Faculty

  • Thea Brejzek is a Professor of Spatial Theory in the School of Architecture at the University of Technology Sydney. Her research engages with the construction of performative spaces in and across theatre, architecture, media, and exhibition. Thea Brejzek is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Bauhaus foundation Dessau and Co-Editor of Theatre & Performance Design. Recent Publications (co-authored with Lawrence Wallen) include:

    "Architecture, Model, Performance", In: On Models, e-flux architecture 2022; "Model & Fragment: On the Performance of Incomplete Architectures", In: Worldmodelling, Architectural Design 2021; The Model as Performance. Staging Space in Theatre and Architecture , Bloomsbury 2018.

  • Dr Lawrence Wallen is a Professor in the School of Architecture within the Interior program, at UTS.

    Previously - Professor at the Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland (2002 - 2012), Guest Artist at the Centre for Art and Media (ZKM) and Lecturer in the School of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury.

    Educated - as an artist (Universität für angewandte Kunst, Vienna) and architect and interior architect (RMIT, Melbourne)

    Writing

    Lawrence's research and writing (primarily a joint project with a long-standing collaborator Thea Brejzek) continue to explore the cosmopoetic (world-making) and epistemological (knowledge-creating) functions of the model in Art, Theatre and Architecture, its digital equivalence inside cross-platform manifestation of a dialogical model of interactivity and immersion and its application in terms of performative approaches to atmosphere.

    Emerging research is centred around the fragment as a microcosm of the whole made visible through their upcoming publication Theatre, Art and Architecture - on immaterial spaces and material fragments, London: Bloomsbury, that identifies and examines the production and reception aesthetics of (performative) architectural fragments/objects and argues their role in an ongoing critical spatial discourse within representation, art and architecture

    Practice

    Wallen's practice operates across a range of modes employing artistic strategies and performative readings, resulting in an extensive collection of Spaces, Books, Drawings, Performances and Architecture. Recent exhibitions and residencies in Vilnius, France, Cyprus, Amman, Cairo, and Italy operate in dialogue with and underpin his writing and artistic production. His recent work articulates the role of memory and the persistence of spatiotemporal elements of culturally significant sites, buildings, and landscapes, through a series of drawings. This continuing body of work contributes to a discourse that explores and documents the enduring qualities of specific places that resonate beyond their physical site axes.

  • Samantha Donnelly is a Lecturer in Interior Architecture at the University of Technology Sydney. She teaches in design and construction studios and leads gender focused drawing workshops. She is currently completing her PhD on trauma-informed design for refuge accommodation helping women and children leaving violence in New South Wales. She has produced two design guides, the Design Guide for refuge accommodation for women and children (2020) and the Design Guide for Older Women’s Housing (2022).

  • Dr Campbell Drake is an architect, researcher, and senior lecturer in the School of Architecture at the University of Technology Sydney. His research is focused on intercultural creative practice and participatory design strategies for sustainable development within regional contexts. Investigating socio-architectural relations and the capacity of urban infrastructure to provide benefits to the conditions and wellbeing of people, cultural practices and environments, his research explores the interaction and entanglements between urban infrastructure and social formation within remote and regional contexts. Recent publications include; Transformative or Tokenistic? Exploring the legitimacy of participatory design methods within an Indigenous context, M /C Journal (2021) and Curatorial Design at the Cultural Interface: Mapping Culpra Station, Curator Journal (2019).

  • Christina Deluchi is a lecturer and electives coordinator in the School of Architecture at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She is currently completing a PhD at the University of Melbourne. Her research examines the relationship between architecture, politics and images and explores how urban histories are informed by the dissemination of multi-media images. Christina has recently published a book chapter in The Routledge Handbook of Architecture, Urban Space and Politics, and in academic journals such as Interstices, idea journal and Interiority. She has also exhibited her work at the Chicago Biennial, the Taubman College of Architecture and UTS Gallery.

    Selected Bibliography:

    Deluchi, Christina. Ed. Nikolina Bobic and Farzaneh Haghighi. 2022. “The political construction of Medellín’s global image: Strategies of replacement, erasure and disconnection via urban and architectural interventions.” The Routledge Handbook of Architecture, Urban Space and Politics, Vol. I: Violence, Spectacle and Data, 395-413, London: Routledge.

