Celebrate the opening of PRS Australia at the Design Hub with welcome drinks and finger food in the Design Hub Gallery. Join us in the gallery space for networking opportunities with our community of practice researchers and to view the research of our PhD and Masters by Research examination candidates.

The PRS official welcome and keynote will then take place in the Design Hub Lecture Theatre at 6:45pm. The keynote will feature presentations by Dr Mark Jacques and Dr Gwyllim Jahn, both recent graduates of the Design Practice PhD program at RMIT University.

Professor Vivian Mitsogianni, Dean of RMIT's School of Architecture and Urban Design will introduce and moderate the discussion as Mark and Gwyllim reflect on their experiences of the PRS, including beginning points, the trajectory of their candidature and the outcomes that emerged from their research. The discussion will explore the distinction and overlaps between industry and the academy in the context of design practice research, the specific ways the speakers have been able to leverage their engagement across both for mutual benefit, and how the PhD has catalysed the next phase of their practice.

Speakers

Mark Jacques was appointed Professor of Architecture (Urbanism) Industry Fellow within RMIT’s School of Architecture and Urban Design in 2015. His projects have won significant awards, including the Australia Award for Urban Design, The Melbourne Prize and the Premier’s Design Award.

In 2021, Mark was appointed to the inaugural Melbourne Design Review Panel, part of the City of Melbourne’s Design Excellence Program. In 2022, he completed his PhD at RMIT’s School of Architecture and Urban Design entitled ‘Interloping and its consequences: Poaching, opportunism and making mischief in the design of public spaces’.

Gwyllim Jahn is the co-founder and Creative Director of Fologram, a design research practice and technology startup developing software for designing and making in mixed reality. Fologram’s clients include leading universities, multinational architectural firms, industrial designers, engineers and artists who are building mixed reality applications for full scale construction, public art, architectural fabrication, sculpture, automotive design and cyber-physical visualisation systems.

Gwyllim has delivered lectures and workshops at international institutions including UCLA, ETH, SciArc, MIT, USC, Stuttgart ICD, UCL, UTS, Tongji and Tsinghua University, and is a Lecturer in Architecture and Design at RMIT University in Melbourne where he also completed his PhD. His design research in the fields of mixed reality environments, autonomous robotic fabrication and creative applications of machine learning has been published in leading computational design conferences and journals including IJAC, ACADIA and RobArch and has been internationally awarded, including for the construction of the Tallinn Architecture Biennial Installation Competition.

Please note the following order of proceedings

PRS exhibition opening: 5:30pm – 6:30pm, Design Hub Gallery, Level 2
Keynote: 6:45pm - 8:15pm, Design Hub Lecture Theatre, Level 3

The DSC Doctoral Research Conference brings together the College's three existing symposia – Practice Research Symposium (PRS), Urban Futures Symposium and Social Change Symposium – to create a shared space for innovation, sustainability and resilience aligned with the theme of regenerative futures.