Our Team

 
 
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Paul Carter

The Creative Director of Material Thinking is Melbourne-based Paul Carter (D.Litt Melbourne 1997, MA Oxon 1975), an internationally renowned writer, artist, and cultural heritage specialist. The author of over 20 books, he has written extensively about white settler societies, their foundational myths and the ways these inform the places they create and the national narratives that hold them together.

Paul has extensive experience in working with communities to identify shared creative aspirations and in translating these into art works, programs and landscape designs. Material Thinking’s calling card, ‘the creative template’, translates community place aspirations into design propositions that express overarching senses of place, showing how these can shape sustaining invention. In the last few years he has been particularly proud to work with Nyungar representative bodies and individual Elders and artists.

Leading public art projects include ‘Relay’ (with Ruark Lewis), Sydney Olympics, Homebush Bay, 2000, ‘Nearamnew’, Federation Square, Melbourne, 2002, ‘Golden Grove’, University of Sydney, 2007-2009, ‘Alterations’, Harmony Square, Dandenong 2014, ‘Passenger’, Yagan Square, Perth, 2018, ‘Borders’, ‘Signatures’ and Unfolding Rose (with Artillion), Springvale Community Hub, 2020. Most of these have been delivered through Material Thinking and in collaboration with Edmund Carter.

Paul has strong international links. He has been the guest of the International Research Center (Interweaving Cultures in Performance), Free University, Berlin (1 year fellowship across, 2013-2017.), Moore Institute, University of Ireland, Galway (visiting fellowship, 2018), Istituto di Studi Avanzati, University of Bologna (visiting fellowship, 2019) and Bogliasco Foundation (pending visiting fellowship). In 2018-2019 he co-curated an exhibition (Poseidonia, water city, archaeology and climate change) at the National Archaeological Museum of Paestum.

Paul is a research professor at RMIT University, Melbourne in the School of Architecture and Urban Design where, in 2018, he received the RMIT Award for Research Impact – Design. He was the 2020 recipient of The Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal for Excellence in Literature, awarded by the Mildura Writers Festival.

Edmund Carter

Edmund Carter an architect and designer with an interest in interdisciplinary public art and urban design. Edmund practices privately as an architect and collaborates with a number of established and emerging creative practices.

Edmund has exhibited nationally and internationally including in Now and When, the Australian Pavilion for the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale and in Flood, the 2005 Rotterdam Architecture Biennale, and  has had work published in several Australian architectural magazines including Architecture Australia and Architectural Review. He was the recipient of the RAIA Graduate Prize in 2006 and in 2013 his collaborative work with MGS Architects on a social housing project in Altona was awarded the Best Overend Award for Residential Architecture (Multiple Housing) and the Frederick Romberg Award for Residential Architecture at the Australian Institute of Architects state and national awards respectively: a first for social housing in Australia.

Edmund’s experience includes a number of collaborations with well-known architects, artists and designers including recently in the procurement of a number of bespoke lift car interiors and the design of the NGV’s Melbourne Now “Design” exhibition with Simone LeAmon as Carter LeAmon. Edmund took up a brief residency in February at the NGV as part of the exhibition.

Edmund has led a number of design studios at RMIT, Melbourne and Monash Universities in their respective architectural programs and in 2012 co-convened an architectural workshop at Tokyo Institute of Technology.