Designing for Extremes

What can Antarctica, a living laboratory for extreme environments, teach us about the NOW?

As we face a future where extreme conditions are no longer distant, this conversation brings together deep Antarctic experience, sustainable design practice, and First Nations knowledge to ask: are we asking the right questions about how we respond to climate crisis, resource constraints, and systemic change facing Australia and the world?

Featuring Deb Adams, BKK Architects; Bradley Kerr (Quandamooka), Winsor Kerr; Jirra Lulla (Yorta Yorta | Wiradjuri), Kalinya; and Miranda Nieboer, UTAS; the panel will be chaired by Naomi Stead, RMIT University. 

This conversation will traverse many directions shaped by the panellists' lived experience and expertise, seeking ideas and insights into how we build resilience and future-proof our response to what lies ahead. For anyone curious about how we adapt, learn, and lead through change.

This public program is presented by RMIT University, in collaboration with BKK Architects, as part of the exhibition Creative Antarctica: Australian Artists and Writers in the Far South, across both RMIT Gallery and Design Hub Gallery.

Image: Philip Samartzis, 'Platcha Hut at the edge of the Antarctic Plateau', 2010. Image courtesy of the artist.

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Deb Adams is an architect, Senior Associate and Sustainability Lead at BKK Architects; in 2025 she was the Awards Chair for the AIA Vic Chapter Sustainability Award and is on the AIA’s Vic Chapter Sustainability Working Group. A passionate advocate for sustainability and building less to do more, she brings together two decades of learning from her time as architect in the UK and here in Australia. With experience in residential, education and cultural projects, she strives to create designs that positively impact their communities while creating lasting social and environmental benefits.

Bradley Kerr is Director of Winsor Kerr and a Quandamooka man working on Wurundjeri Country. An architect, Associate Lecturer at University of Sydney and Monash University, and Co-Chair of the Australian Institute of Architects' First Nations Advisory Committee, Bradley champions Country-centred design that prioritises community, cultural responsibility, and reciprocal relationships with Traditional Custodians.

His practice demonstrates how Indigenous knowledge systems and contemporary design can respond to complex environmental and social challenges. Recently recognised as the 2024 Victorian Emerging Architect Prize recipient and was on the curatorial team for the 2025 Architecture Venice Biennale - titled HOME. Bradley's work advocates for systemic change in how the built environment serves Country and First Nations Peoples.

Jirra Lulla is Director of Kalinya Studios, a Design + Strategy Consultancy weaving Indigenous knowledge into city shaping projects. Specialising in a nature-led approach to the revitalisation of urban precincts, Jirra works towards a future in which our cities are in healthy relationship with land, water and sky.

A Yorta Yorta and Wiradjuri woman with ties to Cummeragunja and the Narrandera Sandhills, river Country with trees so big, they hold memories of different times. Raised in the Koorie community, Jirra has travelled the world learning from communities who practise stewardship as an expression of joy. She holds a BA (Media & Communications), was arts leadership fellow at the National Gallery of Australia, innovation fellow at RMIT University.

Dr Miranda Nieboer is an architect, researcher, curator and creative practitioner whose work examines how humans inhabit extreme environments, with a particular focus on Antarctica. Her research sits at the intersection of spatial design, environmental humanities and climate science, exploring how people design, build and live in conditions shaped by environmental constraint, risk and rapid change. Rather than proposing universal solutions, her work considers what extreme environments reveal about adaptation, limits, care, and responsibility in the built environment. Her practice spans field-based research, exhibition development, and interdisciplinary collaboration with scientists, designers, and policy practitioners. She engages architects, landscape architects, and those working in governance with questions around design, infrastructure, and decision-making in contexts increasingly shaped by climate uncertainty.

Professor Naomi Stead is an architectural critic, researcher and academic leader, currently Associate Deputy Vice Chancellor Engagement in the College of Design and Social Context at RMIT. Previously the Head of Architecture at Monash University she has, throughout her academic career, been committed to research-based advocacy - particularly into gender equity and work-related wellbeing in creative workplaces. She has edited or co-edited six books, including the award-winning After the Australian Ugliness (NGV & Thames and Hudson, 2020) and been the recipient of three Australian Research Council grants. She is widely published as a critic and commentator in architecture and related fields – most recently as architecture critic for The Saturday Paper. In 2023 she was the state winner of the Bates Smart Award for Architecture in the Media and in 2024 was made an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects.

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Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.

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