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This event forms the first in SONA’s In Practice lecture series, delivered in collaboration with Architecture with Pride (AWP) and the UTS School of Architecture’s Solidarity public program. It will share experiences in queering practice in and adjacent to the profession of architecture and the built environment. Through perspectives of those in different stages on the spectrum of their careers, intersections of theory and build work will be presented as provocations for practice. The word ‘practice’ speaks to actions of an individual or collective that can be theoretical or physical, developing or established, learning or learnt. Much like practice, pride -or queerness, itself- exists within a spectrum – from public to private, personal to professional.
Speakers
Aoife Brazil (They/them)
Aoife is a student of architecture with a particular interest in architectural history and theory. They completed a Bachelor
of Architectural Design at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in 2024 and recently completed their Honours at the University of Sydney following a year-long, self-directed research project. Aoife has also worked as a casual academic at UTS, developing and delivering a history and theory module for the first-year interior architecture course. Outside of their architectural education, Aoife pursues an artistic practice, and their work has been published across a few local and student publications.
Ben Peake (He/him)
Ben Peake is a Principal at Carter Williamson Architects. In 2023, Ben was awarded the National Emerging Architect Prize for his outstanding contribution to architectural practice, education, design excellence, and community involvement. This is evidenced through his involvement as a founding member of Save Our Sirius, and Architecture with Pride. Ben is also a recipient of the 2019 Dulux Study Tour Prize, and the 2020 Adrian Ashton Prize for Architectural Culture and Literature. Significant recent Carter Williamson projects by Ben include the award-winning Woodcroft Neighbourhood Centre for Blacktown City Council, the seductive Concrete Blonde, and a sculptural waterfront home in Birchgrove in Sydney’s Inner West.
George Jamieson (They/them)
George Jamieson is a landscape designer and architectural graduate who has recently returned to UTS to teach across architecture and landscape. They have spent the last two years working in arid-appropriate landscape design and community projects at Rattlepod Landscapes in Mparntwe (Alice Springs) and across the Central Desert Region. Before heading north, they spent time in design education and practice, first in residential design at CHROFI, and later as a sessional architecture tutor at the University of Melbourne and Monash University. Their practice also occasionally extends across disciplines, ranging from speculative spatial collaborations with landscape researcher Faid Ahmad to set design for queer performance works.
Vesna Trobec
Vesna Trobec is an architect, artist, and educator whose practice spans teaching, collaborative design, and experimental making. She founded Studio Trobec to support these interdisciplinary processes and is a key academic in the growing architecture program at Western Sydney University.
Her work has been exhibited in Australia and internationally, and she has received numerous awards, including the World Community Architecture Award and the Byera Hadley Traveling Scholarship. Vesna co-won the AIDS Memorial in Darlinghurst public design competition and was a finalist for the Bondi Memorial to Victims and Survivors of Homophobic and Transphobic Violence from the 1970s and 1990s. Her design studios often explore marginal, forgotten, and subcultural spaces, reflecting her deep commitment to the overlooked and the in-between.
