Joseph Grima takes a step back, literally, to show us an image of the earth taken from the Apollo 17 space shuttle. This is the moment when we realise that we operate within a finite, closed ecosystem while coming to terms with the fact that our economies depend on exponential growth. Discussing the historical, entrenched views humans have towards the environment – notably dominated by our economic framework – Joseph unpacks the ways in which this world view was created, how it evolved, and why it is flawed. Finishing with a provocation, Joseph asks us to question whether environmental depletion is necessary and what other models are out there, calling for a ‘non-extractive architecture’ – design without depletion.

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The Living Cities Forum is an annual assembly exploring the role of design, planning and architecture in shaping our society.

In July 2022 it returned to Melbourne with an impressive array of international and local architecture and urban design leaders—featuring keynote addresses from globally renowned thinkers including Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Elder Dave Wandin, British architect and co-founder of Dark Matter Labs Indy Johar, Canadian landscape architect Jane Mah Hutton, British architect and educator Joseph Grima, Ghanaian educator and architectural scientist Mae-ling Lokko, Vietnamese architect Vo Trong Nghia, and Chinese architect Xu Tiantian.

For as long as humanity has traded, materials have flowed. The 2022 Living Cities Forum theme ‘Material Flows’ examined the global material flows that underwrite our growing built environments. Within the 2022 theme, Living Cities Forum delivered its fifth program of keynote lectures, with cross-disciplinary talks over the course of the day by globally renowned thinkers from around the world.

While there has been increased awareness into the impacts of our material use in recent times, our approach to building construction continues to reflect short-term commercial interests over long-term environmental sustainability. These short-term interests are most evident in the material flow of pollution.

Against this backdrop, the forum explored if the current global disruptions to material flows—as a result of the global pandemic, wars and other destabilising factors—might well be our chance to rethink the materials we have taken for granted. Can we seize this moment to accelerate our first steps towards a genuine circular economy? Can we support those who are decarbonising our supply chains, while also breathing new life into smaller footprint manufacturing? The forum was an opportunity to rethink logistics as ethics and to reframe scarcity as the catalyst for new abundance.

The Living Cities Forum is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and Development Victoria.

Living Cities Forum is the sister event to MPavilion, and is presented by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation.

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