Elena is a registered architect and is a specialist in environmentally and socially sustainable design. She splits time between private practice, project collaboration, and roles as a university educator for postgraduate students in built environment sustainability and regenerative design.
She is the Co-chair of Cohousing Australia, a Regenerative Development Practitioner, and works with community groups to build community cohesion, participatory process, collaborative decision making, and socially and environmentally literate communities. Elena is due to commence a PhD in collaborative housing and is interested in the broader interaction between housing, urban space, and civic participation. She takes an ecological and systems thinking approach to design and problem solving and is interested in the economic and cultural relationship between housing, ownership, and belonging. She is passionately exploring new futures for housing with a focus on affordably and environmental responsibility in the Australian context.