Architecture Bulletin / Dindarra / Between / July 2022

VOL 79 / No. 1 / JULY 2022

DINDARRA / BETWEEN

Celebrating Country: The spaces and moments between cultures

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ARCHITECTURE BULLETIN VOL 79 / NO 1 / JULY 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 PATRONS 05 Major and supporting patrons 07 Alistair Swayn Foundation EDITORIAL 07 Kate Concannon DINDARRA / BETWEEN 11 Dindarra / Between Celebrating Country: The spaces and moments between cultures Words: Michael Mossman 14 The power of education and learning in architecture Words: Liam Coe and Pip Buchman 16 Framing Country: Reinterpreting lost architecture through storylines of place Words: Ryan Dingle 18 Repairing the between spaces – activating the rhizome in Country Words: Samantha Rich 20 Bidgun / Middle Words: Beau De Belle 22 Pavilion of sand Words: Shellie Smith 24 Awakening a consciousness Words: Jack Gillmer

27 Two-way learning: Participatory design & construction Words: Marni Reti and David Kaunitz 31 A reflection on the missing pieces: Discovering a new design process Words: Tom Gray 34 The power of reciprocity – starting with Country Words: Elle Davidson 37 In conversation with Daniel Boyd & David Adjaye Interview: Michael Mossman 40 Black hearts of time and space Words: Danièle Hromek 42 Finding your place Words: Chi Melhem 45 Co-becoming: Redfern Community Facility Words: Isabelle Aileen Toland 46 Recalibrating cultural awareness expectations for architects working in Australia Words: Michael Mossman, Kirsten Orr and Kathlyn Loseby 52 Belonging to Country – yindyamarra winhanganha Words: Craig Kerslake 56 Beyond token Words: Kevin O’brien 58 Taree First Steps Count – Child + Community Centre Words: Caroline Pidcock

62 Clearing the space between – Allyship in our professions Words: Annie Tennant 65 The space between: Thoughts on Designing with Country, Connecting with Country Words: Diana Snape and Dillon Kombumerri 68 Uncle Max Dulumunmum Harrison Words: Owen Kelly and Bobbie Bayley 2022 NSW ARCHITECTURE AWARDS 74 Award winners and commendations 2022 NEWCASTLE ARCHITECTURE AWARDS 93 Award winners and commendations PROFILE 100 Dulux Study Tour Words: Simon Rochowski, Studio Plus Three 102 Studio Prineas is certified carbon neutral Facilitated by Gemma Savio 104 Carter Williamson is certified carbon neutral Facilitated by Gemma Savio OBITUARY 106 Vale Dr Jacqui Goddard Words: Bob Moore 3

FOREWORD / LAURA COCKBURN

This special edition of Architecture Bulletin has been guest edited by Dr Michael Mossman and brings together voices from across our profession, those in practice, academia and government to provide perspectives of First Nations and non-Indigenous Australians in their approach to Country, their work and the opportunities and challenges that presents.

I am an immigrant of English and Scottish ancestry. Our family settled in the bushy northern suburbs of the Guringai people. I work on Gadigal land and I live with my family on Wangal land in Sydney’s Inner West. In my education here at both high school and university the curriculum remained silent on the long and culturally rich living history of Indigenous Australia with no reference to acknowledgement of the local clans of the land we inhabit. So, like many of you, I am learning and enthusiastically seek out opportunities that enable me to improve my understanding, acknowledgement and approach to my work and life.

In recent years I have felt the shift in the approach from government and industry towards a better position on collaborating with communities. The implementation is still lumpy, but when frameworks such as GANSW Connecting with Country and Designing with Country are positively implemented on projects, the results are truly dynamic and bring a deeper understanding of place to all

MANAGING EDITOR Kate Concannon

CREATIVE DIRECTION Felicity McDonald

EDITOR Emma Adams

DESIGNER Andrew Miller

GUEST EDITOR Michael Mossman

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

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Elise Honeyman (Co-chair) Sarah Lawlor (Co-chair) Arturo Camacho Cate Cowlishaw Jason Dibbs Nathan Etherington Ben Giles Matilda Gollan Tiffany Liew Kieran McInerney David Welsh

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parties involved. This can only be construed as positively contributing to the healing of Country.

I have most recently had the opportunity to be a part of the Reconciliation Conversations day held by the Institute’s NSW Chapter and a workshop at the University of Sydney to discuss the Indigenising of Curriculum in part as implementation of the new AACA Competencies. These conversations are incredibly important in the acknowledgement of the shortfalls of our current education of architects and the industry as a whole. As an industry we are in a unique position with our training to see the bigger picture of our impact on the built environment outcomes and the communities within which we work and live. Our role as an industry leader needs to be both exemplar in embracing community collaboration and co-design, advocating for the early and ongoing interaction with community, and as educators of our clients and broader design teams around the benefits of this approach.

We can only perform this role well if we equip ourselves of the knowledge. My hope and aspiration is that our profession will lead from the front, call out improper practices and educate our industry to continue the healing of Country.

Laura Cockburn NSW Chapter President

ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTIONS nsw@architecture.com.au +61 2 9246 4055 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.

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 their authors.

COVER IMAGE: Puntukurnu Aboriginal Medical Service Healthcare Hub Newman | Kaunitz Yeung Architecture | Photo: Robert Frith

DISCLAIMER The views and opinions expressed in articles and letters published in Architecture Bulletin 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 NSW Chapter, 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.

PATRONS

DINDARRA / BETWEEN PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY – Major patrons

fjmtstudio recognises the unceded sovereign lands and rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of these lands and waters. This recognition generates acknowledgement and respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Countries, Cultures and Communities, and their ways of being, knowing and doing.

We acknowledge our obligation to deepen relationships with First Peoples and celebrate their living cultural heritages, to engage and act meaningfully through reciprocal partnerships.

Our work acknowledges that it is human habitation which imbues a place with social and cultural significance. It is through a deep and inclusive understanding of this interconnection with the land that our work can embody meaning.

We recognise that climate action must be founded on the concept of custodianship. It is an ecological imperative that we learn from First Nations people about Country.

Supporting patron

In the spirit of reconciliation, Warren and Mahoney acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community.

We challenge ourselves to always listen, learn and let Country reveal itself through Indigenous perspectives across the design process.

We speak of First Peoples first as a key point of inflection – because we know new conversations and new ways of working will achieve outcomes that respect and reveal Country in an urban context with more meaning, understanding and depth.

With our advanced Cultural Design Unit, Te Matakīrea, we strive towards demonstrating global leadership in our authentic engagement with Traditional Custodians, building places and spaces that best serve local communities and beyond.

PTW is a proud supporter of the First Nations edition of Architecture Bulletin. As a practice we have become increasingly aware of our responsibility and desire to be part of reconciliation with First Nations peoples in Australia.

Our company Reconciliation Action Plan sets out our formal commitment to the process of reconciliation in Australia and provides guidance and milestones for actions which create real change for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

In our own workplace and as we participate in the construction industry, we aim to contribute to achieving greater social equality and employment opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

In our work we aim to provide opportunities to celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stories and create meaningful connections to Country.

We are proud to support the First Nations edition of Architecture Bulletin.

For 60,000 years, Aboriginal Australians, the oldest known civilisation on earth, have lived sustainably in Australia by understanding that if you care for Country it will care for you. As architects, there is much we can learn from First Nations Custodians and Knowledge Holders to live harmoniously with our climate and design places that are inclusive, regenerative and for their place. Our teams are collaborating with local Knowledge Holders and Traditional Custodians on several of our projects, and we hope to do so on many more.

We wish to advocate for communities and through co-design and placemaking ensure our First Nations people are reflected in our built environments. To do this, non-Indigenous design professionals need to listen and unlearn the human-centred approach to design that we have been taught. This is the power and responsibility of architecture.

We endeavour to undertake a process of reconciliation on a foundation of respect and aim to create space for the voices of First Peoples through our practice, responding with quietness and genuine listening. We support the Institute in its reconciliation activities and look forward to reading this important First Nations edited Bulletin.

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EDITORIAL / KATE CONCANNON

Among our membership and the profession more broadly, there is a deepening desire to practice in a way that recognises, respects and supports Country and the interests of First Nations people. Alongside this desire has emerged a difficult recognition of the ignorance that poses a significant obstacle to achieving realising it. Accordingly, our members want to (un)learn, to understand, and to gain the awareness and appreciation with which to overcome their fear of causing inadvertent harm and to contribute positively and respectfully through both the design and construction processes and through the impact of the built environment they shape.

The welcomed updates to National Standard of Competency for Architects, formally acknowledge the importance of the profession’s upskilling in this critical space and appropriately demand the education and professional development required to see architects equipped to practice with cultural sensitivity and respect for Country, including its lessons about sustainability and care.

The Institute is working to address this competency gap, supported by the expertise of our First Nations Working Group, and this special edition of Architecture Bulletin is a generous contribution by many Indigenous authors to help raise awareness and understanding of First Nations discourse.

But the shouldering of the burden of education

by First Nations people is also problematic and a challenge incumbent upon the Institute, the profession, and communities more generally to resolve. We must forge and resource respectful approaches to education that compensate appropriately and correct the balance of responsibility.

On behalf of the Institute and the membership, we thank all of this volume’s authors for their generous support of our members’ evolution as responsible, engaged, culturally conscious built environment professionals. In particular I thank guest editor Dr Michael Mossman who brought together the authors and content under his illuminating thematic vision ‘Dindarra / Between’ to create this important, timely volume.

Thank you to the patrons that have provided financial and philosophical support for the volume: fjmtstudio, Warren and Mahoney, PTW, HDR and SJB. I also acknowledge the valuable support we received from the Alastair Swayn Foundation through its research grant program to produce this special edition of Architecture Bulletin. Wishing you an informative and transformative read.

Kate Concannon NSW managing editor

DINDARRA / BETWEEN Produced with the assistance of the Alastair Swayn Foundation – alastairswaynfoundation.org

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Puntukurnu Aboriginal Medical Service Healthcare Hub Newman | Kaunitz Yeung Architecture | Photo: Robert Frith

DINDARRA / BETWEEN

DINDARRA / BETWEEN

I pay respects to the Traditional Custodians and Knowledge Holders of Country – past, present and emerging – where the stories of this publication lie.

I acknowledge that the information presented is respectful of Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property rights that has belonging with Country and First Nations Cultures and Communities.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this publication contains an image and stories of a person who has passed away.

First Nations map of Australia Image based on AIATSIS Indigenous map of Australia Illustration: Michael Mossman

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ARCHITECTURE BULLETIN

Dindarra / Between Celebrating Country: The spaces and moments between cultures WORDS: MICHAEL MOSSMAN

Appreciating the spaces and moments between provides opportunities to meaningfully translate the stories of Country, and First Nations Cultures and Communities.

Dindarra, the Kuku Yalanji word that translates in English to ‘between’, is the theme of this edition of Architecture Bulletin. It delves into aspects of architectural experiences from interactions between Country, First Nations Cultures and the Western systems that immerse our architectural practices.

My current role as a lecturer and researcher in architecture at the University of Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning always presents a myriad of opportunities to express understandings of Country and First Nations Cultures and Communities.

Meaningful understandings of the spaces and moments between First Nations and broader societal cultures in education, research, policy and professional practice is evolving at a rapid pace. While interest in this space has grown, it requires critical debate through theoretical

interrogation and practical commitments by the architectural and allied disciplines to evolve.

I relate the word Dindarra to the theory of Third Space – the space and moment between interacting cultures in our contemporary cultural landscapes. Dindarra presents the moment between to listen, understand, give, receive, collaborate, challenge and assert meanings of Country as the foundational centrepiece of project narratives in Australia.

Through this lens I reached out to friends and colleagues to share processes to activate conversations around what Country means to them and for the application of architecture within this realm. Above all, I find interactions with students of architecture and professional practice networks to be exciting and invigorating, pointing towards a better future.

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DINDARRA / BETWEEN

/ DINDARRA / BETWEEN CELEBRATING COUNTRY: THE SPACES AND MOMENTS BETWEEN CULTURES WORDS: DR MICHAEL MOSSMAN

STORIES

MECHANISMS

The many ways I give information promotes Country as living and evolving, always and everywhere. The interconnectedness of Country is told through the multitude of stories associated with original Cultures and Communities.

Mechanisms to assist in understanding the intentions of the original stories include the Connecting with Country Draft Framework through the Government Architect NSW. This is a refreshing addition to the architectural discipline that provides starting points, strategies, and commitments to implement through the entire lifecycle of the project.

As part of an iterative process from conception to delivery. This is a critical inclusion to curriculum in the university units of study that I engage with on a regular basis.

In all instances, these stories are connected to place with histories, memories, moments and transformations between the past, present and future. Stories of thriving on landscapes, maintaining waterways, activating regenerative practices, communicating in the hundreds of languages, gathering in settings near and far permeate our continent and its deep time histories.

My Doctor of Philosophy promotes the Third Space as understanding how we interact between living memories, present times and futures. Pasts interact with the essence of place as Country. This connects us with thousands of generations of human and non-human kin who interact with the lands, waters, skies, and fires through stories that connect us to place. The stories are Country. Everything comes from and returns to Country.

Our present times interact with introduced understandings of place that mistranslate the qualities of the original evolving realm into entirely foreign languages. These are languages that do not translate the intention of building with Country, but instead, supplant or impose upon Country with their own foreign stories.

The foreign languages in this sense are our Western colonial canons of architecture that permeate and influence our expressions of our built environments. What story do we want to tell with our architectural expression and physical built environments?

By interacting in the moment between, our futures provide opportunities to meaningfully translate the stories of Country, Cultures and Communities.

Interacting with the intentions of the original living stories and activating ways to turn architecture into Country: not Country into architecture.

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The National Standard of Competency for Architects 2021 presents the most recent structural change for the moments between Country and First Nations Cultures and Communities and Architecture. The expectations of the specific performance criteria mean that levels of interaction will potentially increase the implementation of the key tenets of the Connecting with Country framework.

From first year interactive lectures to immersive master’s level studios, I communicate Country, First Nations Cultures and Communities as an enriching presence to contemporary architectural expression. It is the space between where non-First Nations individuals, who exist within community and cultural frameworks from territories near and far can interact with the First Nations Community and Cultural frameworks of Country that are all around us.

In my role as a First Nations design strategist, I see it as being equally important to the professional practitioner to interact with the space between to learn and understand the nuances of Country one step at a time. We could all try something in collaboration with community to interact with and translate the qualities of Country a first time and then do it better every time after.

It is through the voices of custodian knowledge holders in Communities that translation of Country is possible. Every time we design place, we must collaborate with Local Communities to translate Country respectfully. Respecting the integrity of Country means interacting with and translating knowledge systems that you do not profess to hold expertise.

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FUTURE Our task, as architects is to interact and translate information through those who hold the expertise. Our profession can give back to Country, celebrate Country and be mutually accountable to those with belonging to such Indigenous cultural intellectual property.

First Nations Cultures and Communities are distinct in their connection to place. Architecture can continue to transform by learning from and applying these qualities in the environments we design.

The contributions for this First Nations focused edition present the thinking and advocacy across the profession between an array of cultures.

First Nations and non-First Nations practitioners tell their understandings and experiences of the space between. Students and graduates of architecture, early career and mid-level to experienced architects, and allied discipline professionals provide commentary on the exciting and interactive spaces and moments of Country.

_____ Dr Michael Mossman is a proud Kuku Yalanji man, born and raised in Cairns on Yidinji Country.

He now lives and works on Gadigal land and is an academic lecturer and researcher at the University of Sydney School of Architecture Design and Planning where he was recently awarded his Doctor of Philosophy with the topic of his thesis: ‘Third Space, Architecture and Indigeneity. He is also a registered architect (non-practising) who advocates and champions Country and First Nations Cultures as agents for structural change in the broader architectural profession at educational, practice and policy levels.

Dindarra propositions the translation of architecture into Country through meaningful interactions and collaborations between Cultures and Communities and the architectural profession. Every interaction, every expression, every understanding that occurs in the spaces and moments between means that we are always learning and evolving the ways we design and create architecture in Australia. ■

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DINDARRA / BETWEEN

The power of education and learning in architecture WORDS: LIAM COE AND PIP BUCHMAN

Education acts to shape our engagement and viewpoints with greater society, through development of minds, allowing us to think critically and respond to complex issues.

