Join us for welcome drinks and finger food to celebrate the opening of PRS Asia September 2024!

The evening will commence with a welcome from PRS Asia Chair, A/Prof Jessica Wilkinson followed by a book launch and keynote presentations from Prof Derek Hoeferlin and Dr Andy Stiff with A/Prof Katrina Simon as interlocutor.

Book launch

As part of the PRS Asia Opening Event, Dr John Doyle and A/Prof Graham Crist will launch their book, House Precinct Territory: Design Strategies for the Productive City.

Keynote presentation: Living with/in Rivers

Rivers are a crucial part of planetary and human life and health. Their courses and catchments influence the formation of settlements and cities, but their vitality and complexity are often overlooked as cities expand and become denser and hungrier for land.

Two design-researchers present their work on rivers, deploying creative and analytical approaches to engage with different dimensions of rivers at vast and intimate scales, reflecting on how these modes of engagement might create new insights and opportunities for living with rivers.

Andrew Stiff details the impact of an exploration of his film practice conducted through the PRS, and more recent work conducted through RMIT Vietnam’s collaboration in the River Cities Network project, and the role of ‘dorsality’, which emerged from his PhD and has influenced his work since.

Derek Hoeferlin will introduce his book Way beyond Bigness: The Need for a Watershed Architecture, which explores infrastructural transformation of three vast catchments of the Mekong, Rhine and Mississippi rivers and proposes a simple, adaptive framework that utilizes a three-part, integrative methodology.

These presentations will be followed by a discussion moderated by Katrina Simon, Associate Dean of Landscape Architecture at RMIT University, who researches ways of drawing that engage productively with the mutability and ambiguity of landscape conditions.