Adaptive reuse in focus at Melbourne Design Week
What do we do with the buildings we already have? Associate Director Tim Brooks took part in two events as part of Melbourne Design Week, tackling this exact question.
A frank panel on adaptive reuse
Tim joined the Melbourne launch of Adapt! Designing New Lives for Old Buildings, a sold-out evening discussing how to give old buildings a second life. He shared the panel with the book’s authors Hannah Lewi and Cameron Logan, alongside Kerstin Thompson, Robert Crawford and Suzanne Zahra, and Prof. Rory Hyde moderating.
Our cities hold an enormous amount of carbon in their existing fabric, so keeping that fabric is now a sustainability question as much as a heritage one. The panel didn’t avoid the hard parts – the cost, the compromises, the technical headaches – but it made a clear case for reuse over demolition.
Adapt! Designing New Lives for Old Buildings is available now, online and in store.
A walking tour through Collingwood
The second event was a walking tour with EmAGN, the Australian Institute of Architects’ Emerging Architects and Graduates Network. The route moved through Collingwood and a set of adaptive reuse and cultural projects, then finished with a panel discussion. Tim was among those presenting along the way and contributed to the conversation.
Collingwood Yards was the final destination, rounding out the tour, and a useful example of what reuse can give back to a neighbourhood.
Our thanks to EmAGN Vic and Uro Publications, and the NGV as the initiator of design week.