The Australian Institute of Architects has announced a star-studded speaker line-up for its Lost Opportunities symposium that includes half a dozen Pritzker laureates and several Australian Gold Medal winners.
Scheduled for 18–20 March in Melbourne, Lost Opportunities will look at projects that were significant for their architects, but which were never built.
“In any successful architect’s career, there are many instances where great visions are unable to be realised,” the program reads. “Architectural expressions develop more from those lost opportunities than from any other place; such is the pain of developing an unrealisable seminal work in our profession.”
Through this lens, the symposium will aim to explore topics including the practice of architecture today, the environment and the global future of the profession.
International speakers include Irish architects Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell, the 2020 Pritzker laureates; Indian architect Balkrishna Vittaldas Doshi, 2018 laureate; Spanish architect Carme Pigem, a 2017 laureate; and Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza, 1992 laureate. Glenn Murcutt, who is Australia’s only Pritzker laureate, having won the prize in 2002, is also speaking.
Other Australian speakers include Kerry Clare, Rick Leplastrier and Peter Stutchbury, all winners of Australian Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal. The symposium’s creative directors are architect Angelo Candalepas and Tony Giannone, national president of the Australian Institute of Architects.
Lost Opportunities is not being described as the National Conference by the Institute. The National Conference has not been held since 2019, after the planned 2020 conference was first postponed and then dropped in the midst of the pandemic.
The two-day symposium will be held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre from 18 to 20 March. See the full program here. Early bird ticket sales close on 2 March 2022.
Source: Architecture - architectureau
