Jan van Schaik

Dr. Jan van Schaik is an architect, a co-director of MvS Architects, and a researcher and lecturer in the RMIT University architecture masters program. Across Australia and the Asian region he has designed civic precinct plans; master-plans; public buildings; mixed use developments; secondary and tertiary education buildings; buildings with interpretive content and ecological themes; installations and exhibitions; galleries and museums in urban and regional areas; and a prototypical regional dwelling for a celebrity chef.

His work has received awards from the Australian Institute of Architects, the Malaysian Institute of Architects, the National Local Government Awards, the Master Builders Association and the Victorian Premiere’s Design Award in the categories of residential additions, community engagement, collaboration, sustainable energy, cultural architecture, and public architecture.

Jan is a former committee member of the Mildura Palimpsest Art Biennale, former board member of Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces and former chair of the Creative Spaces working group at the City of Melbourne.

Jan is the producer/curator of both ‘Writing & Concepts’, an ongoing lecture series investigating the role that writing plays in the development of contemporary creative practice, and ‘New City Research’, a forum which speculates on new ways that the planning, architecture, construction, financial and creative industries inform the complex relationships between the economic, social, political, physical and cultural components of cities.