Using Our Past to Enhance Our Future: Recycling Buildings to Achieve Unique, Sustainable Outcomes

Robert Morris-Nunn is one of Tasmania’s most adventurous architects. He explores new approaches towards a socially humane architecture that he calls “storytelling,” often working with the recycling of old buildings together with innovative timber structures. He has won over 50 state and 4 national architecture awards and his work is widely published. In 2013 he was appointed Adjunct Professor at the School of Architecture, University of Tasmania. He is a Member of the Order of Australia, the nation’s prestigious civic honours award. In this talk, Robert will discuss projects where the existence of prior structures and their integration has added immeasurably to the quality of the new development. The scale of intervention is often quite dramatic but always inclusive, and by new entering into a dialogue with the old, the outcomes are greatly enriched. In 2024, the Woods Bagot redevelopment of his University of Tasmania Forestry Building won the Future Project: Education category at the World Architecture Festival.