Where do we find our leverage as individuals, as practices and organisations, as a profession?
How can we activate our professional circumstances, training and knowledge to extend architecture’s reach and amplify its impact?
How is architectural wit and intelligence, agility and diligence, cheekiness and humour, restraint and flamboyance, ethics and goodwill being used to maximise influence?
How do we sustain architectural cultures as we embrace new associations and roles?
The role of architects in contemporary society is shifting, bringing with it the potential for transformative influence. Practice modes and models are changing. New roles are emerging. Architects and the architecturally trained are identifying many ways to work and finding diverse levers to increase the impact and effectiveness of the discipline.
Leverage 2020 starts with three core observations:
- Our profession is both porous and fluid, it is well disposed to learn from and impact others.
- Our practitioners are nimble and agile, imaginative and inventive, well disposed to playing and breaking the rules towards greater advantage.
- Our knowledge is broad, with a healthy to-and-fro between research, practice and public engagement.
The conference brings together a broad range of speakers to share their insight and experience. Practitioners, researchers, advocates and those active in allied fields, all are using disciplinary knowledge and skills to create new possibilities.
Leverage presentations will focus on creative and critical work in a wide range of media — projects, policy, advocacy — and the contexts that enable it. Our speakers will reflect on the processes of identifying and activating potential in professional, cultural, institutional and contextual circumstances. What levers, large and small, did they use? What opportunities have they found? How might others put this knowledge to work in their own contexts?
