Architecture Bulletin by Australian Institute of Architects

ARCHITECTURE BULLETIN VOL 78 / No. 2 / 2021-2022

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Reflecting on architecture, providing amenity and care for community

2021 NATIONAL ARCHITECTURE AWARD WINNERS

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PHOTO: Mackintosh Photography / Justin Mackintosh / mackintoshphotography.com.au

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ARCHITECTURE BULLETIN VOL 78 / NO 2 / 2021 – 2022 Official journal of the NSW Chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects since 1944. We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we live, work and meet across the state and pay our respects to the Elders past, present and emerging.

FOREWORD 04 Laura Cockburn 05 Kate Concannon COMMUNITY 08 Making space for community Words: Alicia Pozniak 13 Our voices. Our ways. Our time. Our spaces. Words: Samantha Rich and Danièle Hromek 16 How communities can shape architecture Words: Abinaya Rajavelu and Claudio Holzer 20 Rothwell Symposium Words: Jasper Ludwwig 23 Reframing a disaster: Rebuilding community on the NSW south coast. Words: Katharina Hendel and Brent Dunn 27 A creative bushfire recovery project for the communities of the Snowy Valleys Words: Vanessa Keenan 29 Tending to the open field: The art of maintaining publicness Words: Hugo Moline 31 To regenerate as one: the social promise of sustainable architecture Words: Sarah Lawlor

34 The power of small Words: Caroline Kite and Sarah Schoffel

61 Illegibility as refusal: Spaces of queer performance Words: Georgia Jamieson

38 Place, people, materials Words: Sandra Meihubers

63 Queer space Words: Emily Saunders

40 Cultivating community for vital times Words: Kirsty Hetherington

64 Intersection reflection Words: Joel Sia

42 Schools at the heart of our neighbourhoods Words: Ali Bounds 46 Designers in government Words: Kate Rintoul and Alice Stroemstedt QUEERING ARCHITECTURE 49 Queering Architecture Words: Jo Paterson Kinniburgh 50 Naba Ngabadi’o’naba: Loving Kin Words: Shannon Foster and Jo Paterson Kinniburgh

66 Just spaces Words: Ella Cutler 67 Queering furniture Interview with Phoebe Adams 68 A tale of two Bunnings Words: Paul Brace 2 0 2 1 N AT I O N A L ARCHITECTURE AWARDS – NSW WINNERS 70 NSW National awards winners and commendations 2021 NSW COUNTRY DIVISION WINNERS

53 Storytelling as methodology Words: Rhiannon Brownbill

85 NSW Country Division winners

54 Gay as in happy? Nah, queer as in f*ck you. Words: Neph Wake

PROFILE

56 Spatial politics: Costume, architecture and thinking queerly Project by Eloise Humphrys Words: Eloise Humphrys, Monica Edwards and Jo Paterson Kinniburgh

Facilitated by Gemma Savio 90 SJB are certified carbon neutral 92 Welsh + Major are certified carbon neutral 94 CO-AP are certified carbon neutral 5

FOREWORD / LAURA COCKBURN

This edition of the Bulletin is two fold – a focus on community and a celebration of an amazing year of Chapter Awards, both in its size and complexity and also its calibre, attested to by the wealth of National Awards also received by NSW entrants which are illustrated here. Congratulations to all participants and thank you to the jurors for your time and effort in reviewing over 300 entries across all categories, and Institute staff for organising this feat. How timely for the discussion to turn to community, the element that all of us have been most conscious about over the last two years. Lockdowns and broader travel restrictions and the inability to utilise indoor venues for recreation and social interaction have refocused our frame and made us more aware of our local community environment. The quality of the physical tangible aspects of where we live – privacy, light, open space and safe access to amenity that become the

MANAGING EDITOR Kate Concannon EDITOR Emma Adams DESIGNER Felicity McDonald EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Elise Honeyman (Co-Chair) Sarah Lawlor (Co-Chair) Arturo Camacho Jason Dibbs Ben Giles Tiffany Liew Phillip Nielsen Jenna Rowe David Welsh

The articles within are wide ranging, from different voices that cover government, policy, research, practice, First Nations, sustainability and identity in space. But all share an understanding of the practice of architecture as pivotal in the creation of spaces that are defined by community for community. Community is complex – a rich and vibrant society that is sustainable, supports local economies, engages its citizens and cares for its inhabitants’ wellbeing – we just need to listen to its people.

Laura Cockburn NSW Chapter President

ASSOCIATE CONTRIBUTORS Hugo Chan Jamileh Jahangiri Sahibajot Kaur

COVER IMAGE: International Grammar School Bibliotheque | BVN Photo: Tom Roe

PUBLISHER Australian Institute of Architects NSW Chapter 3 Manning Street Potts Point, Sydney NSW 2011 nsw@architecture.com.au

REPLY Send feedback to bulletin@architecture. com.au. We also invite members to contribute articles and reviews. We reserve the right to edit responses and contributions.

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ISSN 0729 08714 Architecture Bulletin is the official journal of the Australian Institute of Architects, NSW Chapter (ACN 000 023 012). © Copyright 2021. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher, unless for research or review. Copyright of text/images belong to the respective contributor unless otherwise noted.

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enabler to the creation of a social community through emotional connectedness, care and support of the vulnerable, acknowledgment and respect for diversity.

DISCLAIMER The views and opinions expressed in articles are the personal views and opinions of the authors of these writings and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the Institute and its staff. Material contained in this publication is general comment and is not intended as advice on any particular matter. No reader should act or fail to act on the basis of any material herein. Readers should consult professional advisers. The Australian Institute of Architects, its staff, editors, editorial committee and authors expressly disclaim all liability to any persons in respect of acts or omissions by any such person in reliance on any of the contents of this publication. WARRANTY Persons and/or organisations and their servants and agents or assigns upon lodging with the publisher for publication or authorising or approving the publication of any advertising material indemnify the publisher, the editor, its servants and agents against all liability for, and costs of, any claims or proceedings whatsoever arising from such publication. Persons and/or organisations and their servants and agents and assigns warrant that the advertising material lodged, authorised or approved for publication complies with all relevant laws and regulations and that its publication will not give rise to any rights or liabilities against the publisher, the editor, or its servants and agents under common and/ or statute law and without limiting the generality of the foregoing further warrant that nothing in the material is misleading or deceptive or otherwise in breach of the Trade Practices Act 1974.

F O R E W O R D / KAT E C O N C A N N O N

After two years occupying the state manager’s chair, I have stepped into a new role at the Institute managing the national education program – and very happily continuing on as managing editor for the Bulletin. In my time in the NSW Chapter I have been privileged to work with many of the profession’s best minds and hearts, as well as many of the finest colleagues I have known, and I look forward to continuing to work with many of you in my new task of ensuring the Institute is setting the quality standard for professional development in support of an evolving, industry leading profession. Thank you for a tremendously challenging and rewarding experience in the chapter, and thank you in advance for all the collaborative connections still to be enjoyed.

In this Community edition, as Jasper Ludewig notes in his article, architecture as a discipline is good at celebrating its social project. Serving community is key to architecture’s social project. Doing that well, as a number of articles in this volume attest, means knowing who constitutes a given community and then obtaining and reflecting within our work a sympathetic understanding of that community.

The 2021 awards program is highlighted in this issue, and as a (sort of) parting message to the NSW membership and my team, I want to congratulate the chapter staff on pulling off a feat of almost biblical proportions – complete with flood and plague – in delivering the largest program to date in NSW. Congratulations are of course also in order for the entrants. The quality of projects was just outstanding – as the subsequent clean up at the national awards confirmed – and our built environment here in NSW is all the richer for these members’ tremendously good work.

The articles herein are diverse. Core to all, is a recognition that architecture cannot make community spaces – that task is for its inhabitants – but it will enable or hinder their emergence.

The NSW Gender Equity Transformation has contributed to the broader theme to speak to the profession not only of spatial design through a lens of queer consciousness, but from within our community and profession. It is in this spirit of growing our own self-view that these contributors have penned often very personal perspectives.

Kate Concannon NSW Managing Editor

Bunjil Place | fjmtstudio | Photo: Trevor Mein HEADER

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Making space for community WORDS: ALICIA POZNIAK

When we think about community today in our local NSW context, our varied lived experience can obscure its common meaning. This is exacerbated by our highly privatised built environment, more recently developed by European colonisation through the physical demarcation and division of land, and systematic allocation of individual property rights. Our context, seen through this lens, holds more affinity with the condition of immunity, understood as exemption from obligation to share (land) with others. Through the global pandemic of COVID, by now we are all highly conscious of the medical meaning of immunity to disease, and are reminded daily of how our own individual protection is largely contingent on the collective action of our broader community abiding by public health orders and moving towards a vaccinated majority. And so, in an interweaving of these terms, their meaning and origins, as individual citizens and built environment practitioners, can we strengthen our understanding of the fundamental public health and collective wellbeing benefits from working together and making space for community? Over the past several years, I have been interested to study Australian patterns of housing, urban development and policy, and how it shapes the way we live and relate. Of particular interest to me has been the prevalence of individual private land ownership and detached single-family housing, at the expense of other housing forms and tenures including community-centred models such as cooperative housing and citizen-led development, as well as

communal and public space. There are multiple complex and interrelated factors that have contributed to this, notably the perpetuating cultural myth of the Great Australian Dream that has tied homeownership to freedom and the single-family household. The dream has become embedded in our housing and planning systems, and financialised to underpin our economy, marginalising those that don’t or can’t share in its aspiration. It also fails to acknowledge the thousands of years that Indigenous people lived across this land through collective stewardship and sharing resources from which we have much to learn. More recently, we have seen a significant increase in apartment development, almost all of it private developer-led. While strata title requires owners to come together for collective decision making, the future occupants of apartment buildings are generally not part of the design process. In addition, the many renters of apartments are excluded from strata decisions. There is a need now more than ever to develop adaptable housing and urban forms that can sustain more resilient and diverse communities. The huge and important role public open space plays day to day was magnified through ongoing lockdowns. There are multiple learnings we can take from our experiences to realise different models of the private and communal, that can relate to, and also drive, new and better models of public open space – at different scales, with different uses, spaces, structures and stewardship.

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Fox Johnston | The Rochford | Photos: Brett Boardman

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Above and Left: Fox Johnston | The Rochford | Photos: Brett Boardman

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Despite being tied to specific housing forms, the problem is far from architectural to solve, but there are a number of opportunities for architects to contribute their knowledge and skills to foster more community-centred development, and help different groups selfdetermine their living needs. The most available to us is through the critical application of our spatial training and visualisation skills to reinvent, adapt and propose new housing configurations to support community life. This requires spatial thinking and testing beyond interior layout across scales and property boundaries, to the way in which housing shapes communal and public space, and urban settlement patterns. The typical layout of homes hasn’t changed significantly over the last 30 to 40 years, while household and community structures have. The rise of apartment living has seen some recent design innovation to improve communal open spaces and amenities, such as shared rooftop terraces, externalised common circulation that integrates spaces for incidental neighbourly exchanges and landscaping. The new built-to-rent sector and co-living is predicated on a higher offer of communal facilities for tenants, and while these are provided at a premium price and privately managed, they may bring further design learnings for successful common spaces to apartment development. Arguably, the most substantial experimentation to reimagine our homes collectively is speculative. This enables us to think beyond business as usual, identify barriers to, and opportunities for change however incremental. Recent design competitions such as the City of Sydney’s Affordable Housing Ideas Challenge and the Government Architect NSW’s Missing Middle, garnered some innovative local spatial propositions with shared ownership and/or delivery models. These included suburban retrofit models, such as the The Right Size Service by Alysia Bennett, Damian Madigan and Dana Cuff or Youssofzay and Hart’s dual occupancy scheme, that adapted detached homes to create new infill dwellings and communal spaces for multiple and intergenerational households to share the same lot. Larger scale urban housing propositions such as panovscott and Alexander Symes’ Pixel Pilot Project and The Third Way by Alexis Kalagas, Andy Fergus and Katherine

Sundermann, focused design around generous communal spaces and community facilities with long-term collective resident ownership. Through expansive spatial reimagining, architects and design can play a key role in coordinating and visualising the multiple inputs and options needed to realise these projects from other built environment practitioners, local government, developers, housing providers, residents and communities. Precedents for community-centred housing models are more common internationally, where cultural attitudes have developed over time to value the collective ownership and management of land and community assets. If we look at countries with greater proportions of cooperative housing and citizen-led development, such as Switzerland, Austria and Germany, these have prompted the burgeoning of specialised architectural practitioners that facilitate this type of development. Austria has effectively developed a dedicated expert field to aid groups of owners and residents undertake their own co-housing development. Most practitioners are typically architects that undertake further training in social planning, client mediation, financial models and project management to expand their skill sets and provide the necessary level of service for these developments. Facilitators generally remain with client groups from project initiation, through design, construction and post-occupancy. They can direct groups to different financial organisations for loans, builders, developers and building maintenance contractors to support the building and its residents through its whole-of-life costs. An exemplary case study is Wohnprojeckt Wien (Association for Sustainable Living) where Viennese practice Einszueins architektur supported the co-creation of cooperative housing for a community of 70 people in an urban renewal precinct of Vienna. The process engaged planning participation consultants to assist with the co-determination of project and resident needs through democratic decisionmaking methods and coaching. The project contains a diversity of apartment types for different households, cooperative owned and leased commercial spaces at ground, and a generous range of communal facilities and spaces including a large shared kitchen, event 13

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/ MAKING SPACE FOR COMMUNITY WORDS: ALICIA POZNIAK

space, food pantry, workshops, library and more. As a case study for collaborative housing, these demonstrate many private and public benefits. The flexibility to customise and participate in the design process, the consideration of wholeof-life costs, greater responsiveness to local character and building neighbourhoods, and a higher-level of design quality and diversity that positively influences market housing. In Australia’s minimal market for resident-led development, Nightingale Housing and Property Collectives are the most well-known facilitators of this type of development; however, most of their projects remain in Victoria where land costs are significantly lower than in NSW. The barriers to success remain high (Palmer, 2020), but with precedents being set like these, it gives policy makers and lenders the confidence to make more space for these models in our housing market and built environment. Finally, we can consider the opportunities of the profession collectively, to encourage architectural action that supports community life and serves the public good. Through our peak bodies, we can advocate for policy change to adjust the technical tools, mechanisms and processes that influence built form, housing and public space. By educating the next generation of practitioners, we can promote greater entrepreneurship and expanded practices that address interdisciplinary barriers and professional skills gaps to deliver more community-led development. Engaging with research in daily practice, through professional development and/or academia can grow evidence-based approaches to design that address the needs of our population and communities. And ultimately, build our own professional sub-groups, relationships and 14

