ANDREW MAHER

Research Fellow

Project Involvement

    Sagrada Familia
    Paramorph II
    Digital Mockups
    Decoi Folly
    Jersey Waterfront Bridge Competition
    Shoal Fly By
    Craters of the Moon
    Parametric Bridge
    Australian War Memorial
    Embedded Research within Architectural Practice
    Space Division
    Re-Engineering Pre-Major
    LiminaL
    LongSpan & HighRise

News for 2008

After six years at SIAL (from the lab's beginning) I am joining Arup in March 2008.

While at SIAL I looked after practice-based research. This involved consultancy, industry outreach and work undertaken with the Embedded Research within Architectural Practice grant on which I was the Research Associate. I also ran research-based courses such as Pre-major project and Design studios.

My research interests included the Metrics of Change, understanding technology transfer in architectural practice including the social and cultural barriers to adoption. On this research I worked with Dr. Anitra Nelson and Inger Mewburn. Inger and I concentrated on understanding how new knowledge is created and then ‘flows’ within an organisation. Other research interests included data capture and hybrid measurement techniques, representation and difficult forms. I was also a member of the Innovative Structures Group

I worked at SIAL applying parametric design to architecture. This was under an Australian Research Council (SPIRT) grant awarded to Professor Mark Burry entitled New onto Old : 3D flexible computer modelling to aid heritage building restoration, recycling and extension at the Sagrada Família church in Barcelona.

Prior to joining the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory at RMIT, I worked with Lab Architecture Studio on the Federation Square project in Melbourne. Images of Federation Square by cbdphoto.com and during construction from The Age newspaper. The ABC in Australia has recently produced a documentary on the making of Federation Square.

I was invited to present work at the at the Beijing Biennial 2006 (Emerging Talent, Emerging Technologies).

Research Design Studios:

A collaborative cross disciplinary seminar, LongSpan and HighRise was completed between Architectural and Engineering students focusing on conceptual approaches to structural design.

>> LiminaL - a Lower Pool Studio
>> Re-Engineering a Pre-major Project Studio
>> Digital Mockups an Upper Pool Studio
>> Craters of the Moon an Upper Pool Studio
>> Project McKellar, a mobius strip I helped decipher for students at Deakin University.

Student prizes:

>> 2006 Biennale Prize Steven Swain for Re-Engineering
>> 2006 Premier's Design Award Steven Swain for Re-Engineering
>> 2005 International Union of Architects Student Prize Barnaby Bennett and Tom Gooch for Craters of the Moon

Current School Committees:

>> Member of the Facilities committee in 2007. Member of the School Executive Management committee in 2005 & 6

Publications & Presentations:

Maher, A & Mewburn, I (2007) An economy of knowledge: research, architectural practice and knowledge (in) translation, paper presented to the third international Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference, October 3-6, 2007 in Keystone, Colorado

Maher, A & Burry, J 2006, The Re-Engineering Project: Developing Pedagogical Frameworks for Early Stage Collaborative Design between Engineers and Architects, paper presented to Synthetic Landscapes [Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture], Louisville, Kentucky.

Nelson, A., Maher, A., Burry M. (2006) The 'Discipline' in Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Research Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, vol 1, pp. 147-154

Maher, A., Nelson, A., Burry M. (2006) Embedding Research within the Context of Architectural Practice Working Papers in Art and Design, vol 4

Maher, A (2006), The Parametric Bridge, in A Chaszar (ed.), Blurring the Lines: Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing in Contemporary Architecture, Wiley, pp. 76-81.

Maher, Andrew and Burry, Mark (2003) The Parametric Bridge: Connecting Digital Design Techniques in Architecture And Engineering, Connecting >> Crossroads of Digital Discourse [Proceedings of the 2003 Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design In Architecture / ISBN 1-880250-12-8] Indianapolis (Indiana) 24-27 October 2003, pp. 39-47

Burry, J., Maher, A., Burry, M. and Taylor, M. (2003) Educational experiments in design project sublimation, Design and Research: Project Based Research in Architecture [The second International Conference of the Association of Architecture Schools of Australasia] 28-30 September 2003

Maher, A., Woods, P. and Burry, M. (2003) Building Blobs: Embedding Research in Practice, Digital Design [21th eCAADe Conference Proceedings / ISBN 0-9541183-1-6] Graz (Austria) 17-20 September 2003, pp. 333-336

Maher, A.M, Mclachlan, N. and Burry, M.C. (2002) Design Models for Cross Disciplinary Communication, Architectural Education: from Pedagogy to Andragogy [36th ANZAScA Conference Proceedings / ISBN 0-95811925-0-2] Geelong (Australia) 1-4 November 2002, pp. 297-304

Maher, A.M. and Burry, M.C. (2002) Hybridized Measurement: Interpreting historical images of Sagrada Família Church in Barcelona using CAD-based digital photogrammetry, Connecting the Real and the Virtual - design e-ducation [20th eCAADe Conference Proceedings / ISBN 0-9541183-0-8] Warsaw (Poland) 18-20 September 2002, pp. 448-455

M.C. Burry, J.R. Burry, G.M. Dunlop, A. Maher & S. Anson (2001) Simple Computer Programming to Enhance Spatial Cognition in Architecture & Design Presented at SIRC 2001 - The 13th Annual Colloquium of the Spatial Information Research Centre; University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
December 2nd-5th 2001
Published in the conference proceedings

M.C. Burry, J.R. Burry, G.M. Dunlop & A. Maher (2001) Drawing Together Euclidean and Topological Threads Presented at SIRC 2001 - The 13th Annual Colloquium of the Spatial Information Research Centre; University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, December 2nd-5th 2001
Published in the conference proceedings

Dunlop G.M., Burry M.C., Burry J., & Maher A.M. (2001) Paramorphs: An Alternative Generative System Presented at Second Iteration: Emergence - Second International Conference on Generative Systems in the Electronic Arts, CEMA - Centre for Electronic Media Art, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, December 5th-7th 2001
Published in the conference proceedings

Burry J., Burry M.C, Dunlop G.M., & Maher A.M. (2001)Sagrada Família Rosassa: Global Computer-Aided Dialogue between Designer and Craftsperson (Overcoming Differences in Age, Time and Distance) ACADIA 2001: Reinventing the Discourse Buffalo, New York. (State University of New York at Buffalo) October 11-14, 2001

Goulthorpe, M., Evangelisti, G., Giroud, G., Robbins, F., Deschaux, F., Burry, M., Dunlop, G., More, G. and Maher, A. (2000) Paramorph: a gateway to the South Bank, London, DOMUS, Vol 822, pp. 20-26, Editoriale Domus Spa, Italy AA

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