Practice Research Symposium

Thursday afternoon will be our last in person examination for June PRS Australia. School of Architecture and Urban Design candidate, Alan Ho Kyeong Kim will present his PhD practice-based research, ‘Fibrous Tectonics | Amalgamation’ in the Design Hub Gallery Project Room 1. Alan’s research examines how the integration of additive manufacturing (AM) and composite fabrication through Tailored Fibre Placement (TFP) can reframe the tectonic repertoire of architecture, enabling structural patternation of high resolution and tectonic intricacy. The core of the research is the development and resolution of TFP-laminated additive polymer (T-LAP), pursued through a cyclical design-through-making methodology. T-LAP integrates robotic Fused Granulate Fabrication (FGF) with TFP through vacuum-assisted wet lay-up (VWL) lamination, operating within a stay-in-place (SIP) formwork logic. The system was explored through a series of investigations across specimens, prototypes and architectural scale, with Ghost Tectonics as the primary large-scale demonstrator. Alan’s findings collectively establish fibrous composites as a unified tectonic system, simultaneously surface, structure and assembly medium, advancing both the disciplinary discourse around composite architecture and the practical fabrication repertoire available to architects working between computational design and physical making. We look forward to seeing you in the Design Hub Gallery for this in person examination. 🔗 Register to attend via the link in bio. Please note no entry will be permitted after commencement of this examination. Please aim to arrive at least 15 minutes prior to the scheduled start time. 🗓️ When: Thursday 4 June, 2 – 4pm 📍 Where: RMIT Design Hub Gallery, Project Room 1 This examination is supported by @rmitgalleries

Thursday brings us to the last day of examinations for this PRS Australia. Join us in the Design Hub Gallery Project Room 1 for School of Architecture and Urban Design candidate, Tiange Wu’s PhD examination. Tiange’s research, ‘Inhabiting In-Betweens: Designing with Nature-Based Solutions Through Interdisciplinary Practice in Lower Mekong Cities’, examines the role of landscape architecture in interdisciplinary design through the lens of Nature-based Solutions [NbS] with Bangkok's inner city as a testing ground. In Bangkok, water management sits within tension between the government's ambition to institutionalise NbS and culturally rooted, community-driven practices that resist top-down interventions. Oscillations between environment and culture, control and emergence, and strategic planning and placemaking amplify operational tensions across disciplinary narratives, design attitudes, and spatial arrangements. Drawing on her dual expertise in landscape architecture and environmental engineering, Tiange reimagines NbS as an operational common ground for interdisciplinary communication and cross-boundary interoperability. We look forward to you joining us for this in person examination at the Design Hub Gallery. 🔗 Register to attend via the link in bio. Please note no entry will be permitted after commencement of this examination. Please aim to arrive at least 15 minutes prior to the scheduled start time. 🗓️ When: Thursday 4 June, 9:30 – 11:30am 📍 Where: RMIT Design Hub Gallery, Project Room 1 This examination is supported by @rmitgalleries

Join us Wednesday afternoon for our final examination of the day, School of Architecture and Urban Design candidate, Liz Lambrou. Liz’s work, ‘Spaces in Transition: Mediating Light, Surface, and Movement through Time’ develops an approach for working with spatial conditions of transitional interior environments that are visually performative, surface-mediated, and temporal. The project work moves from observing incidental effects of light, movement, and environmental change to operationalising them through design investigation, readdressing visual representation techniques and methods of spatial production to actively capture, reconfigure, and translate these conditions over time. In her work, surfaces act as performative mediators, projection functions as a spatial and temporal process, and drawing is conceived as an embedded, procedural practice spanning physical and digital environments. Intermedial operations fold together drawing, modelling, projection, animation, sensing, and feedback that inform responsive spatial installations that adjust in real time via movement, light, and changes in viewer position. Please join us in the Design Hub gallery for this in person examination, we look forward to seeing you there! 🔗 Register to attend via the link in bio. Please note no entry will be permitted after commencement of this examination. Please aim to arrive at least 15 minutes prior to the scheduled start time. 🗓️ When: Wednesday 3 June, 2 - 4pm 📍 Where: RMIT Design Hub Gallery, Project Room 2 This examination is supported by @rmitgalleries

