Pluralising Pasts The Architecture of Recovery
Features:
Jefa Greenaway Libby Porter Timothy MooreGill CHitty Rodney Harrison
Vol 01
June 2021
Alexandra Burns
Contributors Gill Chitty
Jefa Greenaway
Gill Chitty is the Director of the Conservation Studies Programme and Centre for Conservation Studies in the Department of Archaeology, University of York. Chitty was Head of Conservation at the Council for British Archaeology from 2005-2012. She has edited the book Heritage, Conservation and Community Engagement which has provided a valuable insight into the world of heritage conservation practitioners with a specific focus on the current shift towards people-centred approaches and community involvement.
Jefa Greenaway is a Wailwan/Kamilaroi man and the director of award-winning architecture and interior design firm Greenaway Architects. He also teaches at the Melbourne School of Design and runs Indigenous Architecture Victoria (IAV) which he founded in 2010 with Rueben Berg with the aims of creating a conduit between the Indigenous Community and the Architecture Profession.
Rodney Harrison
Elisapeta Heta
Rodney Harrison is a Professor of Heritage Studies at the UCL Institute of Archaeology, University College London. He has a broad range of experience teaching, researching and working across the fields of cultural and natural heritage management in the UK, Europe, Australia and North and South America. Rodney was Principal Investigator and led both the Diversity unit and the Heritage Futures research programme. His work focuses on critical interdisciplinary approaches to heritage and their impacts on important social, political, economic and environmental issues in the future.
Elisapeta Heta is Senior Associate Architectural Graduate and Māori design leader at Jasmax. She has founded Waka Maia, a collective within Jasmax of architects who specialise in engaging mana whenua, Māori who have rights over the land, in applying Te Aranga Maori Design Principles into projects. Heta is also a poet and artist and collaborated with John Miller for an artwork at the Biennale of Sydney 2020.
Libby Porter
Timmah Ball
Libby Porter is a Professor of Urban Planning with the Centre of Urban Research at RMIT University. Her research examines the ways in which urban development causes dispossession and displacement, particularly of Indigenous Australians. Porter formerly worked in policy and research in the Victorian public service and was a member of the Expert Advisory Panel for Melbourne 2020. She is currently Assistant Editor of Planning Theory and Practice. Her work brings to light what she calls the “cult of forgetfulness” which has characterised a failure to recognise the presence of Country within our urban cities.
Timmah Ball is an urban palnner, writer, member of the Clean Air and Urban Landscapes (CAUL), Hub Steering Committee and community arts worker. Her writing has been published in a range of anthologies and literary journals. She grew up in Melbourne and her heritage is Ballardong Noongar from Western Australia, on her mother’s side. She shares a passion for using urban planning to create inclusive people-centred cities and challenging established modes of thinking.
Timothy Moore
Diana Hardy
Timothy Moore is the director of Sibling Architecture, project director at Right Angle Studio, lecturer of architecture at Monash University and part of the curatorial team at Melbourne Design Week presented by the NGV. His work is widely published in architectural magazines, journals and books and speaks widely at events and in the media. Moore oversees Sibling’s design research practice in the aim to create environments, experiences and buildings that respond to cultural and social needs.
Diana Hardy is a senior lecturer in Indigenous Studies in the Indigenous Education and Research centre. She is also Research Fellow at the Cairns Institute in the Creative Innovation, Cultural and Linguistic Transformation and Indigenous Futures strands and is a frequently requested presenter on Design Thinking. Through her research, Hardy has developed an expertise in co-design skills to assist community members in developing projects that improve social wellbeing and facilitating access to sovereign data for Indigenous people.
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Melathi Saldin
Kelly Greenop
Melathi Saldin is a PhD candidate at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University and Melbourne. Saldin’s research has focused on the role of archaeology in the construction of national heritage narratives in post-war contexts with particular reference to Sri Lanka. Her work explores the potential of democratising heritage as a means of fostering cultural resilience and empowering communities.
Dr Kelly Greenop is a senior lecturer within the School of Architecture and is affliliated with both the Architecture Theory Criticism History (ATCH) and Aboriginal Environments Research Centres (AERC) within the School. Her research has focussed on work with Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people in urban Brisbane, using ethnographic techniques to document the place experiences and attachment, and the importance of architecture, place, family and country for urban Indigenous peope. She also conducts research into the intercultural place heritage of the Brisbane region, and the urban cultural history of Brisbane’s suburbs.
Kerstin Thompson Kerstin Thompson founded KTA in 1994, with the guiding focus on the role of architecture as a civic endeavour with an emphasis on user’s experience. Thompson regularly lectures and leads studios at various schools in Australia and New Zealand and plays an active part in promoting quality design within the profession through her writings as Panel Member on the Office of the Victorian Government Architect’s Design Review Panel and as Board member of the IBA Melbourne.
