Lisa Garner is an architect, educator, and director of LIAN Architects, a Melbourne-based practice working across housing, community, and adaptive reuse projects. Her work is guided by an interest in the relationship between architecture, everyday life, and the social structures that shape how people live together. Through projects ranging from private residential alterations to social and affordable housing, LIAN combines design research with a pragmatic understanding of construction, policy, and place.

Lisa’s work focuses on housing, with a particular interest in medium-density development and the future of Melbourne’s established suburbs. She has contributed to housing projects and strategic initiatives for the Victorian Government, Homes Victoria, community housing providers, and not-for-profit developers, exploring how greater housing density can be delivered while maintaining quality, landscape character, and a strong sense of community. This interest extends into her teaching at the University of Melbourne and Monash University, where she has led design studios examining alternative housing models and suburban futures. Through practice, teaching, and research, she is interested in how housing can respond to demographic change, affordability pressures, and evolving patterns of family life.

Lisa is currently an Affiliated Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, where she is undertaking Abitare Insieme (Living Together), a research project investigating multigenerational and collective living. Drawing on case studies from Italy and across Europe, and informed in part by her Italian heritage, the research examines how housing can support changing family structures, ageing populations, and networks of care. Through interviews, architectural documentation, and photographic studies, she is recording a range of housing models that exist beyond conventional notions of the nuclear family household and exploring what lessons these housing traditions and contemporary approaches might offer for the future of housing in Australia.