaking is a powerful tool in bringing about positive change in the short term. Despite this many capital works projects are rolled out in conventional ways, without any thought to how to make the ‘place’ work. We are now in a post-covid world where human connection and civic projects are more important than ever. So, how can placemakers disrupt traditional citymaking processes to reconnect local people with local places and deliver outcomes that are permanent? 

This presentation will explore exemplar placemaking projects from across regional Queensland and New South Wales that use placemaking as a tool to disrupt traditional citymaking processes. Brooke will provide case studies of projects which shook up traditional built environment processes by bringing a placemaking mindset. The result? Strong communities and more sustainable places.

Brooke Williams, Director, Fourfold Studio

Digital Placemaking: Our Future in Augmented Reality

Digital Placemaking is the creative use of technology to transform and redefine our physical environment, engage with people and enhance human behaviour. This innovative session showcases how Digital Placemaking is changing human behaviour like never seen before, illustrating why it is an integral part of the future of placemaking. Join me as I showcase how it will change the future of communities, art, culture and sculpture into an Augmented Reality.

Emile Rademeyer, Executive Creative Strategy Director, VANDAL

Do Smarter Cities Really Lead to Better Places?

• New technologies like big data are transforming the way we understand cities, but does it help make better places for people?
• This keynote will unpack how better data and technology can help us understand the social life and wellbeing of places.
• We'll look at case studies from cities around the world who are using data to make evidence-based, citizen-centric decisions and answer the questions you may have about big data. 

Lucinda Hartley, Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer, Neighbourlytics

Placemaking in Fishermans Bend – Opportunities and Challenges

• Fishermans Bend is entering a period of significant transition. Building on the areas rich history of industry and manufacturing, each of its precincts will soon become distinct mixed-use neighbourhoods focused on people and human scale interactions. 
• This presentation will explore what opportunities exist for placemaking and activation in Australia’s largest urban renewal area.

Peter Smith, Chief Executive Officer, City of Port Phillip

Starting With Place and Not Forgetting the People

• Shakespeare said “What is the city but the people?”. Why starting with place is right, why place is critical to humans in cities and why placemaking should go deeper than decoration
• Lessons learnt and updates from our journey making places across the ditch in Tāmaki Makaurau

Frith Walker, Head of Placemaking, Panuku Development Auckland – New Zealand

PANEL DISCUSSION

Placemaking and Property Development

• Potential Benefits of placemaking for developers 
• Creating more desirable communities through placemaking
• Placemaking as a winning real estate development strategy

Andrew Hoyne, Principal, Hoyne
Bec McHenry, Founder, To Good Use
Cat Burgess, Head of Frost Place, Frost* Collective
Obelia Tait, Director, Inhabit Place, Tait Network
Sophie Pickett-Heaps, Co-Head of Design, Stockland Design Studio

A Place-Making Paradigm for Liveable Cities & Neighbourhoods

City of Parramatta Council has one of the largest local government place-making teams with 17 place-makers creating great places from ‘concept’ to ‘curation’ through an annual $26M capital budget. Council’s Place Managers link projects, initiatives and priorities across multiple business units, but what that really means is that they’re motivated silo-busters who know how to find a ‘yes’ in a large bureaucracy. Narrative is key: they make decisions based on what they know and what they can prove, but they persuade and engage property owners, local businesses, state agencies and community groups through strong narrative. This presentation shares Council’s place-making paradigm that redefines ‘design’ from drawings to a process of discovery, places end-user acceptance as the greatest determinant of success, and champions the value-add of ‘non-scientific’ success criteria.

Bruce Mills, Group Manager – Place Services, City of Parramatta Council

Urban Waterfront Transformations through Placemaking

The last 40 years have seen massive changes in our cities caused by rapid population growth, global mobility, increasing cultural diversity, new technology and climate change. The challenges and opportunities arising from these changes has meant that cities around the world have had to look for new, imaginative and bold ways to address the challenges of the present to shape their futures. Through the lens of placemaking, this presentation explores how cities are evolving to meet these challenges by reconnecting with their waterfronts and provides key insights to unlock their potential.

Michael Stott, Director City Strategy and Place, Urbis

Placemaking Strategy for Lot Fourteen

• Lot Fourteen on the site of the former Royal Adelaide Hospital is our neighbourhood to inspire ideas and change the game across innovation, research, art and culture.
• The seven-hectare neighbourhood is bringing together members of the Space and Defence, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence and Creative Industries to share spaces, experiences and most of all, talent.
• Simplifying the place vision for Lot fourteen

Rachel Walsh, Director – Place & Marketing, Renewal SA

Design-Led City: A Design Strategy for Brisbane

As the largest local government in Australia, Brisbane City Council recognises the value of well-designed places, spaces, buildings and structures and their collective contribution to the culture, lifestyle, prosperity, environment and health of Brisbane and its communities. Design-led City – a design strategy for Brisbane is a new corporate, city-wide strategy that seeks to achieve a people-centric approach to design, delivery and maintenance of the built environment, and ensure that all developments make a positive contribution to the community. The strategy demonstrates Council’s leadership in Australasia and commitment to design that reflects Brisbane’s character, identity and climate across all aspects of the built environment, as well as cultivating a culture across Council, industry and the community that values design quality

Omar Barragan, Manager - City Planning and Development, Brisbane City Council

PANEL DISCUSSION

Placemaking and Public Lighting

• Lighting’s contribution to the creation of a high quality public realm

• Adding visual interest to public spaces through engaging, interactive lighting designs where appropriate. 

• Exploring lighting’s influence on the quality of our built environment 

• Role of lighting in creating safer and vibrant night-time economies

Anne Truong, Specialist Lighting Lead, Wrap Engineering Pty Ltd.
Dimitrios Tsiokaras, Senior Lighting Designer, Electrolight
Ian Dryden, Principal - Industrial Design, City of Melbourne
Ingrid Baldwin, Studio Director, FPOV
Tim Hunt, Melbourne Lighting Leader, ARUP

Meekarlba: Testing the water in Newcastle

Four million people live in regional capitals in Australia, and another four million surrounding residents depend upon them for education, health, employment, and goods/supply chains every day.  This is the equivalent of Sydney and Melbourne’s population combined. Yet dollar for dollar the investment in regional centres and in particular their public domains on average is ten times less than in capital cities. In the past decade, increased funding has been made available for placemaking efforts outside of capital cities across Australia. This has offered interesting opportunities for experimentation before major redevelopment as well as testing public responses to heterogenous notions of place.  This presentation will be discussing recent and current projects in Newcastle, NSW which explore placemaking outside of capital cities as a way of opening up dialogue, generating productive friction and inviting contestation in the public realm.

Professor SueAnne Ware, Head of School, School of Architecture and Built Environment, The University of Newcastle

One Minute Once Chance - Rapid Talks

From Paddock to Postcode – Placemaking in Greenfield Developments

• Around 65,000 people move to Melbourne’s outer urban growth areas each year
• Hear a local Government view on the opportunities and challenges of creating a new community
• What soft and hard infrastructure is needed to turn a paddock into a postcode?

Bronwen Clark, Executive Officer, National Growth Areas Alliance