ARCHIVE / 1960/61
The earliest recorded gathering.
30.11—05.12.2026Tāmaki Makaurau
©
Warkworth Congress 1971, images by Julian Feary and Peter JoyceSource: Kerry Francis, If Memory Serves, p. 46 ↗Our story
No permanent address
The Australasian Student Architecture Congress has been bringing together architecture students from across Aotearoa, Australia and Papua New Guinea since the 1960s.
04 / 01Since the 1960s / a new city almost every second year
History
It dates back — at least we think — to 1963, when some New Zealand students invited Aldo van Eyck to Auckland to talk about the Social Aspects of New Housing. The archival volume records thirty-six gatherings since, across Australia, Aotearoa, Papua New Guinea, and Singapore.
36RECORDED / PLUS 2026
Scroll through for a timeline of the congress across the decades.
DRAG / SCROLL →
ARCHIVE / 1963
New Zealand students invited Aldo van Eyck to Auckland to talk about the Social Aspects of New Housing.
Recorded: Aldo van Eyck.
ARCHIVE / 1966
Buckminster Fuller and Aldo van Eyck both spoke.
Recorded: Buckminster Fuller, Aldo van Eyck.
ARCHIVE / 1968
Recorded: Buckminster Fuller.
ARCHIVE / 1970
Held across two cities and two countries.
Recorded: Buckminster Fuller.
ARCHIVE / 1971
This congress moved out of the city and built structures to gather at the ruins of Warkworth Cement Works.
Recorded: Roger Walker, John Scott.
ARCHIVE / 1974
A congress that travelled, rather than sat in one place.
ARCHIVE / 1975
Papua New Guinea
ARCHIVE / 1983
Recorded: Paolo Soleri, Peter Beaven.
ARCHIVE / 1987
The Jam.
ARCHIVE / 1993
Recorded: Richard Leplastrier.
ARCHIVE / 1997
SoNA was formed out of this congress.
ARCHIVE / 1999
Recorded: Peter Stutchbury.
ARCHIVE / 2004
States of Mind. Programme and schedule from a two-city congress.
ARCHIVE / 2007
Ctrl Shift.
Recorded: Peggy Deamer.
ARCHIVE / 2011
Flux. The first meeting of the International Network of Indigenous Architects.
ARCHIVE / 2017
Agency.
Recorded: Jeremy Till.
ARCHIVE / 2022
Occupy.
ARCHIVE / 2024
Ground Matters.
ARCHIVE / 2026
Weaving. Six days across the isthmus, 30 November to 5 December.
WHAT WILL YOU PASS ON?Carry it forward →
©
Photographs from past congresses — ASAC archiveOccurring in a new city every second year, Congress is a place for collective knowledge sharing and gathering outside of the university studio.
Organised for students, by students, congress has bounced around Australia, Aotearoa and Papua New Guinea since the 1960s. It has touched the shores of Aotearoa in Tāmaki Makaurau in 1963, 1971, and 1983, in Ōtautahi in 2019, in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington in 2007, and reached as far as Lae in Papua New Guinea in 1975.
ASAC is a unique non-institutionalised entity that supports students’ shared experience, learning and exchange in the region of Oceania, and carries with it a diverse network of past and present practitioners, protagonists and organisers.
This event provides architecture students with the tools to engage with diverse themes and challenges. Bringing together students and recent graduates from across Australasia, congress always relies on the promise of the next one.
THE MANIFESTO · WEAVING 2026
Weaving is a cross-cultural phenomenon, a practice shared by all peoples.
Weaving 2026 recognises and responds to this ancient communal practice and positions it as a framework for a collective and connected architecture discipline. The congress expands weaving through five themes: place, space, connections, knowledge; and a final theme directed to participants, the binding thread and leading to questions beyond the congress: futures.
FIVE THREADS / MOVE THROUGH THE MANIFESTO
- 01
Place
Architecture is a discipline that mediates the relationship between people and their environment. In Aotearoa, whenua (land) is of great cultural significance, as is our place in a ‘sea of islands’. Architecture in Aotearoa finds meaning when it engages with varying, interconnected Oceanic ideas.
- 02
Space
Differing cultural connotations of space, like wā, vā and āina, offer alternate modes of engaging with built and unbuilt space. Space is always political and is shaped by forces and conditions beyond buildings. These notions expand an understanding of space and the self to one that is relational, not only existing in the present but also across times.
- 03
Knowledge
This congress is a forum for knowledge exchange grounded in place and space. Weaving 2026 will explore what it means to practice architecture of Aotearoa, with the knowledges of this place gathered up through time, and informed by land, by ocean, and through whakapapa, interconnectivity of people, places and things.
- 04
Connections
The congress hopes to establish connections that bind practitioners and practice to specific place, space and knowledge. This process of whakawhanaungatanga (relating well to others) forms the foundation for our shared understanding of architecture and, by extension, this gathering, Weaving 2026.
- 05
Futures
Weaving place, space, knowledge and connections creates a collective imagination, one that looks backwards and forwards through time to offer a speculation on our many possible futures. Through this process of gathering, binding and sharing, we seek to learn how, in this place, in this discipline, we might weave something together.
01 / ARRIVE02 / GATHER03 / QUESTION04 / PASS IT ON
THE NEXT CONGRESS
Do you want to host the next congress? Pitch for your city at Weaving 2026 for the 2028 Congress and become part of history.
FRAGMENTS FROM THE RECORD · ASAC · 1963—NOW
©
Brisbane Congress 2022 — Occupy, ASAC archive
2022
CONGRESSES OF THE PAST HAVE DRAWN IN THE LIKES OF
- Buckminster Fuller1966 Perth / 1968 Hobart / 1970 Sydney
- Aldo van Eyck1966 Perth
- Roger Walker1971 Auckland
- John Scott1971 Auckland
- Paolo Soleri1983 Auckland
- Peter Beaven1983 Auckland
- Richard Leplastrier1993 Adelaide
- Peter Stutchbury1999 Sydney
- Peggy Deamer2007 Wellington
- Jeremy Till2017 Sydney
Are you coming to Weaving 2026?
ENTER THE CURRENT CONGRESS →04 / 03hello@weaving.nz / @weaving_2026
Contact
Email hello@weaving.nz. DM @weaving_2026 on Instagram. Or join the general congress WhatsApp group. Access needs, dietary needs, billeting, sponsorship, gear you can lend. We are here to help
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Programme updates, speaker announcements and the behind the scenes.
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