078I_Ammon Beyerle, participatory architect, urban design theorist, and teacher

Interview with Ammon Beyerle, architect, urban designer, and lecturer. We talk about their vision for the future of cities, participatory design, the 3 ecologies, affordability, and many more.  Ammon Beyerle is a practicing architect, urban designer, and academic with a speciality in participatory design. They recently completed a PhD in participation in architecture and urban design (2018); and have 18 years teaching experience across a broad range of design, theory and technical subjects at 4 universities in Melbourne, Australia. Ammon’s PhD was by creative works, including work from their architectural practice, and focussed on agonistic pluralism. This means rather than pursuing the rational ideology of consensus, embracing tensions, frictions and action in design processes. Prior to starting their own practice, Ammon worked in a structural engineering atelier in Paris on public projects across Europe, China and Africa; in international architectural practices in Japan and Melbourne; and then in community activism and sustainability in Melbourne. Ammon’s architectural practice here studio, has a base in both the City of Melbourne, and the regional city of Ballarat, Victoria. Over 12 years, here studio has led projects in community development, placemaking, and social enterprise, and embedded participatory design methods via running events, newsletters, art installations, startups and action research. For the past 6 years especially, here studio and Ammon have strived to prove that architecture can be accessible to everyone, making it their business to deliver more than 150 modest budget residential renovations, extensions and new homes across Victoria, Australia. You can find out more about Ammon through these links: Ammon Beyerle on LinkedIn; @ammonbeyerle as Ammon Beyerle on Twitter; here studio website; residential projects with here studio; Ammon Beyerle on the here studio website; Participation in Architecture: agonism in practice - Ammon Beyerle's PhD research on the here studio website Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, December 2009, which influenced Ammon a lot What wast the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on twitter @WTF4Cities! I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in. Music by Lesfm from Pixabay