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Biomaterial Workshop
MPavilion Parkville
2026


Straw infill panel Straw Bale

Simulaa is a Naarm-based architecture and design practice led by Andre Bonnice and Anna Jankovic, working across architecture, material research, and public engagement. Our projects explore how architecture can operate within ecological limits through the use of low-emission, circular, and bioregional material practices. Alongside our built work, we run workshops and exhibitions that translate material research into public, hands-on experiences. Recent work at the University of Melbourne’s Dookie Agricultural Campus has focused on how agricultural by-products, such as straw, hemp, and earth, can be reimagined as viable building materials, linking rural production systems with regenerative construction practices.

For this project, Andre Bonnice and Anna Jankovic will lead the workshops with support from David Fedyck, Machine Workshop Coordinator at MSD. Together, we aim to demystify sustainable construction by giving participants a direct, tactile experience with regenerative materials across three material categories, straw, hemp and earth.

Harvesting straw from the Dookie Agricultural Campus, 2024 Straw Cassette Hemp Cassette Hempcrete Mixing hempcrete for blocks and walls Hemp Blocks Earth Blocks Previous earth block making workshop at MPavilion, 2025 earth block making workshop at MPavilion, 2025 working with straw on a previous workshop at Dookie Agricultural Campus, 2025

This project is a three-to-four-day public workshop series exploring how earth, hemp, and straw can form part of a regenerative material future for the built environment. Each day focuses on a single material theme, combining demonstration, discussion, and collective making:

Clay (Earth): Participants will test and mix local clay-based soils to form earth blocks and rammed earth and apply clay plasters, exploring earth as both structure and surface.

Hemp: Using lime–hemp composites, we’ll mix and cast hempcrete blocks and a hempcrete wall, discussing its potential within Australian agricultural contexts.

Straw: Participants will assemble and render straw-bale panels, examining straw’s abundance as an agricultural by-product and its role in low-carbon building envelopes as well as thatching as a form of cladding.

Each session will take place around a series of small timber-framed wall prototypes built for the event. These will act as working surfaces for making, layering, and testing materials throughout the workshops. Participants may choose to join in the making or observe from nearby seating, with both modes of engagement fostering shared learning and reflection.

Through tactile experimentation and open discussion, the workshops aim to make visible the broader ecological systems that underpin construction, reframing building not as extraction but as participation within regenerative cycles of matter and energy.


Previous workshops working with Indigenous grasses, 2025 Working with straw for an exhibition Clay Rendering previous workshops making earth blocks Working with straw for an exhibition previous workshops making earth blocks straw cassette prototype Baunetz Campus, ETH Zurich, 'Repairing Vacancy in Ukraine', seminar Studio Boltshauser, 2024 Working with straw for an exhibition Archival Studies, Reset Materials, Copenhagen, 2023


Simulaa is an architecture practice based in Naarm, dedicated to both built commissions and research projects. The work of the practice is defined by considered analysis and a research-based approach that prioritises a time-based design thinking that recognises architecture’s inherent entanglement with social, economic, aesthetic, political, and environmental concerns. The practice has a particular interest in reconciling architecture’s relationship with technology, energy, waste, and ecology through critical experimentation. As architects and design professionals we must demonstrate the social and economic advantages of new and better ways of thinking about the built environment. It is critical we re-evaluate and reset our priorities on a more empathetic and resilient path. 
Simulaa is an architecture practice based in Naarm, dedicated to both built commissions and research projects. The work of the practice is defined by considered analysis and a research-based approach that prioritises a time-based design thinking that recognises architecture’s inherent entanglement with social, economic, aesthetic, political, and environmental concerns. The practice has a particular interest in reconciling architecture’s relationship with technology, energy, waste, and ecology through critical experimentation. As architects and design professionals we must demonstrate the social and economic advantages of new and better ways of thinking about the built environment. It is critical we re-evaluate and reset our priorities on a more empathetic and resilient path.