Unveiling the future
[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 5, No. 3
8 June - 12 July 2009 ] By Melanie Ryan
Two innovative projects by a senior Professor at the University of Melbourne are helping to promote and develop environmentally-sustainable design in Victoria.
The Co-Director of the University’s Australian Centre for Science, Innovation and Society, Professor Chris Ryan, is co-ordinating several major ventures in his role as the Director of the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL). VEIL, a University of Melbourne project supported by the Victorian Government, identifies and promotes emerging technical and social innovations to create sustainable systems for the future. VEIL involves a partnership of four Victorian Universities: Melbourne, Monash, RMIT and Swinburne. As part of its aim to design a “new Melbourne for 2032”, Professor Ryan says VEIL stimulates research concepts for products, services and construction that will safeguard the security of environmental systems in Victoria.
Professor Ryan says the current work of VEIL is vitally important, as 2009 is a “critical year for action on climate change”. He believes a global focus on negotiating targets and international agreements will prompt the Victorian community to become increasingly concerned with defining appropriate responses to sustainability.
“Businesses and governments face the inescapable reality that climate change requires urgent action, that carbon emissions must be reduced rapidly and that building the low-carbon economy must start now,” urges Professor Ryan.
Incremental improvement in the existing economy will not be sufficient, because “a sustainable future depends on harnessing the spirit of creativity and innovation to realign our economy”. Professor Ryan says this process involves re-inventing systems of production, goods and services, re-envisaging cities and communities and redefining ideas of ‘the sustainable lifestyle’ and ‘prosperity’.
In a series of workshops and design research projects, Professor Ryan has worked with the staff of VEIL and seconded design academics from the four universities to model new sustainable systems on ‘zero-carbon thinking’, which he believes is critical for the visualisation of a sustainable Melbourne in the year 2032.
VEIL’s Melbourne Eco-City plan has created a framework for a new high-density residential community for an inner city site scheduled for development in 2014. This high profile and influential project, known as the Ecological Business District (the EBD), has been the focus of design work for almost 200 students across the VEIL universities. Students in design studios in Architecture, Landscape and Urban Design worked with four staff members from the Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning at University of Melbourne – Dr Sidh Sintusinga, Associate Professor Darko Radovic, Jillian Walliss and Ian Woodcock – to produce visionary urban proposals for the EBD. This work continues this year with a group of Masters students led by the Head of Landscape Architecture, Professor Catherin Bull.
According to Professor Ryan, educational investment in improving ecological design is crucial for the future of Victoria’s economy, and he hopes that such projects will aid the state’s ‘sustainability revolution’. “A sustainable future demands new knowledge and renewed creativity,” Professor Ryan says. “It depends ultimately on our ability to change direction, and we will be tested on that in the years to come. We have only decades to transform the ‘carbon’ basis of our economy; if ever we needed the spirit of entrepreneurial action, of creative destruction, it is now.”
Selected works from VEIL projects including the EBD will be shown in the foyer of the Sidney Myer Asia Centre for the University’s 2009 Festival of Ideas, highlighting their relevance to wider efforts to raise awareness of climate and cultural change. The exhibition is being curated by VEIL co-ordinator Dianne Moy and design research assistant Kate Archdeacon. The work of the VEIL project can be accessed on the website: www.ecoinnovationlab.com
Professor Ryan’s work at the University of Melbourne is linking the creative efforts of students and academics to the broader dialogue on sustainable innovation. Through his position as VEIL Director, Professor Ryan will oversee this year’s Alfred Deakin Eco-Innovation Lectures, which he says will showcase individuals and projects from around the world demonstrating innovative thinking in response to the challenge of climate change.
Instead of focusing on the negative aspects of change involved with a shifting climate, the Deakins 09 Lecture program addresses the positive nature of social and technological change, in terms of how it can add value to the social, economical, political, cultural and environmental conditions in Victoria. With events in Melbourne and regional Victoria, the Deakins 09 program will “reach new audiences, create new networks and international linkages and inspire action across all sectors of the community”, says Professor Ryan. The series of free public lectures running from July to December will advance conversations about the links between climate, innovation and the potential to build a low-carbon economy.
Long-term success at VEIL has enabled Professor Ryan to build on the bi-annual Alfred Deakin Lectures established in 2001, and create this new program introducing broad audiences to “opportunities for innovative action”, in what Professor Ryan says will be “thought-provoking, positive ideas and examples of achievement”. “The Deakins 09 lecture series will develop opportunities for the international recognition of research, experimentation and innovation in Victoria”, he notes.
Professor Ryan says climate change is forging a new global dialogue “unlike anything before it in human history”, and the transition to a sustainable economy represents an “unparalleled challenge to our systems of social and technical innovation”. His work at VEIL, along with the Deakins 09 series, will go some way to opening up new avenues for educational and political involvement in such a transition. Information on the Deakin Eco-Innovation Lectures can be found at:
www.climateandinnovation.com
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