ArchiTalks invites the Parlour community to an upcoming online talk by SueAnne Ware – presented by Curtin architecture on 9 October.

SueAnne Ware is Professor and Head of School of Design and the Built Environment at Curtin University. She believes that landscape architects share a responsibility for exploring political, social and environmental agendas in public spaces.  

With over 25 years of experience in design research practice, SueAnne’s work explores themes including contesting the public realm, conflating intersectionality, provoking social engagement, and embracing radical hope. Her most recent work explores regimes of care and notions of feral; resulting in wild, unrestrained or uncultivated states as they pertain to contemporary and historic practices in ecology, landscape architecture, remediating toxic sites, and gardening (see Delprat Garden and Power Plants). 

Much of SueAnne’s design research explores physical catalysts for social and political change or, more simply, design activism. She aims to incite action by using counter-narratives to an unsustainable status quo. Her projects reflect her commitment to society’s marginalised communities and an exploration of issues such as drug addiction, ‘illegal’ refugee policies and domestic violence. She creates spaces that generate friction, where protests are permitted and possible, where attention is drawn to some of society’s most pervasive issues, and passers-by may discover insight into what she hopes is a more humanitarian and compassionate approach.  

SueAnne is a co- founder of out(fit), an all-female collective of design practitioners and student volunteers who work in marginalised and disadvantaged communities. Out(fit) provides design and build services for women’s domestic violence refuges, underfunded schools for students with special needs, and Indigenous community centres. 

Her design projects have won national and international awards. They include Delprat Garden, Humus (film), Power Plants, Germinate, Honeysuckle Placemaking, St Andrews Bushfire Memorial, The SIEV X memorial, the Road as Shrine, and the Anti-Memorial to Heroin Overdose Victims.    

When & where

9 October, 12pm AWST, 2pm AEST, 3pm AEDT

Online – join via the ArchiTalk website.