Garden House | Cottage Parker | Photo: Alicia Pozniak

networks with local government and different communities, including Traditional Custodians to generate better opportunities for co-design. _____ Alicia Pozniak is an architect and senior design advisor specialising in housing at Government Architect NSW in the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment. Alicia’s background spans architecture, practice, research, and education, teaching regularly at Sydney’s architecture schools. She has also lived in London and New York, and undertaken post-graduate studies at the Yale School of Architecture across the interdisciplinary fields of architecture, urban design and planning. Her research interests lie in understanding the cultural and political conditions that shape housing and urban development, government policy and its impact on place. ■

NOTES Palmer, J,S.(2020) Realising Collective Self-Organised Housing: A Network Agency Perspective, Urban Policy and Research, 38:2, pp. 101-117 Further resources on collaborative housing: https://www collaborativehousing.org.au/

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Our voices. Our ways. Our time. Our spaces. WORDS: SAMANTHA RICH AND DANIÈLE HROMEK

In this article when referring to Indigenous we are meaning Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples. First Nations women working in spatial disciplines face discrimination inherently built into the system both as women, and as Indigenous people. We know that women’s representation in senior levels of built environment professions, while growing, is still low. As owners, women tend to cluster in smaller businesses, and the gender pay gap persists (Matthewson, 2018). Indigenous women also face unique forms of discrimination, as colonisation and patriarchy violently impact matriarchal ways of living, undervaluing and depreciating women’s knowledges, including about space (Hromek, 2019). This unique intersection of Indigenous + women + spatial practitioners has resulted in very low numbers of Indigenous women entering built environment professions. Regardless, as descendants of our matricentric families, being centred around the Mother, and also descendants of the Mother, our planet, the earth, Indigenous women play essential roles in translating Country into the built environment. Spaces, for Indigenous peoples, are gendered (Langton, 2002). This means when designing for spaces, it is imperative to include female voices in the design process. Without Indigenous women, architectural and

design projects risk perpetuating colonial and patriarchal behaviours that have resulted in the current situation of a built environment that is incompatible with Country and does not reflect our diverse places. The exclusion of women has more far-reaching impacts, according to pro vice chancellor Aboriginal leadership and strategy, and professor of law with the School of Law, University of South Australia Business School, Dr Irene Watson: “With the white-washing or the making invisible of women’s law came the transferred western values, which left Aboriginal women little opportunity to represent their law stories or hold in place our own meanings and functions of the law. Now we hear more about the laws of men and in particular those laws which are repugnant, for example those which mandate old men marrying young women, or those of the payback system. It is these features of Aboriginal law that the public is made most aware of. Laws relating to the obligation to care for country and family, ecological sustainability, and the ethics of sharing and caring and their deeper philosophy remain largely unknown to the public.” (2007) Climate warnings about the ill-health of the lands, waters and air playing out via extreme bushfires and floods are creating havoc in our environments. We see the loss of biodiversity increasing health risks and all that we know as

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Above: Blakitecture series at MPavilion MPavilion architecture by Carme Pinós of Estudio Carme Pinós Photo: Alan Weedon

a society. We believe Indigenous Knowledges play a major role in helping to find solutions to these challenges. As Irene Watson demands, it is imperative Women’s Law, our stories, and sharing our own meanings and functions of the Law specific to women and our various communities are heard again in dominant culture. “Law” (capital “L”) refers to the laws, customs and protocols of the land set out in the Dreaming as a set of rules or guidelines for every entity to follow as a means of caring for Country. Laws are not changeable by humans. When spelled with a small l, “law” is referring to the imported laws that have come from abroad. For reference, “lore” refers to Knowledges or Traditions passed from generation to generation through story, song and other performative expressions. Law and lore are interrelated and rely on each other, whereas law imposes itself on the land, and on Aboriginal people.

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The practice of architecture is diverse in the breadth and approach one can take, from poetic and high-end architecture to socially responsible and Community led (when referenced this way, we are referring specifically to Indigenous Communities). There are so many facets and finding a niche and people who hold similar views to work with, teach and learn from, through the many stages of a career or profession takes time. Especially in a field which has not been an appealing career for Indigenous peoples and particularly women. There is a severe lack of Community to support the diversity of people starting to take up the field of architecture. In our experiences, this started in our education and continued through the early years of our careers. Finding our places in a male dominated, colonial profession has proven challenging. In response we have turned to our cultures and our families who tell us that matriarchy and female as an approach inherently includes all as they are based on the First Law, Mother’s Law; the earth as Mother of all does not discriminate among her children, creates safe and healthy environments for all entities of Country, and balance between all Laws (including Women’s, Men’s, Country). And so, we are members of a Community of women called Deadly Djurumin. Deadly Djurumin is a group for Indigenous women who are qualified and work in built environment fields and closely related spatial disciplines. ‘Deadly’, in an Aboriginal context, means awesome or excellent. ‘Djurumin’ means sister in Dharug (a language spoken in the Sydney area), with similar words in surrounding languages. This name was chosen to reflect the intent of the group, which is to support each other as kin, while recognising our individual and collective skills and talents. Established in late 2020 in response to the severe underrepresentation of Indigenous women in spatial disciplines, the group provides a space of support and networking. Founded by Danièle Hromek (Budawang/Yuin spatial designer) and Sarah Lynn Rees (Palawa/ Plangermaireener architectural designer), we acknowledge the challenges of being educated in spatial disciplines, where in most cases the content remains colonial and patriarchal. We also recognise the specific responsibilities

Indigenous built environment professionals share to their Communities and to Country. Through Deadly Djurumin, we offer support to those who are undertaking their studies at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, as well as those in professional capacities. The group also shares work opportunities, with some members working together already, including Danièle and Sam. Deadly Djurumin is an opportunity to support each other, grow and lead to hold positions and create opportunities to have Women’s, Mother’s and inevitably Grandmother’s Laws become more visible in our spaces. It is an opportunity to further our education, not only in architecture but also our understanding of culture in a culturally safe environment with people we sense as kin. It is also a way to ensure that other women’s voices, in whichever project we work on, are equally heard. We have visions of an incredible future for Country and Community and we are excited to see ourselves, our Elders, our Countries reflected in the environments we create. If you are an Indigenous woman educated and working in spatial disciplines, come have a yarn. ■ _____ Samantha Rich is a Wiradjuri architectural designer. Danièle Hromek is a Budawang/Yuin spatial designer.

NOTES Hromek, D (2019) The (Re)Indigenisation of Space: Weaving narratives of resistance to embed Nura [Country] in design. Doctoral thesis, University of Technology Sydney. Langton, M (2002). The Edge of the Sacred, the Edge of Death: Sensual Inscriptions. In: David, B. & Wilson, M. (eds.) Inscribed Landscapes: Marking and making place. Hawaii, HI: University of Hawaii Press. Matthewson, G (2018) More women in architecture, but gender inequality remains in leadership roles. Lens [Online]. Watson, I (2007) Aboriginal Women’s Laws and Lives: How Might We keep Growing The Law? Australian Feminist Law Journal, 26, 95-107

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How communities can shape architecture WORDS: ABINAYA RAJAVELU AND CLAUDIO HOLZER

The nexus of architecture and community is important in improving the systems and networks that make up our cities to increase our overall economic, environmental, and social resilience. As witnessed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, this can ultimately impact the quality of people’s lives. Having recently shifted from architectural roles into social planning and community engagement, it’s been highlighted to both of us just how important it is for architects to have an in-depth understanding of the social and spatial context of the people we design for. Spatial practitioners need to hold a respect for the knowledge of the local communities who will use them. COVID-19 has highlighted the need for architects to have curiosity about, and seek an understanding of, the needs of diverse people and communities. So, how can community shape architecture and how can architecture cultivate a sense of community and connection? CURIOSITY ABOUT PEOPLE AND THEIR COMMUNITIES To facilitate joyful and resilient communities through design, as architects, we need to first understand the demographic characteristics of the people who will live and use these spaces. Key population characteristics that inform design outcomes include age, cultural backgrounds, household sizes, income, gender, and socioeconomic status. We know that more than 40% of NSW apartment dwellers speak a language

other than English at home and lower income households are disproportionately living in apartments. Research by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) found that failure to address the needs of lower-income, high-density residents risks undermining the prosperity and cohesion of Australian cities in future years (Easthope, 2020). These demographic indicators can inform the design considerations of a building, how much communal open space is needed, how much public open space is needed and what functions it should serve. Demographic indicators also provide clues as to how the building should interface with the public domain and connect to other key places in the area. Considering the current and forecast demographic characteristics of a development at the beginning of the design process provides an opportunity to create buildings and places tailored to the people who will live there, rather than a cookie-cutter solution. CO-CREATION WITH PEOPLE AND COMMUNITIES Any technical study to understand site and place character and future needs should include meaningful engagement with community. People are experts in their own lives and communities and can add immense value to a design process. Nobody knows a local place like the people who live in it. Cultural groups, age groups and socioeconomic groups may also have different needs or aspirations for their homes and public spaces, gaining an understanding of and consideration

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for these needs will result in improved creative design and ultimately improved wellbeing. Our own experiences engaging with people from diverse communities has taught us so many things about how the design of spaces and places can be improved. Engaging with children for the expansion of the playground in Sir Joseph Banks Park, Botany highlighted that children are experts at playgrounds. It was astonishing how well-versed they were regarding the different types of play equipment available across parks in Sydney, and they were able to distil their play experiences into a vision for the park including the look, feel and materiality of the future playground. “Co-designing the playground with the future users of the park in a way guarantees that it will be highly used and loved, and will meet the needs of the community.” Having worked exclusively on educational projects over the past four years in an architecture practice provided the opportunity to facilitate workshops with students and teachers. These conversations and the oftenplayful explorations with the end users always gave unique insights and enriched the design in ways that would not have happened otherwise. In addition to the valuable design input the engagement with the school communities also helped to create a shared vision and a sense of belonging for the school community. As architects, we facilitate stakeholder meetings, run workshops, and engage with different user groups to draw learnings for

our architectural designs. However, these efforts often subside when it is crunch time as a proposal must evolve to achieve the next milestone. Thinking about engagement as a continuous process, as part of the evidence needed to deliver better design outcomes, and as an opportunity to create sustainable longerterm resilience is a much better practice that can lead to better design. “To incorporate community needs, social planning, spatial analysis and human-centred engagement at the beginning of an architecture or masterplanning project can help inform design thinking and create more resilient and socially sustainable outcomes with less risk.” This nexus of architecture and community is important in improving the systems and networks that make up our cities to increase our overall economic, environmental, and social resilience, and as we have witnessed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, ultimately impacts on the quality of people’s lives. ■ _____ Abinaya Rajavelu is a senior consultant and Claudio Holzer is a consultant at Cred Consulting.

NOTES Easthope, Hazel et al (2020) AHURI Executive Summary, Improving outcomes for apartment residents and neighbourhoods, www.ahuri. edu.au/sites/default/files/migration/documents/Improving-outcomes-forapartment-residents-and-neighbourhoods-Executive-Summary.pdf

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Sales Ring Playground Newmarket, Randwick ARTWORK AND WORDS: RICHARD BRIGGS This drawing of the Sales Ring Playground at Inglis Park in Randwick highlights the positive impact that good green space and public amenity can have on a community. Designed by landscape architects Arcadia, the original steel structure of the Inglis stables Sales Ring was turned into a suspended climbing and play structure, providing hours of play for children of all ages. The space around the play area hosts all sorts of community activities and creates a vibrant atmosphere. This drawing was done before the recent lockdown, and shows families gathering for a ninth birthday party, with cake, laughter and a pinata being hung on the steel pergola ready for action. The drawing also aims to capture the importance of play in our communities, and how the beautiful fig tree can remind us of the importance of nature in an urban context. The way that Inglis Park acts as a community hub demonstrates how good design with a thoughtful process can create a meaningful public space that combines play, nature, and delight.

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Rothwell Symposium THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN AND PLANNING, APRIL 27–29 2021 WORDS: JASPER LUDEWIG

“Design is not the solution to housing problems in Australia” – Professor Nicole Gurran.

When architects in Australia speak about housing we tend to hear more about the aesthetic and technical characteristics of their work than the financial conditions of its production. This is strange, given that all residential architecture relies upon myriad financial instruments that are designed to secure what for most people is the biggest asset they will own in their lifetime (if at all). Home loans, insurance, superannuation schemes and the calculus of interest and capital gains are all woven into the very fabric of housing. They are the financial tools with which a mere dwelling – irrespective of its architectural merit – is transformed into both the de facto means for private wealth accumulation in this country and eye-watering levels of household debt. Australian home loans are estimated at $2.5 trillion, inextricably tied to houses and apartments, as collateral, throughout the country. Can Australians even imagine a life without debt? And what are the obligations of the architect to the financial conditions of their architecture? THE ARCHITECT AND THE SPREADSHEET Over the course of three days in late April 2021, The University of Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning played host to a series of

discussions that set out to address a similar set of concerns. Together, these discussions comprised the inaugural Rothwell Chair Symposium, curated in 2021 by recent Pritzker Prize Laureates, Lacaton & Vassal. Their stated ambition for the event was to “deal with contemporary urban conditions of living in the city” and each of the Symposium’s five sessions focused on a specific aspect of this wider framing. The clearest common thread to emerge from these discussions was the attempt to understand how Lacaton & Vassal’s design methodology might be applied outside of the French context. Their well-known projects – 53 units in Saint-Nazaire, 100 social housing units in Tour Bois le Prêtre and 530 social housing units in Grand Parc, among others – are sophisticated embodiments of this methodology in action: heavily rationalised yet flexible dwellings in which the luxury of unprogrammed domestic space is prioritised over expensive finishes, and in which the value of the existing is redoubled through the careful application of the new. The aesthetic dimensions of this work are clearly also alluring: diaphanous metallic curtains, translucent polycarbonate sheeting and raw concrete columns set against the residents’ everyday bric-a-brac – an unpretentious domesticity that we rarely see represented in the world of architecture. So far, so good. But then…

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As the symposium progressed, and the convincing formula was repeated – keep the existing and transform it, stretch budgets as far as possible, provide programmatic flexibility instead of prescribing use – a slightly irritated line of questioning started to appear in the chat boxes of the livestreamed sessions. The crux of this irritation was as follows: given that the delivery of housing in Australia is almost entirely market-based, does this not fundamentally change the relationship between the architect and their project budget? How, then, is Lacaton & Vassal’s methodology applicable to a context like Australia where private home ownership predominates? THE POLITICS OF PROPERTY Perhaps the most succinct formulation of these concerns was provided by Professor Nicole Gurran. How, Gurran asked, “did we arrive at this place where the idea of preserving social housing, or public housing towers”, and “improving them on the public purse has become radical politics”? As is often the case, neoliberalism was the answer. However, instead of using it as a catch-all for the inequities produced by capitalism, here Gurran wielded the term with precision. Specifically, neoliberalism refers not only to the idea that the free market will deliver solutions to housing problems, but also to the simultaneous depoliticisation of the industries that participate in this market, including architecture. In other words, the fact that we feel there is anything to be learned from Lacaton & Vassal’s design methodology – which, let’s be honest, is based on simple common sense – says little about that methodology and much more about the conditions of the market in which architects operate in Australia. After all, this is a country where the notion that housing could ever be separated from its commodity status as real estate is very difficult to comprehend. And yes, the point Gurran goes on to make – that “design is not the solution to housing problems in Australia” – is based on the important observation that urban policy, not good design, leads to structural change. But then where does this leave architecture? For one, it allows us to see architecture’s fascinations with aesthetics, formalism and

design quality as symptoms of a kind of retreat from the material reality of its production. As Gurran astutely points out, design quality – irrespective of its good intentions – is ultimately always delivered to those who already have the means to participate in the property market to begin with. As for the aestheticisation of architecture – and this is me here, not Gurran – perhaps a more financially literate vocabulary is required: not firms or studios but companies, not practice but labour, not design but service, not luxury but excess, not taste but commodification. I don’t propose to have any substantial remedies here, I merely think these problems, as they emerged throughout the symposium, are worth formulating. Not only because they challenge the professional ethics of architecture – which, as a discipline, is good at celebrating its social project – but also because they reintroduce political questions into what are often framed as purely economic conditions. Here we enter the purview of Pier Vittorio Aureli who has made a career from destabilising this distinction: “Of course an economy acts politically, but its politics ultimately aims to establish economic criteria as the primary organisation of the human environment” (Aureli, 2011). Reframing this for our purposes as yet another question: can architecture ever exist outside the market logic of capitalism? Gurran would probably say yes, but only through greater government intervention. But then that just recapitulates the redundancy of architecture that we’re trying to avoid. WITHIN AND AGAINST Gary Rothwell is the founder of Winten Property Group –“one of Australia’s premier property development companies”– which is presumably where the money was made that now supports the Rothwell Chair position that Lacaton & Vassal will hold until 2023. From one angle, there is a certain irony to this conjunction: surplus capital from a development company, “focused on… the delivery of greenfield land estates,” being used to promote urban social housing projects to Australian architects. From another angle, however, the contrast also makes a kind of sense, especially in how it frames a proposition that was often reinforced throughout the symposium: the necessary shift away from the architect-as-designer to the architect-as-developer.