Sam Cremean Sam Cremean is an urban researcher and community engagement advisor. His passion is to encourage community members to become active participants in improving and sustaining the environment around them. His recent work has explored the incremental changes to the “gaybourhood’”and its impact on the demise of queer fabric of cities around the world. He claims that with the strategic aims of accommodating population growth and the changing nature of our neighbourhoods, city planners overlook the importance of cultural memory, particularly that of minority groups.
David O’Brien David O’Brien practiced as an architect before joining the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning. He since worked in community development projects with Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, Western Australia, Queensland and internationally in Papua New Guinea and Thailand. He coordinates the award winning Bower Studio projects to consult, design and built community infrastructure projects alongside community groups, government agencies, aid workers, industry partners, engineers and sociologists. 3
Table of Contents Pluralising Pasts
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Alexandra Burns This chapter introduces the theme of this editorial Pluralising Pasts as an exploration of the evolution of people-centred conservation, urban planning and place-making practice and the changes that are still to be negotiated in order to better accommodate the needs, identities, perspectives and multiple histories that currently coexist in our cities. This edition spotlights the reconciliatory and regenerative potential of heritage and placemaking practice and its role in empowering communities.
Democratising Heritage
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Gill Chitty This chapter examines the ways in which heritage professionals can empower local communities through enabling participatory involvement in decision making and practice.
Reimagining the Future of Heritage
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Rodney Harrison In this chapter Harrison is invited to speak about his new role as Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Leadership Fellow in Heritage and the new frameworks he has developed for his research program Assembling Alternative Futures for Heritage, which encompass new ways of addressing global problems by fostering interdisciplinary approaches in heritage. He discusses his aims to broaden the definition of heritage to include natural and cultural heritage, as well as the spaces in between.
Remembering Country
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Libby Porter This chapter examines the implications of this lens as applied to current development and the challenges and opportunities that arise for planners and architects.
Folie, Placemaking and Melbourne’s Contested Heritage Timothy Moore In this chapter Moore will reflect on Sibling’s 2016 work Over Obelisk in the discussion of what it means to be an architect working on sites with contested histories. Moore critically examines the potential of architecture and placemaking interventions to create meaningful conversations about the past.
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The Architecture of Storytelling
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Elisapeta Heta This chapter addresses the gap in the architectural education sector as Heta discusses her aims to create projects that encapsulate Māori storytelling and collective ownership. Heta sheds particular light on the recent Ngā Puna o Waiōrea Western Springs College project which was designed for Māori performing arts.
Inclusive Cities Timmah Ball
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This chapter examines the complexities of representing and creating architecture in post-colonial cities and promotes the use of Aboriginal knowledge and site-sensitive architecture. It further examines the problems that arise when industry bodies draw upon Indigenous culture for design inspiration without investing in their holistic wellbeing. Ball promotes a design practice that is founded on deep listening, meaningful collaboration and multi-disciplinary in nature.
Digitising Indigenous Heritage
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Dianna Hardy This chapter explores the use of GIS and 3D modelling development for historical and cultural sustainability and the possibilities and challenges of these technologies.
Indigenous Memory and Architecture
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David O’Brien In this chapter David O’Brien discusses the Wave Hill Walk-off project, which brought together 12 students, 6 designers, eight labourers and the Gurindji people of Kalkarindji and Daguragu in the Northern Territory. The project gave physical form to the remembrance of the birth of Australia’s Indigenous land rights movement.
Digital Cultural Heritage Kelly Greenop Kelly Greenop explores the new and challenging realm of Digital Cultural Heritage and what it brings to heritage practice. Creenop argues that Digital Cultural Heritage offers possibilities for addressing some of the ongoing questions within the heritage discipline including: how to identify and engage broader communities in heritage, how to record and share tangible cultural heritage and how to make digital records accessible.
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Heritage Resiliance and Minority Communities Melathi Saldin This chapter investigates the regenerative impact of reimagining sites and landscapes and creating spaces for engagement and interaction. She examines the challenges that come with mediating the conflicting ideals that come with the preservation of heritage and the strategic aims of development.
The Revitalisation of “the Pink Elephant” Kerstin Thompson In this chapter Kerstin Thompson has been asked to discuss the recent transformation of the important landmark affectionately known as the “pink elephant”, a building that is rich in cultural memory and a beloved landmark within the community.
Preserving the Cultural Memory of our ‘Gaybourhoods’ Sam Cremean Cremean reflects upon the gradual closures of significant LGBT venues across Melbourne and the role of the heritage planning system in protecting places of cultural importance to Melbourne’s queer communities.
