Leanne Zilka

Dr Leanne Zilka is a senior lecturer in RMIT's School of Architecture and Design and registered architect in Victoria with over 15 years experience in institutional, domestic and small public buildings. Her research spans the multi-disciplinary areas of fashion, textile design, aerospace engineering, material science, business and government research bodies to broaden the advances in material technologies to architectural problems.

Dr Leanne Zilka directs the RMIT Architecture, Fashion and Textiles Floppy Lab with Dr Jenny Underwood. Leannes industry connection and active practice is an extension of her research which focuses on cross pollinating architectural form making with techniques from fashion and textile design. This is done to create a closer relationships between design and construction where materials limitations are better able to conform to complex form through a fabrication approach that is developed in parallel with the design concept.

The practice based design research is based in the problems faced by the built environment including retrofitting of existing buildings that help cities achieve net zero, textile based structures that support plant life, light weight solutions to assist cities to shade their urban populations given the changing climate. 

Through her architecture practice ZILKA Studio and her research based in Floppy Lab, Leanne has collaborated with world leading architects from Australia, Spain, Thailand and Italy and is internationally renown for her exhibition work, public pavilions, installations and publications. She received a PhD from RMIT and a Master in Architecture from Harvard University. Her work has been displayed at the National Gallery of Victoria, toured Australian regional galleries, been published in textile and architecture journals and presented at conferences focused on fabrication.

Dr Leanne Zilka is a co leader of the Floppy Lab  - a collabotive research lab that sits across architecture, fashion and textile design. Situtated between Brunswick and City campuses in Melbourne, Australia. For more information contact leanne.zilka@rmit.edu.au