COMMUNITY / ROTHWELL SYMPOSIUM WORDS: JASPER LUDEWIG

We are used to thinking of this shift in terms of familiar examples like Nightingale Housing, Assemble Futures and other deliberative models of development; however, these models never go so far as transcending private home ownership in its entirety – really, they just repackage the same commodity in a different, slightly more affordable, box. So, what would it mean for the architect to fully embrace the position of developer in order to produce nonmarket forms of housing? Their first step would be to listen to every episode of the Hidden Cities podcast at least twice. They would then probably want to read up on the different forms of cooperative – that is, collectively owned – housing around the world, whether the non-profit Swiss Genossenschaften or the Kooperative Grossstadt in Munich. Although ownership still exists in these models it is not held by the individual/resident, rather by a company in which the resident is a shareholder. Based on these examples, the gap between project management, designer and developer seems to be fertile ground for the architect to move into who, as a result, would only be limited by their ability to access finance capital. Even here, models like REAL Homes, currently being promoted by Jack Self as an “ethical real estate project,” are finding novel ways of attracting so-called “impact capital” to provide long-term financial security to their resident shareholders in high-quality housing. The point is therefore not to escape neoliberal capitalism entirely, rather to work both within and against it.

If Australians tried to imagine a life without debt, or at the very least, a life in which their housing did not consume a high proportion of their income, they would not be able to look to Lacaton & Vassal’s design methodology for much guidance. Ultimately, this methodology is the product of a more socialised housing sector in which the architect is in a far better position to shape a more equitable distribution of resources. Instead, they would need to look to contexts where the architect has been able to redirect market forces towards non-market forms of housing. Moreover, they would need to imagine a world in which architects cared as much about financial conditions and ownership models as they do about taste and details. It’s here that the 2021 Rothwell Chair Symposium makes a very meaningful contribution – not only by opening-up the question of architecture’s financialisation, but also by situating this question at the very centre of the architect’s ethical obligations. ■ _____ Jasper Ludewig is a lecturer in Architectural History, Theory & Design, School of Architecture & Built Environment at the University of Newcastle. and associate editor, Architectural Theory Review.

NOTES Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 6.

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Reframing a disaster: Rebuilding community on the NSW south coast WORDS: KATHARINA HENDEL AND BRENT DUNN

Personal connections to the south coast, coupled with an overwhelming desire to help where possible, our studio has been involved in a number of community recovery projects. CONJOLA In Lake Conjola, where we originally started Takt and had family who experienced the worst of the 2020 New Year’s Eve fires, we worked alongside the Recovery Committee, an association formed in the immediate aftermath of the fires to provide assistance to the community. While donations were distributed, funds raised and red tape hurdled, ideas also blossomed of how to transform the disaster into a rebuild program that would not only help the community move forward from the tragedy, but also improve resilience going forward. As architects our skills were best suited to assist in filtering a myriad of seemingly random ideas into a more focused plan with room to develop and grow. The result is a masterplan, or vision document, that allows the community to fill in pieces over time. The project process was a significant learning experience, as the project struggled through leadership changes, political challenges, some

vocal community opposition to the “fancy or architect-y” despite our attempts to tread carefully and gently. Significantly evident was a sense of communal fatigue. The brief window of time when goodwill, donations and grants are available is sometimes not the right time for the community. Yet, some pieces have been funded and we remain hopeful that as time passes, new leaders may emerge to take these ideas further. COBARGO Building on our work in Conjola, early tentative steps to establish a south coast office were accelerated when The Cobargo Folk Club & The Cobargo Showground Land Manager contacted us to assist with their visionary plans for a community hall. As the centre of operations for the initial bushfire recovery, the existing facilities at the Cobargo showground operated to support the recovery effort. A new community building, on this relatively safe land, could double as a disaster refuge, not just for future fires, but also to counter the threat of other climate change impacts. Dual purposing of the structure is a challenge but it acknowledges that layers of protection can be a feature of good architecture. Layers that, like clothing, can be pulled on or off in different situations to improve thermal comfort for community gatherings in increasingly variable climatic conditions. This project has received partial funding and we continue to work with the community in obtaining additional funds to begin construction while exploring the project’s possible wider application with Resilience NSW and other government and legislative bodies. While Conjola experienced devastation of its residential areas, Cobargo and surrounds lost homes together with a swathe of its Main Street heart to a dagger of unbelievably devastating fires. Reimagining this highly evident emptiness in town is critical in restoring a sense of centre to Cobargo and its surrounds. While working on the community hall project, initial introductions to the Rebuild Cobargo Main Street project were made after the Bushfire Local Economic Recovery Fund (BLERF) grants

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Module C

Module B Module A

Module D Module F

Module E Module G

Module A Conjola Entrance Improvements

Module E Bikeway Link between Communities

Module B Yooralla Bay Facilities & Memorial

Module F Bikeway Lake Conjola

Module C Bikeway to Haviland St

Module G Playground & Skate Park & Shelter

Module D Pathways, Fishing Platforms, Bike Play and Signage

Module H Road Realignment

DEVELOPMENT MODULES In order to be able to implement this masterplan in stages a set of initial modules excluding possible connections to Fishermans Paradise and Narrawallee, grouping the components of the plan into manageable parcels has been developed. Each module may be completed on its own or in conjunction with others and in the most appropriate order. The initial focus area will be the Conjola Park area (module B) due to the extensive devastation wrought there by the fires. A concept design plan for Module B is currently being developed.

D evelop ment Mod ules

Top: Takt Cobargo Main Street Elevation

Module H

Scale 1:15000

C O NJ O L A C ON N E C T E D C OM M U N I T I E S

Above: Takt Conjola Masterplan Excerpt

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Takt Cobargo Community Hall 3D

COMMUNITY / COBARGO AND CONJOLA REBUILD PROGRAMS WORDS: KATHARINA HENDEL AND BRENT DUNN

were announced by the NSW Government. A number of client bodies – Cobargo Bushfire Resilience Centre, and the Cobargo Quaama Business Recovery Group with a number of public private partnerships with landowners were seeking assistance to develop the grant proposals. Government funding deadlines were only weeks from announcement so the race was on. On top of the fatigue of the previous year, face-toface community meetings were impacted by the pandemic, and the deadline to deliver the applications fell close to the anniversary of the fires, adding to the intensity of the process. Australian Business Volunteers (ABV) provided much needed support for the many projects being designed and costed, and numerous other organisations such as Arup and TBH offered pro bono assistance. We could not have completed these project designs without the invaluable input from SJB. Fortunately for the community, this immense effort was worthwhile as the Main Street projects are now successfully funded. Where typically architects operate with a clear mandate – a direct link to decision makers, with an expectation to lead, to drive a project forward while carefully stewarding the creative spark in the process to a built conclusion, in community projects the driving factor is not the architect – nor should it be. It is the community itself via its representatives. While diverse in backgrounds and personalities, the leaders in these projects have all shown a similar determination, calm confidence, and ability to hear all sides and negotiate outcomes. They are translators of the vision to various subgroups, and are personally invested in a great outcome for the community. Without this drive and passion, none of these projects could ever hope to develop to their fullest potential. They require leaders who

understand their community, who can learn from its past, and who appreciate the breadth of the future challenges that are most certainly mounting. By respecting and responding to the values of a community, adding weight and depth to their narrative from our own investigations, sometimes challenging assumptions, we become facilitators. The value architecture offers is the process of drawing out ideas, of revealing hidden significance and deepening understanding after careful listening and close observation. Knowing too, when to step back, to allow the community time and pause for reflection, to let the silt stirred to settle is important. For us, input and advice from many other practitioners who have been down similar paths before has been critical. In our view the architecture community stands to gain immensely by open sharing of knowledge and support among peers. As committed regionalists we understand that while change in the built environment is inevitable, it should occur in a way that celebrates the uniqueness of each place, is considerate of the challenges that lie ahead, and caters for the diversity of community life. ■ _____ Takt directors Katharina Hendel and Brent Dunn are active in the Small Practice Forum of the Australian Institute of Architects and are founding members of the Regional Architecture Association. Takt has been working with communities on the south coast of NSW, to assist with post bushfire recovery projects, including masterplanning in Lake Conjola, designing a multipurpose community hall / disaster refuge for the Cobargo Showground, and are continuing to work on the recently funded Rebuild Cobargo and Cobargo Bushfire Resilience Centre main street projects.

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A creative bushfire recovery project for the communities of the Snowy Valleys WORDS: VANESSA KEENAN

The term nostalgia can describe the yearning for home soldiers felt in WWI when faced with the horrors of the battlefront. Today, for many Australians, the battlefront is the impact of climate change. As well as personal and material losses experienced, communities are dealing with the impact of the loss of their landscape. Solastalgia is a modern term used to describe the distress some people experience that is caused by changes to the environment, both built and natural, more often than not brought on by climate change. The Dunn’s Road mega-fire wreaked havoc for fifty days in the Snowy Valleys and surrounding Bago State Forest and Kosciuszko National Park, from late December 2019 to mid-February 2020. While some impacted environments are recovering, others won’t ever be the same. The Alpine Ash (Eucalyptus delegatensis) that dominates the Snowy Valleys high country is reliant on fire to germinate its seeds; however, young Alpine Ash cannot survive high-severity fires and there are serious concerns that while much of the natural hardwood forests are recovering from the 2003 fires, the regeneration of the iconic trees from this event is in jeopardy. What does this mean for our alpine landscapes? How does this long-term impact and scarring affect our sense of place and connection to our local landscapes?

One year on from the devastating fires, Arbour Festival sought to explore some of these questions through a series of exhibitions, events and ephemeral public art installations. A creative recovery project in the first instance, Arbour also sought to celebrate and acknowledge what remained after the devastation, deepening the connection to the natural and built environment that contributes to a sense of place for the communities of the Snowy Valleys. Arbour created gathering points for community in the built and natural environment that remained, reminding us of what we still had and rethinking how we used our spaces. Repurposing an arboretum as an outdoor concert hall, a basketball stadium as an indoor forest and an old bank as a gallery helped to gently shift the mindset from ‘what is’ to ‘what could be’. Both during and after the fires, community infrastructure was repurposed and became a vital gathering point for information sharing, food distribution and shelter. The local indoor basketball court became a hive of activity for BlazeAid, the Memorial Hall a hub for updates from the Rural Fire Service (RFS) and other agencies. Friends, neighbours and families reunited on the steps, faces blackened from the ash and bodies weary with fatigue.

COMMUNITY / A CREATIVE BUSHFIRE RECOVERY PROJECT FOR THE COMMUNITIES OF THE SNOWY VALLEYS WORDS: VANESSA KEENAN

While the landscape can heal itself with time, our built environment needs intervention. The mementos and memories held in these buildings can’t rejuvenate by themselves. The reimagining of what this infrastructure should look and feel like is the next challenge. How do we recognise what was once there and how do we realise what could be? The mantra is to ‘build back better’. How do we harness the lived experiences from, during and after what are some of the darkest days for these communities and create spaces and places that resonate and play a meaningful role in everyday lives? Ask anyone around these parts and they all have their story from during and after the fires. Some tragic and others joyful, all important in demonstrating the impact of these sudden changes to the environment as a result of the fires. For my family and I, our story is centered on the construction of a fire bunker that was ten years in the making and completed just a matter of days before we faced the front of the megafire. Inspired by the survival stories of the Black Saturday fires in 2009, my step-father David Lyons began what was to be a decade-long project of building a fire bunker at the family property, a cool-climate vineyard surrounded by State Forest and National Park in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains. The bunker was designed to be able to withstand a severe fire for up to 30 minutes. Constructed from Hebel, hardwoods and steel, the design evolved over the years, but the fundamentals remained the same. Little did we

know that it would be put to the test so soon and that on New Year’s Eve 2019, we would be sheltering in it for over three hours, allowing us to defend the farm’s built infrastructure in between fire fronts through putting out spot fires and refueling fire-fighting pumps. Eighteen months on and this landscape is still changing dramatically. As I write, out the window a bulldozer is removing what’s left of the vineyard. What were once strong contour lines of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir vines, defining the undulating hills and changing with the seasons now sits as nondescript bare paddocks. Often the marks we make as humans on the landscape are as evocative as nature itself and their loss equally as profound. ■

_____ Vanessa Keenan is the managing director of Acorn Creative Group and curator of the Arbour Festival.

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Tending to the open field: The art of maintaining publicness WORDS: HUGO MOLINE

Before discussing the ongoing transformations of this Country, we pay our respects to all the people connected to the kinship system of this Country, including the D’harawal, the Dharug, the Eora, the Gaimaragal, the Gundungurra and the Guringai. We acknowledge that sovereignty of this land was never ceded. We look out on a former public works depot in Waterloo, Sydney, now a field of concrete ringed by cyclone fencing. Across the road, in the offices of an arts organisation, we are meeting with people who live around the field or have some connection to it. The field will soon be gone, replaced by new apartment buildings in an area once wetland, then industrial, now the densest residential area in the city. The local government will require the developer to create a new public space here. That’s why we are here, speaking to people, gathering their ideas of what this public space could be. Our work is viewed with suspicion by some; we are a fig-leaf

to overdevelopment, we are the midwives of gentrification. We don’t have the authority to change the building heights, or set affordability standards, so what can we possibly do? In late 2016 we were commissioned by the City of Sydney, to creatively engage with the community surrounding the Danks Street South Precinct so that their stories, values and ideas could help shape the future public spaces to be developed. While in typical development processes, these kinds of engagements happen towards the end of the design process, here the city was trialling a new approach, to do this at the beginning. Since 2020, we have been working with D’harawal Knowledge Keeper Shannon Foster and Jo Paterson Kinniburgh of Bangawarra, as well as Jane Irwin Landscape Architects, to develop an initial public space concept design for the precinct. The precinct forms the northern tip of the Green Square redevelopment and is bordered by Danks, Young, McEvoy and Bourke streets. The site is most easily identified by the large concrete open field, surrounding the Sydney Water Pumping Station and Valve House, located at the south-eastern corner of the precinct. This is Nadunga Gurad (sand-dune Country) known for millenia for its nattai (saltwater/ freshwater wetlands). Since colonisation it has lived many lives, for many people: providing a site for refuge, industry and activism. The site, which houses essential water infrastructure, now sits among multiple traumatic urban changes – the ongoing displacement of public housing communities, Westconnex road adjustments, as well as ongoing forms of gentrification. This site

Montage by MAPA

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students packed three to a room, dog walkers, dancers etc. Through the concept of the Open Field we seek to connect these multiple collectives to the place on as equal terms as possible, and in that way also begin to connect them to each other.