Wednesday morning, join us in the PhD examination of School of Architecture and Urban Design candidate, Angela Ferguson. Angela will be presenting her research, ‘Design at Work; Writing the Future,’ which looks at how writing establishes the spatial, strategic, and conceptual conditions through which an interior can emerge. Through the practice of writing, a project begins to take shape and materialise—often long before any drawings are produced, and sometimes before a formal design commission has been established. Angela’s project posits that writing is a method of designing: of enacting an environment, of enabling others to engage with the future interior, of contributing materially to the built form, and of sustaining a coherent conceptual thread across the life of a project. Writing also operates as design, allowing workplace interiors to be experienced as operational and cultural artefacts shaped by, and responsive to, broader organisational, social, and political contexts. We look forward to you joining us for this in person examination. 🔗 Register to attend via the link in bio. Please note no entry will be permitted after commencement of this examination. Please aim to arrive at least 15 minutes prior to the scheduled start time. 🗓️ When: Wednesday 3 June, 9:30 – 11:30am 📍 Where: RMIT Design Hub Gallery, Project Room 1 This examination is supported by @rmitgalleries

Join us Tuesday afternoon in the Design Hub’s Project Room 1 for the PhD examination of School of Fashion and Textiles candidate, Miriam Borcherdt. Miriam’s PhD research, ‘RE-kin-DLE: Circulating excess stock through remanufacturing as a scalable fashion design practice’ investigates the role of designers in implementing Circular Economy strategies in the fashion industry, focusing on remanufacturing as a replicable response to overproduction. Miriam's research investigates how the designer’s role shifts across the product, process and system levels of remanufacturing. This expanded role is described as a “re-designer”, focusing on processes that recirculate garments. The research outcomes reveal strategies and a framework that support this extended design practice and remanufacturing processes. We look forward to you joining us for this in person examination. 🔗 Register to attend via the link in bio. Please note no entry will be permitted after commencement of this examination. Please aim to arrive at least 15 minutes prior to the scheduled start time. 🗓️ When: Tuesday 2 June, 2 – 4pm 📍 Where: RMIT Design Hub Gallery, Project Room 1 This examination is supported by @rmitgalleries

Tuesday afternoon, join us for School of Design candidate Pranay Arun Kumar’s presentation, ‘MOVE – An Alternative Approach to Monitoring Physical Activity for Highly Sedentary Lifestyles’. Pranay’s research posits that while clinicians may encourage movement of all forms in their lifestyle prescriptions, systems of measuring and quantifying non-specific body movements have scarcely been used for monitoring free living physical activity (PA). If every move counts, how can we count every move? Pranay's PhD investigates the design, development and evaluation of a wearable device-based service system for monitoring PA in sedentary lifestyles. The system includes a novel measurement system for quantifying full body movement, a method of recording real-time ecological momentary assessments of the activities, and a system for clinically evaluating the data. Please join us in the Design Hub gallery for this in person examination, we look forward to seeing you there! 🔗 Register to attend via the link in bio. Please note no entry will be permitted after commencement of this examination. Please aim to arrive at least 15 minutes prior to the scheduled start time. 🗓️ When: Tuesday 2 June, 2 – 4pm 📍 Where: RMIT Design Hub Gallery, Project Room 2 This examination is supported by @rmitgalleries

Tuesday morning in the Design Hub Gallery’s Project Room 2, School of Design candidate Mengke Lian will be presenting her research, ‘Alternative Perception, Broadening Sensing: A Practice-Based Inquiry into Sensory Wearables as Out of Body Organs’. Mengke’s research relocates sensory-augmenting wearables from commercial solutionism to participatory, speculative practice, asking how people might 'enhance' their abilities or acquire new sensory organs. The research adopts a practice-based, autoethnographic approach in which making and reflection become sites of inquiry through prototyping, co-creation, and situated practice. Material experiments with dandelion seeds, sewn fabric structures, traditional weaving, coding for embodied interaction, and participatory workshop methods inform a series of sensory wearable prototypes and design experiments. These experiments are framed through Chinese traditions of bodily cultivation, including acupuncture theory, the I Ching, and Nüshu script, which offer alternative vocabularies for thinking about how sensing is registered, modulated, and attuned in context. Please join us for this in person examination, we look forward to hearing Mengke’s research. https://mengkelian.cargo.site/ @oookvkooo 🔗 Register to attend via the link in bio. Please note no entry will be permitted after commencement of this examination. Please aim to arrive at least 15 minutes prior to the scheduled start time. 🗓️ When: Tuesday 2 June, 9:30 – 11:30am 📍 Where: RMIT Design Hub Gallery, Project Room 2 This examination is supported by @rmitgalleries