It is through our education that we shape and mold our youth, and ultimately empower cultural and societal engagements and our systems of morality. Why, then if our education is so ethereal, do we lack accountability for the systemically enforced issues that plague our First Nations communities?

Black children are still targeted and run down in the street. Black men and women are victims of an incarceration rate that does not value their livelihood, along with preventable and degenerative disease afflictions that contributes to a severely diminished life expectancy comparatively high suicide rates for a first world country. All emanating from a democratically elected, first world country.

Generations of historical oppression and colonial justification has relegated First Nations issues to the sidelines. Without consultation, First Nations history, resistance and survival has been overlooked until very recently. Changes in sentiment and expression through NSW schools in curriculum and learning from educational institutions, shed a new light on culture, language revival and celebration. While youth are now better versed on elements of First Nations Culture and language than the previous decades, how will this influence systemic change, when policymakers and those of influence were educated in the 20th century?

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Change has always been a driving force when activated by younger generations in the context of their future engagements with societal environments. The Aboriginal Tent Embassy was erected on the lawns of Parliament House in 1972 by a group of young Aboriginal activists. Sparking a landscape of change and acknowledgement of First Nations issues, through greater societal support. A beacon to white Australia, that on the lawns of Parliament House sits the oldest occupied protest site. It is within the spheres of education, however where its significance is unsung. As are its key tenets of treaty, sovereignty and self-determination of Indigenous peoples, neglectful of the key determinants of First Nations empowerment.

Recently there have been discussions surrounding the trauma of celebrating January 26 for First Nations communities. Education regarding the problematic representation of colonial history nationalism through a twentyseven-year-old holiday, marking a date of invasion, eradication and genocide of First Nations cultures. Dialogue has breathed new air on social media platforms, creating a web of conversations about the true history of this day and its impact on First Nations people.

People from a multitude of cultural backgrounds, genders, age and professions have become a part of this conversation to have exponential effects on the constitution of allies we are seeing today.

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Predicting the future within the current climate is deflating, and is bluntly represented within the built landscape, showing the architectural paradigm prioritising inclusivity and sustainability after profit and aesthetics.

We believe systematic social change is up to us as individuals, it is as students, educators and architects where we hold power. Individual advocacy, action and self-education is where we can foster holistic change between the hierarchically organised cultural landscapes of Australia.

Architecture has the power to completely transform our cities, how we want to write our city is up to us. We can change our cultural narratives to have more empowered and selfdetermined control over how we become more inclusive and sustainable. The very essence of First Nations philosophies allows us to understand how to build this new landscape and create fundamental design principals by which we practice and how we treat our living environments moving forward.

How do we allow for architecture to embody First Nations philosophies? Will this be the beginning of a new architectural language that defines our Australian landscape from an international reach? These are all intoxicating possibilities that discuss the potential for First Nations Culture to become the key driver in the Australian architectural, cultural and social paradigm. The increase in readily available information is predominantly utilised by younger generations, again forgoing those in power.

The only solution is for us, students and the growing network of allies, to continue these discussions with all demographics, standing against stigmatised commentary for those who are uneducated within this space.

These policies are being implemented as a response to the ongoing push and discussion of First Nations peoples and their allies within the architecture community. We have seen a revolution within pledges to the Architects Declare movement, and soon we will see this within Indigenous pedagogies being weaved throughout the built environment. We have the power to create radical change by merely initiating these conversations with friends, families and educators as we fast-track our ever-growing network of allies to ultimately change our culture. ■ _____ Liam Coe is a Wiradjuri man from Erambie.

He grew up in inner city Redfern Waterloo on Eora Country and is currently undertaking a Master of Architecture at the University of Sydney.

Pip Buchman grew up in Byron Bay, Bundjalung Country, and later moved to Sydney within Eora Country. She is currently undertaking her Masters of Architecture at Sydney University.

The discussion surrounding colonial history has seen an amass of new advocacy from non-Indigenous allies, sowing seeds for policy reformation within Country and thus within.

There are new frameworks by the Government Architect NSW, that will provide more education and awareness on design processes that incorporate a designing with Country approach.

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DINDARRA / BETWEEN

Framing Country: Reinterpreting lost architecture through storylines of place WORDS: RYAN DINGLE

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the decline in city’s physical and cultural significance. As the world moves to more digital realms, and the individual takes precedence over the public, the city becomes a symbolic space rather than a living matrix of place. While we try to re-engage with our lost places, the city asks us, how am I to stay relevant after place becomes space and my function has been terminated?

Indigenous perspective. Framing Country suggests an alternative design approach to place through the integration of Indigenous perspectives in regard to materiality, tectonics, live systems and movement. The proposition aims to preserve the value of lost and dying architecture by proposing a new viewpoint on contextualism, ethno-architecture, and architecture’s role in connecting people to Country.

If we are able to re-interpret spaces as a collection of sensory and culturally significant parts, then we are able to re-frame them in a way that re-tethers souls to forgotten place unbound by predictive, featurist or futurist ideologies. Western perspectives on the built environment lie in perceptions of the physical environment in which the self, growth, cultural value and modernity is manifested. My understanding is that this opposes Aboriginal perceptions which view architecture as a direct response to the natural environment and the omnipresent idea of Country. To save the city, we need to look at the built environment with an original mode of analysis which is founded in place, with the most relevant and reverent of such being found in the architectural viewpoints of Australia’s First Nation’s peoples.

Framing Country is the culmination of my masters of architecture graduating studio at the University of Sydney. The studio has given me the opportunity to re-evaluate how I architecturally position myself going into the professional realm – where my potential impact lies not in the notion of creation but rather in technical mediation, establishing a means to interact with cultures which affirm and celebrate place rather than detracting from it. As I leave my master’s behind me, I look forward to continuing my study of the dialogue between Western and Indigenous perceptions of architecture and hope to add to Australia’s architectural landscape in a way which engenders belonging through connection to Country. ■

The design proposition ‘Framing Country’ proposes an answer to placelessness through the re-imagining of the empty railway tunnels which lie between Oxford Street and the State Library of New South Wales. The proposal takes the responder along a personal storyline of place, through the synthesis of the atmospheric quality of the current tunnels and the imagined atmosphere of place from a pre-settlement

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_____ Ryan Dingle is the 2021 recipient of the Brian Patrick Kiernan scholarship and a designer at a Marrickville-based practice Kreis Grennan Architecture. Ryan teaches a third-year studio within the Bachelor of Architectural Environments degree at the University of Sydney centred around atmospheric translation and haptic encounters.

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Observing and studying details of agricultural equipment: Narrabri Grasses and Grains Project. Source: Ryan Dingle

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DINDARRA / BETWEEN

Repairing the between spaces – activating the rhizome in Country WORDS: SAMANTHA RICH

Indigenous ways of thinking and being derive from relationalism, a deep understanding of Country and all human and more than human communities and their connecting parts that form a healthy and holistic relationship.

‘Between’ asks that these colonial-influenced systems, practices and our non-Indigenous sisters and brothers take up this thinking with us.

As designers of the built environment, understanding the beginning and end of a project is not the reality. A project sits in a continuum of interconnected events. With Country occupying the design process at any point, we can connect the city within an ongoing story with deep histories that interpenetrate present moments.

The urgency to address the in between is becoming more and more apparent in Country through our communities. Between needs to be an active process questioning, pushing, listening, and breaking down these structures that are embedded in our post-invasion society.

How do we (designers, creators or planners) connect these parts that are between spaces or parts left disconnected and fragmented from the whole? And what are the principles in our profession that continue to create spaces between our places?

The rhizome consists of multiplicities, which when one part changes the multiplicity changes in nature too. We must consider our cities, places, communities, and Country as a rhizome, all connecting parts and not singular in nature.

A site cannot be disconnected from the whole of that place but part of the unified multiplicity of different systems.

Christopher Alexander (1965)1 speaks about this in his writing; A city is not a tree. Western mainstream thinking tends to reorganise complex organisations or systems into nonoverlapping categories. Like a tree, each building within a city is seen with its own expression.

However, when we draw upon the natural systems or our more than human kin, our cities possess a networked structure in which different parts can connect more freely and interconnectedly.

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The relationship between all the parts of Country is one that is deep, intertwined and complex, that requires close attention and respect.

Perhaps a more accurate description of how our cities and Country work is the concept of the rhizome. The Delueze and Guattari (1987)2 concept of the rhizome describes it as a series of points to any other point. It is not reducible to the one or the multiple. The rhizome comprises of dimensions, and directions in motions with neither having a beginning or end but always a middle from which it grows and overspills.

Systems and processes of adjacent parts will continue to be valued in the design and development of our places. As our cities grow, suffocating Country, the planning preference is to continually impose layers which work to ignore the networks of Country. This is clear in the design and construction of subdivisions of the floodplains such as the Hawkesbury River.

The ignored disconnected and fragmented between-spaces inherently contribute to the whole to enable a celebration of place and its natural systems. This means that the subdivision design respects Country and does not build there or builds with Country. Know the natural flows and all beings benefit.

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Ignoring these natural flows determines the structure of our cities and allows it to disregard the relationships that exist prior to Western building upon Country. Country is not a conceptual tabula rasa to shape and create to our liking, as there are always historical truths and uses associated with the qualities of a site.

The Western concept of design often ignores layers of history and the more than human communities that call that place and all the connecting parts home. This condition often prioritises commercial gain over relationships with nature.

The Government Architect NSW Connecting with Country Draft Framework provides principles for practitioners to understand and appreciate the nuances of Country. Distinct ways of thinking are illustrated in the ego and eco diagram with the circle eco possessing qualities of rhizome. There is equity in the relationships. This contrasts with the arborescent ego diagram possessing layered hierarchies with separated and disconnected relationships in a closed system.

There is no doubt that we all exist within the ego system yet a conscious shift to moving between the ego and eco ways of thinking can benefit natural systems. Starting with Country means valuing those disconnected and fragmented between spaces and activating rhizome qualities to form those connections where opportunities arise.

Moving forward, connecting with Country means valuing the relational qualities of your site that extend beyond the cadastral boundaries and client. It means extending the rhizome of thought to connect with our local First Nations communities who have authority to speak for Country. Valuing our more than human kin, means appreciating the natural relationships that have been disrupted in the city and proposing design solutions that establish and restore habitats.

Image: GANSW Draft Connecting with Country Framework 2020.

As demonstrated in the eco diagram, it is challenging to design for more than human communities if the relational visibility is not present. The challenge for the profession is to break free from the hierarchical thinking and reform thought processes behind the places we create. Using the rhizome analogy, we can strengthen existing links between or break the old connections to create new ones.

Operating between colonial-influenced systems that permeate and structure our societal environments means connecting practices of Country that our non-Indigenous sisters and brothers take up with us.

Country will find a way. ■ _____ Samantha Rich is an architectural designer and researcher for a community led partnership called Yuwaya Ngarra-li. She is a proud Wiradjuri woman, with a deep passion for the social and cultural factors that influence the design of space in particular working with First Nations communities to translate their narratives and perspectives into built form. She has diverse experience working across multiple sectors including art, urban design, residential, health, and civic projects.

NOTES 1 Alexander Christopher (1965, April). A city is not a tree. In Architectural forum (Vol. 122, No. 1, pp. 58-62).

2 Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari (1988). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia ebury Publishing.

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DINDARRA / BETWEEN

Bidgun / Middle WORDS: BEAU DE BELLE

This issue presents the concept of Dindarra, the Kuku Yalanji word translating to “between” to explore aspects of architectural experiences and transformation from interactions between Country and First Nations cultures and the colonial / capitalist systems surrounding us. I will use the word Bidgun, the Gamilaraay (Kamilaroi / Gomeroi) word translating to “in the middle” to discuss the interstitial zone between interacting cultures, in the post-invasion landscapes in what is now known as Australia.

I am a Gamilaraay man. A decade or so ago I would not have been able to articulate that short sentence. I am a member of the Stolen Generations. My land, learnings, understandings of Country, obligations, family relations, history and cultural and social connections were taken from me through government sponsored assimilation policies with genocidal intent. As a father, I want to pass on knowledge and stories to my children. I feel anger at what has been taken away, and am honoured to be recognised a member of the Gamilaraay Nation, the fourth largest Aboriginal Nation. The extent of Gamilaraay Country was defined by a line drawn by a European cartographer’s pen. From that mapping exercise, Gamilaraay Country extends from what is now known as New South Wales to what is now known as southern Queensland.

I am learning the Gamilaraay language, ceremonies, song, dance and how Country is interconnected with the Skyworld. Gamilaraay Country, Elders and community are my educators, with Country being the giver of life.

I have learnt the necessity of being humble and understand that I am in a learning phase and will be for the rest of my life. Gamilaraay Country has so much to teach me. Importantly, I know that I do not have the cultural authority to talk for Gamilaraay Country at this point.

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My personal and professional journeys are intertwined. I have been able to explore my Gamilaraay identity through my architectural education, practice, and now doctoral research in a way that empowers me to say that I am a Gamilaraay man. Changes over the last two decades in architectural education and practice have allowed me to explore my Indigeneity, to begin to understand what Country means and to explore what architecture and design might be from a First People’s perspective. How might the historical injustices that the cartographer’s line, and colonial practices committed be righted through the design of the physical environment?

Following Mattunga and others, I view architecture and planning as a practice and socio-political movement. Euro-centric architecture and planning were used to attempt to erase Country. Our sacred sites were overlaid with developments and many of our songlines and trade routes bulldozed. Country is alive, has survived, but is wounded and needs healing.

Using architecture and planning as a sociopolitical movement, Country can be visually embodied with meaning and sites reconnected.

Gamilaraay Country may be healed, and the cultural identity of Gamilaraay peoples reinforced through architecture and design practice.

As a Gamilaraay design practitioner and academic, cultural mandates necessitate activism in understanding the socio-political contexts of the numerous First Nations on which I work. What is now known as Australia is a culturally diverse place; the processes and outcomes for architecture and planning used for one First Nations Country may be completely irrelevant and indeed disrespectful on another.

We are not generic, nor are First Peoples’ views of Country, architecture, processes, and meanings.

First Peoples’ voices must be privileged, but it is tokenistic to assume that any one Indigenous architect or academic will have all the answers. It is also imperative that nonIndigenous practitioners and academics be involved in discussion. Losing the knowledge of practitioners and academics in rapidly evolving discourses could be a disaster given the challenges ahead and the need for critical thought, advocates and allies.

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recommendations would result in Treaty. It was a great disappointment that this did not occur, and the practice and theory of architecture would have advanced considerably. As we stand, First Peoples presence in the built form and landscape across Australia is in truth telling and reconciliation stages. Individual initiatives, such as the design of memorial sites, which re-layer the landscape with contemporary built forms that acknowledge colonial atrocities and celebrate First Peoples’ resilience are important in truth telling, and the process of attempting to right historical wrongs. Reconciliation projects are imperative, as they educate the public on the presence and knowledges of First Peoples and contribute to strengthening individual and collective Indigenous identities. It is important that we conceptualise projects without using the cartographer’s line and consider how they relate to deep time knowledges and Country.

Otherwise, such projects may become a series of stand-alone exhibits situated in a colonial landscape.

Truth telling and reconciliation projects are recognising First Peoples knowledges and occupation of the land, but we must move toward projects and discourse that focus on sovereignty and autonomy

One given, is the need for architecture and allied professions to recognise the 600 or more First Nations’ endeavours that are underpinned by need for the control of land and sovereignty.

One of the underlying tensions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples engaging with current reconciliation, native title, and other processes, is that they fall short of the recognition and autonomy that we as First Peoples have long sought as sovereign people.

We are in the bidgun (middle).

Many public and institutional projects fall within what could be considered truth and reconciliation initiatives. Reconciliation can be conceived as a form of transitional justice as defined by Māori judge, Sir Joseph Williams as a process where “the new order agrees either to uphold pre-existing rights …or to make good on those that were unfairly taken away.” Australia’s reconciliation processes are a result of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, and it was assumed by many that the processes related to the

As Indigenous designers, educators, researchers, and political beings, we must look to the future and consider how our discourse and practice go beyond the sequence of truth telling and reconciliation, and how they can contribute to First Peoples’ autonomy and sovereignty. ■ _____ Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Elizabeth Grant, John Fien, Anthony Hoete, Martyn Hook, Mark Jones, Paul Munaitya Herzich and N’arweet Caroline Briggs for their feedback on this paper and my research to date. Their patience and guidance have been invaluable.

