Ian Weir

Ian Weir is a registered practicing architect specialising in designing for bushfire prone, biodiverse landscapes.

He is an expert advisor with the Bushfire Building Council of Australia and holds a full time ongoing appointment in the Landscape Architecture discipline at the Queensland University of Technology, where he teaches in the honours design studio, masters and PhD programs.

Ian’s building designs have been featured on special episodes of ABC Television’s ‘The New Inventors’ and SBS ‘Insight’. His most recent project (in collaboration with Kylie Feher Architect) - The 'Karri Fire House' - is a BAL-40 house designed for a professional fire fighter and his family in southern Western Australia.

In 2012 Ian was selected by the Australian Institute of Architects to represent innovative forms of practice at the Venice Architecture Biennale. This was in acknowledgment of Ian's unique multimodal method of practice which incorporates land surveying, art practice, industrial design and architecture.

Dr Weir has designed homes for, and advised survivors of, Victoria’s Black Saturday and contributed to the Royal Commission into that disaster. He continues to advocate for an holistic, integrated design approach to living sustainably in Bushfire Prone Areas.

His primary research focus is the development of cost affordable habitation for the high-to extreme bushfire risk sites with bushfire attack levels of BAL-40 and BAL-FZ (Flame Zone). The aim is to present a means of not only reconciling biodiversity conservation with bushfire safety – but also the reduction of costs through such strategies as the integration of energy efficiency and bushfire mitigation as unified building elements.

These concerns drive Dr Weir's leadership in design innovation in this fomrative research field.