Above: Caretaker residency diagram

will now be transformed again, mostly this will be expensive, and thus exclusive, private space. But for the first time in a long time, there will be a part of the site which will be open to everyone, a public place. But calling a space public doesn’t necessarily make it so. We set out to learn what a true public space would do here. We framed our initial engagement with community as a form of open research on the site, inviting the people who knew it, and lived with it, to work with us to collectively understand it. This mostly took the form of hourlong conversations with individuals and small groups conducted over several weeks. Many people spoke to us about the importance of bringing back the site to its pre-colonial state, to restore lost ecologies, to remedy the history of contamination and to provide space and funding to the Indigenous community to whom the Redfern-Waterloo area is so significant. People also spoke to us about the physical openness, the beautiful urban pause, the suggestive possibilities of the empty site, and the strong desire to preserve these qualities. As we have learned from our research there is no single public for this site, it is a complex network of overlapping publics, Indigenous communities, young professionals, social housing tenants, retirees, Chinese grandparents, international 32

Drawing on research, we took on the role of utopians-in-residence, channelling our discussions with various publics to propose images of possible spatial iterations, ranging from a vast phytoremediation forest to clean the site of decades of dry-cleaning contaminants, to a proposal to raise the entire development on stilts, preserving the open field below as true uncommodified public space. To our surprise the council took our speculative visions seriously, embedding elements of it into their regulatory framework. Through slow negotiation, each element has been reduced; from a forest to a set of pods, from a site-wide condition of openness to modifications at the building edges. Utopia has been bargained down by the realities of commercial tenancies and potential liabilities of exposing the toxins in the ground. While it is hard to say yet if any of these original visions will remain, the proposed process by which the public space will be shaped over time cannot be compromised. The public art funding from developer levies will, on this site, be used to pay for an ongoing set of caretaker residencies for artists, scientists, historians and others to continue the work of developing and maintaining utopias on site. Each residency will be tasked with inciting and continuing discussions with the diverse publics of this site, proposing new uses, forming new collectives and augmenting the public space. These residencies will commence prior to development and will operate over a period of twenty years. In the vexed context of urban redevelopment we are here attempting to introduce an element of slow, repetitive care for a site. Here architecture is reframed as an ongoing practice of tending to a site and the many publics who may use it. In this case, it particularly involves tending to and maintaining the site’s openness: of access, meaning and opportunity. ■ _____ Hugo Moline is co-director of MAPA, an art and architecture collaborative working between the social and the spatial.

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To regenerate as one: the social promise of sustainable architecture WORDS: SARAH LAWLOR

We are hearing encouraging stories about large companies setting ambitious sustainability targets for the construction of their new workplaces (or campuses as Microsoft refers to theirs). Similarly, top-tier developers are adopting sustainable initiatives in their residential offerings that have proven to be a marketing boon following the successes of projects like Nightingale. However, for those who don’t work in the Central Business District headquarters of multinationals nor can afford to live in these types of developments, the environmental amenity of many living and work spaces in Australia remains low, with poor passive climate control requiring substantial heating and cooling. The burden of poorly designed or constructed buildings, including the absence of wellbeing benefits from access to daylight and ventilation as well energy costs of inefficient buildings, are often borne by those that can least afford it. While the sustainability targets from aspirational clients and leadership from top-tier developers and contractors in the sector is undoubtedly welcome and necessary to help set a benchmark for the rest of the market, we need to ensure that sustainable design is accessible, and that the exclusivity and expense of premium developments with superior sustainability outcomes doesn’t further compound social inequality.

There is a shift in our industry towards regenerative design, a holistic systems approach that contributes to renewable energy production, a waste-free circular economy and revitalisation of the natural environment, representing a fundamental change in language and thinking for sustainable design. Moving beyond the current norms of sustainable practice, which aim to do less harm to the environment, regenerative projects are based on a principle of doing more good, where projects have a positive impact on their social and environmental contexts. Social equity is one of the three established pillars of sustainability, along with environmental protection and economic viability. There are opportunities throughout the design process to support social equity, by engaging with community through the design process, by supporting local industry through material or product specifications and collaborations, and by designing places with community in mind. In the work we do, architects are uniquely placed to affect both environmental and social outcomes through our projects, and approach the dual challenges of climate crisis and inequity with creative solutions. The growing momentum of climate strikes internationally in 2019 and the establishment of various community and industry-based environmental groups like Architects Declare

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Bunjil Place | fjmtstudio | Photo: Trevor Mein

has coincided with a social reckoning. The groundswell of community action propelling the environmental movement is equally concerned about the social inequalities evident in our community, and is agitating for social change in other areas also, evidenced by the concurrent emergence of numerous social movements including Black Lives Matter and Women’s March for Justice. In their edited collection All We Can Save: Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, (2020), Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katherine K. Wilkenson write about the climate crisis as a “threat multiplier, making existing vulnerabilities and injustices worse.” They urge us to respond to the climate crisis in ways that “heal systemic injustices rather than deepen them.” It is imperative that we consider ways to support social sustainability through our projects, such as through regenerative design practices that enhance the communities in which they inhabit and interact with.

While there is an opportunity and responsibility for sustainable projects to support and improve social equity, there is an inverse relationship where improved social equity can also improve sustainability outcomes. In 2020, as part of the International Women’s Day Scholarship supported by the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC), I undertook a research project that explored representation and diversity of sustainability leadership in the built environment industry. The business case for gender representation in business leadership has been proven over the past few decades to improve profitability, and my research was based on an expanded premise that diversity must also surely improve other business outcomes, including sustainability outcomes. My project built on an increasing body of research globally around women and sustainability, such as the UN Environment Programme, which identified “women in environmental decision-making at all levels” as one of four priority areas, arguing that diverse

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Bunjil Place | fjmtstudio | Photo: Trevor Mein

representation in decision-making is vital to sound policy and action. We know that diversity drives innovation by bringing together new perspectives and ideas. The environmental challenges we face require innovative solutions from our industry; we need to ensure diverse involvement and engagement in our projects, so that we can generate sustainable solutions that best support our community. The relationship between sustainability and social equality is twofold. Social equity is necessary to create diversity, which offers the best chance of generating innovative sustainability solutions, while sustainable projects in turn offer an opportunity to improve social equity in the communities they are embedded within. To be sustainable, we can’t leave behind large parts of the community, who may be otherwise disadvantaged by various social structures. As we respond to the desperate need to repair our natural environment, we should use our tools as architects in shaping environments to also

support the healing of social environments. To again reference All We Can Save, Johnson and Wilkenson write, “Equity is not secondary to survival, as some suggest, it is survival… We unravel as one or we regenerate as one”. Sustainable architecture must look to positively influence its social context as an inseparable consequence of its environmental impact – the interlinked nature of this social and environmental crisis demands it. ■ _____ Sarah Lawlor is an associate at fjmtstudio, working on Gadigal land. In 2020 Sarah won NAWIC’s International Women’s Day Scholarship for her project ‘Is Sustainability Leadership Women’s Business? A Study of Diversity in Sustainability Leadership in the Built Environment.’ Sarah was a finalist in the Green Building Council’s Future Green Leader award for 2021, and is co-chair of the NSW chapter’s editorial committee for the Architecture Bulletin.

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The power of small WORDS: CAROLINE KITE AND SARAH SCHOFFEL

“I deeply believe that the world is not changing through one big decision. It’s the everyday small decisions that are really shaping our environment and society” – Anna Heringer, German architect and recipient of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (Maganga, 2021)

As architects we’re often focused on the final built outcome, but what if the process of reaching that outcome had more impact than the building itself? A participatory approach to architecture has the capacity to foster community and the role of the architect can be central to this process. Engaging with the community at all stages of a project contributes to a sense of fulfilment for those involved, with long-lasting positive impacts. Though small in scale, The Anganwadi Project’s work is an established and proven example of process before project. The Anganwadi Project (TAP) is an Australian based Non Government Organisation (NGO) which has been working in India since 2007 on the design and construction of anganwadis, or preschools, for communities in informal settlements and rural villages. TAP’s goal is to 36

provide children in these communities with a safe, well designed, beautiful space to learn in, incorporating sustainable strategies such as passive design and low-cost and recycled materials. Sustainability, however, is much more than a physical outcome. TAP focuses on empowering communities and particularly women through collaboration and by “enlarging their choices and opportunities and providing for their participation in decisions that affect their lives” (Kumar, 2012). This is a key aspect of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)’s definition of sustainable development. Professional volunteer architects, Australian and Indian, live and work alongside local NGO partners (Manav Sadhna in Ahmedabad and Rural Development Trust in Anantapur) and communities. Communities globally tend to congregate around their shared experience of child-raising. By starting with children, these tiny projects are disproportionately powerful within their localities, seeding connections wherever they are built. At a national level, anganwadis fit within the overarching framework of the Integrated Child Development Services: a government program across India to improve the health, nutrition and education of children, including pregnant and breastfeeding mothers. TAP’s process has been developed over a decade of architect-led community engagement which starts from the very inception of the project right through to post occupation of the school. Volunteers work on the ground for sixmonths minimum to complete the project. TAP has found that working with the community is about building relationships, which takes time. When architects facilitate this process, they carry their intimate knowledge of the community throughout all stages of the project. Guided by the partner NGOs, volunteers begin by observing and listening to the community’s needs and aspirations. Spending time encourages familiarity and trust. The relationship with the anganwadi teacher is key to acceptance in the community. TAP has witnessed how the teacher’s agency within their communities can grow through their involvement in each project. As the design progresses, TAP volunteers use participatory techniques for engagement. One way to engage is to sit-and-do; writing, sketching, mapping, making models – playing

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Left: Bholu, drawing on site. Ahmedabad, India Photo: Rikita Gandhi Below: Harivillu. Anganwadi completed 2019. Bondalawada, Andhra Pradesh. Photo: Roberto Rodriguez Photography

COMMUNITY / THE POWER OF SMALL WORDS: CAROLINE KITE AND SARAH SCHOFFEL

games. Engaging in activities invites curiosity and collaboration even when language barriers don’t allow for much communication. While drawings are produced for construction, the use of physical models which can be picked up and passed around most clearly explains the building and allows community members to understand and comment on the design. The construction stage (which employs both men and women as labourers) also focuses on community participation. Once the main structure is complete, the community and local artisans are invited to help build gabion walls, create gardens, weave screens, tile mosaics and paint murals. The act of being hands-on provides a strong sense of connection and pride in the building. Long term, it instils a level of ownership by the community who continue to care for the building, ensuring that the children will benefit from the anganwadi for years to come.

_____ Caroline Kite is a registered architect and board member for The Anganwadi Project. She is a previous TAP volunteer to Ahmedabad and a project mentor for recent volunteers in both TAP locations. Caroline is a committee member for the Australian Institute of Architects Emerging Architects and Graduates Network and a sessional tutor at USYD. Sarah Schoffel has been practising architecture for over 25 years, and is a director of Sandberg Schoffel Architects. She is a board member of The Anganwadi Project and a project coordinator for Architects Without Frontiers. Sarah holds a Masters of Disaster Design and Development (MoDDD) from RMIT and has been a TAP volunteer to Anantapur and worked on development projects in India, Bangladesh and Fiji.

While this intimate model of working may be challenging to scale up, TAP’s work is an example of how small-scale interventions can have a sustainable and positive effect on the people they serve. TAP has intentionally stayed small to maintain this personal connection with projects and communities, seeking to build and maintain schools slowly. This process has allowed valuable knowledge to be passed on iteratively from volunteer to volunteer which enables constant refinement and evaluation of the process. In our rapidly changing world the importance of community-based initiatives is gaining attention. Many of the problems we face now stem from high-level political and economic decisions leading directly to environmental degradation, unsustainable urbanisation and conflicts around the world. Slowing down, engaging directly with people, putting our particular architectural skills at their disposal while equally valuing their input, empowers communities to become actively involved in the everyday small decisions that shape our collective future. ■ 38

NOTES Maganga M (2021) “Sustainability Is a Synonym of Beauty”: In Conversation With Anna Heringer” ArchDaily, accessed 2 Aug 2021. https://www.archdaily.com/959398/sustainability-is-a-synonym-of-beautyin-conversation-with-anna-heringer Kumar A, (2012) Women and sustainable development – Women’s empowerment is a key factor for achieving sustainable economic growth, India Water Portal, accessed 1 August 2021. https://www. indiawaterportal.org/articles/women-and-sustainable-developmentwomens-empowerment-key-factor-achieving-sustainable

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Harivillu, mosaic, Bondalawada, Andhra Pradesh. Photo: Sarah Schoffel.

