Headlining the speaker list at the Te Aro campus of Victoria University is Danish landscape architect Jeppe Andersen  who will talk on Thursday about recent work such as his collaboration in the transformation of Sydney’s highest profile waterfront project, Barangaroo at East Darling Harbour. 

Wednesday’s public lecture will be delivered by Australian architect Michael Lavery of m3architecture, and digital spatial designer Antony Pelosi will present examples of projects by Massey University students at Te Aro tonight. 

Crit Week follows hot on the heels of a major review event for the School’s Masters Design Research programme held on 10-11 October. As well as drawing together 16 visiting scholars from eight tertiary education institutions in New Zealand and Australia, the October review also provided a platform for guests Debbie Ryan and Tom Daniell.

Ryan of architectural practice McBride Charles Ryan (MCR) joined University of Melbourne senior research fellow Justine Clark in a public lecture on the topic of diverse practice. As well as being Head of Architecture at the University of St Joseph in Macau, Daniell is an Adjunct Professor at Victoria University. He gave public lectures on the urban mosaic that is Macau and the prominent influence of women in Japanese architecture. 

To cap off this generative hive of activity the head of the VUW School of Architecture, Professor Jules Moloney, was on centre stage at the university last week for the occasion of the long-observed tradition known as the inaugural Professorial Lecture. 

An expert in interdisciplinary parametric design and kinetics for architectural facades, his lecture highlighted the  temporal dimensions of architecture. 

Mindful of Len Lye’s pursuit of kinetics in art, he is a firm believer that responsive architecture for the 21st century coupled with new technologies and materials present an opportunity to design subtle plays of motion and light – what he terms state change – that mediate the environment and interiors of our built environment congruous with an ability to “delight the senses and enliven our public spaces”. 

Having started out with CAD he has been gratified to see the significance of implementing digital technologies and software for architecture increasingly recognised and realised since the turn of the century, citing examples like the Wind Veil (Ned Kahn Studios) and Kiefer Technic Showroom (Ernst Giselbrecht + Partner). He also sees a timely fulfilment coming to pass of the ideas of pioneers in the geometry of thinking like Buckminster Fuller.  

During his inaugural lecture Moloney showed slides of his own number 8 wire inventiveness over the years in the pursuit of replicating emerging technologies when faced with virtually no budget for equipment – to the extent that some of his humble yet functional prototypes employed exercycles and baby strollers. 

Moloney’s career path hasn’t necessarily been conventional. He postponed serious studies in his 20s to play bass guitar in Electrobeat and then the enduring band Penknife Glides which emerged after the punk movement in New Zealand began to fragment, and then relocated to London. 

A graduate of the University of Auckland, Moloney credits his time working in the offices of Koetter, Kim and Associates in London for encouraging a deep appreciation of the respective strengths of manual processes and the power of computers towards “trying every last idea”. 

Equally he credits contemporary Mark Burry, a lead architect on the Sagrada Familia, for smoothing the trajectory of his academic career by inviting Moloney to RMIT to be a Visiting Research Fellow. 

It’s a career that has helpfully seen Moloney forge and retain strong links between architectural institutions in Melbourne and institutions here – both with the ‘laboratory’ mode of research of RMIT and with Unimelb where he was a Senior Lecturer for five years before arriving at Victoria University.  

Having taken the helm as Head of the VUW School of Architecture in January 2012 it’s clear that Moloney is making the most of the Australia-New Zealand nexus, at the same time as determining competitive advantages for the School and its students and fostering a culture to better reflect those advantages. 

Part of what he is setting out to “bed down” at the School is the sense that its activities are regionally centred and that it becomes known for its Masters level design research focus in which 5th year students pursue their theses through iterative design methods. 

The review in October gave Moloney confidence, from his trans-Tasman academic peers in particular, that the School’s programme is “walking the walk”. 

Along with the director of postgraduate programmes, Simon Twose, Moloney is committed to the view that this group of students effectively form a large research engine with almost 100-person years of design work that can be directed in useful and interesting ways. 

The School’s ability to “generate 100 years of research every year” is becoming a mantra, or as Moloney might say about his devotion to parametrics and kinetics a real game-changer that just needs to be more thoroughly communicated outside of the university. 

Design projects being featured during the 2013 Crit Week that are demonstrative of this strong commitment to the Wellington region include designs to breathe new architectural life into the understated urban hub of Newtown, revisiting the potential within a seismically strengthened and renewed future for the popular Cuba Street precinct, and a landscape architecture focus on “restructuring the public life of the Hutt River”. 

The thrust of the 2013 Crit Week’s distillation of current directions is being convened by course coordinators in Architecture (Martin Hanley, Daniele Abreu e Lima, Andrew Charleson, Mark Southcombe, Kerstin Thompson), Landscape Architecture (Penny Allan, Martin Bryant, Peter Conolly) and Interior Architecture (Philippe Campays, Daniel Brown). 

A special acknowledgement has been made of the support of guest critics from the profession, industry, local councils, community organisations and academia. This year those critics include Ray Atkins, Sam Curtis, Geoff Fletcher, Anna Kemble Welch, Paul Kerr-Hislop, John Mills, Mona Quinn, James Suter, Kate Walker, Chris Winwood, Clive Anstey, Diane Menzies, Mike Oates, Sherilyn Hinton, Beth Cameron, Bill Cardon-Horton, John Daish, Alex Davies, Antony Hembrow, Adam Flowers, Guy Marriage, Fabricio Chicca, Ralf Kessel, Alice Harland, Karn Henning Hansen, Shenuka De Silva, Philippa Christie, Victoria Willocks, Rong Qian, Paki Maaka, representatives from Isthmus and Boffa Miskell, and special guests Michael Lavery and Jeppe Andersen. 

The week culminates in an end of year party on Thursday followed by an interior architecture installation by second year students on Friday.