Strategic direction for School of Architecture
Jules Moloney is a fifth generation New Zealander who arrived at Victoria last year from the University of Melbourne. He was recently appointed as Professor and Head of the School of Architecture, building on the legacy of Professor Diane Brand who is now Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Design.
Professor Moloney and his colleagues have developed a new strategic vision for the School. The goals include establishing Victoria as one of the top three Australasian graduate school programmes in built environment disciplines, encouraging short turnaround, high impact and regionally focused research projects, and new initiatives to attract and excite undergraduate students.
He says design in the 21st century must be viewed at a range of scales and holistically, balancing performance against aesthetics.
"The Victoria University School of Architecture with its unique mix of disciplines—landscape, interiors, building science and architecture—has the knowledge base to address this challenge," he says.
Professor Moloney has a long-standing interest and expertise in how digital technologies impact on architectural design.
In the 1990s, while teaching architecture at the University of Auckland, he developed an innovative design research platform using technology from the video games sector and later extended the research by adapting new advances in mixed reality technology (which merges real and virtual 3D objects in real time).
He went on to work with HITLab NZ, a specialist in augmented reality, to produce software and hardware prototypes that integrate mixed reality into architectural design.
Kinetic (moving) building facades are another passion of Professor Moloney‘s and he used his PhD research in the area as the basis for a book Designing Kinetics for Architectural facades: State Change.He says digital technologies have transformed the way we conceive, evaluate and realise design.
"Just as importantly, embedded technology enables the realised design to be responsive, adjusting itself to the dynamics of weather and use."
Professor Moloney, who lives in Korokoro, gets plenty of inspiration for his digital technologies research at home—his partner, Helen, is completing a doctorate in the history of video games and their implications for exhibition and curation.