Living Cities Forum
The Naomi Milgrom Foundation has unveiled the international keynote speakers for Living Cities Forum 2026, with award-winning architect Anupama Kundoo (Germany/India), renowned urbanist and City of Malmö architect Finn Williams (UK), and leading futurologist and spatial researcher Ludwig Engel (Germany) joining the program this August.
An initiative of the Naomi Milgrom Foundation, Living Cities Forum is Australia’s flagship event for urban designers, thinkers and placemakers. Since 2017, the Forum’s global program has spotlighted cross-disciplinary speakers who share inspiring, actionable ideas to improve the cities of today and tomorrow. Rather than positioning cities as fixed systems to optimise, the Forum treats urban life as something continuously negotiated: shaped by politics, economics, culture, ecology and the everyday experiences of the people who inhabit them.
Exploring the theme Cities Made With Care, this year’s one-day series of keynotes and conversations places design where it matters most: at the centre of decision making. At a moment when cities are being reshaped at unprecedented speed, Living Cities Forum 2026 examines housing as both infrastructure and identity; revalued not simply as a commodity, but as a foundation of civic life, shaping how people live, move and belong.
Bringing together perspectives from architecture, governance, spatial research and civic practice, the Forum will open space for urgent provocations and cross-disciplinary conversations examining the tensions between development and care, growth and belonging, extraction and preservation, and the competing forces shaping urban life today.
The full line up of international keynote speakers are:
• Anupama Kundoo (Germany/India) – celebrated architect whose research-oriented practice, which started in India in 1990, has generated people-centric architecture based on spatial and material research for low environmental impact while being socio-economically beneficial. She is currently a Professor of Architecture at T.U. Berlin. Most recent publication on her work is Abundance Not Capital. The Lively Architecture of Anupama Kundoo, edited by Angelika Fitz, Elke Krasny and Architekturzentrum Wien (MIT Press, 2025).
“Radical (and radically resourceful) approach to design.” – PIN-UP Magazine
• Finn Williams (UK) – City Architect of Malmö, Sweden since 2021, having previously worked in the UK to promote public architecture and planning through roles at Croydon Council and the Greater London Authority, and as the co-founder and chief executive of Public Practice. He was the co-curator of the British Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale.
“One of the most influential individuals in architecture and design in Sweden.” – Tidskriften Rum
• Ludwig Engel (Germany) – leading futurologist and spatial researcher who campaigns for and works with HouseEurope! – a non-profit for the building sector that advocates for socially just and environmentally fair rules for housing, making renovation the new norm. He directs the MA program Studio for Immediate Spaces at Saandberg Instituut/Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, together with Julian Schubert (something fantastic) and teaches at station+ at the Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich.
“No to demolition! Yes to renovation!” – HouseEurope!
Across the program, the three speakers will draw on radically different contexts – from Malmö’s experiments in civic equality and governance reform, to European debates around demolition culture and the value embedded in existing buildings, to material-led architectural practices that re-centre the human experience of making and inhabiting cities. Collectively, their work demonstrates that alternative futures for our cities are not only necessary, but entirely possible.
Naomi Milgrom AC, Founder of the Naomi Milgrom Foundation, said, “Increasingly, cities are discussed through the language of targets, growth and delivery, rather than care. The most meaningful cities are not defined by efficiency or economic success alone – they are places that foster connection and a sense of belonging. The international guests invited to speak at Living Cities Forum each offer powerful examples of how care can operate as a radical framework for imagining and shaping the cities of today and tomorrow.”
Elaine Chia, CEO of the Naomi Milgrom Foundation adds, “Living Cities Forum doesn’t seek to produce consensus, but to create the conditions for more ambitious public conversations about the future of cities, and the values that will define them.”
International keynote presentations will take place across the morning sessions, followed by afternoon programming that expands on this year’s theme through conversation, local case studies and interdisciplinary exchange with leading Australian design thinkers. In 2026, half-day tickets will be available for audiences wishing to attend the keynote program only.
“…global, multi-disciplinary panels sharing ideas and solutions to shape the urban future of Australia.’ — Parlour
“…not shying away from difficult conversations.” — Habitus Living
KEY DETAILS
Living Cities Forum (Melbourne) – Tuesday 25 August 2026, 8:30am—6pm at The Edge, Fed Square.
Living Cities Forum (Sydney) – Friday 28 August 2026, 8:30am—6pm at State Library of NSW.
Ticket Prices
$195 – Subscriber Presale (Full Day) – Available from Tuesday 2 June
$213 – Early Bird Presale (Full Day) – Available from Tuesday 9 June
$250 – General Admission (Full Day) – Available from Tuesday 16 June
$149 – General Admission (Half Day) – Available from Tuesday 16 June
$225 – Concession (Full Day) – Available from Tuesday 16 June
$119 – Concession (Half Day) – Available from Tuesday 16 June
For more information and to purchase tickets, visit livingcitiesforum.org
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