National Conferences

Attendance is down this year for the Australian Institute of Architects national conference, Parallax.

Curated by Terroir, the conference positions itself as a location of debate and discourse. Using, keynote speaker and conference anchor Slavoj Žižek’s writings on parallax as a starting point, the conference will seek to actively draw out points of difference and abrasion and use these as the groundwork for an engaging discussion.

This angle is manifested as a series of interwoven discussions around a series of thematic beats; Young Guns, Politics, The Cosmopolitan amongst others. The idea being that looking at the practice of architecture through these filters and then debating these point furiously will be a more enriching experience than a series of slideshows of recent work. I can only speak of architecture conferences in this country, so maybe in other parts of the world things go down differently, but here they generally end up a series of slideshows of whomever’s latest projects. They show up, show some slides and leave. Toyo Ito’s talk recent talk in Sydney is a good example of this. The work produced by his office is astounding, however his presentation of it &#8212 a walk through of the latest five projects &#8212 left me with nothing that I had not already learnt through previsously published material.

And you, internet citizen are well aware that the days of attending expositions and conferences to see what the rest of the world is up to is over. Hell, Archdaily fulfills that need eight times a day.

“Facebook communities are just one example of the complex contextual weave within which the processes and material of architecture take place. An aspect of that taking place is the way in which architecture navigates between multiple and even parallax perspectives in forming a believable ‘tale’. It is the proposition of this conference that the architectural ‘tale’, is a fantasy that can enable our meaningful engagement with our challenging and changing contemporary condition. We have invited architects and thinkers to consider their own work in relation to this proposition.” Link.

The list of presenters reflects this focus on discourse with a heavier weighting given this time to academics, theorists and other firnge dwellers. Usually there is a token academic or two at these conferences, this year the thinkers are the focus. There is Aaron Betzky Slavoj Žižek, Geoff Manaugh, and locals Ingo Kumic, Pia Ednie-Brown.

This is a fairly radical departure from the list of speakers at 2008’s conference which showed what some might say was a very Sydney preference for the tectonic and the technical, a preference that was hammered into relief by the choice of Kenneth Frampton for the opening keynote. Personally, it was a conference that left me a little flat, the only exuberance coming from the emerging architect and student presentations.
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So. Even with this excellent lineup and the very real threat of some lively debate, attendance this year is down. The conference generally attracts about 1000 delegates from around the country and last year sold out with 1200 attending. But this year I am told, numbers are down and particularly with regards to our countrymen, the New South Welsh.

Obviously, the conference being in Melbourne impacts the number of NSW members willing to venture south, but then, the conference in 2007 attracted many more than this year.

Is the content of the conference keeping people away? Or is it the econopocalpyse?

I suspect it is a little of both, but am interested in hearing from the local readers on this one:

(I will confess a vested interest in this matter as I will be presenting a project of the office’s at the Parallaxed late night bar session. An opportunity that is awesome and terrifying in equal measure.)