ADAnow 2022

UNSW Open Day | Design Your Life: Work on What You Love with Bruce Mau

Bruce Mau, visionary Canadian designer, author and co-founder of Chicago-based holistic design collective Massive Change Network joins UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture for Open Day 2022.

Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centred design. Across forty years of design practice, he’s collaborated with global brands, academic institutions, leading cultural organisations, heads of state, renowned architects, and fellow optimists on a broad spectrum of projects. Bruce is in residence with UNSW for the month of September with his work and life partner, Bisi Williams, to launch Massive Action Sydney, their latest project, in collaboration with ADA’s Innovation Hub. 

Mau explored the MC24 principle ‘Work on what you love’ in an engaging keynote at UNSW’s Mathews Theatre A as part of UNSW Open Day on Saturday 3 September. 

Social Sciences Week

Now in its fifth year, Social Sciences Week is a series of events held across Australia during the second week of September. Offering insights into the impact of the social sciences on our lives, this initiative was established to introduce social sciences to the wider public and discuss social and political change and the potential such change promises for our daily lives. 

UNSW's School of Social Sciences is participating again this year, hosting a collection of online and hybrid events.

UNSW ADA is partnering with designers Bruce Mau and Aiyemobisi (Bisi) Williams and their Massive Change Network on a collaborative project titled Massive Action Sydney to translate their 24 Massive Change principles (MC24) into a toolkit for creating Massive Action.

In this presentation you will meet Bruce and Bisi as they introduce us to the Massive Change Network methodology for life-centered design. They will also discuss their vision for this exciting collaboration with the Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture – Massive Action Sydney.

UNSOMNIA: What comes next? | Humanities

The 21st century has been plagued with one crisis after another - how do we equip ourselves for what's around the corner?

To forge our path through this uncertainty, hear from five UNSW Sydney thinkers who are discovering the future of video gaming, the wild west of cryptocurrencies, the dark side of hybrid education and how we could use algorithms to build the cities of the future.

Harmful Thoughts

Michael Salter (UNSW), Matt Tyler, Emma A. Jane (UNSW) and Jayne Crossling will examine if more can be done to pre-emptively prevent child sexual abusers from ever offending.

!DOSOMETHING Exhibition Opening

Join us for the launch of !Do Something, a specially curated response to climate change from staff and students in the UNSW Arts, Design and Architecture (ADA) faculty. Opened by the ADA Dean Professor Claire Annesley, with special guests Bruce Mau and Aiyemobisi (Bisi) Williams from the Massive Change Network, this exhibition heralds a month of exciting conversations, actions and design experiments in support of Massive Action Sydney.

Climate Change is the dominant wicked problem of our time: there is no single solution; the boundaries are difficult to define; and it is influenced by complex, interdependent and rapidly changing factors.

In response to Bruce Mau’s MC24 Principle “New wicked problems demand new wicked teams” (24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in your life and work), The Wicked Collective for Climate Change and Sustainable Development was established in 2021 by five committed academics from the School of Art and Design. We believe that artists, designers, academics, and students need to work together across disciplinary boundaries to effectively respond to the wicked problems confronting us.

The Wicked Collective invited students and staff from the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture (ADA) to submit creative responses and interventions to the wicked problem of Climate Change. The selected works all relate to one or more of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and were created since the formation of ADA in 2020.

The Big Anxiety 

A festival of lived experiences, The Big Anxiety brings together creative thinkers to re-imagine mental health care for the 21^st century.

Judith Neilson UTZON Lecture: Alison Killing

The 2022 Judith Neilson UTZON lecture will be presented by Pulitzer Prize-winning British architect Alison Killing and will explore her investigation of Xinjiang’s network of detention camps.

Alison is a journalist and architect who uses maps, satellite imagery and architectural expertise to investigate urgent social issues. In 2021 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for a series of articles exposing the network of detention camps in Xinjiang, China.  In this lecture Alison will detail her forensic process and how her architectural training informed her approach to this remarkable project. 

This lecture is presented in association with the UNSW Institute for Global Development.

‘A MURRIALITY’ is the first survey of renowned Waanyi artist Gordon Hookey, charting three decades of practice where artmaking and activism fuse.

UNSW Languages Week 2022

Australians speak hundreds of languages, ranging from First Nations languages to the global languages that new migrant communities have brought with them. It is more important than ever for all of us to be open to the richness of this linguistic and cultural diversity. In UNSW Languages Week we celebrate and explore these languages and cultures.

Join us for our celebration of Dharawal language and dance. Visit our Open Classrooms to get a taste of our language teaching. See our interpreters at work as they help us to understand each other across language barriers. Learn to dance and share the food of diverse cultures. Practice Tai chi and calligraphy. Join us as we discuss the darker side of language-use in misinformation and fake news. Come and speak your language with us at UNSW Languages Week!

‘exploring giant molecules’ is the largest exhibition to date of Australian artist Sandra Selig, bringing together key examples of her interdisciplinary projects from the past two decades.  

Luminocity

The annual UNSW Built Environment undergraduate exhibition, Luminocity, is a showcase of student works from across the school.

Luminocity demonstrates the wide range of design and critical thinking skills on display within our school. These include hand-drawing, physical model-making, prototyping, data-rich 3D-modelling, coding, digital fabrication and immersive forms of mixed and virtual realities.

Many Luminocity projects respond to real-world challenges, with students exploring new possibilities in the design, delivery and production of the built environment.