Finding the right words Sarah Oberklaid, Office of the Victorian Government Architect, on shaping our public buildings, infrastructure, and cities

Finding the right words

Words by Sarah Oberklaid

“Government builds much of the social and cultural infrastructure that becomes the permanent long-term visual representation of the city – our civic and cultural memory… Government must build the best it can for all our sakes” (Denton, 2008).

Government project managers, decisionmakers, and policy makers are rarely the target audience of architectural media and publications. Yet the choices they make have a significant impact on shaping our public buildings, infrastructure, and cities. Many of these professionals do not come from an architecture or design background, often bringing different knowledge and language to describe their aspirations. It is critical that we bridge these gaps by finding the right words and avenues to build a common understanding and vocabulary of the fundamentals of good design and the processes to achieve it. The Office of the Victorian Government Architect (OVGA) endeavours to build design literacy within government. Our engagements across government projects often includes helping to articulate clear design principles, translating aspirations into project briefs, and illustrating good design through case studies of built projects. It is important that our messages

are neither oversimplified, nor inaccessible and alienating. We need to take care to convey a clear message to take our audience on a journey. Over time, by gently building the understanding of a vocabulary that supports good design, we hope to further expand potential for greater and more mature dialogue with government. A measure of success is the emergence of design champions who are not necessarily designers but are confident to embed higher aspirations for good design within project expectations. Architectural media, which appeals to a broad audience, provides an important tool for enhancing design literacy. Drawing upon architectural media in accessible language, shareable formats and by a diversity of voices helps to supplement our messages. As “a rare and early public intellectual for the Australian built environment” (Denton, 2010), Robin Boyd created a legacy for raising consciousness of the impact of design through architectural media. His weekly articles on the Small Homes Service for The Age from 1948, and his messages in The Australian Ugliness (1960), helped engage the public with architectural discourse. It is now 20 years since The Age published the last regular column by architect and writer Norman Day, which brought architectural commentary into the homes of Australians from 1976. By critiquing the architectural works of everyday environments – stadiums, museums, houses, childcare centres and public toilets – Day was able to make architectural criticism relatable and approachable. He not only educated his audience about the important contribution of architecture to the whole city but conveyed the theoretical shifts from modernism to post-modernism. Day’s column received countless letters from the public, also highlighting the impact of raising the public consciousness of architecture, and the potential to influence government decision-making. The publication of design critique for public consumption appears to have been since re-channelled. We are more likely to consume home renovation shows and magazines with their pervasive advertising, profile-raising Instagram images or articles in Domain guiding us on how to enhance resale value. How do we re-engage those who have been easily distracted by these reductive mediums and expose them to discourse informed by rigorous thought? How do we encourage the ‘outsider’ to the discipline to seek out frank-and-fearless critique and learn lessons from past projects or processes? Public events promoting public design discourse through exhibitions, talks and tours, such as NGV Triennial, MPavilion, Melbourne Design Week and Open House Melbourne, and their associated media, are important for engaging a more diverse audience, and inviting them into the conversation in new ways. These forums have a life of their own as they find their way to different audiences - reviews and interviews in the news; shared images on a friend’s Instagram profile; online videos or podcasts of panel discussions. OVGA participates in many of these events to reach and communicate with a diverse audience. We often invite government clients or experts from the Victorian Design Review Panel to be part of these public events, to help demonstrate and explore the critical relationships between client, decision-maker and designer in supporting good design outcomes. Architecture After Architecture: Alternative Pathways for Practice (2020) by Harriet Harris, Rory Hyde and Roberta Marcaccio identifies opportunities for architects to expand their influence beyond traditional boundaries. With the last year prompting a re-evaluation of priorities and highlighting the need for new ways of working, the contributors to the book describe “a future of architecture that is diverse and engaged, expanding the limits of the discipline, and offering new paths in times of crisis.” The challenges faced, do not fit neatly within disciplinary silos – but warrant an engagement across sectors. Architectural media, in a diversity of forms, has the potential to be a powerful source in shifting such vocabulary and facilitating cross-disciplinary engagement.

Sarah Oberklaid, is the senior adviser, planning and design, Office of the Victorian Government Architect.

References

John Denton (2008) ‘Victorian Government Architect Message’, Architect Victoria.

John Denton, Philip Goad and Geoffrey London, ‘Afterword’ in Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness, (Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 2010).

Harriet Harris, Rory Hyde and Roberta Marcaccio, 2021, The Great Challenges We Face Do Not Conform to Neat Disciplinary Silos, Dezeen, accessed 5 January, www.dezeen.com/2021/01/05/architects-after-architecture-harriet-harriss-roryhyde-roberta-marcaccio/