Beau De Belle is the Vice Chancellor’s Indigenous Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the School of Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT University and is currently undertaking his PhD by practice. He completed his Bachelor of Design and Master of Architecture at the University of Newcastle and practised as a graduate architect for a number of years.

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Pavilion of sand WORDS: SHELLIE SMITH AND GENEVIEVE MURRAY

On Awabakal Country, at the mouth of the Coquun and before the sacred site of Whibayganba was sliced in half to secure ship access to the harbour, sand and water met in an ever changing landscape. Sand, which characterises this coastline up into Worimi Country on the opposite shore heading north, has long been a material, with its liquid, subtle and constant movement, that acts as a mediating force. A force that once nurtured the now endangered Little Turn who only nest in moving dunes, now constantly moved, mined and dredged to enable ongoing settlement in this place.

The middens that lined the shores, cultural sites, evidence of Awabakal occupation for time immemorial were also mined for their lime.

LimeBurners Cove on the northern shore of the Coquun fed the demand for builders lime down the coast in Warrane as well as in Mulubinba.

In the tradition of pavilion architectures that sit on the fringe of practice as a mechanism for

Pavilion of Sand conceptual collage by Joel Sherwood-Spring.

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opening up sometimes necessary conversations, the commission of a pavilion to exclusively celebrate living Awabakal and Worimi culture as part of the New Annual Festival in Mulubinba (Newcastle), was the starting point for a conversation between practice, process, Country and material.

Pavilion of Sand is a design collaboration led

by Awabakal practitioner Shellie Smith with Wiradjuri anti-disciplinary artist Joel SherwoodSpring and non-Indigenous architect and settler Genevieve Murray of Future Method.

The process began by walking Country and yarning. As we looked north towards the dunes of Worimi Country from the highest point of Mulubinba, we could see clearly the city grid and its constant conflict with the moving topography and natural processes of the land.

Sand as the mediating and material force in this landscape is central to the project. The decision to reintroduce this ubiquitous but beleaguered material force back into the settler city square as a pavilion, brought these two worlds into a more intimate conversation with each other. Ideas of the temporality, proximity and malleability of sand started to be explored.

Reviewing archives found numerous references to the “problem” sand drifts caused to the fledgling colony and its need to enforce the

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structure of the street grid on this dynamic ecosystem, one that had done its thing, unimpeded for eternity. The opportunity for this once natural occurrence to be allowed to do its thing again and appear, engulf and recede felt right. Sand, with its softness, movement and playful nurturing quality, becomes seating, ballast and structure – a place for dance, and culture and Community to gather, a space that is responsive and supportive of living Awabakal and Worimi culture.

Throughout the project, careful attention was paid to the relationships – between community, between us as a team, and with Country.

This brought about a considered, caring and responsive process where looking to Country and its people drove the process. The pavilion commission allowed us to explore the polemic of sovereignty, response to Country, and protocols of material use without burdens inherent in larger commissions. It enabled discussions about material provenance and the act of bringing material that was once part of another Country and what that meant from a cultural and spiritual perspective. As interdisciplinary designers it enabled us to explore the complexities of working on Country in ways that are respectful of Community, of living Aboriginal culture and Country.

In this complex context, there are risks in projects that engage with Country and do nothing more than memorialise Aboriginal culture. Unless co-creating with Aboriginal people working on Country and working to support living Aboriginal Culture, projects are always at risk of contributing to a system that is complicit in processes of securing this landscape for settlement.

To engage with a living Aboriginal culture when working in the built environment is, by its very nature, problematic and complex. Burned by my previous experiences where First Nations voices are approached to collaborate on architectural projects, trepidation is a first response. Was this project going to be another instance where a local First Nations person with a background in architecture is called upon to nod approval and add legitimacy to a brief, budget and design outcome already in place by a settler-led client and design team?

Fortunately, the answer for this project was no and from the outset, the intentions and trajectory of this project were openly discussed with truly collaborative processes employed from the start.

Since its pre-pandemic inception, we have witnessed the reconfiguring of our role in relation to place and Country. We can see settler colonial culture, in the time of climate crisis, with fires, floods and pandemics, confront its limits. The imperative, that the lessons of living in this place must begin with Aboriginal people and their communities is critical and essential.

Space must be made for projects that are led

by Aboriginal people and for their communities to support, sustain and enrich living Aboriginal Culture not memorialise it.

Pavilion of Sand launches with a program of Awabakal and Worimi language, culture and dancing as part of New Annual Festival in Mulubinba (Newcastle) on 23 September, and will run through to 2 October.

The project has been a collaboration with Barkindji Malyangapa artist, Jasmine Craciun and Worimi local Knowledge holder, Luke Russell. ■ _____ Shellie Smith is a proud Awabakal women who uses a combination of research and art practice to reconnect to her aboriginal heritage.

A graduate of architecture, Shellie specialised in adaptive reuse and heritage conservation.

Currently a PhD candidate and sessional academic at the University of Newcastle. She provides culturally appropriate advice regarding imbedding local Aboriginal perspectives and design element in projects located in the Mulubinba (Newcastle) area.

Genevieve Murray is co-director of Future Method Studio, a collaborative and inter/antidisciplinary practice working on projects that sit outside established notions of contemporary art & architecture attempting to transfigure spatial dynamics of power through discourse, pedagogies, art, design, and architectural practice. We are focussed on examining the contested narratives of Australia’s urban cultural and Indigenous history in the face of ongoing colonisation.

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Awakening a consciousness WORDS: JACK GILLMER

gathay nyiirun yanyi, gathay nyiirun ngarra, gathayga, nyiirun ngarra (Gathang: language of the Birrbay, Guringay and Warrimay) Let us walk together, let us listen together, on Country, we remember.

Elders teach you to listen to the land, and Country sings back to you. Country is the greatest teacher. She presents evidence of latent histories through lessons of wind, water, earth and fire sculpting the landscape since the beginning of time. Guri (Aboriginal Peoples) are extensions of Country who have a cultural responsibility to pass on her wisdoms. This has been interpreted through story, dance, art and theatre since time immemorial reflecting 60,000+ years of observation and relationship with the lands.

It’s important to recognise the limited keepers of traditional knowledge, “to keep culture alive we have to give it away” as Yuin Elder Uncle Max Dulumunmun Harrison would say. Often culture is shared with, and respectfully by wayibala (white fellow), who can play a fundamental role to inspire emerging First Nations leaders and allies. We require more pivotal figures in all professions to share these wisdoms as culture can be made present and rediscovered in countless facets and periods of life. Many have been fortunate enough to cross-paths with and share knowledge with a great teacher, mentor, ally and friend Richard Leplastrier. He has inspired my journey.

One of Rick’s great teachers was Uncle Max. Uncle had witnessed the marginalisation of Aboriginal people and traditional teachings; as a result, his mission was to discover ways for others to understand First Nations culture.

He generously shared knowledge with many,

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including students of architectural conferences and masterclasses where he provided Indigenous insight to the intersection of Country and architecture. Traditional knowledge from Uncle Max is reflected through those he inspired. Although I did not meet Uncle, I receive an overwhelming sense my journey has been a result of his mission. Through Rick he has strengthened my Aboriginal identity.

Rick and I met at the University of Newcastle on Awabakal Country in the Masters of Architecture program. He was a Professor of Practice alongside the extraordinary minds and generous cohort of Brit Anderson, Kerry and Lindsay Clare, Lawrence Nield, and Peter Stutchbury to name a few inspirational people who understand the complexities of this landscape. The intersection of Country and architecture creates sophisticated relationships between the tangible and intangible, that truly require a symbiosis of the complex cultural knowledge of landscape, and technicalities of architecture.

This intersection was a foreign conception when I began my architectural journey at university, I had not aligned Aboriginal knowledge and thinking to the built environment, and the way we design and occupy space and place. Before meeting Rick, I did not quite understand the presence of Country. I grew up knowing of my Aboriginality, but didn’t know of its inherent connectedness. I am still learning, we all are.

Cultural knowledge in my family lay dormant due to the hidden generations. I was not taught to read and feel the multi-sensory qualities of Country; there were misconceptions that songlines and story were fictional. I didn’t understand their truth until I “remembered”.

Rick had awakened my cultural consciousness.

He helped me “remember”.

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Observing and studying details of agricultural equipment: Narrabri Grasses and Grains Project. Image: Steven Burns

Rick teaching lessons from natural flora: Narrabri Grasses and Grains Project. Image: Steven Burns

Drawing and discussing details, lessons from Rick.

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Looking back at the founding moments of our relationship, they were life defining. The yarns, lessons, and wisdoms that were shared has sculpted my trajectory, and others; to connect to culture, to listen to Country, celebrate and respect it, and touch it lightly. These lessons have enforced not only my identity as an Aboriginal man, but my familial identity. As my siblings and I have been inspired by guri and wayibala professionals alike, we have shared this knowledge with each other; our family is remembering. Our consciousness has been awoken and this will radiate to our networks and generations to follow.

Rick and I have maintained a friendship in the six years since I completed my architecture degree.

I will call him for a yarn, ask for advice, share newfound knowledge; we’ve also collaborated on projects that focus on Aboriginal narratives.

These projects have provided opportunity for Rick and I to work collaboratively within the realm of Indigenous thinking and architecture, the career trajectory he helped inspire. These projects include, Eucalyptusdom at the Powerhouse Museum Ultimo with the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences; Dhuwarr: a celebration of Gomeroi grasses, grains and placemaking, with collaborator Dr Michael Mossman, Kuku Yalanji.

These relationships between First Nations peoples, architects, and allied practitioners will promote the sharing of cultural knowledge and will reflect to a future that is better for generations to follow. My realisation is that the process of engaging with Aboriginal communities and peoples through consultation and co-design is equally important, or moreso than the tangible outcome of a building.

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Rick’s contribution as a tutor and mentor in my formative architectural education years has imbued my own connectedness to processes that design with Country.

To all academics and tutors participating in this space. Richard Leplastrier and his stories of Uncle provided a framework to teach architecture as a vessel that shares songlines, stories, cultural lessons and knowledge systems. This resulted in a student cohort who became more culturally competent and aware of the complexities between built and natural environment. You never know as the next First Nations student might be in your class waiting for their consciousness to be awoken.

Wanyimbuwanyimbu ganyila, wanyimbuwanyimbu ganyiy nyiirunba barray.

Always was, always will be our Country. ■ _____ Jack Gillmer BArch MArch is a graduate of architecture at SJB. Jack is a descendent of the Worimi & Biripai Nations. Country (barray – in Gathang) is the forefront of his architectural narrative, exploring the tangible and intangible, negotiating a multi-sensory outcome and narratives that deliver projects of place, rejuvenating the senses and latent knowledges of Country. His cultural instinct is to co-design with First Nations community groups and peoples, and recognises the sharing of knowledge and these processes are critical to a successful and well-placed project. He has worked on various multi-unit residential, mixed-use, commercial, exhibition, and master planning projects.

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Two-way learning: participatory design & construction WORDS: MARNI RETI AND DAVID KAUNITZ

Two-way learning is the foundation of participatory design and construction. In our experience it is central to First Nations cultures with many having a specific word or phrase for this way of doing. Two-way learning sits at the core of our practice and was the genesis of the way in which we practice.

Kaunitz Yeung Architecture was born from the approach that David began developing while living and working in the remote Solomon Islands. With little English spoken or connectivity to the outside world, projects were delivered through true collaboration. This approach has continued to develop as our experience and the number of communities we have collaborated with has grown. This has been amplified by those within the practice such as Ka Wai Yeung, Emma Trask-Ward and Marni Reti as they have folded their own perspectives and experience into our process.

Kaunitz Yeung Architecture’s deep commitment to participatory design and local construction is central to the story of belonging for each project.

The former builds a rapport and ownership between the project and the users. The later enables an enduring connection to place and Country. This also serves as the primary measure of the project. These are the outcomes that really matter if architecture is to be an agent of social change and elevate its standing within the community at large.

Underlying this is the fact that all our work has been delivered within the same funding and time constraints as other similar projects. We consider this important as it reinforces the legitimacy of the approach by being respectful of the community’s limited resources and opportunities. It has also demonstrated that high quality, change making architecture does not need to be a luxury item.

Many of the communities we collaborate with face the very real challenges of living in two worlds. For us architecture is a vehicle to unite these two worlds. Through our experience we have developed an approach, a process which harnesses the projects cultural context. By working together with communities and being brave we are able to create architecture which is elevated beyond what normally could be achieved. The result, we hope, is the best of both worlds.

The foundation of this process is mutual respect.

You must acknowledge what you do not know and open yourself up to two-way learning.

This requires a humility in approach. The design process must be opened to the clients and users. In this way the clients / end users bring their knowledge of their cultural world to the design process. They bring what the design team lacks. This compliments what the design team brings to the project experience, best practice, and expertise. In this way the best of both worlds can be achieved.

Our experience over the last ten years working with almost all the Ngaanyatjarra, Martu Niaboli communities in the Western Australia deserts has also been central to our approach. The culmination of the desert project collaborations is the recently completed Puntukurnu Aboriginal Medical Service (PAMS) Clinic in Newman WA on Nyiyaparli Country and servicing all four remote Martu communities.

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/ TWO-WAY LEARNING: PARTICIPATORY DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION WORDS: MARNI RETI AND DAVID KAUNITZ

The project has closely followed the following eight principles which we use to guide all our work. The response to each principle has been applied in a way that is specific to local people, culture and Country.

1. Community-led consultation: The key to this is to work with the existing community governance structures. The PAMS board is made up of a female and male member from each of the four Martu communities and Newman. We worked through these representatives for several years supporting them to engage with community and facilitate our direct engagement. Importantly this enables consultation to occur in language which supports principle two.

2. Enabling all voices to be heard: Multiplicity of forums is important in enabling all voices to be heard. Small group meetings with women, men, youth, children, Indigenous health workers etc. are important to enable specific perspectives to be conveyed.

So too is informal discussion at the shop or sitting under a tree.

3. Time to listen: Perhaps the most important aspect of engagement and consultation is time. It takes time to build rapport and relationships. Only with time can there be repetition in engagement that enables a real understanding to be developed and issues to be uncovered. We spend significant time in communities and on Country and this was especially true of our years working with the Martu communities culminating in the PAMS Clinic Newman.

4. First principles approach: Every project goes through a rigorous process where nothing is assumed, and everything is revalidated. The PAMS Clinic was no different with all aspects of the project being redefined from our previous work and lessons learnt appropriately applied.

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5. Iterative co-design: The first four principles cannot be successful without an iterative process that is an authentic partnership with communities, the client and stakeholders.

In Newman this was seamless with our previous work with PAMS and the Martu communities. The process was a journey for all concerned where the logic of decision making was crystal clear to all involved.

6. Materials / art / culture: Local materials and integration of local art are hallmarks of how we connect architecture to Country.

Rammed earth creates a human and intuitive connection to its place.

The material is Country. It reflects the different light and absorbs the rain just like Country. This is obvious and immediate to everyone but elevated and important for Aboriginal people. The excitement in the community for the project was palpable once the rammed earth walls were erected well before the project was complete.

7. Co-construct: This is in many respects the hardest principle to achieve in Australia.

In the Pacific almost all the projects we have worked on have been completely built by local people. We are expanding our collaboration with Indigenous contractors and communities to raise the bar and steadily making progress.

8. Innovation: No matter the budget or the remoteness we feel innovation must be central to any project to deliver the best possible outcome for communities. In Newman the rooftop PVs mean that the building is almost entirely powered from onsite renewables. Dramatically reducing operational carbon and running costs.

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Puntukurnu Aboriginal Medical Service Healthcare Hub Newman | Kaunitz Yeung Architecture | Photo: Robert Frith

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In particular the integration of art has been emblematic of the implementation of these eight values. It is important in enriching the architecture, engaging with, and providing an enduring connection to local people. The process of selecting art is always conducted by the community and guided to ensure the artists represent the gender and other diversities of community. This is not simply a copying exercise but a process of iterative collaboration with the artists to ensure the integrity of the art and its cultural meaning are maintained while it is adapted for integration with the architecture.