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Place, people, materials WORDS: SANDRA MEIHUBERS

While preparing the works of architect Paul Pholeros for archiving in the State Library of New South Wales, a lecture outline for architecture students in Papua New Guinea, circa 1995, was unearthed. The title is simply PNG Talk. Paul presented three universal principles for the design process: consider the descending hierarchical order of place, people, and materials (or “stuff” in future iterations). Place: protect the site and greater room, respect its overall custodial role in preserving the environment. People: entrusted with clients’ money and dreams, the architect works with them to identify and develop needs; the best ideas come from the clients. Materials: reduce the quantity of materials and increase the quality of the built and natural living environments. Students pre- and post-1995 explored these principles through games, which in the modern parlance would be problem-based learning. Paul always preferred games. The principles underscored his practise, from his pioneering cooperative approaches to improving environmental health and housing conditions in Indigenous and remote communities, to improving living conditions for private architecture clients. In his reflective moments Paul singled out one project to be the most meaningful – the Tjilpiku Pampaku Ngura (home for elder men

and women) on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in northwest South Australia, opened in 2000. Paul had already been working on the Lands, spanning from the Stuart Highway in the east to the Western Australian border in the west, for 15 years and had developed respectful relationships with Anangu and non-Anangu leaders. Over more than two years the project’s development process was led by an Anangu team who consulted with the residents of the six major communities and several homelands on the Lands. Paul’s role was to listen and to share his thoughts on possibilities and practicalities. This collaboration with the Anangu communities, Troppo Architects, Aged Care and health advisers, engineers and builders, resulted in a facility that respects traditional comforts – sheltered outdoor gathering and resting spaces, connections to earth – and the necessities for Elders’ health and residential care provision. The site, nestled in the edges of the Musgrave Ranges, has a powerful sense of ancient strength both physical and spiritual. In the years to come Paul visited the Ngura regularly to maintain his connections with Anangu friends and to keep an eye on the landscape, buildings and usage patterns, learning always for future projects.

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Paul died suddenly in early 2016, a tragic loss. One colleague mused, who do I look up to now? The community-based environmental health and housing works in Australia and overseas continue to be implemented by Paul’s teams, after a period of considerable adjustment. The Paul Pholeros Foundation (PPF) was established in 2018 to honour Paul’s legacy of improving peoples’ lives and investment in skills development. The initial focus was on Nepal, to build on foundations laid by Paul in guiding village sanitation programs since 2007. In 2019 the PPF provided a travelling Fellowship to a young plumbing and media team from Australia to work on the construction of a communal toilet block near the villagers’ holy gathering site, a Buddhist stupa in the nearby forest. Mentored by a senior plumber who is a founding director of the PPF, the team worked alongside their counterparts from the village. The villagers dedicated this facility to “Paul Sir” and proudly maintained it through employment of a caretaker. The COVID pandemic forced the cancellation of the Nepal 2020 team – a plumber and an architect. Their project was to be the restoration of an outreach health centre’s toilet block that had been damaged by major earthquakes in 2015.

With the annual PPF Fellowship on hold, the organisation ran a national competition in Australia for the design of a portable handwashing unit. Messages stressing the importance of hand hygiene have been strong and clear since the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic. Many countries including Nepal have developed hand-washing units to address the lack of local sanitation facilities; however, there is great need for a durable and portable handwashing unit for use in locations with little or no access to a clean reticulated water supply. The competition was won by a Bachelor of Design architecture graduate who is working with the PPF’s technical advisory panel to finalise the unit’s design details. The unit will be trialled and evaluated in Nepal, ahead of any final design modifications and production by Nepali fabricators. The PPF will also soon be releasing information about a Paul Pholeros Architecture Scholarship. In the spirit of Paul’s considerations of the roles of place, people and materials in improving peoples’ lives, it will support newly graduated creative minds to explore, within Australia, the social purpose of architecture. ■ _____ Sandra Meihubers AM is chair of the Paul Pholeros Foundation.

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Cultivating community for vital times WORDS: KIRSTY HETHERINGTON

A virtual community is created not from common location, but from common interest. While being online can be an accessible source of solace in pandemic isolation, there are risks in replacing physical communities with virtual ones. The well acknowledged malady of the echo chamber, lacking diversity and eliminating contrasting viewpoints can allow viewpoints to develop without a sense of responsibility to a wider diverse society and with information absent from their reasoning (Rheingold, 1993 and Dertouzos, 1997). Within a virtual community, thousands may stand on their soapbox concurrently, with no obligation to fulfil the reciprocal listening that defines a typical human conversation. This kind of environment generates fear, may isolate individuals from physical neighbours and even trigger conspiratorial ideation. In their worst form, virtual communities can present motivation for non-compliance of pandemic control measures, putting their physical neighbours at risk. Being surrounded by people does not generate community on its own, being engaged in a community requires certain conditions to be present, and often requires a catalyst of sorts. We know well the physical qualities that provide opportunities for community to develop – designing with people in mind, enabling incidental interactions, less cars, more common spaces (Gehl,). The neurological biology of humans might suggest scale is important, that we should be designing for micro communities embedded within macro communities. Understanding community, its importance, reallife implications, parameters and dimensions, is helpful for those of us involved in city-making or placemaking activities. As practitioners, we have the ability to contribute to community growth. The baseline relationship between authority and community is defined, most often, by planning frameworks but may be tested and tweaked within individual projects. We can advocate for planning processes which genuinely involve the community in visioning, strategising, optioneering and planning phases. There have been many examples that demonstrate the benefits of this and effective outcomes, three examples are below.

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First, an international example – an economic project – is the Preston Model, an implementation project of Community Wealth Building, a program developed and facilitated by CLES, the National Organisation for Local Economies (UK), supported by the work of SGS Economic and Planning. A financial recession revealed Preston’s vulnerability to the whims of outside investors. This model sought to improve local democracy and an economic approach prioritising resilience which one article described as ‘guerrilla localism’ (Chakrabortty, 2018). Second, a local example – a housing project – is Nightingale Housing, a not-for-profit organisation focused on housing equality but also about generating community: at-cost purchasing, prioritisation of public transport, shared community amenity (laundries, open space with facilities) and maintenance (common gardens, worm farms, etc) which improve opportunity for incidental neighbour interaction, a sense of a shared responsibility, ownership and risk to participation in decision making processes. And third, (Two in one) a NSW example – public domain projects – Ethos Urban has been working on a series of projects with two local governments, Port Stephens Council and Eurobodalla Council, with some common qualities. Both seek imaginative ways to enhance engagement and buy-in from the local community. Both seek more economical and time efficient placemaking activity through involving the community in visioning, placemaking and optioneering as well as construction and making stages of the process. Rebuilding Mogo was a project run with Eurobodalla Council. The project prioritised recovery from a shared trauma (Mogo was devastated by the 2019-20 bushfire), in parallel with generating enthusiasm for a future vision for the town. It was developed through many engagement sessions with the community; establishing goals, visions and options. The outcome was designed to be less prescriptive, more a how-to guide, to manage the varied needs of owners, supporting both collective decision making and individual autonomy.

Among endless news narratives of pandemic health, pandemic politics and pandemic economy, the last 18 months has further reinforced to many people the importance of community. In particular, we are keenly aware of community’s capability to improve both mental health (by reducing social isolation during physical isolation) and build pandemic resilience (having direct impacts on health, loss of life and economic outcomes). Looking for opportunities for unconventionally communityfocused, placemaking processes may support an increasing sense of value and belonging, and give individuals an opportunity to craft a map of what and who their community is, with this, a shared dream for the future. ■ _____ Kirsty Hetherington is an architect and principal designer at Ethos Urban.

NOTES Rheingold, Howard (1993) The Virtual Community Dertouzos, Michael (1997) What Will Be Jan Gehl, various works and examples by Jane Jacobs, Charles Montgomery, Jeff Speck Chakrabortty, Aditya (2018) ‘In 2011 Preston hit rock bottom. Then it took back control’, The Guardian, theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/ jan/31/preston-hit-rock-bottom-took-back-control

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IGS Bibliotheque | BVN | Photo: Tom Roe

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Schools at the heart of our neighbourhoods WORDS: ALI BOUNDS

Australian cities are experiencing what international communities have faced for some time – rapid population increase. And with it, a pressing need for more schools, more places to work and more places to live. At the same time we want to feel connected and localised. As architects we’re faced with the challenge of creating more space and more connection, with less. How can we create more of the places we need, in the midst of a high-density urban boom? How can we shape our neighbourhoods differently, support community wellbeing, and embed all the spaces we need, close together? Before COVID there was already a movement to consolidate land and building typologies in urban areas, specifically ones where the numbers of people were going up, and the available land space going down. The idea of multi-functional buildings – school by day, and community space by night or completely integrated precincts that combine residential, workplace and education – was becoming the narrative. Today this is more vital than ever. It’s no longer socially or commercially sustainable to simply have schools operating between set hours, leaving building stock and open space empty outside school time. What’s even more apparent is the vastly improved community connections that can be achieved when previously siloed sections of the community come together as a cohesive unit. When space is shared, and people are brought

together, community interaction increases, and wellness ensues. Since COVID, it’s never been more relevant, as we’ve all been locked in our Local Government Areas, to truly understand the benefits of an economically and socially vibrant neighbourhood community. One that supports cultural initiatives, encourages inclusiveness, promotes sustainable behaviour, and addresses city resilience. As architects we want to create neighbourhoods where people feel they belong. One of the key ways of achieving this is working out how schools can integrate with the urban fabric, creating a neighbourhood anchor point. By reimagining the relationship that schools can have with other community facilities, we can find new ways to integrate and evolve the idea of urban neighbourhoods. And so, we reconsider the conventional school typology. GREEN SQUARE PUBLIC SCHOOL: A SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY INTEGRATION When approaching the design of Green Square School & Integrated Community Facility, our practice recognised that the urban area provided a truly unusual opportunity. The density supported the creation of a new school with a walking catchment. And also, a series of pedestrian-accessible neighbourhood facilities

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Green Square School & Integrated Community Facility | BVN

to provide school learning opportunities – a Creative Arts Centre, Kindergarten, Green Square Library, Gunyama Aquatic Centre, Playing Fields and Drying Green Park. These accessible neighbourhood facilities would allow opportunities for learning to occur outside of the school in spaces that the students would be familiar and comfortable with – ones that they would already be emotionally connected to. In response to this, the architectural language we chose for Green Square Public School and the courtyard ground plane design, intentionally made it a recognisable piece within the series of connected community places. It promotes cultural heritage, unifies the precinct as a recognisable ‘whole of community facilities’ and binds the civic functions through place. It will become a neighbourhood making civic place, a square, that encourages civic responsibility, is inclusive to all, and a place where people feel they belong. A VERTICALLY INTEGRATED SCHOOL MODEL As an extension of this urban model of the school and other community facilities, we are now seeing the increased need for a vertically

integrated school model. This model can be applied by adding schools into existing developments (like International Grammar School) or constructing new precincts that have schools and community functions at the base of commercial and residential developments. In high density, high-rise communities like St Leonards or Parramatta, we see a need for schools and public spaces that ideally can all be reached on foot. By collocating public and private functions, increased employment opportunities are created with safer, active 24hour environments. These types of environments promote a vibrant urban experience, enhancing sense of place through increased access to recreational facilities and access to enterprise. NEXT STEPS Not all of these challenges are easily resolved but there are so many desirable community outcomes from the grouping of shared facilities. As we emerge from lockdown we’ll want more connection, more fresh air, more embedding of our children’s lives in the spaces near us. And we’ll continue to explore how architecture can best promote and support this kind of humanfocused approach to the design of the built environment. ■

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_____ Ali Bounds is a principal architect at BVN. Ali has particular interest in the briefing process and has experience across multiple sectors including education, public, health, adaptive re-use and workplace projects. She enjoys the process of creating and delivering appropriate and vibrant buildings that challenge existing paradigms. Drawing on her experience in numerous specialised building typologies, she has recently focused on a variety of education projects, including Green Square School & Integrated Community Facility and the redevelopment of Arthur Phillip High School and Parramatta Public School.

Top and above: IGS Bibliotheque | BVN | Photos: Tom Roe

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Designers in government WORDS: KATE RINTOUL AND ALICE STROEMSTEDT

While 22.5% of the work architects do is for the government, only a small percentage of the industry work within government itself (AACA: Industry Profile, 2018). For those of us working in architecture and other built environment professions within the government, it can feel like you’re an alien in a foreign land. More often than not, you are one of few designers in your workplace, and, perhaps more significantly, a minority within your profession.

project and property managers, urban planners and policy writers. This is perhaps more noticeable at the local government level, where in many cases design professionals on staff have grown from a single landscape architect or heritage architect to more contemporary models. These models include broader remits and more diverse functions including urban design, design management, design strategy and policy guidance (to name a few).

Government has always had a place for design professionals. For more than 200 years, the NSW Government Architect has had a continuous presence – playing a key stewardship role in the planning, design and delivery of public works and policy across a range of agencies. Council-based city architects (and similar) have had comparable roles in the local context – overseeing much of the public domain and urban design of our towns and cities.

The continuing diversification of roles for designers in government has resulted in a broad spread of design professionals working across different departments and divisions, which can often mean there is only one designer in the room. In some ways this makes the sole designer’s role more important, giving them the agency to apply design thinking in situations where it’s a second language at best. But, it can also be challenging to work in environments without a design background or culture, requiring personal resilience, strong advocacy and communication skills to explain design to non-designers.

Over time, as the value of the government’s role in designing its own buildings has been contested, and several agencies and organisations have shifted their delivery models, the number of designers in traditional design roles in government has reduced. But rather than remove designers from the government context, this has led to a proliferation of allied design roles. In both state and local government we have seen the emergence of designers filling roles that may have once been the domain of

In an attempt to further support the diverse community of designers in both state and local government, Callantha Brigham initiated the group Designers in Government (DiG). DiG seeks to create a community, harness the insight and experience of a broad section of design professionals working across government, and

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raise the profile of design and designers in a government setting. DiG meets online (so far) once a month and informally discusses one or two topics relevant to its members. Membership to date has been by invitation, relying on existing relationships and connections, but there are hopes to broaden the reach as well as the types of activities (eg in-person events and site visits, as restrictions ease). DiG brings together architects, strategic planners, policy authors, landscape architects, urban designers and more from state and local government. Some are government ‘lifers’, others have moved between the private sector and government roles. The members share common reasons for working in government and experience similar challenges and rewards – using words like legacy, giving-back, honour and public service to describe this sometimes odd calling. With the growing recognition of the importance of quality design outcomes in connection with significant contemporary issues such as housing equity, connecting with Country and climate change, government has an instrumental role to play in advocating, shaping and delivering good design. Positively, we are now seeing a push for greater collaboration within government, better partnerships with external stakeholders and more meaningful engagement with the community. There is a new focus on developing

place-based outcomes that speak to local needs and character and delivering new and upgraded public spaces, which local communities rely on now more than ever. The emerging Design and Place SEPP (State Environmental Planning Policy), which aims to embed state-wide design principles into planning processes is perhaps the government’s most significant action reinforcing its gooddesign agenda. The introduction of the SEPP will trigger the need for more design professionals in both state and local government to both demonstrate and review quality design outcomes. Designers in government individually contribute to achieving a common vision and goal of government, which is to promote and deliver good design. With the impacts of the pandemic fundamentally shifting the way we work, live, recreate and communicate, there is no better time for a community of designers to come together to share their experiences, expertise and passion for design. ■ _____ Kate Rintoul and Alice Stroemstedt are members of DiG. If you would like to join the group, please email us at designersingovernment@gmail.com The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of government.

