Mimi Zeiger

Critic, editor, curator and instigator.

Across our diverse fields we are tackling the question of how to better engage the bottom-up-open-source-distributed-tactical-informal-crowd phenomena surrounding us, whether in the service sector, the city, or the networked community.

Our focus is better understanding the intersection of:

informal and formal,
atomised and conglomerate,
bottom-up and top-down,
distributed and hierarchical,
tactic and strategy,
community and government,
fluid and ordered,
open-source and secure,
crowd and enabler.

In this salon we’ll collectively explore and define this evolving domain from our differing perspectives.

We’ll hear from guest speakers from the US, Japan and locally from Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney including:

Mimi Zeiger, a Los Angeles-based journalist and critic. She covers art, architecture, urbanism and design for a number of publications including the New York Times, Domus, Dwell, and Architect, where she is a contributing editor. She’s lectured internationally on “The Interventionist Toolkit”, a series of articles on alternative urbanist practice she wrote for Places Journal. http://mimizeiger.com/ @loudpaper

Satoru Yamashiro, a Tokyo-Dalian-Shanghai based architect and community-led design activist. His work crosses large- and temporary-scale architecture, community participation, urban revitalization, installation art, research and education. For over twenty years he has been exploring the intersection of participatory urbanism and conventional development governance. Http://buildinglandscape.com/ http://cityswitch.jp/ @syamashiro0531

Timothy Horton, a nationally recognized thinker on design, innovation and city governance. As Australia’s first commissioner for integrated design, Tim continues to provide advice to government across design, planning and development in local, state and national policy, programs and projects. His interests include the intersection of design, innovation and governance and the role for the built environment. He owns a purple suit. @timhorton_

Roderick Simpson, has over thirty years experience in architecture, master planning and urban design. As director of the architectural and urban design practice Simpson+Wilson, he led the urban design and spatial planning of the sustainable Sydney 2030 strategy. He is associate professor, urban design, at the university of Sydney, a member of the Landcom project review panel, and a trustee of the historic houses trust. http://sw.net.au/

Marcus Westbury, a broadcaster, writer, media maker and festival director who has been responsible for some of australia’s more innovative, unconventional and successful cultural projects and events. In 2008 he founded Renew Newcastle with his own funds and energy, a low budget, not for profit, DIY urban renewal scheme that has brokered access to more than 30 empty buildings for creative enterprises, artists and cultural projects in his home town of Newcastle, NSW. http://www.marcuswestbury.net/ @unsungsongs

We will collaborate in facilitated working sessions to establish a multi-part framework that maps out the present challenges and the scope for action in our specific pockets of this evolving domain.

Each salon participant will also present their current context and questions.

Finally, together we will develop a twelve-part statement comprising short position papers drafted in the salon. Our aim is to build opportunities for sharing and to better coordinate energies when working across this question.

Complementing these ambitions we’ll be served some sensory specialties; thanks to our hosts we’ll purvey Golden Age treats and relive the past while envisioning the future.