Art counters the utilitarian-built environment of most underprivileged communities which gives no inkling of the extraordinary art that is so often created for the pleasure of others.

Their incorporation enables the building to pay respect to elders, artists and culture, enriching the community, becoming a beacon of a brighter future.

It is this brighter future that we hope participatory design and construction by two-way learning will engender. A future in which the best of both worlds is achieved. ■

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_____ Marni Reti is a proud Palawa and Ngātiwai woman, born and raised on Gadigal Country.

She graduated from a Master of Architecture at UTS, where she was one of the first recipients of the inaugural Droga Indigenous Architecture Scholarship, and the 2021 recipient of the NSW Architect Medallion. Marni is a graduate of architecture at award-winning practice, Kaunitz Yeung Architecture. She has dedicated her professional and academic career to engaging Indigenous Knowledge Keeping into architectural practice and design.

David Kaunitz as a director of Kaunitz Yeung Architecture is focused on facilitating high-quality architecture in some of the most disadvantaged communities in Australian and Asia–Pacific.

Underlying this is a deep commitment to participatory design and local construction.

They have a significant body of award-winning architecture and have worked in more than 40 Aboriginal & Torres Strait Island communities, 200 Pacific Island communities as well as in Asia. This includes prestigious awards such as the Union of International Architects, Vassilis Sgoutas Prize the world’s highest architectural honour for working with the underprivileged.

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A reflection on the missing pieces: Discovering a new design process BYERA HADLEY TRAVELLING SCHOLARSHIP 2012 WORDS: TOM GRAY

Originally, across many continents, “The Missing Pieces” sought to discover existent and emergent ways of developing the built environment through varied First Nations worldviews. The research sought projects that had managed to re-organise the systemic logic of the culturally hegemonic group and privilege other ways of doing. Inevitably, the journey became a critique of cross-cultural negotiations and methodologies in architecture.

Now, ten years on, this article reflects on key elements from that journey in order to unpack some of the assumptions, ongoing challenges and conditions we face as built environment professionals collaborating in post-colonial landscapes. It poses the question. Are cultural practices meaningfully strengthened and deeply embedded or are they peripheral?

The original journey presented design processes in two ways. The first through the presence of an external agency (catalyst or participant) and secondly through the internal dynamics of communities that are often guided by sophisticated, naturally occurring cultural protocols. To focus on the former we can examine productive ways of negotiating disparate world views with a willingness to reciprocate knowledge.

Projects that seek to include the voices of marginalised communities occasionally struggle with the idea of consensus and the process to which decisions are ultimately made. Consensus, for the external agency, can sometimes mean the absence of conflict in design processes, ultimately solving the exogenous problem and prioritising prescribed project timelines or outcomes chained to static laws or standards.

An alternative to consensus could be a process in which conflict can flourish in the unprescribed, which plays a role in achieving proper agonistic pluralism in projects. The feasibility of which might hinge on our willingness to temporarily abandon preordained project goals and privilege a diversity of cultural ways in determining the future of project sites.

Such inclusive processes inevitably lead to lengthier consultation periods which, in their wake, tow the realities of project fatigue.

How then do we recalibrate societal systems

Walking Country, talking culture with architect Richard Kroeker, Nova Scotia, Canada. Source: Tom Gray

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to support such non-linear processes and understand what it means to “un-know”? Finding time and space (and money) to reflect on the auto-ethnographical nature of architecture is both confronting and necessary. On the journey, Albert Marshall, a Mi’kmaw elder imparts to us the concept of Etuaptmumk or two-eyed seeing.

This gift of multiple perspectives seems a necessary enabler of non-solutionist thinking.

Such challenges for external agencies are not insurmountable and to examine more closely the structural foundations of institutionalised design processes in Australia there is a truth-telling required in the field of participatory design.

Perhaps cynically, but truthfully, South African architect Jo Noero reminds us that sometimes in design projects “participation is about making people feel that the decisions you’ve made for them, they are making for themselves.” This echoes the sentiment of Sherry Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation, which helps explain the phenomenon of some external agencies simply chasing buy-in from the traditional peoples. It’s also important to reflect that democratic design does not equate to opening up the decision-making process to every single person, which runs counter to community abilities to navigate polemic space.

Sherry Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation.

Source: https://www.citizenshandbook.org/arnsteinsladder.html

Over an extended three-hour yarn, Canadian architect Douglas Cardinal recounts the fourday-vision session for the design of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), reminding us of the crucial nature of time in dissolving ego and diversity in capturing a meaningful vision. Douglas reminds us that the elders would say: “if everyone agrees with you, you only have half the circle.”

Reflecting with Douglas Cardinal in his studio, Ottawa, Canada. Source: Tom Gray

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There are multiple, often contradictory paths in enacting a vision, but as the vision is committed to the ancestors, those present bear the great responsibility of carrying it. It is important to reflect that, for community members not present, access to that vision is encountered in their own way, and in their own in time.

How then can a project support a constellation of relationships with that vision in perpetuity?

If the concretisation of cultural practices can occur in the initial design process, then the project should also facilitate an ongoing conversation and reinforcement of those practices into the future.

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The concept of visioning is neither new nor a product of esoteric cultural protocols. The key lies not only in what but in how the initial problem is defined and framed. The struggle of visioning is real, and it is true that decision making processes operate on different time scales and often within different social and economic logics. Dianne Kay from Lalme’ Iwesawtexw (Seabird Island Community School, British Columbia, designed with Patkau Architects) describes her culture as a “paper clip” unable to be straightened out without force, using money as one example, “It’s we got paid, not I got paid”.

Extending the example to Chile, the word Kelluwun or collective help describes the logic for the Mapuche-managed community financial institution The Mutual Support Group enabling regenerative asset management within the Llaguepulli Community. Despite neither example including built form, the subtle internal logics that drive these initiatives are key to reimagining how we forge interdisciplinary connections in the built environment in order to reimagine how certain problems are defined.

In recalibrating our relationship with the lifeworld from which the built environment borrows so heavily, we must also rethink the living qualities of buildings. Visiting Richard Kroeker, a Canadian architect in Nova Scotia, we spoke for weeks on the deep learnings gifted by the Mi’kmaq community. Generalising a typical colonial mindset toward materiality he says, “We confuse the complexity of making a material with the complexity of what the material can do on its own.”

The practical application of this sentiment varies at scale but carries with it an important message that disrupts the pattern of thinking sometimes engrained in built environment professionals: the constituent parts of buildings do not exist in isolation but belong to a continuity of meaning and purpose. The Pictou Landing Health Center, designed by Richard Kroeker and Brian Lilley in collaboration with Peter Henry Architects, illustrates this impermanence and exposes us to cultural narratives and the voice of the community through its physical parts in a greater realm.

Internal trusses of the Pictou Landing Health Centre, Nova Scotia, Canada. Source: Tom Gray

Finally, in discussions on design processes and cultural hegemony, it is important to acknowledge the assumption that anyone is capable of being dominated, colonised or pacified through the act of systemic and passive cultural imperialism in post-colonial landscapes.

Despite the atrocities of the past and present in which architecture plays a key role, the deep connection to culture was, is, and will never be deterred. The themes discussed are done so with the utmost regard to all, and the personal limitations of my perception is sincerely acknowledged. ■ _____ Tom Gray is a casual academic at the University of Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning on Gadigal land and principal architect of Tom Gray Architect on Dharawal land. His experiences and views are a result of living and working in Arlparra on Alyawarre land and a more recent continuum of yarns with peers and students. His focus remains on the process of ideation, and more specifically how process can strengthen cultural narratives and benefit a diversity of people and species long term.

NOTES All quotations come from transcripts of personal interviews conducted via film on the Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship.

Image references Arnstein’s Ladder https://www.citizenshandbook.org/arnsteinsladder.html

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The power of reciprocity – starting with Country WORDS: ELLE DAVIDSON

The disciplines of architecture and town planning are intrinsically interrelated yet in practice are often considered separately from one another. My understanding is that there are intersections between these disciplines but rarely do the systems behind these professions collaborate through sharing knowledge and project outcomes in meaningful ways.

Western practices are predominantly siloed environments, with linear and rigid processes causing the two disciplines to move in and out of a project by considering its outcomes

in narrow-sighted ways. In contrast, my lived experiences of thinking from a First Nations perspective is holistic and multifaceted. All parts are interrelated and one must consider design thinking with spatial locations, relationships with place and reciprocity in actions to start with Country.

Gawura Aboriginal Learning Centre (2007, NSW Government Architect’s Office – Project Architect: Dillon Kombumerri) located at the Northern Beaches TAFE in Sydney provides a strong case study that starts with Country.

Yarning circle at Gawura with Dillon Kombumerri, Kylie Watts, Susan Moylan-Coombs, Elle Davidson and Michael Mossman. Photo: Adrian Thai.

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The project provides actions of reciprocity through careful spatial location considerations and relationships with place and community.

These were achieved through sustained collaborative practices with the local First Nations communities who led the process of planning and design from the outset. The project was born out of community desire to create a space for Aboriginal learning within the TAFE site. Their involvement in the process was deeply embedded in all phases of the project and developed as a trusting partnership rather than a transactional engagement activity.

Susan Moylan-Coombs, a Woolwonga and Gurindji woman from the Northern Territory, who has lived on Gai-mariagal Country for over 50 years and former employee at the Northern Beaches TAFE commented “the campus site was unique because of a pocket of bushland in the middle. The idea was to create something that spoke about culture, spoke about purpose of place, which is education and then something that was welcoming.”

The siting of Garuwa in a central location within the TAFE campus was a powerful act of reconciliation and healing Country – creating a place where the whole community could come together while also providing a cultural facility for the local Aboriginal community. The project created a strong First Nations presence to enact Country as the centrepiece of the design thinking and approach.

Community leadership was integral to success to query and inform the parameters of planning the location of the facility and empowering a voice for Country. Community and culture were key drivers for the project for the architectural design and spatial location to build on and provide the built form manifestation of community aspirations.

Once the community had articulated their needs for the project Yugembir architect Dillon Kombumerri was engaged to facilitate the design process and work closely with the community in achieving their aspirations. He noted the importance of having an open mind when working with community through the practice of deep listening and the value of black-on-black enterprise to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.

The design and planning process was led by community and Dillon highlighted the value of working at the pace of community without trying to force or rush outcomes. This ensured trust and reciprocity from both parties to collaborate with shared values and understandings of how the planning and architecture connected with Country.

As we learn to embrace, celebrate and commit to concepts and meanings of Country and community, industry and government need to reevaluate notions of reciprocity and collaboration between design and planning disciplines. The pressure placed on First Nations Traditional Custodians and Knowledge Holders to maintain holistic influence is mounting in light of the disjointed nature of planning and architectural disciplines. This is compounded by a growing sense of powerlessness among community who sometimes lack agency in deciding the parameters of a project.

In my experiences of working in collaboration with First Nation communities, understanding Country through sensing and listening needs to occur much earlier in our processes. Planners need to actively understand the importance of cultural landscapes and how places are connected to one another. This knowledge is harnessed to form the basis of the spatial framework in relation to what types of activities and land uses are appropriate for certain locations. Critically, it is the contributions of Traditional Custodians and Knowledge Holders who provide the instructions to carry out this task.

As a project progresses through its architecture and design stages, the same Traditional Custodians and Knowledge Holders should be taken through the journey to ensure continuity to develop capacities of community for future projects. It is our industry responsibility to understand the notion of reciprocity and actively weave these processes with our own practices to learn and alleviate pressures of consultation fatigue. Activating foundational conversations in the early stages of planning with Traditional Custodians and Knowledge Holder benefitted projects such Gawura and competently moved forward with a First Nations architect.

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/ THE POWER OF RECIPROCITY – STARTING WITH COUNTRY WORDS: ELLE DAVIDSON

With understandings of Indigenous cultural intellectual property permissions, industry can transform to facilitate better knowledge-sharing and a transfer of information between disciplines to embed more dynamic and respectful relationships. Our responsibility is to create a more seamless transition between planning and architecture processes to ensure communities participate and contribute is respectful and honouring environments.

We need to navigate all spaces between First Nations communities and the architect and planner. It is important to understand where communities are positioned to lead and take us through the whole project as recommended

by Dillon. Gawura is loved and cherished by the local First Nations communities and broader community as a place that connects with Country and allow others to immerse themselves in Country.

Our linear, stop-start thinking between planning and architecture professionals must be transformed so that First Nations communities are participating from the outset of a project.

This continuous thread of Country through culture and community enables seamless connections between the different scopes and stages of a project lifespan.

To truly start with Country and embed thinking into the built environment we must consider opportunities for reciprocity with Country, community and culture as foundational to industry practice. For First Nations peoples, reciprocity is a core cultural value, the concept of sharing and exchange, respect and fairness, give and take.

Every piece connects as an interwoven tapestry.

Built environment practitioners can understand that starting with Country means transformative shifts in thinking and approaches to generate mutually beneficial outcomes for Country, community and culture. ■ _____

“

the campus site was unique because of a pocket of bushland in the middle.

The idea was to create something that spoke about culture, spoke about purpose of place, which is education and then something that was welcoming.

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Elle Davidson is a Balanggarra woman from the East Kimberley and descendant of Captain William Bligh, and describes herself as being caught in the cross-winds of Australia’s history. With a passion to empower the voices of First Nations People, Elle combines her Town Planning and Indigenous Engagement qualifications to shape our places and spaces. Through her approach, she creates a strong platform for Aboriginal voices in the planning process and builds allies to advocate for community. She is the Director of Zion Engagement and Planning, an Aboriginal training and consulting business and an Aboriginal Planning Lecturer at University of Sydney.

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In conversation with Daniel Boyd & David Adjaye 180 GEORGE STREET PUBLIC PLAZA INTERVIEW: MICHAEL MOSSMAN

The conversation below is a snapshot of an interview with Daniel Boyd and David Adjaye.

Michael Mossman (MM): Thanks very much.

I am keen to have a yarn with you both, Daniel and David, to discuss the Sydney Plaza Building Project at 180 George Street on Gadigal Land, which in the case for this project is the Sydney CBD. I have allocated time for introductions and then a critical question that we can let flow.

We can start by introducing ourselves to tell each other about our cultural backgrounds as a breaking of the ice. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples here in Australia, it is important to situate yourself, so others can relate to you, and you can then carry out your interactions.

David Adjaye (DA): I love this. I love this thing that I saw in Sydney and New Zealand, in your region. I think it is something that’s starting to proliferate globally, and I like it very much. I think the whole world should do this.

MM: I am Dr Michael Mossman, a Kuku Yalanji man from rainforest Country north of Cairns.

I was born and raised in Cairns and now live on Gadigal land in the Inner West of Sydney area.

I am trained in architecture, have practiced and now teach at the University of Sydney School of Architecture Design and Planning and consult in First Nations design strategy.

Daniel Boyd (DB): I am an artist and now live on Eora Land in the Gamaygal and Wangal Country.

I have been living here now for 15 years after studying visual arts at university in Canberra.

DA: My name is David Adjaye. I was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. I come from the Akan peoples of West Africa and am of Ghanaian descent. I was educated on the continent, first years, and then later educated in the UK. Lived in the UK for 30 years practising architecture and returned to my homeland in Ghana most recently.

MM: One thing that interests me for the Sydney Plaza Project is that there is an air of mystery and anticipation in its reveal this year. It is part of a larger precinct of other developments happening on spectacular Country. We use this term Country in Australia as a totality of place.

How an individual connects to that place and all associated stories, memorial and cultural practices. This site is a moment away from the point of first contact between this continent and the people with the British. I would like to understand what this place means to you when you approach this project in the context of Country. How you situate yourself as a human being, as an architect, an artist, as professionals who specialise in the creation of place. What are some of the qualities of this place that resonate for you and how have they been translated into the design?

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Proposed 180 George Street, designed by Daniel Boyd & David Adjaye. Image: Adjaye and Associates.

/ IN CONVERSATION WITH DANIEL BOYD & DAVID ADJAYE INTERVIEW: MICHAEL MOSSMAN

DA: At the heart of it, my interest in this project springs from the questions that were posed when I was first approached about it – questions of Country, land and stories in the city. Sydney is a magical city that I fell in love with but I also felt there was an elephant in the room. It seemed to be missing a sense of what its actual origins were about.

