COUNTRY AND US

How can Architecture coalesce Australia’s shifting ethos towards Country?

Master’s thesis 2023

The role of Architects in decolonising Australia has become ever present through an increasing shift towards Country. Opportunities now are open to investigate the boundaries of cultural space and how we interact within them. Within a shifting ethos towards Country, architecture must allow space for discourse and opportunities for indigenous systems to be embedded into modern contexts, threshold spaces are acts of recontextualization and new ways of looking at Country. Weaving a collective fabric into colonial spaces can be ethical and culturally challenge us, Michael Mossman “ third space” thesis can be reviewed through a lease of thresholds to enlighten architects in the opportunity of indigenous systems in designing. Testing this process in architectural devices can be complex and this thesis hopes to question the best built outcomes and the types of spaces that provide them

Changing paradigms

“It has never been ceded or extinguished and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown. How could it be otherwise? That people possessed a land for sixty millennia and this sacred link disappeared from world history in merely the last two hundred years?”1 Australia’s built environment since occupation has been a melt pot of cultural dynamics, oppression, and sacrifice. Architects historically have played a key hand in demonstrating dispossession in the built environment, the term ‘Settler colonialism’ sets a lens in which we can define the boundaries of space we inhabit as one driven by control and power. Its oppression on Australian indigenous worldviews has effect across “Past, Present & Future”.4 The above extract from ‘The Uluru statement from the heart’ perpetuates the core principle within investing Country back into the built environment. Before anything else, the role of the architect today is to instate truth within any built object of Australia soil. Political and social dynamic paradigm of built environment outcomes can paralyse architects into stagnant designing around Country. Today we see ‘Country’ is being instilled at the core of practice for Australian architects within institutional reform, cultural and practice change. The analysis within this thesis hopes to highlight how a collective built environment fabric can be brought out within a project and what space this entails.

What are the driving factors to inform architects in developing contemporary Australian space?

As a non-indigenous architect interacting with Country can be an overwhelming task. A traditional architectural education gives students a toolbox of western theorical principles. The opportunities within contemporary Australian spaces call for these tools to be used in conjunction with a greater knowledge of reading landscape though indigenous world views. Mary Graham outlines two key axioms to indigenous philosophy, “Land is law”, “You are not alone in the world”. 3

Graham emphasis the sacred relationship to space and its overarching cultural and spiritual template it presents to society and social relations. This entails a view towards landscape devoid of property and real estate, Olive Freeman captures the polarising view settler colonialism has upon these sediments. Australian colonialism established itself through the ‘destroying to replace’ of indigenous landscapes. The relevant consequences can stagnate our view of the built environment, looking towards how policies of settler colonialism demonstrate a solid change in perspectives.4 In doing so architects can integrated the truth and reality of Australia’s built environment. One prime example is Australia’s major road network is established on traditional routes, ignored for many years its enlightenment treads truth into how we view navigating space. Paul Carter beautifully writes the faith of these original tracks, “With the flattening of trees a people collective soul is sacrificed: in the wake of this harrowing a strange kind of overwriting happens, sometimes uncannily mimetic, sometimes rigorously defacing former pathways”.10 The past actions of settler colonialism impact our underlining methodology of architecture and planning which by shifting our view towards less humancentric ideals offer up Country as equal. The layers of fundamental dispossession that is inherited by any built environment in Australia can be pulled a part and an architect must design with sensibility and humility, ensuring not to perpetuate the process of dispossession.

Graham’s second axiom “you are not alone in the world” focuses primarily on the theme of non-human centric perspective, kinship systems and cultural ethics tie indigenous perspectives to landscape and its wellbeing3. “Conscious isolation is to limit yourself to being an observer in an observed world”, In modern contexts indigenous society is looking forward with custodial ethics, an underpinning which has been reworked within a colonial impacted setting. Architects dealing between western and indigenous views can transform practice by engaging with indigenous voices and community to instill these kinship systems into modern environments. Catherine Donnelly’s article on “state or awareness” questions architects’ ability to host disrespect, the breakdown of awareness is sum up this within six points when reflecting on how architects can facilitate awareness to conscious regionalisation of country2:

• Feeling

• Seeing

• Sustainable

• Recognition

• Co-creation

• Being Aware

Taking these words and reflecting how practice can be an extension of them brings into focus a question of what are the architectural devices that promote Country? We must not look at these words as place holders in a criteria to design with country but as grounding principles all Australian architects are educated in and begin all designs with.

Tectonics of Country and Place

Following from the six concepts above looking towards cultural space can help decipher how we embed country into architecture practice. Act of Cultural space are the first instilling of country within our society, they function firstly for community, Ground architecture in concepts of Country to siting, setting, tectonics and receptacle sustainability to environment. They reflect our changing ethos towards space and can begin to translate ideas into commercial and housing.