Unveiling our Hidden Histories Jefa Greenaway This chapter examines the ways in which architecture and design can engage with Australia’s Indigenous heritage and culture. Greenaway discusses how architects and heritage experts can begin to unveil and give voice to 60,000+ years of habitation of Aboriginal people in Australia and how we can use the built form as a storytelling device to shed light on pre-contact histories. Greenaway will shed particular light on the rehousing of the Murrup Barak Building at the University of Melbourne.
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Fig 1 (Above): Toppling of a statue of a slave trader in Bristol, UK, June 2020. 7
Many people would be surprised to hear me say heritage has very little to do with the past, but is actually more about how we conceptualise the future. Objects of heritage are the things we pay attention to because they’re still meaningful to us, not always because they tell great stories about the past but because we use them to tell stories about ourselves… We use objects of heritage and practices of heritage to shape our ideas about who we are as nations, communities, and individuals1. Rodney Harrison
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Pluralising Pasts British Professor of Heritage Studies, Rodney Harrison has claimed that heritage has actually very little to do with the past, but instead emerges out of the relationship between past and present as a reflection on the particular set of values we choose to take with us2. Harrison firmly positions the role of heritage in “assembling futures” and its connection with pressing economic, social, political and ecological concerns of our time3. On 8 June 2020, the statue slave trader Edward Colston was recently hauled off its plinth by Black Lives Matter protesters and dumped into the Bristol Harbour (fig.1). This act not only throws into question the moments of history we choose to memorialise, but also strives to instigate a deep and lasting change. Recent approaches to heritage have opened up opportunities to enable the recognition of collective identities and new ways of engaging with the past. Architects and heritage professionals have been utilising methods of digitisation, co-production and place-making in order to shed light on elements of our cultural heritage that have gone unrecognised by Government bodies. These new methods and approaches reconceive heritage as a reconciliatory process with significant regenerative impacts on community wellbeing4. According to Gill Chitty, public participation and local community involvement has taken centre-ground in heritage theory and practice over the past few decades5. However, whilst new methods in the theory and practice of conservation acknowledge the necessity for a broader range of voices, identities narratives, it also battles with an entrenched heritage thinking. This perceives heritage as a top-down process, often co-opted by those in power in order to fulfill cultural or political agendas6. Rethinking the practice of heritage has acquired an increasing urgency as particular sites chosen by Indigenous peoples as possessing significant heritage value, are weighted against the category of “the national interest” or against their economic value to mining or tourist projects7. Moreover, in 2017 Melbourne’s best known drag venue, the 164-year-old Greyhound Hotel in St Kilda was demolished for the development of apartments after Planning Minister Richard Wynne refused to give it heritage protection8. In order to engage with histories rendered invisible by dominant narratives, many have recognised the need for an interdisciplinary heritage theory and practice that is embedded within the discourse of environmental and social justice9. Recent conservation theory demonstrates increased investigation into the ways in which institutional policies and practices could evolve toward more instrumental approaches.
Open Source Heritage Recent theorists have investigated the digitisation of heritage and its role in providing access to and facilitating the reappropriation of cultural knowledge. Initiatives such as Objects of Possession aim to make the knowledge gained from studies in various museums, archives and government institutions accessible to the Indigenous Australian communities, in such a way that these communities could easily access, add to and interact with various kinds of data in relation to artefacts: printed photographs, typed documents, 3-D models and audio-visual material10. Other digital, free and open-source data acquisition systems are intending to exploit the transformative potential of new media with the use of tools such as virtual reality, game engines and agent-based modelling. Dr Donald Sanders states, “plan, section and elevation drawings have been central to archaeological visualisation since the inception of the profession well over 200 years ago, and archaeologists persist in using them despite the availability of more appropriate and more accurate alternative image types”11. However, as Rossella Salerno argues, digitising heritage is not merely the translation of analogue information into digital data. It enables participation through the provision of new methods of recording the memory of places and facilitates the sharing collective of experiences12. Digitising heritage connects places, objects and communities, virtually and facilitates the interpretation of these places in order to better understand and communicate their values. The use of these digital platforms raises many issues surrounding the access, control, authenticity and ownership of archived material and artefacts, as well as the nature of conservation that is no longer fixated on the material object. Some theorists have speculated the potential implications of digital databases and virtual reality versions of historic places, including concerns that physical fabric will be devalued by digital versions of places, leading to the neglet of heritage places13.
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Indigenous Memory and Design Contemporary design practices have begun to explore the opportunities that have emerged from reconceiving the relationship between design and heritage. For example, designers have investigated the ways in which placemaking can expose the establishment of Melbourne’s contested heritage and spark engagement and interaction. This was done by architecture firm Sibling Architects in their public installation, Over Obelisk (fig. 3). The installation encases the John Batman monument that sits on the northeast corner of the Queen Victoria Market. The installation draws attention to the inscription that states that Melbourne was “unoccupied” prior to 1835 and asks passers-by in English and woiwurrung “Do you acknowledge that the events referred to by this monument are inaccurate?”14. It comprises of a series of brightly coloured mesh screens that surround the monument. Two of these components feature stair elements that can be separated and moved to different locations around the market, forming spaces for reflection and discussion. The work delves into the reconciliatory and regenerative potential of design through meaningful interaction with the past.
