The News South Wales city of Newcastle will host the 2013 Australia and New Zealand Student Architecture Congress from 3 to 6 July 2013. The biennial student-led congress dates back to 1961; this year it’s is about the regeneration of urban space, and will focus on some major issues facing regional cities around the world today. Nexus 2013 will be an opportunity to think about our ideas of the “city” and the urban condition, and conceive of viable alternatives for what the “city” may become in the future.

Newcastle is Australia’s largest regional city and the best example of the worst of circumstances. Newcastle’s history – a story of riots, earthquake, floods and the shutting down of industry – has shaped a present-day city that is one of the best places to live in the country, yet which has an emptying CBD.

The congress has never before been held in Newcastle, so it’s a big deal for the three creative directors, who are past and present University of Newcastle architecture students. Rianda Barnes graduated from the Master of Architecture program in 2012, while Thomas Marshall and Joe Larkings are each in their final year of the same course. At the Flux congress in Adelaide in 2011, the three students won the competitive bid to host the 2013 Nexus congress. They’re taking it as an opportunity to showcase the city of Newcastle and use it as a live test case for the congress theme.

Australian and international speakers include recognized architects, broadcasters and writers. Univesity of Newcastle architecture professors Peter Stutchbury, Lindsay Clare and Kerry Clare, together with Melbourne-based architects Timothy Moore and Stuart Harrison, will moderate the Q & A sessions.

Special guest speakers include Hedwig Heinsman of DUS Architects (The Netherlands), Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu of Atelier d’architecture autogéréé (France) and Philippa Tumubweinee of Izuba in Africa Architects (South Africa). They join local speakers:

• Ian Athfield (Athfield Architects, NZ)
• Clare Cousins (Clare Cousins Architects, Vic – 2013 National Emerging Architect Prize recipient)
• Rory Hyde (Rory Hyde Projects, Vic)
• Richard Francis-Jones (fjmt, NSW)
• Ingrid Richards and Adrian Spence (Richards & Spence, Qld)
• Melonie Bayl-Smith (Bijl Architecture, NSW)
• Cassie Stronach (local graduate)
• Marcus Westbury (Renew Australia, founder of Renew Newcastle)

Both Renew Newcastle and Newcastle Now are participating in the congress. Renew Newcastle is a not-for-profit company founded by Marcus Westbury to help solve the problem of the city’s empty CBD by finding short- and medium-term uses for buildings that were vacant, abandoned or awaiting redevelopment. His urban renewal scheme has brokered access to more than thirty empty CBD buildings for creative enterprizes, artists and cultural projects.

Newcastle NOW is a group of property owners, businesses and inner-city Newcastle residents involved in CBD projects, with a focus on taking small areas – such as a laneway, series of shop-fronts, or a small public space – and improving the experience of these spaces. During Nexus 2013, the group will sponsor a placemaking design-and-build competition for students. Several sites will be chosen, each with its own brief. Students will respond with a design idea for improving the area, that they then have to build. By the final day of the congress, the winning projects will have been built and prizes awarded in the evening.

The three-day congress will bring together twenty-two schools from around Australia and New Zealand. It is an opportunity not only for architecture students, but anyone interested in engaging in the topic of urban renewal, to participate in talks, presentations and Q & A sessions on the subject. It takes eighteen months of energy and commitment to make the congress happen; bids for the 2015 congress will be invited during this year’s event.

Nexus program and registration.