Topophilia: Attachment & Belonging Summit

Dr Phillip Roös is the Director of the Live+Smart Research Laboratory and Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and Built Environment, Deakin University. He has been working as an environmental design professional and architect for more than 30 years on an extensive range of large-scale projects in Europe, Africa and Australasia. His interests are centred on the human–nature relationship and the identification of optimised design processes based on a regenerative-adaptive pattern language theory. This approach incorporates the principles of biophilia and regenerative design as well as an adaptive pattern language that re-establishes our wholeness with nature and considers the vulnerabilities of a changing landscape. His recent book titled ‘Regenerative-Adaptive Design for Sustainable Development, A Pattern Language Approach’ (Springer, 2021), has been hailed by Professor Mark DeKay as “a radical and visionary work of immanent practicality… a new manner of thinking if humanity wants to survive”.

Stephanie Skinner is a proud Wadawurrung Woman who works as the Language Officer at the Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation. She has a passion for Language and its important relationship and cultural connection to Country, and strongly believes in the process of Language revival and its benefits to Wadawurrung Country, Culture, and Community.
Stephanie, with support of the Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation, has been working closely with communities and other organisations towards the activation of Wadawurrung Language within Country through education programs in schools and kindergartens and other interpretive design projects that can be seen throughout Wadawurrung Country.

She is currently working with dedicated indigenous and non-indigenous textile researchers, academics, scientists, engineers, growers and local Iwi (tribes). Documenting the journey to develop circular designed, native plant fibre materials and textiles that will help to connect people back to the land through indigenous ways of knowing. She is also independently developing a Community Rongoā (Māori native plant medicine) Forest initiative combining ancestral knowledge with integrated app based technology.

In addition to her own companies, Christine is the Executive Director of Native Land Digital (https://native-land.ca), an Indigenous-led not-for-profit dedicated to providing education about Indigenous peoples, territories, and knowledge systems across the world. She is currently studying for her Master of Arts in Indigenous Studies at Trent University.

Dr. Nikos A. Salingaros is Professor of Mathematics and Architecture at the University of Texas at San Antonio. An internationally recognized Architectural Theorist and Urbanist, he was visiting professor of Architecture at Delft University of Technology, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Querétaro, Mexico, and Università di Roma III. He has directed and advised twenty Masters and PhD theses in architecture and urbanism. Salingaros began as a painter working in the fine Arts, later becoming a scientist and polymath contributing to architectural theory, complexity theory, design philosophy, and urban theory. He holds a doctorate in Mathematical Physics from Stony Brook University, New York. Salingaros published research on Algebras, Electromagnetic Fields, and Thermonuclear Fusion before turning to Architecture and Urbanism. His publications include the books Algorithmic Sustainable Design, Anti-Architecture and Deconstruction, A Theory of Architecture, Principles of Urban Structure, and Unified Architectural Theory, plus numerous scientific articles. He co-authored with Michael Mehaffy the books Design for a Living Planet, and A New Pattern Language for Growing Regions. He collaborated with the visionary architect Christopher Alexander in editing the four-volume The Nature of Order. Salingaros won the 2019 Stockholm Cultural Award for Architecture, and shared the 2018 Clem Labine Traditional Building Award with Michael Mehaffy.

Timothy Beatley is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities, in the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, where he has taught for the last thirty years. Beatley is the author or co-author of more than twenty books, including Green Urbanism: Learning from European Cities, Native to Nowhere: Sustaining Home and Community in a Global Age, and Biophilic Cities: Integrating Nature Into Urban Design and Planning.  Beatley directs the Biophilic Cities Project at UVA (http://biophiliccities.org/) and co-founded UVA’s Center for Design and Health, within the School of Architecture.