And this city plaza project became an opportunity to add a little seed of the story to this megalopolis that Sydney has become, this giant metropolitan modernist city. It is a small modest project, but its ambitions are about placemaking. It presents an opportunity to potentially rebuild and to go back to all the

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issues that speak about the land: What origins?

What is the place? Who is the place for? How do we all live in the place now? And what is architecture’s role in this?

For me, the project was really about scraping, in a way, a place. The scraping for me is a tonality of this aura, this magical aura of creating a black space and to speak about another encounter. To put a house-like form that speaks to the human existence of making. It is made in metal but it speaks to a timber construction. It speaks to this idea of a timber enclosure made by the Indigenous communities of Australia which signifies their humanity.

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With Daniel, it was important to somehow change the aura of this space. There are many plazas and pocket plazas in Sydney, but it felt important to create another sense of aura here that would re-engage a rethinking about what this place means? What are the histories here?

We were asked to make a cultural centre but for me we were making a cultural place. We were making a place that tells the story of the original peoples and this land. Daniel’s phenomenal proposal was to transform the sky and to create a lens with nature.

DB: For me it seems like it is more of an invitation to experience space in a collective way. Within the plaza there is no imposition or directive of how to experience the space.

Personally, I see the building as an object that is continually gaining associations and not a static thing. It presents a story of how humans experience space and place as an accumulation of association and how architecture adds to it. There is no vernacular within the bringing together of different things within the building on the plaza that is negated as there are different languages there. The beauty of the plaza project is that it is not forgetting about these different relationships to place, but acknowledging all of those collective associations to a particular place.

DA: One hundred per cent. The building speaks to early settlements, colonial settlements, human settlements and is deliberately exaggerated. It displays this idea that exaggerates this typological form, the aural power of what I wanted to make. A roof is usually made for its functional reason to shed water and protect the occupant. This roof is purely a symbol because it sits underneath another roof. The roof is really sculpted to remind human beings of dwelling forms that date back thousands of year in our deep human history. This is about a house of human beings and the associations are for you to layer on as your histories and memories come into it. It is at once modern with contemporary detailing but at the same time it is monumental and ancient.

DB: David, you have spoken previously about the idea of a theatre and that we play out our lives within that theatre. With a public space, it has to be open. It cannot be any type of

language that creates separation or barriers to access to that space. The way that building sits at the back of the plaza as an invitation into that space seems quite successful in understanding that diversity of place, the layers of association and multiplicity that will exist in that space.

DA: It will be one of the most unique pocket spaces because it also presents a quasi-loggia notion as it is still completely open to the elements but it creates a second sky in a public space It specifically identifies that pocket park as an invitation, a room for the city. When one is making public space, one quickly comes up against the signifiers of public space and nonsignifiers. What this project does is speak to the idea that there are always signifiers in any sense of space. Whether it’s speaking from one trajectory of histories or another. I think that to make a successful world, we need to disengage from the modernist tendency of form-making that assumes a trajectory of history that is clear and assumed to one that is a questioning of what the appropriate diversity of histories that they form.

The collective conscious making of form that is the city, is also reflective of the extraordinary human diversity that we create by way of interactions with each other. We create those hybridities and those mutations through those interactions with other humans from different groups. Can the city do the same? Can the city be much more reflective of the nature of which we make ourselves? I think that idea is a very relevant one in the 21st century as you grapple with notions of identity and what place means. Especially in the way the city has become a dominant force in driving populations to their core, decentralising notions of land and permeating the notion of city as the form of human habitation. We can design the city with information for it to be emotionally relevant and not feel as though it is the purview of one dominant group over another.

MM: Thank you so much to you both for your time and generosity for this interview. The opening of the George Street Sydney Plaza is much anticipated and will be an event to behold.

Your insights and thoughts have been profound and will add to the advocacy of Country and First Nations cultures in architecture and placemaking in Australia. ■

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Black hearts of time and space WORDS: DANIÈLE HROMEK

When we look up into the stars at night, we see forever in distance, yet we also see the deep past. Observing our closest, brightest neighbour, the moon, we are looking 1.3 seconds into the past.1 As a Budawang Yuin woman I also see my Grandmother. Dhawara (moon)2 is part of my comprehension of Country, dhawara gives us the rhythm of life, the flows of the tides, the movements of the waters in a woman’s body, the ability to bear life and create.

Seeking out Alpha Centauri, the closest djinggi (star) we can see with the naked eye, we are sensing four years into the past, as Alpha Centauri is four light years away. Betelgeuse, in the constellation Orion, is around 640 light years away, meaning we are peering about 640 years into the past. These issues of time and space are ones that Aboriginal peoples experience through interconnected relational subjectivities rather than dogmatic objectivism.

My People, the Budawang, saw these constellations well before Cook’s Endeavour sailed by on 22 April 1770, so the experience is part of my being. Coloniser Captain James Cook observed the Budawang Peoples on the beach at Murramarang and remarked they were, “of a very dark or black Colour; but whether this was the real Colour of their skins or the Cloathes they might have on I know not.”3 Cook’s perception of the colour of their skin on that particular date highlights the importance of connecting the individual with colonial objectivities of space and time. Rather than the existing occupation of place relational to a deep time-tested system of connection to place through intergenerational sharing of stories.

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When I gaze deeper into the night sky, it takes me to a time before, when my Ancestors might have likewise lay under the bright garraywaa (Milky Way), looking for the spaces between, for the dark spaces, for the Ancestors up above who have left this realm to head up to the campfires in the sky to find their space of ever rest, until it is time for their return. The Large Magellanic Cloud is 160,000 light years away, meaning we are seeing 160,000 years into the past, to a time before Western science stipulates my people walked this continent.

Our stories say we have always been here.

For me, the night sky is like the Dreaming.

It is the past, it is always, but it is also now.

The Dreaming and our ability to Dream Up is a gift of our heritage for Aboriginal peoples. The Dreaming is our creativity, our ability to adapt, as we have always done over millennia, as Country and the environment have changed around us and propelled us to move. The waters rose and fell numerous times over many thousands of years, meaning Ancestors needed to relocate further inland to share space with neighbours, or expand further away as the resources of the sea moved with the coast.

Borders, boundaries, and edges were fluid, not as we currently imagine them, fixed and drawn on maps. Elders share stories that describe these movements, recalled via many generations of clever minds. Likewise, architecture was also more fluid and closely connected with Country.

Was this why colonisers did not see our built structures? Or were they wilfully choosing not to see it as part of the lie of terra nullius?

Architecture and built environments deny terra nullius.

During the most recent Ice Age, around 21,000 years ago, sea levels in south-eastern nowAustralia are thought to have been 125 metres lower than present position at the Continental Shelf. The coastline of now-Sydney was about 20 kilometres east. The rising sea level between 18,000 and 6,000 years ago flooded the rivers to form estuaries and deep harbours. Around 7,000 years ago the sea level rose to two metres above its present level then descended to its current level.4 Gai-mariagal Elder Dennis Foley describes the changing Country and rivers that are now the harbour, and coastal land that is now under sea.5

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According to Uncle Dennis, there were times of great changes in the weather, including extreme droughts, when the land was very different to how it is now. There are six major family groups who comprise the Gai-mariagal. One clan belongs to the east, their land is now under the sea. Uncle Dennis says these people are spoken of with great sadness as they are people with no land, their Dreaming underwater.

Down on my own Country on the South Coast of New South Wales, there’s an island that is now under water that is a women’s place. Further out is a men’s island on which Yuin men still hold ceremony. Some Yuin women still feel drawn to the underwater island, despite it no longer being visible above the sea levels.

Given the sea level changes, the stories shared by the Elders have been preserved for hundreds of generations and thousands of years. There is much more to these stories, lessons to learn, Laws to comprehend and obey, and secrets for those with the right level of knowledge.6 The stories our Elders and Knowledge Holders share say we have been here forever, observing and acting, being one with the land as part of a large network of reciprocity and care. Yet how long is forever? Is it 160,000 years? Is it hundreds of generations? In many ways all the numbers I have shared are irrelevant. Aboriginal peoples experience time and space differently to others relative to being the oldest living culture on the planet. We say we have always been here. We say we came from this land. We stand on the shoulders of more generations of people than can be counted. That is our way of understanding ourselves, our worldview, our lens of perception.

Our deep memory and way of sharing knowledge has meant that despite all the forces of colonisation, we hold and create space as sovereign peoples. We maintain our culture and our kin networks, and we remember our stories. The time since 1788 has been destructive to our ways of lives, caused much trauma and devastation, and separation for our communities. Our understanding of time places this into context with an understanding we are still here, observing and connecting with traditions pre-1788.

Like time, our understanding and expression of space differs from other worldviews. For us, the spaces between, the dark spaces, are full (of dark matter, of universe, of Ancestors, of Country). Our spaces that could be construed as empty are seen as experiential, sensorial, pedagogical, imbued with story and memory and always occupied. Blackness does not mean emptiness. Blackness, like the endless Dreaming, is our ability to be creative and to do so despite that the land has been colonised, because Country can never be colonised. It is up to us as descendants of the Dreaming to maintain, re-establish and connect with Country.

That is the power of Blackness.

Returning to my personal understanding of my place in the world, Grandmother Moon, dhawara, and my grandmother, Gloria, both have gifted me with the ability to be a creative, free thinking, sovereign woman. Dharawa through the gift of knowing Country and understanding my place on Country, and Gloria because she taught me how to connect to Country and that endless network of reciprocity and all that contribute to Country. My grandmother says we have Black hearts. Blackness does not mean emptiness, as Blackness is the gift of Country and culture, and of family. ■ _____ Dr Danièle Hromek is a Budawang woman of the Yuin nation. She works as a spatial designer, Country-centred designer and researcher, considering how to Indigenise the built environment. Her work contributes an understanding of the Indigenous experience and comprehension of space, investigating how Aboriginal people occupy, use, narrate, sense, dream and contest their spaces.

NOTES 1 Michael J I Brown “When You Look up, How Far Back in Time Do You See?” The Conversation, no. 27 December, 2018.

2 All language words are in Dhurga, the language of my Ancestors from the South Coast of New South Wales. Dhurga language is in recovery.

A Dhurga dictionary has been released: Ellis, Patricia et al. The Dhurga Dictionary and Learner’s Grammar. Aboriginal Studies Press, 2020.

3 James Cook, Captain Cook’s Journal During the First Voyage Round the World. edited by Sue Asscher and Col Choat, 2005 ed., Project Gutenberg, 1770. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8106/8106-h/8106-h. htm, 12 February 2015.References 4 Williams, Alan N et al. “The Last Ice Age Tells Us Why We Need to Care About a 2°C Change in Temperature.” The Conversation, 2020.

5 Dennis Foley, Repossession of Our Spirit: Traditional Owners of Northern Sydney. Aboriginal History Inc, 2001.

6 Aunty Fran describes these parts to Aboriginal stories. With no space to share the full stories in this writing I encourage readers to seek them out and learn directly from the wise words of the Elders who share them.

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Finding your place WORDS: CHI MELHEM

In an interview a few years ago, I was asked how my upbringing has shaped the way I practice architecture. Why equity in practice was so important to me and what drives me to question craft and function. A few years later, that same question was asked with a follow-on question – how has that upbringing on Country shaped me as an architect? The answer to this is through this yarn.

I arrived in Australia in the early 80s though the Refugee Resettlement Scheme. I had no recollection of Vietnam. My first memories were of Alice Springs where I lived in a co-living estate with six other refugee families. The place was basic and not particularly beautiful, but it was functional and provided a communal courtyard where I spent my days playing with the other refugee children. Life was simple, I felt safe, happy and I had a community to which I belonged.

For my parents, Alice Springs was a world away from what they knew. They felt a deep sense of loss for the country they were forced to flee but an immense sense of gratitude for an opportunity to build a better life. They were surrounded by a strong network of friends and supported by our very generous Australian sponsors who helped them find work, education and most importantly integration with the broader community of Alice Springs. For them, it was about being empowered to make choices and a need to give back to the country they now called home.

Within a few years and through the great support of many advocates, my father established his own construction company and was building basic facilities for Indigenous communities in the Kimberly region. Due to

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the remoteness of these projects, he would be away from home for many weeks at a time.

During my school holidays, I would join him “out bush”. It was eye opening. The structures he built were very basic, they provided a space for shelter, shade and protection from the elements.

However, they were incredibly uncomfortable to occupy and very crudely put together.

Despite this, I observed a great camaraderie through working with the Indigenous communities.

Through a shared and mutual respect, my Dad and his team interacted with the community to find different ways to communicate and work together. As a child watching the process, it was comical at times, sometimes stressful but mostly productive. Although the final buildings were basic, they were proud of what they collectively achieved together.

This experience of growing up in Alice and my time “out bush” with my dad established why team work and collaboration underpin how I practice as an architect. Traditionally architecture is recorded as an outcome. It is critiqued on its beauty, its craft, its function – how it contributes to its place and the people who use it. All these things are extremely important, but very rarely do we hear about the process of how it was made and the community of people who contributed to it beyond the hero architect.

This recognition and acknowledgement of the many hands and minds which contribute to the making of buildings is critically important. From equity in the workplace, giving everyone a voice; hearing people’s stories, understanding how difference can enrich a project; acknowledging contributions; advocating for people; finding balance – these all shape the culture of the profession and enhance what we can collectively produce.

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Ngaanytjarra Council clinic completed.

Working with the local community members to build a shelter.

My dad with one of the local “crew” sharing a meal. He still managed to have rice every day.

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/ FINDING YOUR PLACE WORDS: CHI MELHEM

Observing the built outcomes “out bush” also made me question the fundamentals of what we need as human beings and if those same needs can both be functional and beautifully crafted to celebrate how we occupy place. In recent years, Designing with Country has become a refreshing core requirement for many projects that reinforce understandings of place and people to inform processes of making architecture. It promotes a critical need to deeply understand these stories of place and people and for better representation of voices from less visible cultures. It also supports the idea of adding our own stories and how the collective experiences of all of us can enrich the way we craft and make buildings for their place and the people who occupy them.

These principles have been embedded in various ways through early engagement with First Nations collaborators on projects over the years. On a large metro-precinct project, embedding stories of place were explored through the selection of Indigenous artists for each building on the site. Rather than treat the art as an overlay, each artist’s interpretation was integrated into the design of the buildings, resulting in a rich tapestry of responses for the facades, built form and spatial design.

On a competition for a large public performance space, consultation with our First Nations collaborator adopted a more ephemeral response. Centred around how fire was used on the site for ceremony and gathering, charred timber and specialist lighting was designed to celebrate the transient interactions of the people who would visit the place both past and present.

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Circling back to those earlier questions, my early years in Alice Springs and those trips out bush with my dad have shaped how I practice through a collaborative approach and the ambition to produce architecture that is both functional and beautifully crafted for its place.

It is an acknowledgment of our different stories and a recognition that diversity and a respectful collective culture can achieve great outcomes together. Furthermore, it provides fundamental qualities that bind us through a sense of belonging to a place and a desire to find a community. ■ _____ Chi Melhem is as an architect with a breadth of experience across typologies and scales.

Before recently establishing EMBECE, Chi worked with Tzannes for almost two decades.

As a director at Tzannes she delivered significant projects from urban design, feasibility, multiresidential and bespoke houses to landmark cultural buildings. Chi is an advocate for equality within the profession, has co-led the Masters of Architecture housing studio at UNSW and is a member of the NSW State Design Review Panel.

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Co-becoming: Redfern Community Facility WORDS: ISABELLE AILEEN TOLAND

An ambition of our practice since we started eight years ago has been to explore and find ways to embed cultural, environmental and social value in our work. We believe that valuable architecture must balance functionality with poetics, nurture community and connect people, not only with each other, but with the broader world around us.

To do this, we have sought to work in a way that emphasises our methods of practice as being equally important to the architecture that we produce. We do this by always considering the intangible aspects of a project as much as the tangible ones. This method values conversations and relationships, long term learning and experimentation, writing and documentation of ideas – much of which (to this date) has been in the delivery of small acts and works, that are now progressively growing and being realised.

