If Memory Serves | Architecture Now

The 2026 ASAC, titled Weaving, will as soon as once more happen on Tāmaki Makaurau’s shores, and its organisation machinations are properly underway. Occasions so far have taken on a reflective theme, wanting backwards to look forwards, ka mua, ka muri.

On the Australian Institute of Architects convention in Could of this 12 months, Weaving co-director Oliver Brockie and Floor Issues (Nipaluna Hobart, ASAC 2024) co-director Alastair Scott teamed up with Liz Brogden (Senior Lecturer and Director of Instructing and Studying, UQ Faculty of Structure, Design and Planning) and Liam LeBlond (Nationwide SONA Vice-President for Advocacy) to current If Reminiscence Serves, a panel dialogue on the historical past of the ASAC, its mission to revisit how architectural schooling is approached, and its long-standing custom of forming connections and galvanizing riot.

Following on from this, the week earlier than final I used to be in attendance at If Reminiscence Serves No. 02, on the Ellen Melville Centre. Invited speaker Kerry Francis (gifted storyteller and lecturer at Unitec) supplied perception into his personal involvement within the 1971 Auckland-Warkworth Congress. It was the architectural eye-opener into how occasions have modified: Francis recalled the wanton abandon with which college students launched into unconsented development (and the ritually becoming nature of its fiery finish), the revolutionarily progressive optimism that underpinned the dialogue (which, I hope, shall be rekindled at Weaving) and the startling demographic homogeneity that outlined the architectural scholar physique of the time.

The discourse of the day was debated by visiting audio system like Sim van der Ryn and Serge Chermayeff (who, at 72 years of age, struggled in [at-the-time] rural, camp-like setting of the Warkworth Cement Works). Even Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown had been set to make an look, having to cancel final minute and as an alternative throw van der Ryn to the hordes striving to herald change. This Congress shaped the impetus for the “July Revolution:” a 1972 stop-work by the Auckland Faculty’s scholar physique in response to a syllabus marred by a “slim vary of topics” and “institutional assumptions about architectural apply that didn’t correspond with main adjustments going down in society and various modes of architectural apply.” Thus the elective course was born on the Auckland Faculty of Structure, notably David Mitchell’s Vernacular and Fashionable Structure and Mike Austin’s Polynesian Structure papers, each of which sit in outstanding positions of the native zeitgeist. ASAC just isn’t with out its place in our historical past!

The latter a part of If Reminiscence Serves No. 02 invited attendees (a mixture of structure college students, enthused mates and flatmates, and optimistic educators) to think about their very own Congresses. The catch? Groups had been assigned parts of ‘Kiwiana’ to include and a cloth round which to develop a central thematic apply. Generally, essentially the most ingenious thought or design is borne from constraint; on the very least, creating inside limitations shakes the cobwebs from the thoughts. This historicist night established Weaving’s bodily presence in Tāmaki Makaurau and its psychological presence within the minds of its future attendees, with the hope of wanting ahead in shaping the approaching Congress.

Weaving is about to happen in late 2026, and as that date nears, extra occasions are within the pipeline to make sure the programme is collaboratively designed and responds to college students’ intents and aspirations. Preserve an eye fixed out throughout socials for data surrounding the following iteration of If Reminiscence Serves and different Congress occasions. ASAC has traditionally been a non-profit enterprise, a ardour venture fuelled by volunteer hours and a benevolent self-discipline, and as such the organising committee are at all times open to gives of fiscal or bodily philanthropy. They are often reached at hiya@weaving.nz

The article’s author Sahil Tiku is a latest graduate of the Auckland Faculty, who attended Floor Issues in Nipaluna Hobart in 2024 with a collection of friends who now make up the organising committee for the 2026 Congress.