Jan van Schaik is a Co-director of Minifie van Schaik Architects (MvS), a globally recognised practice based in Melbourne. He is a lecturer and PhD candidate at RMIT University and chair of the City of Melbourne’s Creative Spaces working group. Jan’s built works, academic pursuits and acts of advocacy have been honoured for privileging the civic and transformational qualities of architecture and celebrating the complex relationship between human beings and the spaces they inhabit. He has been instrumental in the design of a variety of project types, especially public buildings, multi-residential developments and masterplans.

Recent projects have included buildings with extensive interpretive content and environmental and ecological themes; exhibition designs in contemporary art galleries; and a prototypical regional dwelling for a celebrity chef. Since 2002, Jan has been involved in the World Architecture Workshop, which dispatches students, academics and professionals to various locations to conduct hypothetical design experiments aimed at solving intractable urban problems.

He has been the external examiner at various universities including Melbourne, Deakin, Westminster, Maryland, Michigan, Pennsylvania, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Sint Lucas School of Architecture in Ghent, Belgium. MvS has received awards from the Australian Institute of Architects for the Victorian College of the Arts Centre for Ideas, Southbank (2004), the Australian Wildlife Health Centre, Healesville Sanctuary (2006), Wattle Avenue House, Mildura (2012) and Edithvale Seaford Wetlands Discovery Centre (2012). The practice has also twice won the Premier’s Design Award, for the Australian Wildlife Health Centre (2008) and the Edithvale Seaford Wetlands Discovery Centre (2012).