Professor Alan Pert

Alan Pert is Interim Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne and a Professor of Architecture. He leads one of the world’s leading comprehensive built environment faculties, bringing together architecture, landscape architecture, planning, urban design, property, construction, heritage, and spatial systems to address the major environmental, housing, technological, and cultural challenges shaping contemporary cities and regions.

Under his leadership, the Faculty continues to strengthen its position as both a globally connected design school and a major centre for interdisciplinary research, industry engagement, and public discourse. His leadership approach emphasises collaboration across disciplines, critical and speculative design thinking, and the role of universities in shaping more sustainable, equitable, healthy, and culturally informed futures.

Prior to his appointment as Interim Dean, Alan served as Deputy Dean and previously as Director of the Melbourne School of Design (2012–2021), where he led a significant period of growth, curriculum transformation, and international engagement. During this time, the School consolidated its global reputation for design education and research while expanding its connections with cultural institutions, industry, government, and the wider community. Since January 2024, he has also served as a member of the University’s Academic Promotions Committee.

Originally trained in Scotland, Alan combines academic leadership with extensive experience in professional practice, curation, and public engagement. Before joining the University of Melbourne, he was Design Director of NORD Architecture, the award-winning practice recognised as Young British Architect of the Year in 2006. The practice’s South Block Artist Studios won the Doolan Prize in 2013, while the Primary Substation for the London 2012 Olympic Games was longlisted for the Stirling Prize. During this period, he also led the design of the permanent Furniture Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, pioneering new approaches to exhibition design, interpretation, and curatorial technology. In 2007, he was recognised as Alumni of the Year by the University of Strathclyde.

Alan’s research and scholarship examine housing, suburbia, modernism, exhibition-making, and the cultural life of architecture. Between 2017 and 2022 he chaired the University of Melbourne’s Hallmark Research Initiative for Affordable Housing and is currently the academic lead for the Faculty’s strategic initiative framework focused on housing research. He convened The Housing Assembly (2021), an international symposium bringing together architects, housing providers, health experts, government, industry, and communities around questions of housing futures.

He has contributed to a number of major interdisciplinary research projects as a Chief Investigator, including an ARC Linkage Project focused on developing alternative and sustainable housing models for First Nations communities through co-design and strategic design processes in partnership with communities in Shepparton, Victoria. The project brings together researchers and partner organisations to address critical gaps in housing provision and contribute to Closing the Gap outcomes. He was also a Chief Investigator on the ARC Linkage Project Designing for Wellbeing: Realising Benefits for Patients Through Best Practice Hospital Design (2014–2019), which examined the relationship between hospital design and patient wellbeing outcomes.

Alongside his academic work, Alan has developed an extensive body of curatorial and exhibition projects that connect architecture to broader civic and cultural debates. His projects include Landforms at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Cedric Price: Think the Unthinkable (2011), The Invisible College (2010), The House Talks Back (2016), X-Ray The City (2016), The Endless Interior (2023), and OFF FORM, OFF MODERN: A Brutalist Archaeology at Hamilton Gallery (2025).

His forthcoming book, This is Not Subtopia! (Melbourne University Press, 2025), examines Merchant Builders as a radical force that reshaped suburban Australia and continues his broader interest in the relationship between architecture, landscape, culture, and public life.

Alan contributes extensively to the broader cultural, academic, and professional sector. He chairs the McGeorge Bequest Management Committee, is a Council member of Asialink Arts, and has served on the University’s Estates Planning Design Review Panel since 2016. He has been a member of the Association of Deans of the Built Environment and Design since 2013. Internationally, he is an Awards Ambassador and Jury member for the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) International Awards. Alan is a Fellow of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (FRIAS) and a Fellow of the Royal Scottish Academy (FRSA).