15/05/2026
Last night, our Co-founder Sonja Markovic had the privilege of delivering a keynote at the 2026 MSB Showcase Night hosted by Monash Sustainable Buildings, and we all left genuinely inspired by this next generation of architects, engineers and designers.
Climate change is fundamentally reshaping what it means to design and build. The students at MSB are already designing from that reality.
Evitat had the opportunity to work alongside the students’ Design Challenge and the Yirrkoo Rise project, a resilient, elevated coastal home for Saibai Island in the Torres Strait, developed in partnership with Engineers Without Borders. Saibai sits just 1.7 metres above sea level. Rising seas, king tides, storm surge, not future threats, but today’s conditions. The team drew on traditional Papua New Guinean housing principles, modern building methods and purposefully selected materials to incorporate costs, people’s traditional connections to building design, environmental footprint, energy and climate resilience.
Working alongside the Design Challenge cohort was a fantastic way to capture the range of criteria they weigh, and the weight they give to the brief as an opportunity, not just a constraint.
This fed directly into what is next at Evitat AI 3.0 — agentic data infrastructure that automates and supports project and material assessments across emissions, health, circularity and resilience. In human language.
The conversations last night, about design complexity, technology, AI, and data democratisation, are exactly what Evitat stands for: giving every team the ability to bring decisions upstream. To ask the hard questions early, before they’re locked in.
The quality of thinking in that room last night was genuinely humbling. These are the architects, designers and engineers who will shape how we build future-ready. We are proud to deepen our relationship with Monash Sustainable Buildings and look forward to continuing this work together.
Special thanks to, Joshua Kolak, Anna Parsons, Emma Reece, Liam Gill and Valcan Patel, Dr Waldemar, Shane Esmore, Dr Laura Harper, Dr Jenny Zhou, Jenny Ly, ,