Fabricate 2020 - Making resilient architecture

Swinburne’s Dean of Design, Professor Jane Burry is a co-chair of this year’s international Fabricate conference.

Fabricate 2020 is the fourth in the series of triennial international peer reviewed conferences established by renowned academic experts in research and innovation in advances in architectural design and fabrication as a forum to share emerging issues and ideas relating to technology and making.

The theme this year is “Making Resilient Architecture”, a significant focus that aligns with academic research and practice in response to accelerating climate change and the need for climate action.

Resilient architecture can mean many things, including the use of less material, reuse of materials, growing biological materials, using technology to streamline design and construction to reduce waste and wasted energy, building lighter and smarter, drawing on lessons from nature and integrating electronics to enhance building performance.

Fabricate 2020 was to be held at The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL)’s new Here East campus, but due to COVID-19 the event will now be held virtually.

Swinburne’s Professor Burry is the conference co-chair with Jenny Sabin (College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University) and Bob Sheil Fabricate co-founder (UCL).

Burry, Sabin and Sheil with Marilena Skavara, co-edited Fabricate: Making Resilient Architecture as a book to accompany the 2020 conference and enduring record. Over 250 submissions from 45 countries were presented for review and inclusion in the publication which can be downloaded from UCL Press along with the previous three Fabricate editions. There have been over 130,000 downloads of the four Fabricate books to date. 

Fabricate: Making Resilient Architecture is available for download free of charge.

“The COVID-19 crisis precipitated the postponement of the FABRICATE 2020 event scheduled for the beginning of April. It will now be held from in a highly novel online format, across 4 consecutive (part-time) days, following the sun around the world with an east and west session on each day as a combination of pre-recorded Webinars and live Q&A from 9-12 September,” says Professor Burry, Dean of Design at Swinburne.

“While it’s disappointing not to be able to bring this adventurous community of architectural makers together in physical space, the virtual format offers the opportunity to expand participation beyond the spatial limits of the conference venue. Just as in academic teaching learning and research, we are seeing extraordinary hands-on participation in global workshops, conferences and events this year. FABRICATE 2020 will be a highlight,” she says.

The four sessions on each of the four days explore the themes of:

• BIO MATERIALITY (keynote: Julia Barfield, Marks Barfield Architects with Kai Strehlke, Blumer Lehmann - UK/Germany)
• SYNTHESISING DESIGN AND PRODUCTION (keynote: Cristiano Ceccato, Zaha Hadid Architects)
• OPTIMISATION FOR A CHANGING WORLD (keynote: Philippe Block - ETH, Switzerland)
• POLEMICAL PERFORMATIVE PRACTICE (keynote: Meejin Yoon - Cornell University, USA).

Each session is chaired by a global expert in the domain, includes five short fabrication presentations by selected paper authors, and live Q&A.

For more information, visit the Fabricate website.