One of our most important current collaborations is with cultural spatial designer Danièle Hromek (Budawang /Yuin) – with whom our work and conversations have been ongoing since we met over three years ago. The Redfern Community Facility, commissioned by the City of Sydney, has been an opportunity to develop and strengthen our ways of working together.

This community facility is situated on Gadi Country. Gadi land extends from Burrawara (South Head) through to Warrane (Sydney Cove), Gomora (Cockle Bay to Darling Harbour) and possibly to Blackwattle Creek, taking in the wetland sand and dunes now known as Redfern,

Erskineville, Surry Hills and Paddington, down to the Cook’s River. The neighbouring clans are Cameragal (to the north), Wangal (to the west) and Gameygal (to the south).

Sited on a prominent corner in Redfern, the contemporary significance of this place for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members should not be understated. Redfern is, was, and continues to hold great community significance as a place of activism, social resistance and change.

The project is for the upgrade of an existing 1880s Victorian Italianate building, the brief to make it both physically and psychologically accessible to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community for whom this facility will serve.

While it might seem to some that keeping the existing colonial building relatively intact is symbolically problematic in this context, there are a number of narratives that inform and result from this decision. Firstly the building was chosen by local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community representatives for the community. Secondly, the existing 1880s building was constructed from materials of this Country – local Sydney sandstone quarried from Pyrmont and bricks made from clay deposits most likely sourced from the brick pits around this area. These materials continue to hold stories and significance that should be recognised and valued.

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Balsa model render illustrating a new way of entering a former colonial space through a dedicated and considered experience of space.

Aileen Sage Architects

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Working collaboratively with Danièle, building heritage specialist Jean Rice and architectural historian Noni Boyd, our approach to this project seeks to celebrate and honour a cultural reading of place. Seeking to design specifically for a broader cultural, environmental and social context over an extended period of time.

A robust design and materials strategy that values what is existing on the site and the embedded memory of these materials is crucial.

Our approach extends beyond the boundaries of the site. It is a framework for the current upgrade works as well as future works, with an ambition to provide a project that celebrates, considers and recognises existing scars, and will leave a positive legacy for the community and all who will visit this place.

The new entrance for the building is clearly demarcated by a new masonry lift tower, made from strongly patterned, carefully angled and cut recycled brickwork set back from the street, which stands in opposition to the existing clock tower as a sort of resistance to colonial architecture. The additions carefully consider their materiality and composition, and the effects that light and water will have over these materials over time. The use of recycled building materials is maximised – using bricks, stone and timber reclaimed from nearby demolished sites – as well as maximising locally produced materials, trades and training programs. Using the same materials as the existing building, but in a contemporary way that respectfully acknowledges and celebrates their origins from this Country, the entry finds a new way of moving into a colonial space through a new, dedicated and celebratory pathway.

In one of our first conversations with Danièle, she drew to our attention the writing and research of the Bawaka Collective – an Indigenous and non-Indigenous, more-thanhuman research collective. In their paper ‘Co-becoming Bawaka: Towards a relational understanding of place/space’, they ask us to “consider an Indigenous-led understanding of relational space/place” drawing on the concept

Angled polychromatic brickwork to the new entry and lift tower draws on patterns and experiences of the natural world relevant to the history and narrative of this place. Facade detail render, Aileen Sage Architects

of gurrutu to “look to Country for what it can teach us about how all views of space are situated.” Gurrutu recognises all relationships within Country. It recognises us as just one part of the broad and interconnected network of all things that constitute Country.

Considering this way of thinking and working – recognising ourselves as just one part of a much broader and significant network – has framed our approach not just for this project, but for all projects that we undertake as a practice.

Emphasising a relational understanding of time and place, and where we sit as architects within it, we feel is hugely important to ensuring a respectful and valuable practice in architecture with in our communities, now and into the future. ■ _____ Isabelle Aileen Toland is a co-director and co-founder of Aileen Sage Architects based in Sydney. She grew up in Guringai Country and currently lives and works on Gadi land. Isabelle graduated from the University of Sydney in 2003. She has worked overseas in Paris as well as in Sydney for Neeson Murcutt Architects where she and co-director Amelia Sage Holliday met and worked for several years prior to establishing Aileen Sage in 2013.

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Recalibrating cultural awareness expectations for architects working in Australia THOUGHTS ON THE 2021 NATIONAL STANDARD OF COMPETENCY FOR ARCHITECTS WORDS: MICHAEL MOSSMAN, KIRSTEN ORR AND KATHLYN LOSEBY

This article results from a conversation between us2 about the inclusion of Country, First Nations Cultures and Communities in the 2021 NSCA and the likely profound, long-term changes it will bring about in the capability expectations of Australian architects and architecture graduates.

The eight PCs were developed and finalised by the Australian Institute of Architects First Nations Advisory Working Group and Cultural Reference Panel chaired by Sarah Lynn Rees and Paul Memmott.3

The 2021 National Standard of Competency for Architects (NSCA)1 identifies the skills, knowledge and capabilities required for the general practice of architecture in contemporary Australia. Significant new content is introduced in new Performance Criteria (PCs) focused on engagement with First Nations peoples and understanding and respecting Country.

For the first time since its introduction in 1993, this fifth edition of the standards includes eight PCs that recalibrate the cultural awareness expectations of all Australian architects and that present ground-breaking opportunities for the profession to work in meaningful ways with Country and First Nations Cultures and Communities. This is a remarkable transition, given the failure of previous standards to account for Country and local Indigenous cultures. The new competency expectations of the 2021 NSCA are long overdue and an exciting, optimistic commitment by the profession for lasting change.

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With this structural reform, the architectural profession cannot continue to accommodate ignorance of Country, First Nations Cultures and Communities. For to continue without addressing this knowledge gap is to suggest that architects as a profession accept having less knowledge, learning or information than is expected by the wider society.

The new PCs will ensure a continuing building and expansion of knowledge by Australian architects to establish a profession-wide uplift in capacity that addresses critical knowledge and skill gaps. All architects must accept that there is much we do not know in the profession when it comes to architecture interacting with Country and First Nations Cultures, and Communities at practical and structural levels of engagement.

The development of national competency standards for Australian professions was one of the key features of the Hawke Government’s approach to federal microeconomic reform in the late 1980s to early 1990s. At that time, it

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was intended that competency standards for architects would be applied to those seeking registration as an architect in Australia but would not form part of the state and territory legislation controlling the registration of architects or be applied to architectural education.

Since the first publication in 1993 of NCSA 01, the competency standards have evolved, and their authority and application has expanded.

Today, they underpin all AACA competencybased assessment pathways to registration – defining the skillset expected of architects entering the profession – and they are embedded in accreditation procedures for Australian architecture programs – informing higher education curricula to directly shape the architects of the future.4 With the publication of the 2021 NSCA and its full implementation in assessment pathways leading to registration and university accreditation procedures, transformation of mainstream architectural practice is expected to flow to all participants in the wider architectural services industry. The eight PCs that specifically focus on Country and First Nations Cultures and Communities (PC 3, 8, 15, 17, 27, 36, 45 and 50) ensure that all architects have the knowledge, understanding and skills necessary to deliver professional services in line with societal expectations. Yet in implementing these new PCs, the architecture profession is proactively setting broad-reaching expectations that are missing in the regulatory regimes of other disciplines such as planning.

Because the competency standards exist at a national level and sit outside state-based legislative processes, some architects might be tempted to argue that the 2021 NSCA is not relevant to them and the architectural services they provide. Such claims are insupportable in light of contemporary expectations of architects to be competent in their appreciation of differences and commonalities between cultures that enrich the qualities of placemaking in Australia. For example, academic and industry interactions with frameworks such as the NSW Government Architect’s Connecting with Country Draft Framework are now the expectation in public infrastructure design and not optional.5 In turn, Connecting with Country processes are increasingly demanded in private projects to enrich the quality of the design legacy for consumers. Moreover, the 2021 NSCA is indirectly referenced in the regulation of architects through annual Continuing Professional Development (CPD) requirements.

In NSW, for example, clause 16(1) of the NSW Code of Professional Conduct requires an architect to “take all reasonable steps to maintain and improve the skills and knowledge necessary for the provision of the architectural services that the architect normally provides” and CPD policy of the NSW Architects Registration Board requires architects to refer to the NSCA as the basis for “an effective CPD regime”. As such, all architects will be captured in the exciting conversations to unfold around Country and First Nations Cultures.

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On graduation from an architecture program – a graduate will

At the point of registration – a candidate will

Post registration – an architect will

PERFORMANCE CRITERIA FOR PRACTICE MANAGEMENT AND PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT PC 3

Understand the principles of project planning, considering implications for Country, environmental sustainability, communities, stakeholders and project costs.

Demonstrate understanding of the principles of project planning, considering implications for Country, environmental sustainability, communities, stakeholders and project costs.

PC 8

Understand how to implement culturally responsive and meaningful engagement processes that respect the importance of Country and reciprocal relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples across architectural services.

Be able to implement culturally responsive and meaningful engagement processes that respect the importance of Country and reciprocal relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples across architectural services.

PC 15

Understand legal and ethical obligations relating to copyright, moral rights, authorship of cultural knowledge and intellectual property requirements across architectural services.

Comply with legal and ethical obligations relating to legislated requirements in relation to copyright, moral rights, authorship of cultural knowledge and intellectual property requirements across architectural services.

Apply principles of project planning, considering implications for Country, environmental sustainability, communities, stakeholders and project costs.

PERFORMANCE CRITERIA FOR PROJECT INITIATION AND CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PC 17

Have an understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ aspirations to care for Country and how these inform architectural design.

PC 27

Understand how to embed the knowledge, worldviews and perspectives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, shared through engagement processes, into the conceptual design in a meaningful, respectful and appropriate way.

PC 35

Understand the operational and embodied carbon implications of chosen materials, components and systems.

Be able to assess operational and embodied carbon implications of materials, components, construction systems and supply chains (including transport) to achieve net zero whole life carbon when developing design concepts. This includes integrating relevant consultant expertise and advising on the impact of chosen materials, components and systems on carbon outcomes.

PERFORMANCE CRITERIA FOR DESIGN DELIVERY AND CONSTRUCTION DOCUMENTATION PC 45

Understand processes for selecting materials, finishes, fittings, components and systems, based on consideration of quality and performance standards, the impact on Country and the environment, and the whole life carbon impact of the project.

Be able to nominate and integrate quality and performance standards with regard to selected materials, finishes, fittings, components and systems, considering the impact on Country and the environment, and the whole life carbon impact of the project. This includes integrating life cycle assessments and other expertise and advice from consultants.

PERFORMANCE CRITERIA FOR DESIGN DELIVERY AND CONSTRUCTION PHASE SERVICES PC 50

Be able to continue engagement with relevant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples throughout all stages of the project and its delivery in a meaningful, respectful and appropriate way.

2021 National Standard of Competency for Architects. Source: Architects Accreditation Council of Australia.

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It is thought provoking to contemplate how the new PCs will transform interactions between consumers and Country and First Nations cultures relational to place. There are many opportunities to connect the differences and commonalities between Country and First Nations knowledge systems and the normative Western tenets of architecture and placemaking.

Nevertheless, it is impossible to pinpoint exactly where the 2021 NSCA could take us in transforming how architectural services are procured. It is critical that we understand that individuals across the wider architectural services industry will be engaging at different levels of knowledge and through various intensities of experience and application. The issues are further intensified by adding the important qualities of First Nations community interactions as part of the PCs. These interactions with Communities skilled in translating and storytelling Country and local Cultures are refreshing additions to the structural nature of architectural practice.

Importantly, careful considerations of cultural and moral competence, faculties of knowledge exchange between cultures, appreciations of deeply embedded intergenerational trauma and the realities of consultation fatigue require skilful articulation throughout the project process.

_____ Dr Michael Mossman is a proud Kuku Yalanji man, born and raised in Cairns on Yidinji Country.

He now lives and works on Gadigal land and is an academic lecturer and researcher at the University of Sydney School of Architecture Design and Planning where he was recently awarded his Doctor of Philosophy with the topic of his thesis: ‘Third Space, Architecture and Indigeneity.

Dr Kirsten Orr is Registrar of the NSW Architects Registration Board and a Director of the Architects Accreditation Council of Australia. Kirsten is a NSW registered architect.

She has served on two national panels to review the National Standard of Competency for Architects (NSCA) in 2006-08 and 202021. In 2015 she led the development of the Australian Architectural Education and Competency Framework that made nationally significant policy recommendations on the interpretation and implementation of the NSCA for the accreditation of architecture programs.

Kathlyn Loseby is Immediate Past President of the NSW Chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects and CEO of the Architects Accreditation Council of Australia.

NOTES

It is up to individuals in the architecture profession to learn, collaborate, build capacities and focus energies to meaningfully interact with the specific Performance Criteria as conscious commitments. Energising ourselves to become cognisant of the 2021 NSCA structural reforms to enhance the quality of placemaking on Country and activate more inclusive interactions with First Nations, Cultures and Communities will result in improved living environments. We are optimistic that these are actions and legacies we can all look forward to in the future. ■

1 AACA (2021), National Standard of Competency for Architects, accessed 27 May 2022: https://aaca.org.au/national-standard-ofcompetency-for-architects/2021nsca/ 2 Dr Michael Mossman (Lecturer University of Sydney School of Architecture Design and Planning), Dr Kirsten Orr (Registrar NSW Architects Registration Board) and Kathlyn Loseby (CEO Architects Accreditation Council of Australia (AACA)) 3 https://www.architecture.com.au/about/national-council-committees/ first-nations-advisory-working-group-and-cultural-reference-panel 4 Orr, K (2015) ‘Institutionalising National Standards: A history of the incorporation of the Architects Accreditation Council of Australia (AACA) and the National Competency Standards in Architecture (NCSA),’ Australian Institute of Architects, Architecture.com.au https:// www.architecture.com.au/wp-content/uploads/InstitutionalisingNational-Standards_Kirsten-Orr_2015.pdf 5 https://www.governmentarchitect.nsw.gov.au/projects/designing-withcountry

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Belonging to Country – yindyamarra winhanganha WORDS AND ILLUSTRATIONS: CRAIG KERSLAKE

Within our practice we aim to amplify the voice of Australia’s First Peoples, extending into the fabric of the built environment to inform architectural expression in a vibrant and engaging way. It is through the social construction of our environments – the spaces we live and work in – that critical relationships are defined; relationships between people and with the natural world.

Influenced by many Aboriginal Elders and respected thinkers, my world view is that human relationships with the natural world are in fractious disharmony and the implications of our ways are profoundly untenable.1 The pursuit of liberalism and individual freedom has separated people from each other and from the natural world in which we all live. With the human focus being reduced to work and the ownership of property, our collective identity has largely been lost. Inaction is incentivised to result in complacency and tolerance to the problems around us. Our sociopolitical system is ambiguous and bland, with obscured propositions that fail to connect us with place and disallows us from belonging to place. Yet, it is strong collective purpose that many of us, including me, seek to belong to and be a part of. Commitment to meaningful causes beyond the self that allow us to understand ourselves as being part of an integrated system imbued with spirited generosity for others.

Architecture is unique. It connects environmental, economic, social and political networks. It is intermeshed with market forces, policies, regulations and communities.

And while I believe that the sociopolitical system that architecture resides within is fundamentally dysfunctional, I propose that

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in Australia, collectively, architectural thinking has the power to challenge the footholds of liberal capitalism and to re-frame the priority of the individual. Often marshalled by time and cost, project managed to short term political moments, our architecture can become a transactional expression of narrow and at times confused parameter-based aspirations. But what would our built environment look like if informed by a culture-based social structure steeped in tradition and timeless qualities of Country?

YINDYAMARRA WINHANGANHA AS ARCHITECTURAL MANIFESTO “The wisdom of respectfully knowing how to live well in a world worth living in”2 Indigenous thinking around the world contrasts liberal individualist socio-political thinking. The Wiradjuri perspective, like many Indigenous social systems, is centred on relationships and connections within an enduring continuum of mutual responsibility. Evolved over thousands of years, the philosophical understanding of the individual for Wiradjuri significantly reduces the prioritisation of the self. Instead, the individual is bound by social contract, required to contribute to and be responsible for the greater good of the collective. Surprising to many, this also embraces and includes of the natural world to which we belong.

