Committee Members

PHILIP FOLLENT – CITY ARCHITECT – CONFERENCE CO CHAIR

Philip Follent was the youngest person to be elevated to the position of Fellow of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects.  He has had 27 years of architectural practice with 21 of those years in his own practice and winning 21 architectural awards. 

He became City Architect of the Gold Coast in 2003, is currently adjunct professor at Queensland University of Technology and was voted lecturer of the year across all university campuses in 1996. 

He has history of environmental activism being president of a local environmental group for 6 years as well as one of the founding members of the Gold Coast and Hinterland Environment Council.

His leadership of the Office of City Architect & Heritage has assisted the Gold Coast City Council to receive the Royal Australian Institute of Architects President’s award for the demonstrated and ongoing commitment shown by the city towards the advocacy for higher standards of architecture and urban design.

GORDON HOLDEN PhD, MA(Urb Des), Dip Arch, FRAIA, FNZIA


Professor Gordon Holden is an architectural and urban design educator and is currently the Head of the School of Architecture at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand where he is also Deputy Dean and Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor of the Faculty of Architecture and Design. He has contributed to and has lead architectural education nationally and internationally over a period of thirty five years, including twenty five years at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia the final eight years as Head of the School of Architecture, Interior and Industrial Design. He established Queensland’s first degree programme in interior design and Australia's first programme in urban design (Masters at QUT). His research expertise is in urban design theory methods and practice as well as in architectural education.

He served on the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, National Education Committee for six years, three as chair. He chaired RAIA (Qld Chapter) committees for twelve years and was a Chapter Councillor for ten years and Vice President for two years. He was chair of the Heads of Australasian Schools of Architecture for two years.

Gordon has directly assisted the advancement of architectural education in Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, through teaching, research and external examination of programmes. He has chaired eleven and has been a member of a further nine program accreditation reviews since 1984 across six countries. In 1987/88 he chaired the preparation of the joint RAIA - Registration Boards, Education Policy and Procedures for recognition of courses. He was the Oceania representative to the 'Commonwealth Association of Architects' from 1987 to 1991, chair of Education from 1997 to 2000 and is currently Senior Vice President.

Gordon has supervised five doctoral students and mentored a further six. He has also supervised six Masters students. He has examined five PhD theses, he has participated in oral examination of ten PhD’s and he has examined six Masters theses.

Juris Greste OAM

Juris is an urban designer with an architectural background and over 50 years of professional experience.

Having served as the design director of his Sydney architectural practice for many years, he has also been the Company Architect of a large project management and development firm Fletchers Australia.

 After nearly 20 years as a practitioner, Juris moved to education. He has taught design and a range of other subjects in the architecture department of the Queensland University of Technology as a full time academic member of staff for over 10 years. He has a Master of Arts degree in Urban Design (with Distinction) from the Joint Centre for Urban Design, Oxford Brookes University - a leading institution in urban development, knowledge and research.  Juris has continued to teach urban design (part time) to Master’s students as well as to undergraduate planning and architecture students.

Juris has extensive knowledge and experience in urban design and development both as an employed senior urban designer and as a consultant.  After leaving the QUT he has worked with some of Queensland's largest architectural firms designing a range of large local and international projects.

As a consultant he was one of an international group of specialists advising on the future urban development of Riga, (population 900,000), the capital of the Republic of Latvia. Juris has presented papers at conferences, regularly contributed to a range of publications and now also edits the Australia Institute of Urban Studies Queensland Division's newsletter Urban Briefs.

He has been a member of AIUS for twelve years and secretary since 1997. Juris has also been the secretary of the Urban Design Alliance of Queensland - a multi-disciplinary association of built environment professional groups - since its inception in early 2000 and is a Queensland recipient ‘2004 Year of the Built Environment’ exemplar award.

Caroline Stalker
Director, Architectus

Caroline is an architect/urban designer with over eighteen years experience leading and participating in major urban design projects throughout Queensland and in the UK, working at both strategic and detailed design levels. Her project work has encompassed a range of scales, from large centres design, to regional centres revitalisation, school master-planning, design guidelines, greenfields masterplanning as well as individual public spaces, medium density housing and public buildings. Current projects include the reworking of Hastings St, Noosa, King George Square in Brisbane (with Urbis JHD) , masterplanning Southport Broadwater Parklands, and design proposals for Transit-Oriented Development for Subtropical Climates.

Caroline has a particular commitment to delivering outstanding design quality and specialist skills in working across disciplines to achieve integrated urban design outcomes. Her work has won both Planning Institute of Australia and Royal Institute of Architects awards.

Caroline is recent past president of the Urban Design Alliance of Queensland, was chair of the 2005 Gold Coast Urban Design awards jury, and sits on Brisbane’s Lord Mayor’s Advisory Panel on Creative Cities.

Peter Sugg

Peter is Managing Director of AST Management Pty Ltd.  His company has been designing and managing National and International Conferences for twenty years.  An accredited member of the Meeting Industry of Australia and joint Managing Director of the Australian Conference and Events Bureau, Peter has been directly involved with RAPI and PIA Conferences since 2001.

He serves on Association and Institute Boards.