Professor Brendon McNiven leads the Melbourne School of Design (MSD), Architectural Engineering Masters Course. Mark Burry AO is the Founding Director for Swinburne University of Technology’s ‘Smart Cities Research Institute’. Roland Snooks is a Professor at RMIT University, and director of the architectural practice Studio Roland Snooks.
Professor Brendon McNiven leads the Melbourne School of Design (MSD), Architectural Engineering Masters Course. He has more than three decades of experience in the construction industry and recently joined University of Melbourne to pursue research in the field of architectural engineering.
His industry experience provides him with an in-depth working knowledge of how projects design & deliver. Much of his career was spent working for global design consultant Arup and has included lead roles on projects such as the Millennium Wheel (London), Marina Bay Sands and The Singapore Flyer (Singapore), and the Melbourne Star (Melbourne).
Specialist design skills include architectural buildings, lightweight structures, specialist & moving structures, tall building design, façades, heritage buildings, buildability, and digital design processes (BIM & similar).
Brendon is a chartered engineer, a fellow of Engineers Australia, and a member of the Institution of Structural Engineers in the UK.
Mark Burry AO is the Founding Director for Swinburne University of Technology’s ‘Smart Cities Research Institute’, an appointment he took up in May 2017. His role is to lead the development of a whole-of-university research approach to helping ensure that our future cities anticipate and meet the needs of all – engaged smart citizens for engaging smart cities.
Mark Burry is a practising architect who has published internationally on two main themes: putting theory into practice with regard to procuring ‘challenging’ architecture, and the life, work and theories of the architect Antoni Gaudí. He has been Senior Architect to the Sagrada Família Basilica Foundation since 1979, pioneering distant collaboration with his colleagues based on-site in Barcelona.
In 2001 Mark Burry founded the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) at RMIT University before establishing the Design Research Institute (DRI) in 2008. He held an ARC funded Federation Fellowship in ‘Complex Architecture and Convergent Design’ 2007-2012. He joined the University of Melbourne in 2014 as Professor of Urban Futures at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning where he helped develop the Faculty’s capacity to consolidate research in urban futures, drawing together and augmenting expertise in urban visualisation, urban analytics, and urban policy.
Roland Snooks is a Professor at RMIT University, and director of the architectural practice Studio Roland Snooks. Roland’s design research explores behavioural processes of formation that draw from the logic of swarm intelligence and multi-agent algorithms. Roland directs the RMIT Architecture | Tectonic Formation Lab that explores the architectural design implications of emerging technologies with a focus on computational design and additive manufacturing.
He has previously taught widely in the US, including at Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, SCI-Arc and the Pratt Institute. Roland received a PhD from RMIT University, focused on behavioral processes of formation that draw from the logic of swarm intelligence, and the operation of multi-agent algorithms. He holds a master in advanced architectural design from Columbia University where he studied on a Fulbright scholarship
Roland's work has been published widely including recent articles in: AD, Domus, L'Arca, World Architecture, and Urban Environment Design. His work has been exhibited internationally at venues in: London, New York, Paris, Melbourne, Moscow, Kiev, San Francisco, Shanghai and Beijing. Roland was nominated for the Chernikhov Prize in 2006 and 2010, and was the Australian Curator for the Beijing Architecture Biennale in 2008 and 2010. Studio Roland Snooks is currently working on projects in the US and Australia.