Sustain/Create 2012 explores the notion that urban development has resulted in a loss of connection with the larger and more complex ecology that exists outside of a city and asks what is the role of ecology in a future urban context? Three specialist in design and sustainability will speak on how we might create and nurture the relationships to ecology within urban development. This will be followed with conversation.

Colin Meurk Xavier Meade Michael Trudgeon

Michael Trudgeon is the deputy director of the Victorian Eco Innovation Lab, Melbourne (http://www.ecoinnovationlab.com ) which seeks to identify and promote emerging technical, social and organisational innovations that could form part of future sustainable systems. He is also the Design Director and a co-founder of Crowd Productions, founded in 1983 as a trans-disciplinary design practice.

Colin Meurk works for Landcare Research, a government research institute specialising in sustainable use of terrestrial resources. He works in biogeography, ecological restoration and design, landscape dynamics, urban ecology and conservation biology, with a specialist area of terrestrial ecology and botany. Based in Christchurch he has a strong interest in its redevelopment.

Xavier Meade has worked as a designer, architect, photographer and graphic designer in New Zealand, London, Spain and Mexico (his homeland). He teaches EcoDesign and EcoAchitecture at Wintec. You can read his design manifesto at http://www.xaviermeade.net/sustainable-design-manifesto/

Sustain/Create co-presented by Product Design, School of Art + Design, AUT University as part of their research into sustainable design practise and ST PAUL St Gallery as part of its research strand Ethically, Socially, Politically, a series of interrogations into the complex interfaces between aesthetics, politics and ethics in the 21st century.

Image by Angelica Rojas Garcia.