The social character of focusing on oneself is typically understood as a momentary fall from social grace. In contrast, individuals must fit into the relational context of other people and then within the natural world with all understood as family. Elders and Indigenous thinkers3 tell me that there is no binary separation between

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When People Became the River

During the time when people thought they could roam here and there, going wherever they pleased, the river seemed to always get in their way. Try as they did to cross or go around, the river would always be there. They seemed lost, flitting this way and that, sometimes going around in circles. They would yell at the river in anger.

When some people sung with yindyamarra, softly and respectfully, to the river about this she started to speak with them. She invited them to come into the water and close their eyes to dream. They started to float, they were carried downstream, across the landscapes, through the earth and up into the trees. Up into the branches, twigs and leaves. Then into sky camp until finally the clouds brought them back to the land.

When they returned to Country the river flowed in their bodies. In their veins, their eyes and out through their skin. They had become the river, and she had become them. They belonged to each other now. The people were together too and could now speak with the her and she always showed them the way.

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/ BELONGING TO COUNTRY – YINDYAMARRA WINHANGANHA WORDS: CRAIG KERSLAKE

nature and human cultures. We are one and the same. This thinking is referred to as Belonging to Country. I have been taught to understand Country as everything within my conscious world, trees, rivers, sky, oceans, animals and people. With human bonds strongly entwined with family kinship and our personal connections, to belong to, and identify with specific landscapes and nature. For the architectural context, yindyamarra winhanganha forms the basis of many propositions as part of and an extension of my cultural practices.

As a result, I find an endless array of compelling design possibilities firmly anchored within an authentic Australian vernacular.

TO DESIGN FROM COUNTRY, BUILT FORM MUST BELONG TO COUNTRY An architectural discourse that Belongs to Country will invigorate interrelated expression that defines and inspires connections to identity and place. Unique Australian architectural expressions may indeed flourish with built form that distinctly belongs to place, is of place – an architecture that is part of the ambiguity of what

is human, and what is nature. Belonging is about relationships, with connections beyond Western surveyed boundaries. When built form Belongs to Country it intuitively embraces its obligations to the health and wellbeing of Country, as family, so it is imperative that the architectural profession engage with Indigenous worldview philosophies such as yindyamarra winhanganha.

Designing From Country requires that we start with these relationships. What unfolds will be an architecture that is enriched by, specific to and designed from the original place and cultural qualities from which it came. Engaging with place through a First Australian worldview is part of my custodial obligations to reinforce the connected qualities of the landscape and kinship to which I belong. This way of thinking extends beyond the binary proposition of the superior human being arrogating dominating nature to instead strengthen relationships between that minimise the disruption of environmental ecologies. Excitingly, the expression then becomes about this ambiguous state, nuancing the constant tension between and the vast array of ways this can unfold.

Spaces in Relation. Illustration: Craig Kerslake

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CUSTODIAL ARCHITECTURE IS AN EXTENSION OF THE INDIGENOUS SOCIAL CONTRACT My experiences in commercial practice is that built form must find its place within this relational context, fit in, and as such be accountable for and establish ways to relate to its spatial context. Shaped by a sociology of spatial and environmental considerations,4 design thinking then becomes informed to the Indigenous culture and character of place.

An example of this would be a project near a river. The architecture can identify as being part of this tributary system. Here, the architect must collaborate with Traditional Knowledge Holders to find ways for built form to connect to the stream, and take responsibility for all that resides within these spaces. These practices deliberately strengthen natural and human connections to each other, at times blurring one from the other, to bring forth the sense of reciprocity. Design explorations essentially then become a process of refining and reinforcing the cultural practices of reciprocity to enact Custodial Architecture – embedding the idea that built form is part of the landscape, itself belonging and in a reciprocal relationship with people and nature.

Individualist social structures are like an infliction of mass narcissism, blended with apathy and complacency.5 The architectural story that unfolds here is often transactional, and disconnected from its context. While the architecture expressive of a detached liberal social structure reflects the free individual model, the cost of the distance between humanity and nature may well be the dissociating factor distancing us from our very own identity, and sense of belonging to place.

Separating us from our core responsibilities

and custodial obligations. Instead design approaches can become intuitive as we respond to and connect with the character of place, understanding what is best for the collective wellbeing of an integrated social and environmental ecology. Belonging to Country sparks and gives rise to the design of our built environments through an Indigenous lens based on relational foundations like yindyamarra winhanganha. This way of thinking can genuinely define us, our identity, our architecture and guide us to captivating, thought-provoking propositions.

Designing from Country will undoubtedly see the unveiling of exciting and compelling architectural expression with purposeful resolve which will be understood as an extension of nature, rather than an imposition upon it. ■ _____ Craig Kerslake is a Wiradjuri architect and managing director of NGULUWAY DesignInc. Craig draws upon his cultural heritage, community and knowledge of what Aboriginal people refer to as Country. Within a team setting, he brings this forth with spirited innovation to inform spatial design and architectural form with unique expression that finds resonance with all Australians. His cultural overlays often draw design thinking to the unexpected and provide positive outcomes focused on Aboriginal-centred qualities, spatial unity and scales of social engagement

NOTES 1 Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers: The History & Future Impact of Climate Change, 2008, Chapter 22, p. 209 2 As told to me by Dr Stan Grant (SENR) April 2021, and public address in December 2021 at the rescheduled NAIDOC event in the Botanical Gardens, Sydney.

Also noted in The New Wiradjuri Dictionary (2010) Stan Grant (AM) and Dr John Rudder, pp. 469, 485.

3 Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk – How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, 2019, p. 20 4 Better Placed, Connecting with Country, Government Architect New South Wales, Issue no. 01-2020 Draft for Discussion 5 Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, Part 1, p 29. “There are people who are filled with such horror at the idea of a defeat that they keep themselves from ever doing anything. But no one would dream of considering this gloomy passivity as the triumph of freedom.”

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Beyond token WORDS: KEVIN O’BRIEN

Over the past decade there has been a noticeable rise in interest in the identifiable presence of First Nations culture within the built environment. That the focus has broadened beyond visual art and into architecture is a welcome development for professional architects of First Nations heritage.

However, there is now genuine debate among practitioners about the influence of nonpractitioners into architectural practice. It is worth reminding the profession what the context looks like and where the next frontier appears to be in the near future.

The encouraging release of the Designing with Country discussion paper in March, 2017, followed by the Draft Connecting With Country discussion paper in November 2020 by the Government Architect NSW (GANSW), encapsulated a tremendous and long-standing desire to put words into actions.

The central tenant of the Connecting with Country discussion paper is to enable leadership of Aboriginal people in the pursuit of valuing and respecting the Aboriginal concept of Country.

The proposition of the Designing with Country discussion paper is to argue for the intersection of Nature, People and Design as the intersection at which a Designing with Country approach can emerge. When read together, the essential intents can be distilled as Aboriginal leadership, and architectural expertise.

The most influential mechanism for the GANSW is the State Design Review Panel (SDRP) which “delivers independent, consistent design quality

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advice on projects that have or will undergo assessment by the state. The program provides a best-practice state-wide approach to the review of State Significant projects, precincts and infrastructure.” This endeavour has spawned a distinct challenge for the GANSW and the industry more broadly.

With the rise in awareness of the afore mentioned discussion papers, there is an implied need to build the capacity and expertise of not only the SDRP membership but even more ambitiously, industry expertise. The industry peak body which sets out the national standards for professional architects, the Architects Accreditation Council of Australia (AACA), is now poised to lead this aspect of capacity and expertise. The AACA mechanism for change is in the National Standard of Competency for Architects (NCSA).

The revised 2021 NCSA effective from January 2022 describes the incoming competency requirement for the “recognition of First Nations principles in designing with Country” for professional architects. It notes that “Embedded within the practice of architecture is the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ ongoing connection and custodianship of Country, and the ethical responsibilities to the physical environment and the transition to a carbon-neutral built environment. These responsibilities are fundamental to architecture practice.” It does not, however, detail how that competency requirement is achieved, measured or recognised as a professional architect.

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“

That the focus has broadened beyond visual art and into architecture is a welcome development for professional architects of First Nations heritage.

“ The GANSW Connecting with Country and Designing with Country discussion papers might bridge a gap with regard to this competency requirement. It is therefore not unreasonable to argue that the sooner these discussion papers are tested, refined and adopted as policy, the sooner professional architects practising in NSW will have certainty of what is expected of them.

However, the 2021 NCSA will also need to follow step and consider what defines competency in this space. Among and between the two lies a substantial gap that has not been filled by professional architects. Instead, it has been filled by non-architects from backgrounds as varied as artists, consultation consultants, university graduates, academic researchers, graphic designers, and even textile designers. These influencers have colonised a new Designing with Country industry and in the view of the author, unwittingly disenfranchised professional architects.

According to the 2021 NCSAs, a professional architect practising at large is required to understand the following foundational units of competency (complete with performance criteria): 1. Practice management & professional conduct 2. Project initiation and conceptual design 3. Detailed design and construction documentation 4. Design delivery and construction phase services.

This raises a quandary, in that if influencers are not required to demonstrate any kind of mastering of performance criteria in relation to the new Designing with Country industry, how is it that their presence within built environment projects appears to be flourishing, even carrying more weight than those professional architects at the coalface?

Furthermore, where does this leave professional architects of First Nations heritage who over time have developed an independent world view that informs their approach to architecture?

To the author’s knowledge, at this point in time, there are only three such architects with over 25 years each of continuous practical experience in Australia uniquely synthesising their personal cultural experience and architectural endeavours into significant projects. Unlike other professional architects, these three are expected to share their design methodologies for others to apply. Unlike the influencers these three are expected to conduct themselves as recognised professional architects from the beginning to the end of a project. Unlike both, these three are acutely aware of token gestures. ■ _____ Kevin O’Brien is a descendent of the Kaurareg and Meriam people of Far North Queensland.

He is a practising architect (registered in QLD, NSW, VIC, SA and NT), Principal at BVN, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning.

He completed a BArch in 1995 and a MPhil in 2006 at the University of Queensland.

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Taree First Steps Count – Child + Community Centre FOCUSING ON WHAT GOOD LOOKS LIKE, NOT LESS BAD WORDS: CAROLINE PIDCOCK

Every journey starts with the first steps, and its pathway is invariably refined along the way. In the context of a post-COVID environment, we have been forced to slow down to review and redefine how we are placed in our practices and the options for how our pathways forward might look.

This has been very much the basis of the journey of Taree First Steps Count – Child + Community Centre. It started out, in 2009, as a one-stop shop for families experiencing difficulty, and a template for how inclusive health care and services can be delivered in ways that suit and work with the diverse people they are intended for. The focus is on helping families to become their best, with no bias regarding who will seek help. This vision has not changed, but the importance of connection with and care for Country, regenerative qualities, and integrated ways of working that will support this have been identified and embraced.

My journey of understanding the richness and potential of Country-centred design, and my own growing insight into how to engage with this, is very much reflected in this project. Being on the land of the Biripi Nation, members of this community have been increasingly involved in all committees and meetings along the way, along with the wider group of stakeholders.

This includes the Purfleet / Taree Local Aboriginal Land Council and a newly created Yarnin Circle of local First Nations people interested in the project and its future operations. This is a key tenet of the 2020 Connecting with Country Draft Framework and the 2012 AIATSIS Guidelines for Ethical Research.

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Aligning with this, the Living Building Challenge LBC Standard V3.1 introduction notes “the focus needs to be on our relationship with and understanding of the whole of life.”Additionally, the Place Petal starts with: “The intent of the Place Petal is to realign how people understand and relate to the natural environment that sustains us. The human built environment must reconnect with the deep story of place and the unique characteristics found in every community so that story can be honored, protected and enhanced.” Closer to our First Nations people’s understanding that we are one with nature, not separate, but not perfect. However, it is moving closer to this idea than all other current frameworks. The journey must start somewhere.

The need for deeper and more respectful approaches to protocols and ideas is still being learnt. I am hungry to better understand and actively engage in working out how I, as an architect and citizen of this amazing country, can enable this ancient wisdom to inform all that we do. This project continues to be enhanced by our team’s collective interest and determination to learn.

In mid 2012 I returned from the International Living Future Institute’s unConference titled “Women Changing the World”. I spoke with the First Steps Count Committee about whether they might be interested in using the Living Building Challenge (LBC) framework that was articulated at the conference. The LBC is about making every act of development positive and regenerative. More good and less bad. Their response was, that’s “exactly what FSC is about!” This provided the impetus to facilitate a project, a journey that was shaped by regenerative approaches to design.

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North-east view of the conference pod and informal entry leading to the heart of the Centre. Image: Austin McFarland

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Eastern view of main entry, with rounded pods to the North and work areas to the south. Image: Austin McFarland

Regenerative design aims to deeply appreciate the systems (Country, people, governance, business) that are present, through observing, listening, and understanding, so that the potential of those interacting systems can be realised. This can be best achieved through a collaborative and integrated approach by the whole team (clients, consultants, builders, council) that then challenges and changes the way we work.

The LBC has many alignments with my understandings and experiences with First Nations processes and methodologies. The primary principle being the inseparableness and interconnectedness of nature and people and perpetual interactions. Based in the modern built environment industry, the LBC can build bridges between the non-Indigenous and First Nations worlds to enable a diverse group of people to be engaged in positively exploring what this can mean for specific places and projects.

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Some stand out examples of LBC Principles used in the First Steps project include: –

–

–

Integrated design team from the outset or as close to this as possible. As soon as we had enough money committed to know that construction on a significant part of this would commence, we started to build the wider team. Including the builder at this stage required a special Early Contractor Appointment process to satisfy government funding due diligence processes. Having the builder – a very skilled and enthusiastic team member who lives and works locally – has proven to be invaluable. The integrated approach has so enriched the structural engineer’s involvement that he has changed the way he works on all other projects to be like this for the benefits of all involved.

To restart the project and build the team’s understanding of the place, people and project, we started this stage with an all-day biophilic design workshop in Taree. Joining the team and client members, where many people from the local community who will be making the most of this place when it is completed. The attention to the natural environment of this place and how a wide range of people felt about and lived with this, enabled a plan to be created to enrich the development of the plans and details moving forward to incorporate these ideas. Biophilia (when discussed simply) is something everyone understands, no matter what your background is, and a great way to weave the community together to enable their collective wisdom to be appreciated and influence the work.

The ripples of this project are already starting, and the building has only just commenced on site. In addition to the impacts noted above: –

The MidCoast Council Sustainable Building Futures Group has been initiated, and is planning lots of ideas for engaging their constituents in more sustainable ways of living and building

–

Locals are connecting to the project though weaving and on-site ceramic making classes, producing site-specific artefacts that will be included in the building.

We hope that this will be amplified as the ideas of connecting to Biripi Country and the newer history of the place and people are embedded in its design, construction and operations on completion. ■ _____ Caroline Pidcock is passionate about the importance of architecture, biophilia and regenerative design, and how they can contribute to a “culturally rich, socially just and ecologically restorative” future. She has a rich background of experience deriving from significant involvement and contributions to practice, professions, academia, government and community groups. She feels strong affinity with and has been shaped by saltwater environments, and is learning how to reconnect her ways of knowing, being and doing with nature to enable a more holistic approach to how she lives and works.

Addressing the complex issue of materials prompted us to connect with the Construction Management School at the University of Newcastle to help out. This has resulted in an LBC-aligned review of their curriculum for materials and the involvement of hundreds of students in this project, all with a better understanding of the issues of specifying and using better materials in their work, which they will take into their future projects.

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Clearing the space between – Allyship in our professions WORDS: ANNIE TENNANT

My name is Annie Tennant and I was born on Gadigal Country, raised on Cammeraygal and Terramerragal Country, and now live on Wangal Country. The Country that surrounds me is part of me and part of my story. Country remembers us all and remembers every person who has ever passed over it. I am part of the landscape of Eora Country as Eora Country is part of me.

Country is not a theoretical concept that is isolated from the design process. As a design practitioner, I have spent a lot of my career as a translator and facilitator of good design outcomes; endeavouring to create space for First Nations voices and narratives to embed stories of Country into our places. This is a role that transcends facilitation and to one of partnership, side by side, guided by the voices and perspectives of First Nations people.