A place for rest, retail and community these space acts not just their given function but as places of a public location for the town, the focus on the threshold spaces as interaction spaces for travellers and local community is emphasised here6. It can be described as the threshold and in the cases can extent outside the sphere of architectural build environment and into the trees and landscape around. Enacting a connectivity between landscape, shade acts as the definer of the boundary between usable threshold space. Bi-visual design, interpretation of the dual understanding of design and cultural viewpoints. Spatial diversity of social cultural encounters staying clear of one concise agenda of programmed space. A display of this comes in the discussion of the threshold, Michael Mossman explains this in terms of “The Third space”. When relaying an understanding of the third space the notion of a built object being enshrined with a reciprocal loop becomes clear. “Design is, therefore, an imaginative and interpretative conceptualisation of a being’s possessions that are influenced by past, present and future time and space and given to an encountered being in a reciprocal exchange” The third space is the site of exchange, where country is communicated. Where something is given and, in the examples of the canoe, new iterations in the design environment represents knowledge and belonging. This act allows the object to take on new meaning and influence the act of living, “for those who occupy such places—not control and ownership.”

The translating of the third space into threshold space is the architectural interpretation, today many buildings consider the discussed in the point for connecting with country as an act of threshold on the boundaries of architecture. Mossman states “Engagement with space always results in its reshaping, always negotiating an interstitial zone that results in inevitable transformation.” Reflecting on this in point we must look at how we holistically embed the third space into architecture in Australia. An instance of this can be found in the Bowali visitors centre by Troppo and Glenn Murcutt in the Kakadu national park, responding to the drastic landscape threshold spaces enact an interweaving of stories of place and local community. Efforts to embody traditional owners’ knowledge and education played a role in establishing a grounded design. The philosophy of the two architects work hand in hand with grounding Country. Troppo principle of the tenth line “the theory that encapsulated the act of visual perception, Toppo offered this theory to combat the unresponsive design of southern-style monolithic boxes in the tropical climate of the top end.” The concept of the threshold enacts the same sensual experience in a public space, a phycological belonging to site, landscape and region. In resemblance Murcutt philosophy encapsules “Touching the ground lightly” and to “live through an architecture that creates mutual respect for the environment”. We can see how this paring produced a structure that blurs interior and exterior with threshold spaces and establishes itself a building reflective of its place.

This point is reflective of a concept coined by Kenneth Frampton, “Critical regionalism” most notable the point of “tectonic form”. The ability of an architect to marry the structural poetics with materiality and threshold layers a building within place, or in these cases on Country. Following closely into tactile realms “our normative visual experience” is contemplated with “the readdressing the tactile range of human perception” and in doing so we can feel and be more perceptive to the stories of Country. Both these architects provide highly tangible and tactile built environments that capture place, as non-indigenous architects they promote designing with the environment as equal to human needs. This in the lens of the third space can be viewed as designing with Country or as Mossman explains “Dwelling becomes a component of Country” the intentions of these architects aren’t “Country” or and Indigenous motif it is designing environment with connection to landscape, local knowledge and the assemblage of deconstruction the notion of interior spaces.

The Architectural devices we use as Australian architects must be considered more closely and when we look towards building upon our cities the act of initiating the third spaces must be enshrined in design philosophy and practice. The ideas are not far removed from western architectural practices and notably we can look back at ideas such as Critical regionalism to spark discussion around how we instil this changing ethos. It begins with relinquishing human centric design and taking poetic or reserved approach to space that is grounded in the interwoven fabric of formal and informal relations we have with Country. The tool we can find within thresholds spaces is a critical reassessment of the importance of climate to internal space, instead of being caught up in blocking we asses when we can promote larger muti function, social thresholds over large, contained spaces. This subtle shift promotes all to read and be affected by environment in everyday life and find their own connection and way to understanding Country.

Bibliography

1. “Uluru Statement from the Heart.” Accessed March 14, 2023. https://ulurustatement.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/ UluruStatementfromtheHeartPLAINTEXT.pdf. 2. Donnelley, Catherine. “Bulletin.” Architecture Bulletin , January 2019, Regional - Beyond The Sandstone Basin edition, sec. State or Awareness - Aboriginal activism and the built environment in rural NSW. 3. Graham, Mary. “Some Thoughts about the Philosophical Underpinnings of Aboriginal Worldviews.” Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology 3, no. 2 (1999): 105–18. https://doi. org/10.1163/156853599x00090. 4. Freeman, Olive. “The Role of Architects in Decolonising Australia - MARC5110,” 2022. 5. “Draft Connecting with Country Framework.” Accessed March 14, 2023. https://www.governmentarchitect.nsw.gov.au/resources/ga/media/files/ ga/discussion-papers/draft-connecting-with-country-framework-2020-11-12. pdf. 6. Kimmel, Laurence. “2 Threshold Spaces Express Dialectics .” Essay. In Architecture of Threshold Spaces: A Critique of the Ideologies of Hyperconnectivity and Segregation in the Socio-Political Context. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2022. 7. Snape, Diana, and Dillon Kombumerri. “The Space between: Thoughts on Designing with Country, Connecting with Country .” Architecture Bulletin Dindarra/Between , no. Vol 79, 2022. 8. Szacka, Léa-Catherine. “Critical Regionalism for Our Time.” Architectural Review, December 13, 2022. https://www.architectural-review. com/essays/critical-regionalism-for-our-time. 9. Reti, Marni, and David Kaunitz. “Two-Way Learning: Participatory Design & Construction .” Architecture Bulletin Dindarra/Between, no. Vol 79, 2022. 10. Carter, P. (2010) Ground truthing: Explorations in a creative region. Crawley, W.A.: UWA Pub.