    Deluchi, Christina. 2021. “As an Interior: Reimagining Gerhard Richter’s Altas.” idea journal, Issue 1: (Extra)Ordinary Interiors: Practicing Critical Reflection: 205-222. https://doi.org/10.37113/ij.v18i01.443

    Deluchi, Christina. 2020. “The Politics of Social Architecture in Medellín: A reading of the Parque Biblioteca España.” Interstices: Journal of Architecture and the Arts 20: 57–74. https://doi.org/10.24135/ijara.vi.647

  • Nevena is a lecturer in Interior Architecture at University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Her research practice is primarily concerned with performative and poetic capacities of space – and is inspired by the concepts of memory, personal and collective identity, and entwined relationships between people and space.

    In her doctoral research Nevena dealt with domestic spaces charged with mental experiences and destroyed homes as physical manifestations of interrupted identities. Situated within the field of spatial practice, her research was established on theoretical framing, historical contexts, field trips and a performative practical component.

    Nevena is a member of international scenography research groups, runs workshops at globally recognised events, and actively presents her research internationally through conferences, symposiums and publications. Nevena has previously worked across theatre, film, installation art, and pedagogy in Australia and Europe.

  • Leisa Tough is a part-time Lecturer of Interior Architecture at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and is a trained architect with 15 years of experience in architectural design, from large scale civic to residential projects & including work for award-winning leading local & international practices.

    Her research is multi-modal and focused on the role of care in design. Leisa is principal in an independent studio focused on small scale interventions into the existing built fabric while seeking solutions to the question of living well, within means, in the era of climate change. Her current research is focused on interior details which, as small units of negotiations in the work of making, repairing, and crafting - might reveal an eco-system of relations at play in the era of the Anthropocene.

  • Luke Tipene is an architecture academic at the University of Technology Sydney. His research is centred on the history, theory and practice of architectural drawing and questions how accuracy and uncertainty produce new knowledge in the field of architecture. He has published in leading architectural journals, including Space and Culture, The Journal of Architecture, Places Journal, idea Journal, Cubic Journal and in Distance Looks Back: Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand 36. He is the Executive Editor for idea Journal, for which he is the co-guest-editor of the 2021 and 2022 issues. He has peer reviewed for Fabrications and The Journal of Architecture.

    Select publications include:

    • Luke Tipene, ‘Censorship Through Explanation: The Corrective Agency of Visibility in Panoramic Perspective and the Panopticon Prison Plan’, Space and Culture, 25(3) (2022), 379-397. doi:10.1177/12063312221104192

    • Luke Tipene, ‘Conflicting Imaginaries: Lars Lerup’s Aesthetic Dissonance in the Plan Composition of his Suburban Bungalow’, in Activism at Home Architects Dwelling Between Politics, Aesthetics and Resistance, ed. by Janina Gosseye and Isabelle Doucet (Berlin: Jovis, 2021), pp. 105–117.

    • Luke Tipene, ‘Openings of Uncertainty: Critiques of Modernity in the Drawings of Lars Lerup and Gunnar Asplund’, The Journal of Architecture, 25(6) (2020), 759-786. doi:10.1080/13602365.2020.1806337

  • Michael is an architect and lecturer in the Architecture and Interior Architecture programs at the School of Architecture, UTS. He teaches across design studios and communication and construction subjects.

    In his professional work, Michael has worked on large-scale health, education, urban design projects, small-scale residential dwellings, and multi-dwelling residential developments. Currently, Michael is a freelance architect working on residential dwellings across Australia.

  • Monika Proepper is a practicing architect and a lecturer in Interior Architecture at UTS, where she teaches in Communication & Construction and Design studios. Over the past 8 years she has developed and delivered many construction and detailing electives in collaboration with industry clients.

    She has over 20 years of extensive work experience at all project levels through renowned companies in Germany, the UK and Australia focusing on high-end residential buildings, which she has managed from concept stage through to completion.

    Monika holds degrees in architecture and interior architecture received in the UK and in Germany and has been running her own practice in Sydney since 2019.