Alan Pert

Professor Alan Pert is the Director of the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne and an acclaimed architect.

As Director, his role is to shape a distinctive identity for the MSD and to inspire learning through interdisciplinary reflection, and its integration of research, teaching, and practice. He carries out practice-based research, analysing and forging propositions across writing, discourse, exhibitions, education and building. He has worked extensively as an architect, exhibition designer, and curator while concurrently holding a role as Professor of Architecture.

As an architect and academic, Pert believes 'today’s ‘designer’ must be nimble enough to move between the art and the science of building and among the social, cultural, political and economic fog that surrounds our disciplines.’ As academia shifts, its research agenda to focus on impact, and as practice considers new ways of working to cope with an ever changing world of construction, there are big opportunities to form partnerships beyond the reach of conventional architectural and urban design consultancies, which are distinctively placed to devise research-led solutions for unusual situations and special challenges.

He is internationally known for his creative practice research having received several awards for his built projects as principal of NORD, while in the UK. He was featured in the ‘Faces of British Architecture’ exhibition in 2012, which celebrated the UK’s leading experts, innovators and visionaries in architecture and engineering, responsible for many iconic buildings and landmark developments. In Australia, he is a principal of Parallel Practice, a design research Lab dedicated to the advancement of design innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and an intensive dialogue with construction practices.

Professor Pert is the Chair of both, The Hallmark Research Initiative for Affordable Housing and 'IBA Melbourne'. The International Building Exhibition (IBA) seeks to change the face of affordable housing across the State of Victoria and seeks to find answers to the most pressing issues facing modern Melbourne. IBA believes that a building exhibition is much more than a mere exhibition, rather an instrument of visionary urban development.

Since arriving in Australia in 2012, Pert has been awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project Grant in partnership with Lyons Architects, which has been investigating the direct effect of the environmental design of healthcare facilities on the wellbeing of patients and their families.

He has also researching the life and works of Ernest Fooks, while working on the restoration plans for a Fooks modernist heritage house.