Rena Czaplinska Architects

Rena Czaplinska-Archer is an experienced ecological architect, teacher, writer and multi-disciplinary artist and somatic practicioner, former Sydney University Architecture Faculty Lecturer and a founder of Time for Drawing workshops which are offered in Australia and internationally. Drawing for Rena is journey of discovery, tuning the body and the senses, listening deeply, sensing what's alive. She is interested in body conscious design and sees training in sensory awareness and embodiment as a key component of an architectural practice. Rena holds a PhD in Theory and History of Modern Architecture and a Post Graduate degree in Social Ecology, and has lectured and tutored in Sustainable Architectural Design at Sydney University for over 20 years. In her PhD on architecture of James Stirling she discovered body in movement as a design tool and later became a student of an American dance pioneer Anna Halprin exploring relationships between body, movement and space. This had a profound effect on the way Rena works and teaches. She is fascinated by the question of seeing and sensory perceptions and inspired by her lifelong interdisciplinary research into architecture, art and phenomenology and the writing of Merleau-Ponty and Juhani Pallasmaa.