Dulux Study Tour 2026

Dulux Study Tour - Wrap Up

By Jasmine Placentino

Time. 

Perhaps more than anything else, it has been a recurring theme throughout this journey.

Travel has a way of altering perceptions. Days become compressed and expansive simultaneously. Hours pass quickly, yet experiences linger, embedding themselves in memory. Each day becomes a series of heightened moments woven together. 

There is an acute and underlying awareness that time is finite, and therefore precious.

Architecture shares a similar relationship with time. Buildings are experienced in the present, yet are conceived years earlier and often endure long after their creators are gone. Cities are shaped by the decisions of people who may never experience their consequences. To conceive a plan or a city-wide manifesto is therefore an inherently optimistic act, and one that assumes a future worth investing in.

As I moved through Singapore, Paris and Vienna, I became increasingly aware that the qualities of a city are the result of a long succession of decisions. The character of a city can be understood in different ways: is it people-centric? Does it invite the natural world? Is it kind, welcoming and equitable? Does its infrastructure make it liveable? Most simply, how does it feel to the inhabitant who walks its streets each day?

These decisions are shaped not only by design at both urban and granular levels, but by patience, continuity and a willingness to think beyond immediate political cycles. In Australia, long-term thinking is often undermined by short political horizons and fragmented responsibility. Projects are evaluated against immediate costs rather than long-term civic value. Yet, the qualities the tour group admired in the cities we visited were those shaped by intergenerational investment and commitment to an enduring vision. 

In Singapore, the vision of a garden city has transformed the nation through sustained investment in landscape and public infrastructure. Despite the dense urban environment – born from the necessity of housing a population within a limited land area – the city felt lush and humanising in its synergy with nature and appropriateness of scale at the ground plane.

In Paris, the gradual reallocation of street space in favour of people reflects a commitment to the resilience of the city, both socially and environmentally. Layers of history converge with experimental contemporary art and architecture, maintaining the Parisian culture of disruption to established systems. A compelling and deeply meaningful idea surfaced for us, as distilled by Lina Ghotmeh Architecture: evidence of the hand of humanity. Marks of use, adaptation and imperfection are not flaws to be concealed, but reminders that cities are living and continuously evolving. 

In Vienna, more than a century of investment in social housing has created an urban environment that feels highly liveable. It is a city of generosity. Affordable housing is treated as a basic necessity, as is the need for shared amenity, productive gardens and play spaces that enable city living for families and communities. 

Australian cities need not try to be European, or reflect the qualities of our South-East Asian neighbours. Their histories, cultures, political structures and climatic conditions are, in most instances, fundamentally different. Rather, the lesson is that meaningful urban change requires continuity of vision. The qualities we admired most were not architectural objects – though we can appreciate them – but the cumulative outcomes of decisions sustained across decades. The built environment is simply the physical manifestation of those decisions.

As city-shapers, we must acknowledge that our time is finite. We must act with clarity of vision, placing humanity at the forefront of each decision for the benefit of those we may never meet.

Architecture, at its best, is an act of stewardship through time.