Launch—TERROIR: Territories, Melbourne

Join us for the launch of TERROIR: Territories at Bookshop by Uro, Melbourne, including a conversation between co-authors Gerard Reinmuth and Andrew Benjamin alongside Anna Jankovic, as they discuss the book and its implications for design and practice.

Territories repositions architecture as a relational discipline, reversing the logic of building as architecture’s endpoint. Rather, the book contends, buildings are the after-effect of relations. This aligns with the philosophical writing and teaching of Australian philosopher Andrew Benjamin, who argues that architecture is a critical activity not simply synonym for building. Similarly, the work of Anna Jankovic foregrounds a research-led approach to design and creative practice, as recently exemplified by exhibition Deep Time Real Time, which is co-curated with Fleur Watson and André Bonnice.

While some relations within architecture, such as the physical and spatial, are long-established constituent ingredients of practice, Territories adds cultural, political, economic and social relations to this architectural repertoire. Seen through this lens, the architect’s scope and agency expands to a network of complex real-world relations, in which designing buildings is only one territory of action.

Ticket price redeemable as a discount from book purchases.

About the Speakers:

Gerard Reinmuth is the inaugural Professor of Practice in the School of Architecture at UTS and director of TERROIR. Gerard’s research spans both architectural practice (including sustainability, procurement practices and larger questions of agency) and research by design. He curated and designed the Sydney exhibition for the inaugural Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism in 2017, was co-curator of the Australian Pavilion at the 2012 Venice Biennale, and was the Creative Director of the National Architecture Conference (Parallax) in 2009. 

Andrew Benjamin is Distinguished Professor of Architectural Theory at the University of Technology, Sydney and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Monash University Melbourne. He is a graduate of Universities in Australia, France and the UK, where his predominate area of interest is philosophical aesthetics. He is currently an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne. His books include Towards a Relational Ontology (2015), Art's Philosophical Work (2015), Working with Walter Benjamin (2013).

Anna Jankovic is an architect, director of Simulaa, and Lecturer at RMIT Architecture. Her work explores how architecture might respond and act in a world defined by environmental limits, interrelational systems, and layered temporalities. Recent projects include the exhibition Deep Time Real Time (2025) at Design Hub Gallery, and the publication Notes from a finite world: A study of post-carbon paradigms for architecture (2024).