Dr. Fleur Watson
Details
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Department: School of AUD
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Campus: City Campus Australia
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fleur.watson@rmit.edu.au
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ORCID:
0000-0002-1498-9118
Open to
- Masters Research or PhD student supervision
About
Fleur Watson (PhD) is a curator, design researcher and founding director of curatorial practice Something Together. She is an Associate Professor (Interior Design) in School of Architecture & Urban Design at RMIT University and Chair of RMIT’s Practice Research Symposium Europe – a bi-annual gathering of PhD practice-led creative researchers and scholars.
Fleur's practice is focused on research, exhibitions and programs that ask questions of architecture and design’s role in the world today and its agency in responding to environmental and socio-political issues that shape contemporary life. issues that shape contemporary life. She is the author of The New Curator: Exhibiting Architecture & Design (Routledge, 2021) – an influential title republished in the Korean language by Anh publications in 2023. Fleur is also the series editor of Editions: Australian Architectural Monographs (Thames & Hudson, 2021–ongoing) and authored the most recent edition titled March Studio: Making Architecture, Material & Process – a publication awarded with the Bates Smart Award for Architecture in the Media (State Award) in 2025.
Fleur is a Board member for the not-for-profit organisation Open House Melbourne and was formerly OHM's Executive Director and Chief Curator from 2020-2022. From 2012–2020, Fleur was Curator and Industry Fellow at RMIT Design Hub Gallery where she co-directed an ambitious exhibition program centred on design experimentation, process and research.
Fleur has held senior curatorial roles in Australia and internationally including as founding executive curator for the Lyon Housemuseum Galleries (2018/2019); architecture curator for the National Gallery of Victoria’s Melbourne Now (2013/2014) and curator (architecture) for the European Capital of Culture (Maribor, Slovenia, 2012).
Fleur has curated design festival programs including Unlimited: Design for the Asia Pacific (2010) and State of Design Festival (2007–2009) and co-founded independent gallery Pin-up Project Space (2010–2014). She is also a former editor of Monument magazine (2001–2007).
Supervisor projects
- Collaborative Visions: Architecture as Expanded Practice
- 21 Nov 2025
- MORE-THAN-HUMAN COMPOSITIONS TRANSARCHITECTURES FOR MULTISPECIES COOPERATION WORLDS
- 1 Nov 2025
- CULTURAL PRODUCTION FOR IMAGINING FUTURES
- 22 May 2025
- Perceptions of Home: Domestic Interventions, Site-Specificity, Psycho-Geography, and Art
- 11 Jun 2024
- The Contingent, the Distributed, the Cumulative: Curatorial acts in the cracks of London’s public realm
- 14 Mar 2024
- A liquid architecture: Curating digital environments
- 21 Feb 2024
- Building Audiences
- 28 Sep 2023
- Productive Deviance: Adam Nathaniel Furman Practice & Theory
- 19 Jul 2023
- The Quiet Art of Tactical Curating: A Framework for Cultural Momentum in Architecture
- 15 Feb 2021
- Displaying Emergency: A Situated Curatorial/Spatial Architecture
- 6 Jun 2020
Teaching interests
Fleur's teaching practice and PhD supervision is focussed on expanded spatial and curatorial practices under the collective thematic of 'Curating the City'. The broad thematic brings together research, exhibitions and programs that ask questions of architecture and design’s role in the world today and its agency in responding to the environmental and socio-political issues that shape contemporary life.
Fleur is the Chair of the Practice Research Symposium in Europe (Barcelona) where she currrently supervises PhD candidates from across Europe, Australia and Asia. Additionally, Fleur leads a Industry-engaged Masters of Interior Design studios that are focussed on the agency of spatial and cultural production in addressing future of cities. In this context, students have the opportunity to work closely with industry partners such as Naomi Milgrom Foundation, Open House Melbourne and Melbourne Design Week (NGV).
An emerging area of focus in Fleur's research is exploring responsive practices of enhanced access and inclusion through creative practice research projects and exhibition making. The rapid expansion of virtual spatial and cultural ecounters through emerging digital technologies has generated expanded opportunities for enhanced access for audiences yet these new spatial and curatorial practices must also interrogate the design ethics, inclusivity, and impact of these nascent hybrid worlds.
Research interests
Curatorial Practice, Architecture, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, Spatial Practices, Creative Production, Cultural Production, Exhibition Making, Editorial, Publication, Critical Writing, Ecology, Planetary Systems, Design Innovation
