Design Practice Research and the Dissertation: How do we produce a dissertation that is about non-written work? - Panel Discussion

All design practitioners undertaking a PhD face the demanding task of producing a dissertation at its conclusion. This process is often time-consuming, frustrating, and can feel disconnected from practice. While we excel at creating buildings, digital environments, fashion, and artefacts, translating these outputs into the form of a dissertation can feel like learning a foreign language.

This panel discussion brings together supervisors, current candidates, and recent graduates to share ideas, perspectives, and strategies for navigating this challenge. We will also reflect on the significance of the dissertation, not merely as a written requirement, but as an integral extension of the PhD itself.

CHAIR
Dr. Leanne Zilka is the Associate Dean of Research and Innovation in the School of Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT University. She completed her PhD through RMIT’s Design Practice Research model and is a current supervisor in the program. Her research is multidisciplinary, driven by an interest in how techniques and technologies from outside architecture can transform the way buildings are conceived and made. In particular, she investigates the potential of lightweight (“floppy”) materials, working with fashion and textile design and fabrication. By adapting fabrication processes and from these disciplines, new architectural applications that rethink material performance and environmental responsiveness are explored. This research has led to innovative prototypes and design strategies, including retrofit facades that enhance the sustainability of existing buildings, urban shade canopies that protect the urban public from heat and plant-supported textile structures that merge ecological systems with architectural design.

PANEL
Kate Geck is an artist working with textiles, animation, machine learning, augmented reality and the internet. Her practice tends to the connections between humans and technology, exploring ways to materialise the digital. Kate’s recent work explores what she calls a ‘textillic’ approach to creative practice with machine learning to examine how interconnection, materiality and shared agency might become foregrounded in exchanges between human and machine intelligences. She has exhibited in Australia and overseas, with her most recent Experimenta commission touring Australia from 2025-27. In 2024 Kate co-authored the report ‘Generative AI in Design Education’ with Emma Luke, supported by a Design Thinking Grant from the Alastair Swayn Foundation. Kate is currently completing her PhD through RMITs design research practice model and is a lecturer in Interior Design in the School of Architecture and Urban Design.

Professor Carey Lyon is a director of Lyons. Prior to co-founding Lyons in 1996 Carey Lyon worked for a decade as Associate Director at Perrott Lyon Mathieson leading design teams on a range of major commercial and educational projects. At Lyons Carey provides design leadership across a range of TAFE, higher education, research, commercial and other major projects. He is one of Australia’s acknowledged leaders in urban design, sustainability and in the design of research and learning environments. In 2006/2007 he was elected National President of the Australian Institute of Architects and was awarded the Presidential Medal from the American Institute of Architects. He is currently a Board Member of the Green Buildings Council of Australia and in is a Professor of Architecture at RMIT University. Carey completed his PhD through the RMIT design practice research model and is a current supervisor in the school of Architecture and Urban Design.

Dr Patrick Macasaet is Lecturer and Program Manager of the Master of Architecture program in the School of Architecture & Urban Design at RMIT University. He is Research Leader of the RMIT AUD Immersive Futures Lab, which investigates the potentials of gaming and allied immersive media for architectural design, pedagogy and future creative practice. He recently completed his PhD, Polyphonic Praxis: Architectural Design in Real-time and Immersive Gaming Environments, a practice-based investigation into interdisciplinary approaches to architectural practice through virtual environments, speculative narratives and worldmaking. Patrick is also co-founder of SUPERSCALE, an interdisciplinary speculative practice with works exhibited nationally and internationally, including collaborations with ACMI, Federation Square, Melbourne Recital Centre and the State Library of Victoria.

Professor Vivian Mitsogianni is Dean of the School of Architecture & Urban Design and Professor of Architecture at RMIT University. Prof Mitsogianni is a registered architect and a director of M@ STUDIO architects, a multi-AIA award-winning collaborative focused on architectural design research. Prof Mitsogianni was previously Associate Dean and Head of RMIT Architecture (2013–2023). She undertakes practice-based design research with a focus on experimental design processes and supervises design-practice PhD candidates in Australia and Europe through RMIT’s practice-based PhD program (PRS). In 2019, Prof Mitsogianni was awarded the Australian Institute of Architects Neville Quarry Medal for Architectural Education, a national prize for outstanding contribution to architectural education.

Dr Denise Sprynskyj and Dr Peter Boyd are Senior Lecturers in Bachelor of Fashion (Design) at RMIT University’s School of Fashion & Textiles. Their research and design practice S!X investigates the deconstruction/reconstruction of found garments and the transformation of surfaces. S!X is in the permanent collections at The National Gallery of Victoria, The National Gallery of Australia, The Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences and the Hobart Art Gallery. They have won the Premiers Design Award and exhibit nationally and internationally. S!X were the first Fashion and Design practice to complete a PhD in the invitational stream in The School of Architecture and Design in 2016.

Access
This session will be recorded, but not live-streamed.
The Building 100, Level 10 spaces are accessible via lifts from the street-level entry located at the corner of Victoria & Swanston Streets.