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Fig 2 (Below): Sibling Architects, Over Obelisk, 2017. Fig 3 (Above): Over Obelisk monument inscription.
The newly constructed landscape/urban design intervention, Ngarara Place, by Greenaway architects now sits at the heart of RMIT’s city campus (fig. 4). Ngarara Place strives to create a visible presence and recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, cultures and histories as connected among the lands of the Kulin Nation in which RMIT stands. The project explores Aboriginal people’s connection to Country through the seven seasons of the Kulin Nation, an alliance of five Indigenous tribes in south central Victoria. It sought to “reveal layers of history and meaning through an active gesture of reconciliation, while infusing Indigenous sensibilities within the heart of Melbourne and begins to broaden the frame of reference in which people can connect to place”15. Pedagogical panels engage the public through providing cultural context and history as a means of cultural and knowledge exchange (fig.5).
Fig 4 (Above): Greenaway Architects, Ngarara Place, 2016. Fig 5 (opposite): Pedagogical panel at Ngarara Place.
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Pluralising Pasts Vol. 01 invites contributors from a vast range of perspectives to look critically at the evolution of people-centred conservation, urban planning and place-making practice and the changes that are still to be negotiated in order to better accommodate the needs, identities, perspectives and multiple histories that currently coexist in our cities. In doing so, they are encouraged to reflect on the reconciliatory and regenerative potential of heritage and placemaking practice and its role in empowering communities. The cover image for this edition is a photograph taken by Tom Ross of the last silstone rock in Melbourne. The silstone wall is wedged between apartment buildings in a Melbourne laneway off Exhibition street. The silstone rock is not only a reminder of the past but is also emblematic of uncovering aspects of the city that are grounded to Country in a way that breaks down relationships between built and natural environment.
Fig 4 (Above): Last Silstone rock in Melbourne between two appartments in CBD, image taken by Tom Ross, 2020.
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1 Rodney Harrison, Heritage, Critical Approaches, (London: Routledge, 2013). 2 Harrison, 2013. 3 Rodney Harrison, “Beyond ‘Natural’ and ‘Cultural’ Heritage: Toward an Ontological Politics of Heritage in the Age of Anthropocene”, Heritage and Society, (2015), https:// doi.org/10.1179/2159032X15Z.00000000036. 4 Melathi Saldin, “Pushing Boundaries: Heritage resilience of minority communities in post-war Sri Lanka”, Routledge, (2019): 237-256, http://hdl.handle.net/10536/ DRO/DU:30140474 5 Gill Chitty, Heritage, Conservation and Communities, (London: Routledge, 2018). 6 Laurajane Smith, Uses of Heritage, (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), 44-84. 7 Suvendrini Perera and Joseph Pugliese, “Parks, mines and tidy towns: enviro-panopticism, ‘post’ colonialism, and the politics of heritage in Australia”, Postcolonial Studies, Vol 1, No 1 (1998): 69-100. 8 Tammy Mills and Aisha Dow, “Doors close at St Kilda’s iconic Greyhound Hotel for the final time”, The Age, January 6, 2017, https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/doors-close-at-st-kildas-iconic-greyhound-hotel-for-thefinal-time-20170106-gtmswa.html. 9 Kurt Iveson, “Building a City For “The People”: The Politics of Alliance-Building in the Sydney Green Ban Movement”, Antipode, Vol 46 (2013): 992-1013. 10 Ton Otto and Dianna Hardy, “Transforming Artefacts into Digital Heritage: Developing interactive databases for use by Aboriginal communities”, Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, Vol 10 (2016): 117-132, ISSN 22053220. 11 Donald H. Sanders, “REVEAL: one future for heritage documentation”, Institute for the Visualisation of History, (2013): 520-534. 12 Rossella Salerno, “Putting Tradition into Practice: Heritage, Place and Design”, Springer International Publishing, (2018): 200-250. 13 Kelly Greenop and Chen Yang, “Applying a lanscape perspective to digital cultural heritage”, Built Heritage, (2020), https://doi.org/10.1186/s43238-020-00002-w 14 “Over Obelisk”, Sibling Architects, 2017, http://siblingarchitecture.com/projects/over-obelisk/ 15 Jefa Greenaway, “Indigenous garden opens in heart of Melbourne”, ArchitectureAu, May 31 2016, https://architectureau.com/articles/indigenous-garden-opens-in-heart-ofmelbourne/#
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