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QUEERING ARCHITECTURE

Guest edited by the Australian Institute of Architects NSW Chapter Gender Equity Transformation, acknowledging Jo Paterson Kinniburgh, Monica Edwards, Diana Espiritu and Belinda Goh.

After fifteen years in the School of Architecture at UTS working with young designers to develop their talents, many of the most talented students want to give up once they get out into practice. By far, the vast majority find themselves at the intersections of marginalisation, and struggle to feel safe or to see a path in the discipline of architecture.

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This collection of articles teeters uncomfortably between optimism and failure. Together the authors balance the hope of a more open, loving future that José Esteban Muñoz (2009, 2013) advocated for, against the idea of productive failure that Jack Halberstam (2011) describes. To place these ideas together is to hold their apparently opposing stories with care, acknowledging that queering architecture is a stubborn, slightly awkward, oxymoron.

of reading a text makes it queerer. For example, reinterpreting public space and socio-cultural or sexual safety from a non-normative perspective renders a spatial queering.

Largely our discipline has taken too little care of queer theory. John Potvin (2016, 6) observes no discernable trace on the discipline, decades since the term was coined and preceding the theory, centuries of queer thinkers and makers have contributed architecture to the world.

The fusion of low cultural or pop references with academic theory acts to destabilise dominant narratives (of folly or forgetfulness) that would ordinarily be associated with failure (as discussed in Georgia Jamieson’s piece in this collection). How does this method offer a queering of architectural typologies or detailing?

The two limited ways that the discipline of architecture acknowledges queerness are still largely predicated upon a fixed notion of queer identity: designing queer space as a place for people who identify with some element/s of the LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, + all other identities) initiliasm; or by recognising queer architects and their work. The theory has advanced, but architecture is ossified, 30 years out of date, and still fixated on addressing queer as gender and/or sexual identity.

How might writing and drawing styles that privilege first person, subjective or queer emotive experience permit designers to shift away from normative plans that shut down other spatial readings and futures.

This collection disrupts the dominant narrative, raising intersectional concerns with our discipline, the spaces we make and the things we prioiritise as people and architects. The invitation in this collection is to enter a safe space, one that will resonate with many on the margins in architecture, and to listen, to see more and see differently. ■

Imagine, if you will, a world where cis(identifying with the gender assigned at birth) heterosexual people can henceforth only be permitted to write, design or talk about their sexuality or gender. What would that do to your architecture practice? Just as we can acknowledge that people who identify as queer have more to contribute, we must acknowledge that our public spaces, our design methods to produce them and our practices must move beyond heteronormative and culturally violent assumptions of what is culturally safe public space.

_____ Jo Paterson Kinniburgh is a spatial designer, co-director of Bangawarra and Faculty of Design Architecture and Building member at the University of Technology Sydney. NOTES

Other disciplines have engaged with queer theory in ways that could be productive for architecture, offering methods and approaches. One such method is queering – a trunctation of the phrase ‘queer reading’, whereby the action

Halberstam, Jack. (2011). The Queer Art of Failure, New York, USA: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822394358 Muñoz, José Esteban. (2009). Cruising utopia: the then and there of queer futurity. NY: NYU Press. Potvin, John (2016) Bachelors of a Different Sort: Queer Aesthetics, Material Culture and the Modern Interior in Britain, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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Naba Ngabadi’o’naba: Loving Kin

Jo Paterson Kinniburgh spoke with Shannon Foster, co-director of Bangawarra and Sydney registered Traditional Owner and D’harawal Knowledge Keeper, on local Aboriginal perspectives on gender, sexuality and cultural safety. Through these contexts, Shannon offers an understanding that can be applied to design and practice.

Shannon Foster

JK: Queering architecture challenges fixed ideas of identity, diversity and inclusion. I’m interested in your perspective on the verb of queering, and the idea of acting or enacting that. SF: Anything that makes us challenge societal expectations of what we should be and how we should fit in, makes a world that is safer for those of us who occupy the margins. I hate the words inclusive or acceptance or tolerance. There’s a power dynamic there – as in who holds the power to include, accept, tolerate? It’s great to be included, but on whose terms? It takes a strong person with a lot of determination to survive this inclusion, and it’s draining to feel strong and determined every single day. I don’t think it should be on those of us from the margins to perform that. I know the intent comes from a well-meaning place, but we all need to shift how we approach that. JK: When you speak of the interrelatedness and connectedness of all things, how do you feel about the abstractions and representations that we use in an architecture studio, that tend to edit and curate information, connection and relation?

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SF: In a studio situation there is the potential to have some leeway, to be able to experiment with different ways of thinking, being and doing, and I think we have a real privilege, and also an obligation, to use that space to explore and speculate on what could be possible, to develop more interconnected methods. A lot of studios have lost that freedom and tend towards normative box-ticking. Design needs to respond to and accommodate not just who we are, our shapes and sizes, but also our unions and families, and how we want to live with others. JK: Culturally, when you speak of the breadth of difference, how does that fit into the Sydney Aboriginal cultural context? SF: I don’t speak for all Aboriginal people, but for my family there is an overriding principle that we act as one small part of a greater picture, and everything is connected. Whether it is living or non-living, we are all part of this physical plane. No one thing is more important than another, including humans. Everything holds equal value in the greater whole. When everything matters, it means you have to consider, and reconsider, everything that you say, and think, and do. You need to act sensitively and with greater responsibility; with more compassion and care for everything around you. I think that this is the antithesis of how colonial society works. JK: We’ve all heard about women’s and men’s business, but it’s not quite as binary as it sounds. Respecting protocols on cultural knowledge for public sharing, can you tell us about local approaches to gender? SF: I can only speak for my family, and from an on-Country Sydney perspective. If everything is connected, you work with a completely different understanding of how everybody fits into your

Country, family, and your community or society. Our cultural Knowledges of interrelatedness means that every single person is just as important as the next person. No one person, gender or sexuality is culturally prioritised over another. Our Elders are respected because they have the oldest connections to the Country, not because of their gender. The way we approach gender is reflected in our languages. In my language, the D’harawal-eora language, the words ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’ or ‘they’ do not exist. We have one singular pronoun ‘nga’ for all of those words. Gender is not the most important thing about a person and the one pronoun indicates that regardless of how you identify or express your gender, your contribution to society is equally valued. We look at the inherent strengths and abilities of each individual and we nurture and celebrate these. Children of all genders grow up together, learning the same skills and knowledge. Adult mentors foster the strengths and abilities of each individual child. Children are never forced into a position to learn or do things where they are uncomfortable or can never excel. Each individual is valued for who they are and seen as an important part of their community. There are some practices related to gender that come into play from puberty. Conversations about this business needs to stay within the cultural context, and with the people who understand the ontologies of interrelatedness within which they operate. So, I don’t often speak about them to a broader audience. JK: Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate scholar Kim Tallbear writes of the disconnect between Indigenous sexuality and that of colonisers and the church in North America. Can you explore this from a local perspective?

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/ NABA NGABADI’O’NABA: LOVING KIN BY JO PATERSON KINNIBURGH

SF: In our D’harawal-eora language, there is only one word for sexual desire. It doesn’t matter if you want to talk about people of any gender being attracted to people of any other gender. It’s the same word. Imagine not having to differentiate sexualities, because the only word in your language for sexual desire is assumed to mean all of those things by default! There are different kinds of unions between people that can purely be for connection and not necessarily to procreate. There is a difference between sexual relations for producing offspring, which has implications and obligations for the entire community, and other types of sexuality that are about pleasure, experience and connection. Your sexuality may be with parenting partners; or with others of any gender; or you may be asexual. Most of our teachings on sexuality are about offspring (as other sexualities don’t have the same population consequence) but all things – all sexualities – are valued because all individuals are important as and who they are. There is a level of celebrating and understanding the nuances of human nature that is central to Aboriginal ways of being. While we can have partners for the purposes of having children, it isn’t your day-in, day-out circumstance. We actually live as community groups which largely see all of the women together with the children and largely all of the men together. JK: When you talk about there being two groups that are arranged loosely along gender lines, is it possible for there to be fluidity with those? SF: I keep coming back to the point that we accept each individual person as they are, and

all of the aspects that make that person a human being. Our old stories don’t speak specifically about gender fluidity, being non-binary or trans*, but I think that is because we always accept the person as they are with their own strengths and abilities. That means if you identify as the Dharamuoy, the Keeper of the Flame, then you occupy that space in our society and build up your contribution through that role. If you identify as a particular gender or sexuality, I don’t see any difference there. You would contribute to society through being yourself too. If a person is identifying with a particular gender or roles, then that is the life that you nurture for them. There’s no way I can imagine a different life enforced on them, because culturally that goes against what we stand for. It is about taking care – for Country, for people, and for everything around us. It’s what we might call adaptive management, letting everything have its natural way of being, and then you work with that. JK: Didjariguru Djanaba-gumal! [Thank you Djanaba, my friend]. ■

_____ Shannon Foster and Jo Paterson Kinniburgh are the co-directors of the practice Bangawarra, working together to embed on-Country Aboriginal Knowledges into architecture and the built environment. Both are writing PhDs at the UTS Centre for the Advancement of Indigenous Knowledges.

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Storytelling as methodology WORDS: RHIANNON BROWNBILL

The first assignment of my undergraduate degree asked us to consider: What is architecture? The question was a purposeful one; a fundamental inquiry intended to linger within us and push us towards the (im)possible. It seems to me that the theme of this collection, queering architecture, asks us to go further: to delve once more into the existential; to consider ourselves within the architectural machine and to reflect on how we operate. We are challenged to question how we make kin – enact those obligations and accountabilities beyond ourselves – while in the process of making architecture. For me, the answer to this question can be found in our stories; those epic and mundane mechanisms through which we ground ourselves. I approach storytelling as a methodology which allows me to know myself, and through this, extend my responsibilities to other ways of being. And so, let me tell you a story of me. I was born through disability. Not a participant, but a close spectator. My mum, diagnosed with osteoporosis at 29, walks with a permanently dislocated ankle. She goes to work every day. On the weekend she sleeps, exhausted from the pain. My dad had profound mental illnesses and depression. He died in a place where he did not belong, homeless and alone. Through them I have witnessed how the built environment acts as a tool of marginalisation and erasure. From classical architecture through to Le Corbusier, architectural theories occupy our psyche, defining ‘man’ as a fixed constant until, late in the 20th century, adding the binary categorisations of abled and disabled. Limiting, these categorisations are rendered legitimate in practice, through tools and legislation such as the Metric Handbook and the AS1428 series. The friction between these categories and my story was always evident. That is, until I entered my masters degree in architecture. Working with First Nations practitioners in decolonial studios, I

was exposed to positioning, an Indigenous axiology and cultural protocol, as methodology. I was challenged to contextualise who I was and what I could bring to architecture. Through this process, I was able to connect myself to an architectural practice that centres those stories we so often marginalise. As a white woman, I will not speak to what kinship is within Indigenous ways of being, but through my studies, I encountered a kind of kin-making. An enduring connectedness, rooted in a reciprocity that bridges self-reflection to stand in solidarity with multiple ways of being. AUSTRALIA HALL In 1938, a group of more than a hundred Aboriginal peoples enacted the first modern Indigenous civil rights movement in the world: the January 26 Day of Mourning. Because of their Indigeneity, the protestors were forbidden to use the main entry. Relegated to enter via the fire-egress stairs, they transformed Australia Hall into one of the most significant buildings in Australian history. It was upon these stairs I found myself in midAugust 2020. Intending to produce drawings exploring the inherent politic of space, the task was seemingly elementary: a simple site measure. But it was within these hallowed walls that the question again returned to me. What is architecture? Was architecture merely these stairs – utilitarian in nature, a maroon and beige colourway coating a relic of a not-too-distant past – or was the architecture something more? In that space, in that temporal moment, it was those enacting their resistances upon these now well-worn stairs that gave them architectural heritage status. Sharing our stories alongside the monumental history of that place, the studio filled Australia Hall for an exhibition. For my part, the stairs became a canvas to share acts of resistance to the conditioning architecture provokes. Architecture won’t heal the wounds of the world, but it is a canvas upon which those who will change the world will act. It is our job as practitioners to choose. Do we want to continue suppression and marginalisation or move towards standing in solidarity with other worlds of imagination as they (re)emerge? ■ Rhiannon Brownbill is a recent graduate of architecture. Challenging modern practices of healthcare architecture, her work explores practices of care and healing alongside on-Country Aboriginal Knowledges. 55

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Gay as in happy? Nah, queer as in f*ck you BY NEPH WAKE

I wrote two submissions. One was a thoughtful, gentle introduction to queer thinking and history, the opportunities and benefits that queering architecture presents, with references to double coding, layered spaces, intersectionality and the gift of waking up one morning and realising there’s a hidden world out there that you are lucky enough to see and be part of and wondering if this fundamental shift in assumptions might just apply to a bunch of other assumptions and things too. But if you’re reading this, I’ve swallowed my nerves and sent the other one.

I was taught histories that mentioned (male) architects with multiple families, (male) architects who hooked up with clients, (male) architects who partnered with draughtswomen or married women who did interiors. I wasn’t taught about queer architects. There were no proud dykes, no flaming queers, no throuple clients. We were there (we’re always there) but sotto voce. Glossed over, elided. Silenced – by discretion, norms. Fellow students told me with a straight face I was the first gay person they’d met and were visibly shocked when I snickered.

I struggled to write this piece. Culture is slippery, culture is subtle, culture is hard to change. Professional is a verb, a behaviour, a norm. Workplaces create their culture by celebrating birthdays but not name days; mandating Christmas but not Lunar New Year holidays; displaying pictures of children and straight partners. We still have workplace norms which assume a full-time home worker (better known as a wife) is supporting staff. Professions create norms through education and award systems, commissioned journal themes. Most professional journal submissions don’t use swear words and snarl into void.

Queer identity is diverse and not immune to wider social forces. What is termed queer culture in Australia is too often white, male centred and makes assumptions about gender binaries and being ‘out’ that do not hold for all communities. But historically, to be queer is to identify as part of a minority and typically that identity is not shared by your family of origin. Queer culture is (was?) often carefully nursed and consciously taught to the newly out. The physical imprint of the culture can be hard to find. A community that could lose jobs for being suspected of being queer is not predisposed to leave easily traced written histories. Much lives on in memories and ephemera.

Educated mainly within the Australian tertiary system, the huge majority of my enculturation into architectural professional norms was undertaken by older straight white people. The invited critics, guest speakers, the history syllabus, who your tutors are, and who they tell you to look at, all subtly shape your idea of who can be an architect.

I’m 37, and have been fully out since age 18, over half my life. The possibilities for queer people have changed radically during that time. At age 18 in Sydney, I could not expect to get married to a same-sex partner, be recognised as a parent to a child carried by my partner or legally adopt a shared child as a step-parent.