Tuesday morning we’ll be diving into School of Architecture and Urban Design candidate Michael Chapman's PhD presentation, ‘The Fictional Architecture of Fictional Architects whose first name is Michael’. Michael’s thesis explores a conceptual architecture, executed through a practice of drawing and models, that engages specifically with allegory as a mode of enquiry, and is sited within a world of competing but aligned fictions. With an emphasis on architectural models, the research develops a renovation for a fictional architectural object, as well as a contextual world (and narrative) that the object sits within. In each case, the project carefully constructs an allegorical architectural system that is set against a working reality and uses the exhibition as a format through which this world can be glimpsed and reimagined. We look forward to seeing you in person in the Design Hub Gallery for Michael’s examination. 🔗 Register to attend via the link in bio. Please note no entry will be permitted after commencement of this examination. Please aim to arrive at least 15 minutes prior to the scheduled start time. 🗓️ When: Tuesday 2 June, 9:30 – 11:30am 📍 Where: RMIT Design Hub Gallery, Project Room 1 This examination is supported by @rmitgalleries

Monday afternoon we have our third examination of the day, School of Architecture and Urban Design’s Sarah Burrell. Sarah’s research, ‘Participatory Dialogues with Temporary Publics’ focuses specifically on modes of encounter and collective assembly generated through performance design practice in shared urban space. The research examines performance design as a spatial and relational practice that exceeds the formal boundaries of the performance event and the interiorised dynamics of theatrical production and reception. The research advances a performance design approach to participation in urban environments. The contribution lies in reappraising the role of audiences in critical spatial practices in the city in three ways. Please join us for Sarah’s in person examination in the Design Hub Gallery. 🔗 Register to attend via the link in bio. Please note no entry will be permitted after commencement of this examination. Please aim to arrive at least 15 minutes prior to the scheduled start time. 🗓️ When: Monday 1 June, 2 - 4pm 📍 Where: RMIT Design Hub Gallery, Project Room 1 This examination is supported by @rmitgalleries

Monday morning, we have School of Architecture and Urban Design Candidate, Sue Fenton presenting her research, ‘Palette-Practice: A Conceptual Colour & Material Framework for Composing Interiors’. Sue’s research examines colour and material as a mode of inquiry, articulated through what she defines as palette-practice: a method of composing interiors through the assembling, arranging, and refining of colour and material relationships. Through critical reflection on projects and design processes, the research traces a shift from a colour- and material-led approach toward a more deliberate and situated palette-practice. Within this framework, colour and material are understood as primary generative agents, operating through tactile engagement and in relation to site, narrative, and context. Please join us for this in person examination, we look forward to hearing Sue’s research. 🔗 Register to attend via the link in bio. Please note no entry will be permitted after commencement of this examination. Please aim to arrive at least 15 minutes prior to the scheduled start time. 🗓️ When: Monday 1 June, 9:30am – 11:30am 📍 Where: RMIT Design Hub Gallery, Project Room 2 This examination is supported by @rmitgalleries

PRS Australia is back and bigger than ever – join us for a record thirteen PhD examinations this 1-4 June in the Design Hub Gallery and online. 🎉 One of our first candidates to be examined this PRS is School of Media and Communication candidate, Sushi Das. Sushi will be presenting her project, ‘Meta and third-party fact-checking: An insider’s perspective on journalism’s fight against mis/disinformation in the face of censorship narratives’ Sushi’s research argues right-wing critics discredit fact-checkers’ integrity by sowing doubt about the credibility and motivations of their work, revealing a bigger ideological war over the authority to adjudicate mis/disinformation. Its global significance lies in explaining how fact-checking was delegitimised through censorship narratives. We look forward to hearing Sushi’s work in person at the Design Hub Gallery. 🔗 Register to attend via the link in bio. Please note no entry will be permitted after commencement of this examination. Please aim to arrive at least 15 minutes prior to the scheduled start time. 🗓️ When: Monday 1 June, 9:30am – 11:30am 📍 Where: RMIT Design Hub Gallery, Project Room 1 This examination is supported by @rmitgalleries

Thank you to Maria Giramé, Pau Bajet and the curatorial team for the World Congress of Architects, Mariona Benedito, Tomeu Ramis, Pau Sarquella and Carmen Torres for sharing your time and insights with us as part of our in-studio series at Bajet Giramé for PRS Europe April 2026. It was so wonderful to see Bajet Giramé up close and personal. For those in Barcelona, there are still Advance tickets available for the World Congress of Architects - June 29 to July 1. The World Congress is one of the largest global gatherings dedicated to architecture. Over three days, more than 10,000 participants and 250 speakers from around the world will come together across eight stages, with over 100 sessions, a 4,000-square-metre central exhibition and seventy architectural itineraries unfolding across the region. Find the link for tickets in our bio 🔗