LEAQ Pecha Kucha 26

Last month the LEA Qld Chapter held our annual-ish Pecha Kucha, with this year's theme being sustainability. It was really interesting how the different speakers all approached the concept of sustainability differently, from social sustainability, to cultural sustainability, to business and workplace sustainability. It was great to come together to consider all of the different sides of this important concept.

Our first speaker Dr Cathryn Chatburn shared the work ISQ is doing in creating more sustainable school sites, through long term master planning based on strategic vision. This important work, which has resulted in the Master planning Guide brings together the people, the program and the place of a school campus to make sure planning decisions are considered, appropriate and work for the school if now, and in to the future.

Next we had Emily Low, presenting a new tool for assessing and understanding the implications of development on nature - the Nature Design Guide. Working through a project flow of Context - Vision - Opportunity - Collaborate and Embed, this tool gives the natural world a voice in decision making and helps designers mitigate for negative impacts, while allowing for creativity and growth. It centres traditional First Nations’ People’s  knowledge and context of Country to understand place and the environment. There is a QR link to the tool in Emily's presentation if you want to check it out.

Following Emily was Dominika Richards, presenting to us just a day before being announced the AIA's Emerging Architect Prize winner, who spoke about the embedding of social and environmental sustainability into Diecke Richard's recent projects, including the Bob Marshman building. This project shows how effective environment design principles can be on a project, when they are designed in as the core values of a project, and all other decisions come from these values. I also enjoyed that the building is then utilised as a learning tool, with the environmental impact of decisions clear for users and visitors.  I was lucky enough to visit this last year, it's a beautifully designed building .

Brendan Hogan shared with us the basis of Interface's vision to have less impact on the physical world, through better practices and choices. A mission that underpins all of their decisions from culture to design to product. The environmental impact is not separated from any sector of the company but is interwoven at all steps. While we still live and work within environments that need product input, its is great to see companies acknowledging their part in typing to lessen the environmental burdens for future generations.

Melissa Badrak from Cooparoo Secondary College shared her school's journey with student and First Nations community input, to design some new external learning and gathering spaces throughout the school, in areas previously damaged by flooding. You could feel the pride the school has in these places and it was wonderful to see the school community coming together to design better. The symbolism behind their ideas and the embedding of stories into the school’s fabric was really beautiful, and its great to see the space now in high use throughout the year.

Fleur Johnston FCPHR GAICD from Peoplebench brought a really fascinating lens to the sustainability discussion, considering the sustainability of one of our greatest resources in learning environments - the workforce. Particularly noting the high demand for teachers within the next ten years due to population increase, coupled with systemic challenges around wage growth and community respect, Fleur really showed the impact a healthy and impactful school staff can have on the school culture. I liked that the recommendations came from a data driven lens, encouraging schools to use the information they have to build workplace strategy and leadership capability to sustain their school system.

Charmaine Keal shared the work she is doing at SPARQ-ED (Students Performing Advanced Research Queensland - Education ) in conjunction with the Translational Research Institute Australia. This is such a fantastic program, having school students undertake biomedical research in a working laboratory to further their understanding of scientific study, while working on real world problems. As a remote country student myself (long, long ago!) I especially liked that this program is available for remote students from across Queensland to get experience in a fitted out PC2 lab that they may not get to experience in their home towns.

Ben Vielle from M3 shared the work they are doing at Mt Alvernia College, embedding the Franciscan culture into the architecture, landscape and interior design to ensure a sustainable understanding of the school’s roots continues from one student cohort to the next.  There was so much clever and considered symbolism through the College that tied back to their roots and kept the connection between yesterday and today. Looking back even further, the interior design of the new building travels through the generations with each floor focused on a different theme from Cosmology, to Common ground, Landform and waterways, and Geology and Ecology.

Our final speaker Lauren Hull shared Balmoral State High School’s journey with intentional embedding of student voice into major - and minor - decision making through the school and allowing students to drive their learning experience at the school. With the students given the ability to advocate for themselves and their future at every space within the school, the students, teachers and wider community are more engaged and understanding as they co-design their learning environment together, ensuring a sustainable but flexible legacy for learning. .

Pecha Kucha is a difficult speaker style - I'm not sure I could do it! But all of our speakers embraced and ran with the concept so well and really distilled their concepts into these short and tricky presentations. Well done all and thanks so much for your contributions. To those who missed out, you can see the presenters presentations here.

Article and Photo by: Dani Martin, QLD Chapter