QUEERING ARCHITECTURE

To read my son’s birth certificate in which I am named as a parent and to have that document acknowledge in an awkward footer that my marriage in New Zealand is recognised is both a personal and political triumph. That change came at a cost. It cost relationships. It cost lives. It cost the time and energy of brilliant, brave people campaigning and sharing personal stories. It’s also ongoing (looking at you, NSW Parliament and your anti-science mandatory bloodborne virus testing law). Activist queers attended stalls, planted hearts, met politicians, received hilarious threats, made submissions to parliamentary inquiries, arranged petitions, appeared at estimates, made coalitions with faith groups, received credible threats, drafted legislation amendments, carried placards. I filmed videos, ghost-wrote opinion pieces, shared wedding photos, was cheerfully positive in the face of people telling me they thought they would probably vote yes. I wasn’t at work when the marriage vote was announced – I called in gay. I was scared. I wanted to be surrounded by people who knew the effort and fear that campaign took, who would understand it was a relief, not a celebration. I wanted to be in a queer space, even if it was just a park on any other day. I don’t know what queering architecture looks like and I suspect it’s not monolithic. But either by luck or by design, I am profoundly grateful to know what queer architects look like. There’s no one way to be a queer architect or to queer architecture. To steal and queer an aphorism from the neurodiverse: if you’ve met one queer architect – you’ve met one queer architect. But if you’ve met a bunch or a butch, you’re on the way to a bloody good time. ■

_____ Neph Wake currently works as a client-side project manager, delivering capital works projects for cultural institutions. Neph is an irregular writer, researcher and social commentator, including working as a research assistant for ‘Equity and Diversity in the Australian Architecture Profession: Women, Work and Leadership (2011–2014)’, the research project which established Parlour.

Queer as in we police who is an architect and who isn’t an architect and what is capital A- architecture as hard as we police gender norms: unceasingly, unconsciously, reflexively. Queer as in the client wants gender neutral and inclusive toilets but has to stick male and female labels on the doors to get sign-off. Queer as in it’s a menswear store, even though the store and financials and the clothes certainly don’t give a f*ck about who wears them. Queer as in those gorgeous men who died in the AIDS epidemic should be at their architectural peak. Queer as in my ex-girlfriend is a divorced man now. Queer as in why is it called a “master” bedroom anyway? Why not mistress or Mx or main or primary? Queer as in the kink playroom should have natural light, not be in a basement. Queer as in I know where the police snipers are stationed at protests because of the death threats to speakers at gay marriage rallies. Queer as in we should protect cultural sites like beats on the state heritage register. Queer as in I want memorials to victims of anti-gay violence and police apathy to use the words ‘sanctioned murder’ instead of ‘symbols of healing’. Queer as in who I f*ck is both none of your business and in your face. Queer as in the pink triangle was originally a Nazi symbol used in concentration camps. Queer as everyone confessed to surveilling the university queer space before braving entry. Queer is found family, queer is chosen family, queer is my family. Queer is smiling when your aunt asks when you’re going to meet a nice boy while standing next to your partner of over a decade. Queer is never correcting the mechanic who misgenders you every time you go in – partly because you know you’re getting better service. Queer is wondering if you’re going to be asked to leave the bathroom because someone thinks you’re in the wrong one – again. Queer is being asked to pose with your colleague as they post their yes vote, when you’re raging that your civic rights are subject to a vote at all. Queer is knowing your tax dollars are supporting chaplains in schools. Queer is explaining a demi-boy who is androsexual isn’t gay and then worrying that you’ve outed someone’s gender identity.

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Spatial politics: Costume, architecture and thinking queerly

It’s time for architecture to get off its pedestal. In Costume, Architecture and Thinking Queerly, Eloise Humphrys embraces personal intersections with a queer methodology for architecture, in an exploration of queer spatial experience in the city. This is the story of the making of an archive of queer spatial knowledge in Sydney. Queer archives stand as a record of experience, capturing intimate histories and reflections of queer voices. When collected, they form a resistance, a celebration of community connecting shared experiences, and a manifestation of love and survival. PART ONE: THE BOX The Box itself was a physical object – with echoes of the closet – that highlighted queer stories and histories already collected and constituted a design mechanism encouraging people to make anonymous written submissions about their own queer connections to places in the city. It had its first public ‘outing’ at UTS DAB (Design, Architecture and Building). This accumulative queer archive was then taken to clubs and workplaces to collect stories of queer

PROJECT BY ELOISE HUMPHRYS WORDS: ELOISE HUMPHRYS, MONICA EDWARDS AND JO PATERSON KINNIBURGH

spatial occupation and resistance in Kings Cross, Oxford Street, Newtown and Erskineville. PART TWO: COSTUME / THE TECTONICS OF THE SKIRT The Box collected over 200 submissions, totalling 18,531 words – 18,531 words offered in trust, confident in anonymity. Yet this queer archive was alive, awaiting an expression to reconnect with the city. Costume offered a format to protect anonymity, a queer design response to queer archiving. Intimate stories were positioned on the inside lining of the costume, so that when worn, they intersected with the body, each relying on the other for protection. Drag has had a long and significant place in Sydney’s queer non-normative community. Though shifting, the relationship between drag and other queer and minority communities has been dynamic in the resistance of heterocolonial norms in this city. Hyper-performative in its resistance, drag offers the hyper-affective agency of costume. The intersection of drag with architectural knowledge and space itself presented exciting potential for new research and creative methodology.

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THE BOX SUBMISSIONS THE LIBRARY

THE MAP

250

25 0

0 25

THE JOINT THE THREAD

THE PAPER

THE STTCH

REPITITION

THE JOINT THE THREAD

3904mm of thread

Scale 20:1

3904mm of thread

Scale 20:1

THE PAPER

THE STTCH

1376 strips of information

Scale 5:1

1376 strips of information

Scale 5:1

REPITITION

1276 Stitches

THE ASSEMBLAGE HIP RING ORGANISATION

TULLE STITCHING

LAYERING

THE ASSEMBLAGE HIP RING ORGANISATION

TULLE STITCHING

LAYERING

Stre

Secret Garden

SWO P rd

Stre

lle

y St M

Secret Garden

Interviews

SWO y

ne lle

y St M

Interviews

Scale 1:10

Scale 1:1

2438.4 mm of Elastic with 305 stitches holding 8000mm of Tulle

Scale 1:10

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THE ‘MARILYN’ The style parodying Marilyn Monroe. A drag queen staple and instantly recognised for its flamboyance

THE FACE A traditional drag faec with harsh contolur exagerrated eyes lifted brows and enlarged eyelashes.

THE CORSET A traditional female garmet which also sinchesz the body restricting breathing and creating the illusion of hips.

DRAG -

“THE BODY”

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THERE’S SOMETHING ELSE HERE

INSTAGRAM!

RESTRICTION

SPECTACLE

ATTRACTION

LISTEN UP!

PART THREE: AFFECTIVE ARCHITECTURE AND THE ARCHIVE IN THE CITY The project’s third part saw the queer archive reconnect with the city. Scale, important to both architecture and performance, provided an intersection for study. The initial setting was a university; the performance explored restriction, spectacle and attraction. Recalling the submissions collected with The Box, the archive then moved beyond the scale of the university, returning to the city.

THE LABOUR OF SCALE

Traversing places of persecution documented in the costume, the archive became a living embodiment of resistance, affecting the city and those who engaged with it. There’s something else here From a distance of less than 1 metre, the words in the skirt and the relationship of the costume to the user became apparent. The words wrapped the exterior of the skirt, protecting it. The viewers’ interface with the skirt tested personal space. Like The Box, the reformatted archive invited attempts at redistribution of queer spatial knowledge.

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Wilson Street width R

width R

“what the fuck are you wearing”

Instagram! The performative expectations of the costume were revealed from a distance of 3-5 metres, the ideal length for an iPhone camera lens. Suddenly, the spatiality of the costume entered the online world, facilitating the sharing of the archive on a global scale. Watch out! Within enclosed surroundings, the costume focused the space. The costume blocked doorways and hardware store aisles, claiming space. The archive was spatially affecting the environment.

The costume generated interest and evoked recognition, but it also created friction. The physicality of the body extended in costume made negotiating space and people difficult – potentially antagonistic. The connotations of the costume enhanced this friction. Passers-by noticed the costume. It affected people. But surprisingly, during morning peak-hour in the densest part of the CBD, the skirt engaged endless individuals, encouraging onlookers to connect without any form of spatial violation. The archivist gently held the stories, protecting the memories of a queer diaspora with her body, while Sydney bore witness to the fleeting performance of a queer spatial archive. ■

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Illegibility as refusal: Spaces of queer performance WORDS: GEORGIA JAMIESON

FAILURE Literary, gender and sexuality scholar and trans* person Jack Halberstam explores the concept of failure in the book The Queer Art of Failure (2011), detailing the long history of queer resistance through failure intended to reveal alternatives to conventions of capitalism, academia and cultural criticism. The text aims to foster willingness to fail within the measures of normative success to find opportunity in otherness. ILLEGIBLE SPATIALITY

To engage with the world as a queer person is to become aware of the multiplicity and transitivity of bodies and space. It is the discord between queer lived realities and the heteronormative systems that shape our built environment that captures my design curiosity. Indebted to the work of queer people of colour and their communities, my work draws on ideas of illegibility and of failure, questioning how these might be spatialised. ILLEGIBILITY Illegibility has deep roots in queer cultures. Expressions of selective legibility have been crucial for safety. Hal Fischer’s 1977 work Gay Semiotics identifies the hanky, keys and earrings, as forms of coded language to sexually identify gay men. In the book Glitch Feminism (2020), Harlem artist and curator Legacy Russel expands on illegibility: “Readability of bodies only according to standard social and cultural coding (eg to be white, to be cisgender, to be straight) renders glitched bodies invisible… Illegible to the mainstream, the encrypted glitch seizes upon the creation of a self that, depending on the audience, can at once be hypervisible and simultaneously unreadable, undetectable.”

“In order to reimagine the body, one must reimagine space... Therefore, deterritorialization of the body requires a departure from the heaviness of space, with the realisation, instead, that physical form is dynamic.” (Russel, 2020) I conceive of illegibility with respect to space as conceptually different to dedicated queer space. I am interested in the ways that in Sydney, queer performances temporarily occupy the architectures of our everyday, from bowling clubs to laneways and private homes. Queer spaces are not built but performed. Our communities flourish in disparate happenings; spaces are temporarily hacked and forged deeply into the memory of the audience. In 2020, I completed a collaborative set design project for a performance entitled 101101001: Dude, Where’s My Gender as part of the Two Queers Comedy Festival at The Giant Dwarf Theatre, Redfern. As set designer, my challenge was to embed spatial illegibility within rigid architectural space, using the techniques of the theatre. 101101001: DWMG? itself eluded categorisation. Drag obscures the body’s natural state in order to reveal the synthetic construction of binary gender. In the same way, the show used the gender amplification tropes of drag performance by subverting the linear direction of the gender reveal. The set explored the possibilities of non-binary gender from intuitive readings of queer discourse. The stage curtain was reimagined as an anti-curtain, a queered

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‘101101001: Dude Where’s My Gender?’, Live Performance, Audley Anderson and Haz Lugsdin 2020.

character of refusal. The show used scripted and experimental performance art practices while the curtain facilitated improvised happenings and accommodated chance as form-making. The show began with a live ethereal soundscape as the performers entered the stage from behind the audience. The audience waited in a moment of illegible spatiality, neither the actors nor the set suggesting place, scale or intention. In the first moment of interaction with this anti-curtain, the characters, named ‘They’ and ‘Them’, enacted a gender-reveal. ‘They’, pulling a black velvet cowboy hat from the set, was delighted to be assigned the gender of ‘Buck Daddy’. When ‘Them’ was disappointed to extract a fedora as their gender signifier. Here the first failure was enacted. ‘Them’, unable to return their faulty gender, was instead forced to recognise the futility of seeking gender euphoria in a physical object. Emotion, event, light, sound, time and narrative become integrated into confounding understandings of space. The performance artists were not simply actors or imagined users. Instead they were active collaborators who continued to edit the script, the choreography

and the design brief throughout the design and fabrication phases. This fluctuating iterative experience was an intentional response to Russel and Halberstam’s championing of error, glitch and failure towards uncovering alternative possibilities. The spatial storytelling is fleeting, though its impact lingers. ■ _____ Georgia Jamieson works in set design and architecture. They engage in a spatial and research practice focusing on queer representations and speculative ecologies.

NOTES Barker, Meg-John., Scheele, Julia. (2016). Queer: A Graphic History. London. Icon Books Crawford, Lucas Cassidy. (2010) “Breaking Ground on a Theory of Transgender Architecture,” Seattle Journal for Social Justice: Vol. 8 : Iss. 2, Article 5. Drysdale, Kerryn. Intimate Investments in Drag King Cultures: The Rise and Fall of A Lesbian Social Scene. Sydney. Palgrave Macmillan Halberstam, Jack. (2011). The Queer Art of Failure. California. Duke University Press

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Queer space WORDS: EMILY SAUNDERS

The idea of queer space is a personal one, the meaning of which differs for every LGBTQI+identified person. To me, a lesbian, queer space is not simply the physical area or volume which I occupy. It is claiming one’s own space, on an individual level through being oneself, and on a communal level in the ways we gather together. I claim my space by being out and visible in my everyday life and by giving back to my community throughout the year through my involvement with Dykes on Bikes Sydney. I feel that community space is essential to fostering a sense of belonging for LGBTQI+ people. The act of gathering for the queer community is empowering, self-affirming and liberating. For many of us it also retains a sense of defiance and of strength. Many LGBTQI+ people grow up aware of being different, of needing to keep part of ourselves hidden, because our world is not inherently safe. I was aged nine when homosexuality was decriminalised in NSW and was already conscious of my sexuality. Having lived with an awareness of that repression, it remains a delight to me now when our community gather – a night out with your partner, a queer wedding, a dance party, a street protest. Queer space may take many forms. It is the small, private, personal and it is the large. It is physical, such as the traditional rainbow stripes of Oxford Street Darlinghurst and King Street Newtown in Sydney. It is also intangible, as in the way people experience a space during a queer community gathering. An LGBTQI+ event occurs within a space and makes it queer by being there – the nature of the space itself is, in some ways, irrelevant. It is the people that make it special. In this way, the nature of queer space is transitory, existing in time and memory, and transformational, through the impact of the event on those present. In Sydney, the best example of this is the annual Mardi Gras parade. This started as a street protest for gay and lesbian rights in 1978

and has continued to shut down the city for one night every year since, excepting 2021. Since 1991, Dykes on Bikes Sydney has led the parade. Dykes on Bikes Sydney was born when a group of lesbian bikies decided to do something about the gay bashings which were prevalent in Sydney in the 1980s and 1990s. At a time when the police were notoriously reluctant to act or investigate perpetrators of homophobic violence, Dykes on Bikes would ride the streets and lanes of East Sydney, breaking up attacks and scaring off attackers. In 1988, they decided to take part in Mardi Gras and left leaflets on bikes parked outside the bars and clubs, ending up that year with eight brave women willing to go public. The motto of Dykes on Bikes Sydney is Ride With Pride. To me, that means to embrace and be proud of who I am and to be true to myself in what I do. It also means to recognise that all people are entitled to be proud of who they are. I continue to push the boundaries against discrimination towards other marginalised people within the LGBTQI+ community, including people of colour, young people, transgender people and gender diverse people. Community means ensuring there is space for all. People within the LGBTQI+ community still experience danger in the physical world. The period of the 2017 postal survey saw a spike in homophobic behaviour among our society, some of which was directed at me. I remained staunchly visible during that time, claiming my queer space and owning it. I drew strength from the protest marches and was very grateful for queer community gatherings then, as were many in my circle. These were safe spaces occupied by people with shared experiences and an understanding of some of the difficulties we face, where nothing needed to be explained. Queer space is respite, joyous, inspirational, family, sanctuary. ■ _____ Emily Saunders is a sole practitioner based in the Inner West, specialising these days in heritage work. Emily graduated from the University of Sydney in 1997, registered in 2007 and has been working for herself since 2014. Emily came out in 1992, just as she started her architecture degree and has been a member of Dykes on Bikes Sydney since 2006. She was elected President of Dykes on Bikes in August 2020. Pronouns: She/Her.

