
Topophilia: Attachment & Belonging Summit
Live+Smart Research Laboratory, Deakin University – Summit
23 March – 25 March 2022.
Held as part of Geelong Design Week 2022. Geelong is Australia’s first (and only) UNESCO City of Design.
This summit is an online event. The event will be hosted from Deakin University Geelong, Australia, with online streaming of talks and panel discussions by local as well as international speakers and panel members.
Overview:
Topophilia: Attachment & Belonging, will run over three days with keynote presentations, and panel discussions which includes world renown experts in topophilia, biophilia, biophilic cities, placemaking, integral design, ecopsychology, community resilience and Indigenous Knowledges. The key question “What is required to help transition one’s attachment to place to a deep sense of belonging?” will be at the core of each event in the summit.
Day One: Indigenous Knowledge Perspectives
Day Two: Pattern Languages and Integral Perspectives
Day Three: Liveability, Place Making and Sense of Belonging Perspectives
Dates: Wednesday, 23rd March, Thursday 24th March, Friday 25th March 2022
Time: 7:00 pm – 9:30 pm (Australia Melbourne Time – AEDT)
Venue: Online Streaming
Note: Please provide your email with registration as the passcode to the summit will be emailed to you the day of the online streaming.
Click Here for registration
Summit Programme:
Day One: Indigenous Knowledge Perspectives
Taur – The meaning of belonging | Stephanie Skinner |
Whanaungatanga – family, connection and a reciprocal relationship with the land | Tanya Te Miringa Te Rorarangi Ruka |
Native-Land.ca – Using Counter-Mapping to Learn Whose Territory You’re On | Christine Luckasavitch |
Day Two: Pattern Languages and Integral Perspectives
Revolution in Architectural Thought | Nikos Salingaros |
Place Belonging: situations and perspectives | Mark DeKay |
Nature’s language: Conscious and Unconscious connections to the natural world | Phillip Roös |
Day Three: Liveability, Place Making and Sense of Belonging Perspectives
Designing Cities That Love Nature | Timothy Beatley |
Financing urban regeneration and cultural and liveability pathways in the global south | Zaheer Allam |
Topophilia & 15-minute City | Carlos Moreno |
Presenter Biographies:
Event Host and Panel Interviewer:
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”. |
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Day 1: Indigenous Knowledge Perspectives
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.
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Tanya Te Miringa Te Rorarangi Ruka is a Māori artist and designer currently living in Te Whānganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. She is of Ngati Pakau, Ngapuhi descent. Tanya works with Mātauranga Māori ancestral knowledge and navigational tools to design pathways of transitional Indigenous Futures and Indigenous Speculative Design. Developing her art & design practice in the digital realm weaving stories that firmly place indigenous concepts, knowledge, perspectives and ways of being in the landless territories of new imagined futures. She is the Founder of the Region Net Positive platform, and is active in environmental issues from an indigenous perspective in Aotearoa and globally. As Research Communications Lead for Nativeland Digital she is honoured to be a part of the team and is dedicated to the representation of indigenous tribal voices and their homelands.
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. |
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Christine Luckasavitch is an Omàmìwininì Madaoueskarini Anishinaabekwe (a woman of the Madawaska River Algonquin people), belonging to the Crane Clan, and mixed settler heritage. Christine continues to live in her ancestral territory, much of which is now known as Algonquin Park, Ontario. Christine is the Owner/Executive Consultant of Waaseyaa Consulting and Waaseyaa Cultural Tours (https://waaseyaaconsulting.ca), two small businesses dedicated to reviving and celebrating Indigenous ancestral knowledge and culture-based practices through educational opportunities. She is the co-owner of Algonquin Motors (https://www.algonquinmotors.com/), a motorcycle clothing company based in unceded Algonquin territory.
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. |
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Day 2: Pattern Languages and Integral Perspectives
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. |
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Mark DeKay, AIA, registered architect, Professor of Architecture at the University of Tennessee, is author of Integral Sustainable Design: transformative perspectives, the first book to apply integral theory to design, and co-author of Sun, Wind, and Light: architectural design strategies, 3rd ed, a classic climatic design resource. His research topics include urban wind field studies, integral architectural photography and “design-with-nature” narratives. Current scholarship is a co-authored book, Feeling Form, about experiencing nature via buildings and rich indoor variability. He collaborates with scholars in Scotland, Australia, California, China, and Greece. Mark and his wife/editor, Susanne Bennett, were trained by Al Gore as Climate Reality Leaders. They offer lectures internationally on “Solving the Climate Crisis by Design,” along with trans-disciplinary workshops for built environment research teams using the Integral Research Approach.
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Day Three: Liveability, Place Making and Sense of Belonging Perspectives
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. |
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Dr. Zaheer Allam holds a PhD and 2 masters from universities in Australia and the United Kingdom. Based in Mauritius, he is the Chairperson of the National Youth Environment Council (NYEC) and a board member of the Mauritius Renewable Energy Agency (MARENA) and works on a number of projects on the thematic of Urban Regeneration and on strategies dwelling in the increasing role of technology in Culture and the Society. Zaheer is also a Honorary Fellow at the Live+Smart research lab at Deakin University, the African Representative of the International Society of Biourbanism (ISB), member of the Advisory Circle of the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA), and a member of a number of other international bodies. He is the author of over 95 peer reviewed publications and author of 7 books on the subject of Smart, Sustainable and Future Cities | ![]() |
Researcher of international renown, Carlos Moreno is Scientific director of the Chair “Entrepreneurship–Territory-Innovation:, IAE Paris-Sorbonne University(France). Carlos Moreno earned recognition as a scientist with an innovative mind, pioneer works and his unique approach on urban issues. He is also a scientific advisor of national and international figures of the highest level, including the Mayor of Paris Smart City special Envoy. He works at the heart of issues of international significance as a result of his research, bringing an innovative perspective on urban issues and offering solutions to the issues faced by the cities, metropolises and territories during the 21st century. Some of his concepts traveled the world: the Human Smart City, the 15mn City, the Territory of 30mn. Carlos Moreno received the Foresight Medal by the French Academy of Architecture (2019)and the Obel Award by the Henrik Frode Obel Foundation (2021). Author of “Urban life and proximity at the time of Covid-19 (July 2020), and author of “Droit de cite, de la ville-mondeàla ville du quart d’heure” (November 2020) | ![]() |