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Intersection reflection WORDS: JOEL SIA

It took a while for me to adjust to the unwritten rules of Australian-ness, fraught with the trappings of heteronormativity and the anglosphere; but it has taken longer to understand myself and my value as a designer who is privy to none of those things. To me, practicing architecture requires a deft understanding of context and a groundedness in the culture of practice; then, in order to excel, the ability and bravado to challenge accepted norms. So as much as I love ticking all the minority boxes, it can be and has been a struggle. I lack the nuance and cultural capital of growing up here; I would sooner recognise Sasha Velour over Shane Warne; and have been on multiple occasions the only non-white person in a meeting room.

When I was approached to contribute something to this collection, I somehow blurted yes, even though I was immensely unsure of whether I had anything important to say at all; and if I did, would anyone listen and find what I have to say relevant? Admittedly, my point of view is atypical. I am neither straight nor white, which even in an industry as diverse and colourful as ours is still strangely uncommon. Annoyingly, what is common is that the non-straight and nonwhite labels still come with assumptions of who I am. I love the significance of Mardi Gras, but it’s not the only thing on my calendar at the end of summer. And yes, I am aware that despite the way I look, my English is quite good (so is yours!) I also moved to Australia as a young adult, which inevitably precipitated a messy incongruity of cultures: the one I brought with me and the one I looked forward to adopting. In due course, culture shock evolved into acculturation, and eventually led to the decision to stay permanently. However, despite the passport and right to vote, the feeling of being an outsider and not truly being ‘one of you’ never really goes away.

For a while I disregarded the intersectionality of my situation; I felt my take on things would be peripheral and hence unimportant. I would downplay the relevance of my opinions; and projected a persona adjusted to suit. I also found that it was rare to see people like me, or people with aspects of me, in the spotlight, further emphasising (in my head) the paucity of my worth as an architect. That being said, of course I should be able to rely on my talents and capitalise on my individuality to do well in this profession. But being able to do so unreservedly requires some measure of charisma and nerve, which in turn involves a certain level of privilege not accessible to everyone. I hope that this does not come across as some sort of ‘woe is me’ commentary. It is still a work in progress, but I have come to realise that yes, I can actually rely on my talents and capitalise on my individuality to contribute to the profession. This is in part due to being fortunate enough to have landed in a practice that actively champions diversity and being lucky enough to be surrounded by a group of peers I can count on for support and advice. Although the confidence to be proud of my atypicality is still elusive, these forms of encouragement have come a long way in allowing me to see the validity of my migrantqueer-Asian identity within the architectural community and beyond that, within Australia.

QUEERING ARCHITECTURE

Central Station, Haymarket. Photo: Joel Sia.

I’m not sure if I have anything more than that to say for now. I acknowledge that the issues I face may be quite specific, but I do feel that issues of intersectionality will continue to be a part of the profession, even more so in today’s socio-political context. I hope that my experiences, along with others’, justifies a conversation that encompasses more than what I am able to achieve here. In the words of the American writer and self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” Audre Lorde: “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives”. ■ _____ Joel Sia is an architect working for a multidisciplinary design practice in Surry Hills.

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Just spaces WORDS: ELLA CUTLER

Just Spaces is hopeful future space(s). Through this work, I seek to recognise the multiple ways our queer communities imagine and create safe spaces for ourselves. Just Spaces is not a solution to queer safety but rather a sensitive and gentle investigation of how we can build and maintain spaces for ourselves referencing a rich history of space making. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s essay Queer Feelings, Just Spaces asks questions and implements methods in order to open up queer ways of navigating space. Ahmed describes this process as being “The ‘non-fitting’ or discomfort [opening] up possibilities, an opening up which can be difficult and exciting” (Ahmed, 2004), helping to establish how queer impressions or ways of doing can be a way of protest, and even more so of navigating space.

Just Spaces protests the assumption that spaces are safe and inclusive. Just Spaces is a queering methodology that centres gentle, sensitive, slow and non-repeatable methods to make possible safe space(s). These methods are 68

not necessarily proper; they are messy, sensitive, complex and nuanced, requiring care. When deployed in the context of public space and architectural design, the Just Spaces methods offer a way to challenge normative assumptions about the safety of public space, and to counter the current architectural design methods that inadvertently enact cultural violence. Just Spaces acknowledges that new queer ways of doing and imagining need to be considered. The work hopes to offer a queer methodology that helps to reorient design practice by championing the unfixed, the gentle, and the slow as methods of engaging with sensitive materials while also maintaining a space of safety and care. ■ _____ Ella Cutler is a queer designer, researcher and publisher creating work on Gadi Country. Her design practice seeks to navigate contested and entangled heteronormative spaces through gentle and sensitive methods. Pronouns: She/Her.

NOTES Ahmed, Sara 2004, Cultural Politics of Emotion pp. 154

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Queering furniture INTERVIEW WITH PHOEBE ADAMS

Jo Paterson Kinniburgh chats with queer artist, designer, performer and PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania, Phoebe Adams about motivation, rage, queer theory, activism and the candour of drag. Jo Paterson Kinniburgh: Can you share with us the catalyst (or as you call it trigger) for your latest design work? Phoebe Adams: Frustration and rage are the main catalysts for my recent design work, Queering Furniture. The rage is focused on sexism in the design world, specifically, sexism in the furniture designer/maker culture. Like gender theorist Judith Butler, I see sexism and the binary norms that sustain it as the root cause of homophobia and transphobia. My LGBTQ+ activism stretches back to the early 90s when I moved to Sydney from country Victoria. My first Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras filled me with enough pride to wash away almost all the shame I held in my heart at the time. It wasn’t long before I was volunteering in

the old Erskineville Mardi Gras workshops. There I developed skills as an activist and cultivated my desire to make fabulous things. I learnt to channel feelings of shame into rage, and then direct that rage into making change so that no one has to feel shame again (at least not about who they consensually love and/or how they express themselves). Over the years, I’ve witnessed systematic gender bias within furniture design seeing gifted female and non-binary furniture designers ignored or uncelebrated while their male colleagues become heroic figures. I eventually decided that career wise I had nothing to lose. I started speaking out about it, and that’s how drag king persona Manny Lee Beard “mannyfested” into existence. He’s a parodic and satirical antagonist, a collage of all the mediocre white bearded lumbersexuals you see hand-sanding their already orbitally-sanded furniture in magazines, coffee table books, and websites everywhere. JK: What led you to drag kinging? PA: In their book Gender Trouble, Judith Butler, identifies drag performance as a gender enactment that subverts and undermines existing gender norms. In their late book Undoing Gender (2004), Butler recounts her experience as a baby dyke, hanging out at gay bars watching drag queens, when it dawned on Butler that the drag queens could ‘do’ femininity much better than Butler could. Drag performances inspired Butler’s ideas on gender performativity, that is, the performance required by everyone to meet gender norms. Like Butler, I see the potential of drag to undermine and subvert, but also to critique the gender binary and how it acts to limit the potential of all of us. The interesting thing I learned about masculine drag is it feels very empowering. You get to borrow a little bit of male privilege when you’re a drag king. I discovered there were things I could do and say through drag that I would never get away with as a female (even a gender nonconforming/non-binary one). JK: What would you say to queer students who don’t see themselves reflected in the industry? PA: I would say, if you can’t join them, beat them (at their own game). ■ Left: Manny Lee Beard and the Danish Cabinet. Photo: Dexter Rosengrave. Phoebe Adams’ work and activism can be seen on www.phleabytes.com

COMMUNITY

A tale of two Bunnings WORDS: PAUL BRACE

A phone alert chimes quietly during a meeting; casually I check my screen to witness the words “oh no” from my partner Mike, appended with an image showing the unexpected death of an Australian icon. Our exodus from the inner-city into suburban Sydney has led us to Matraville. A rundown but charming, free-standing fixer upper with potential views to Maroubra. Unloved since the late 70s with original feature arches externally and within, it is slowly dilapidating as we go through the ritual of design, development application and pricing. The backyard Hills Hoist was the latest victim of the vicissitude of time, beset by aluminium corrosion and sun-brittled plastic. We’d been coaxing it along with tape and a prayer, but now we had a problem. On the cusp of renovation, we were challenged, do we buy a new one? With the landscape design lagging, we decided on a wall mounted option as a temporary solution. Off to Bunnings we went. Driving straight past the Eastgarden Bunnings, located 5 minutes from home, we make for Alexandria and their Bunnings, adding another 20 minutes to the trip. As we traverse the central escalator to the clothes drying section on the upper floor, a couple pass, eyeing us. “See, I told you,” a young man says to his male companion, “the gays are everywhere here”. Promptly, they hold hands and keep searching for objects of domestic improvement. The two Bunnings stores are identical. So, what’s happening here?

The answer is Queer Space. The obvious question to ask is: Why? Why does this generic space function as queer space? It doesn’t cater to a specific market, it’s simply an everyday space. But we can feel it. Inner city density, not as form but as culture, evolved out of the great migration of everyday people – creatives, artists, musicians and queers – who fled the outer suburbs seeking something else, something more. I first encountered Darlinghurst in Sydney in 1986, aged 18. Growing up in a rough outer suburb, I’d endured years of homophobic abuse and needed respite. At the time, Darlinghurst was both extraordinary and terrifying. On one hand, it was one of the most vibrant queer and creative communities on earth. People came from across the globe to experience it. On the other hand, with the emergence of HIV, there was real fear building in the same place that offered a modicum of safety and a lot of joy. Queer Space. When you went there, you weren’t isolated. If you didn’t witness inner Sydney in the 80s it’s hard to explain the wonder of it. The entire length of Oxford Street from Hyde Park to Woollahra was gay. Two kilometres of uproariously queer space. Midnight on a Saturday was a parade of drag queens walking from one performance venue to the next. Everyone held hands, couples everywhere. Yes, there was violence, but we also had safety in numbers. Every pub was gay, or felt gay, or was a mix of cool straight kids and queer

QUEERING ARCHITECTURE

people all rubbing shoulders together. Clubs were insane. On Crown Street, someone had sledgehammered the walls between three terrace squats, adding a DJ and a bar. Fire regulations? No. If you lived there, it was normal, and when you ventured out to the suburbs again, it was risky. But all good things come to an end. The LGBTQI+ community of the inner city aged, homophobia diminished, property prices rose, and professionals moved in. It was just a moment in time. Once grungy pubs became done with headline chefs and bistros; retail became fancy. But still it held on, that queer spirit, in fewer and fewer venues. The culture of tolerance that had emerged between diverse groups seeking a new home persisted even as the physical spaces that held them contracted. That concentrated form of experience where everyone in the room is gay or lesbian or bi or trans is increasingly rare; perhaps digital space is now that realm. Over the last ten years, Mike and I stopped going out to specifically queer venues; we stopped using the hospitality and cultural institutions provided by the queer community; general life took over. We started to think about leaving the inner city, searching for something with a bit more nature. “NO!” some of our friends said. “Why? Whatever for?” “Space,” we said, “and quiet”. In 2020, we joined the reverse migration that’s been happening across Sydney for decades. As the centre gentrified, the queer diaspora began to Newtown, Marrickville, Summer Hill, Bondi, Tamarama, Coogee, Alexandria… the list goes on. One of the selling points for our home in Matraville is a local cafe 100 metres away. I walk to the corner and order a flat white every morning at 6am. For the first six months, there was little conversation as I observed the local early-twenty-something staff chat with local tradies. Then one day the staff chorused, “Good morning!”, seemingly overjoyed to see me. Surprised by this I told Mike. “Oh, yeah, on the weekend I ordered our coffees and the girl asked, “Does your partner come here at 6am?” I said yes, “Oh”, she said. So, they worked it out. A gay couple has moved to Matraville; a bubble of queer space has arrived. We’ve since deduced that one of the barristas is gay, a young

skateboarding type, indistinguishable from his peers, except for his smile of recognition and relief every time I order my coffee. I’ve resisted Mardi Gras for years. “It’s like the Easter Show,” I’d say. But, after lockdown, I gave in. COVID saw Mardi Gras relocated from Oxford Street to the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG), the centre of conservative sporting traditions. “What’s it going to be like?”, we asked. Rainbows were the answer. A million rainbows. Everything was rainbows and the SCG was completely queer for just a few hours. It was the most concentrated Mardi Gras I’d been to in years as most of the audience were queer, and that was a shock. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that space so palpably. I realised I still need that easy familiarity on occasion. My commuter bus passed the SCG the next morning and I thought, “it’s just the SCG again”. That queer moment had gone. I think of my new cafe friends and wonder, what’s it like now that queer space is so atomised? To be young and in the suburbs, not always safe, yet there is no queer centre to visit – it has diffused. For me as a young man, it was critical I could live in that space. It allowed me to find strength; to not be alone; to be surrounded by people of like mind. And in a roundabout way, we end up back at Bunnings. Queer space to me isn’t a space designed for queers; I’m sure we’d all disagree on what it should look like! Rather it’s any space occupied by enough of us that it changes the cultural temperature in the room. Is it permanent? No. It’s a living thing that moves and grows and shrinks. It’s knowing you’re included openly in an environment; for a time. That Hills Hoist? We bought the wall mounted one. We got home, read the instructions and realised that we needed a hammer drill to install it! Damn. Back to Bunnings. But this time, Eastgardens was fine, we’d had enough queer space for the day. ■ Paul Brace is a creative professional who works in interior and architectural design with leadership experience on award-winning projects across all scales. His work practice encompasses all aspects of the creative process, from establishing conceptual direction and design development to project delivery and site management.

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