If we cannot come to terms with the horrors and truths of the past that reverberate and affect the present, how can we move ahead as a reconciled nation? How can we forge a path together, in partnership, without recognition and Makarrata?

First Nations sovereignty and connection to our land has never been ceded or disconnected.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart explains and illustrates the need for structural and constitutional reforms that empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians and create a level playing field. Inherent in this is the concept is makarrata:

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Makarrata is the culmination of our agenda: the coming together after a struggle.

It captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination.1 The Yolgnu people generously gifted the word Makarrata to Australia, a word that has implicit ideas of agreement making, or treaty, justice and the resolution of conflict. Makarrata is an important concept to built-form professionals for several reasons. First, whether you are a planner, an architect or an interior designer, our work is on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.

Secondly, collaboration and site appreciation are fundamental parts of the design process.

Without respectful engagement with First Nations communities and advisors, a complete and deep design process remains unfulfilled.

Without understanding Makarrata, design professionals will be unable to meet the full potential of their roles in society.

The elephant in the room is that I am an AngloCeltic Australian woman, and some might ask what right I have to write about this? My response is that we require both First Nations and non-First Nations peoples to talk, to write, to draw and to design. But more than that, we need non-First Nations people to cede space and to cede power to our First Nations colleagues.

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Shellwall by Esme Timbery and Jonathan Jones, Barangaroo South. Commissioned by Lendlease. Photo: Brett Boardman

Unbroken Lines, 2016, Lucy Simpson. Lendlease Office, Level 19, Tower 3 ITS, Barangaroo. Photo: Annie Tennant

Gawaa Nawi, 2015, Lucy Simpson, Wulugul Pop Up, Barangaroo.

Commissioned by Lendlease

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/ CLEARING THE SPACE BETWEEN – ALLYSHIP IN OUR PROFESSIONS WORDS: ANNIE TENNANT

What does ceding power in the designing of our cities mean? And how do we do it?

My resolution for a first step is ceding power in the process of design and planning. First, we need to clear obstacles. In paraphrasing curator Emily McDaniel: it’s important to not simply open the door to the space as the space might be filled with unseen or seen obstacles. We need to clear the space, clear the obstacles, both seen and unseen.

Our work as allies is to play a stronger role in creating a clear space between First Nations cultures and communities and our broader environments. Our role is to let go of control – and continually ask ourselves what are we prepared to let go of? What, why and how are we prepared to clear space for?

My second resolution, we need to set aside our own egos. The modernist ethos of architectural education sets up attitudes that are the antithesis of designing with Country.

Being led by First Nations principles and voices means setting aside egos and the idea of the hero architect. Creating space for First Nations designers and community to be unimpeded by our own needs or imperatives is a critical responsibility of a design ally.

My third resolution, deepening understanding and communication, is inherent to designing with Country. This means we need to accept and understand that it is not solely the role of First Nations people to educate us. We must take the responsibility of listening deeply, hearing what is said to us, reading, and challenging the perspectives of others and the ways we do things; to call out injustice but not speak for First Nations people.

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Until we do this, reconciliation will elude our best efforts. We will negate our responsibilities in creating equitable, inclusive spaces that are just and reflective of the diversity of First Nations voices and communities and right the wrongs of colonisation. Failure is not an option that we can accept.

Trust is built by following through on commitments and showing vulnerability; taking the time to build relationships with the deadliest in the industry, getting the right advice, with the right people for each project. There is no one way to do any project, every community and every project is different. Every Country is different. Clearing the space will allow for moments to breathe and contemplate ways forward together. ■ _____ Annie Tennant is director Design and Place at Placemaking NSW, Non-Indigenous Co-Chair of Reconciliation NSW and on the Advisory Council for the UNSW ADA Faculty. She has a Bachelor of Architecture from UNSW and a Master of Urban Design from University of California Berkeley. Annie’s work focuses on the process, creation and management of public spaces and places that reflect design quality, cultural richness, First Nations cultural practices, principles of inclusion and excellence in sustainability.

NOTE 1 The Uluru Statement, accessed 05 April 2022, https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/

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The space between: Thoughts on Designing with Country, Connecting with Country WORDS: DIANA SNAPE AND DILLON KOMBUMERRI

From a non-Aboriginal perspective, the English word ‘between’ implies a before and an after, or a movement / progression from one place (or state) to another. As co-authors, we bring both an Aboriginal and a non-Aboriginal perspective to seek out the between moments. On offer are opportunities to reset ways we approach business as usual practices to advocate more space between the concept and the resolution through deeper understandings of Country and for more Aboriginal voices and leadership in planning and designing our urban environments.

The space between, both in a temporal and spatial sense, highlights a difference in cultural semantics and understanding. In a broader sense, the Government Architect NSW are working in between, in our response to place design and strategic thinking.

Aboriginal culture is developing a stronger presence in the NSW planning system.

Undertaking archaeological investigations and recording Aboriginal heritage is a wellestablished part of the planning process, but responses to Country and culture in the design of places is a relatively new idea.

Designing with Country is not possible without first knowing who Country is and how to connect with her. Aboriginal people have deep and personal relationships with Country and multiple ways of expressing that relationship and what it means. Country is gendered as she or her, to acknowledge Country is a living

entity. Although this concept is commonly held by many Aboriginal language groups, there are others who do not gender Country. There is no single way of defining the term, and furthermore it is not possible to connect with or understand Country without leadership and participation

by Aboriginal people.

The Connecting with Country Draft Framework developed by the Government Architect NSW introduces an understanding of who Country is and how to develop connections with her to inform the planning, design, and delivery of built environment projects in NSW. It is intended to help project development teams – advocating ways they can respond to changes and new directions in planning policy relating to Aboriginal culture and heritage, as well as place-led design approaches. It also aims to help project teams gain a better understanding of, and to better support, a strong and vibrant Aboriginal culture in our built environment.

While there is plenty of enthusiasm across industry and government to explore this thinking, it is clearly challenging for project teams to understand how to support Connecting with Country. However, it may be possible to do this by situating oneself in or creating the space between First Nations perspectives and standard project delivery methods. Importantly, we think that opportunities to connect with Country and to Aboriginal communities should not hinder the functional requirements of project delivery and should improve and enrich project outcomes.

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/ THE SPACE BETWEEN: THOUGHTS ON DESIGNING WITH COUNTRY, CONNECTING WITH COUNTRY WORDS: DIANA SNAPE AND DILLON KOMBUMERRI

Taking a Connecting with Country approach does not necessarily affect the spatial program for a project – it is more about spatial impact or response to behaviour (the symbiosis between the purpose of Country and the way people behave on Country). Spaces may be more flexible to allow for continuous interpretation of how one connects with Country – they do not make a direct connection with Country in and of themselves, rather they reflect a connection.

The resulting architecture may therefore provide more inclusive spaces or opportunities than the original functional brief by including: –

transformative space which engenders

–

a wider threshold between the public and private spaces where those distinctions are less rigid

For example, a project team designing a school, which typically has a set program with functional requirements, could apply Country-connected thinking to how those functional requirements are organised. This could include opportunities throughout the life of the project to make a connection to Country to create and maintain connections with Aboriginal community. This approach may produce spatial outcomes but could also affect and transform how education is delivered.

Furthermore, learning should not cease at the school gates – it can be carried beyond. Learning permeates all the spaces between school, home and the local park. This idea lets us think about urban design in terms of how health and safety outcomes of active circulation and movement networks have a direct and indirect relationship with learning places. This is similar to learnings that would take place in traditional cultures. One must take in the spaces between as critical to extending knowledge.

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In architectural terms, the space between provides a transition from one context or place to the next – from profane to the sacred. It is a threshold between places, is fluid, has soft boundaries and blurred edges. This space is flexible, allows flow, and change without hard definition.

Spaces in between support interconnection, open communication, ritual and ceremony.

They can help convey a message / purpose / learning / knowledge, strengthen understanding of self, community and place. It can exist at multiple scales and in many contexts including at edges, when gathering and travelling.

Edges – A common architectural device used to create an edge condition is the building veranda which offers prospect to observe and reflect.

The natural equivalent is a rock escarpment or sheltered rock overhang. Another natural edge condition is where ground water meets land creating great change and exchange. For land animals including humans this a place for sustaining life by drinking the water or collecting resources living within it. These are some of the natural edge conditions which over time have generated special places for ceremony and learning for many First Nations people.

Gathering – a key purpose for public buildings is to create a gathering space with purpose to provide a service to the public. It is a transitional place for worker and visitor coming to and from home. Interestingly many of Australia’s early post contact buildings are on ground that continues the purpose of Country. For example hospitals on healing places, churches on sacred sites, sporting arena and public parks on previous gathering grounds of Frist Nations people. Hyde Park in the Sydney CBD is an open space that was originally a site for young men to gather and train for combat and resolve disagreements or transgressions between clans. It is now the site for honouring and remembering the service of our military men and women.

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On a social level, communities can form based on common values and needs including trade and employment opportunities, or connecting with family -for example the Aboriginal community within Redfern, Sydney. This also occurs with other culturally specific groups who have established their own neighbourhoods within the city. These neighbouwrhoods help strengthen cultural identity which is vital to personal and collective health and well being. In addition, it contributes to overall social cohesion more broadly particularly when there is cross over and collaboration between communities.

Travelling – Pathways are also essential between spaces connecting places. They are not only functional to assist travel but also allows one to move from a place of origin to a vantage point from which to look back (or forward). It is here with fresh perspective problem solving can occur and where new / alternative ideas and ways of thinking can emerge. Walking Country with Elders is a traditional cultural practice that recognises this which is explained further in the Connecting with Country Draft Framework.

The space in between allows one to move from a place of origin to a vantage point from which to look back (or forward). It is here with fresh perspective problem solving can occur and where new / alternative ideas and ways of thinking can emerge. This becomes richer when others from different places of origin join together within this liminal space. The Yolgnu refer to this occasion as Ganma – shared learning which occurs at the confluence of salt water from the sea and fresh water from the land. Importantly water connects all realms of Country – sky, land and water bodies to all living and non-living elements including us.

Without liminal space in the process and in the resulting project, the Aboriginal community struggle to be heard / involved and to have impact. To alleviate this, the Connecting with Country Draft Framework and our work

towards finalising it, is looking to expand or make best use of the liminal or between state.

This between, in the context of government is particularly challenging to address, given the need to drive rapidly towards an end or delivery stage, which is also typically the stage at which we can measure the value of our activities.

Essentially, the draft framework asks project teams (including our own) to resist arriving at outcomes too early and to challenge business as usual / proven processes and solutions which will guarantee certainty. The longer we can be between the concept and its resolution, the more people can be invited in and a liminal space created for awareness of culture and Country, and for that awareness to be valued as an end in itself and not just part of the habitual transactional exchanges of property and engagement processes. Specifically, we are testing this process to create opportunities which will privilege and prioritise space for Aboriginal voices to help us understand what Country needs.

It is important that the framework supports policies and strategies within our own government context and can influence positive change. Through several government projects – including planning, transport, health and other infrastructure projects – testing and reviewing of the framework will inform development of a long-term approach to Connecting with Country, which is due for completion by the end of 2022. ■ _____ Diana Snape is principal design advisor at NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment.

Dillon Kombumerri grew up on North Stradbroke Island (Minjerriba) and is a Yugembir descendent from the Gold Coast. Dillon is the principal architect for the Government Architect NSW.

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Uncle Max Dulumunmum Harrison WORDS: OWEN KELLY AND BOBBIE BAYLEY

The passing of Uncle Max Dulumunmum Harrison was a great blow to Australia’s living knowledge. Australian architecture had the privilege for almost 20 years to learn from his teachings, through ritual and story. The breadth of knowledge covered over this time is hard to tell in just a few stories, yet, stories have power.

Power to transcend time, culture and prejudice.

This is what Uncle Max showed to us. Uncle Max’s stories came from deep knowledge that intertwined culture, nature, history, perception and wisdom in a way that our siloed Western thinking struggles to do.

Uncle Max guided us to see the country’s greatest library. It is now up to us to slow down, see, listen and take the time to consider and trust its teachings. The following stories were collated with permission from Uncle Max’s family and through the generous support of some of Australian architecture’s elders.

“

‘I’ve got to give it away to keep it.

Uncle Max Dulumunmum Harrison

“

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From Left to right – Richard Leplastrier, Lindsay Johnston, Glenn Murcutt, Max Dulumunmun Harrison, Peter Stutchbury and Brit Andresen. Image: Lindsay Johnston

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Two Waterfalls WORDS: RICHARD LEPLASTRIER AS TOLD TO OWEN KELLY Uncle Max opened a symposium in Melbourne, as we travelled there together in a taxi from the airport I was thinking about how cities start. I knew a bit about Melbourne, I grew up there and I knew it was at the north end of this enormous bay. They put the city at the north end of the bay where the Yarra River ran out through its delta.

That’s where the south westerly from the roaring forties comes in … not such smart thinking.

Perhaps Geelong is where it should have been.

This bay is almost 70 kilometres across. You can see the You Yangs on the horizon in the west from the east side but you can’t see one shore of the bay to the other. Perhaps the heart of Melbourne is not Melbourne itself, it is Nairm (or Narrm / Port Phillip Bay).

In the back of the taxi I am thinking about Melbourne and I asked Uncle Max, “what do you know about Melbourne?”

“Two waterfalls. The first waterfall is up the Yarra (Birrarrung)1, you white fellas came there, rowed up the Yarra, came to a point where there was a whole pile of rocks crossing over with the water pouring over and you couldn’t row any further so you stuck your flag somewhere there … William Street?”2 “What happened to that waterfall?”

“Before the sea levels rose, which was about 10,000 years ago3, Nairm was a big plain, probably quite moist as there is a lot of water that comes into it from the surrounding areas, but the sea levels were 200-300 feet lower than where they are now. There were rivers and they all went out to the pinch point at Port Lonsdale there, and there was a great cliff face there and the water went over the cliff and down, because the sea level was way below. And as the sea levels came up over time so the waterfall is still there but it is all underwater. The water is still ripping out there and the turbulence where it drops off is phenomenal.”

That’s where ships and lives are lost, ships have to be piloted out of there because it’s so dangerous. if you go back to the records from 15 years ago, a pilot vessel that was un-sinkable and un-capsizeable was lost there with all lives.

Uncle Max was able to go back millennia. He is not from that area, he is a Yuin man but has carried that knowledge from stories and songs.

Deep knowledge.

That’s the sort of knowledge that the First Australians are willing to share with us through the Makarrata and the Uluru Statement from the Heart and we haven’t even answered them.

You couldn’t be less grateful than that.

“You fellas blew it up” “Ahh … right … and the second?”

“The second is the real one, you know where Nairm opens up into Bass Strait? There’s a lot of water goes out of Nairm. From high tide to low tide a 900 rise and fall.”

You can imagine how much water goes out that narrow neck (the Rip) between Port Lonsdale and the Nepean Peninsular. It’s probably the most dangerous point along the coast.

“What about the waterfall?”

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NOTES 1 https://cv.vic.gov.au/stories/aboriginal-culture/nyernila/boon-wurrungthe-filling-of-the-bay-the-time-of-chaos/ 2 https://poi-australia.com.au/points-of-interest/australia/victoria/ melbourne/the-site-of-the-falls-william-st-melbourne-vic/ 3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E3yU3yIoRHmS5hkYd5nLOiHPdLC9o y7n/view

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WORDS: PETER STUTCHBURY Uncle Max Dulumunmun Harrison, a Yuin Elder.

Taught traditionally by three uncles from the age of 9 to 16. On one of our travels we crossed the Bega bridge on route to a site at Mallacoota.

Uncle told me the stories of their camps on their river signalling to the location as we passed.

It sounded wonderful until he added the context of camps being “moved on” by police and children taken for “repatriation”.

I felt so ashamed, my father’s mate had a beef farm north of Bega, we’d regularly cross that bridge 60 years ago and frowned down at the “campers” – fancy one of those very campers having the grace not to judge but to educate.

Uncle Max represented the best of human values. He led by example and taught with elemental, accurate, humble, and educated language. His life was a composition of tradition, woven purposefully into the foreign culture placed upon this land. By retaining the “life” of traditional values he sought to improve the life of those who listened. A generosity. What he knew had been developed over tens of thousands of years, he was a conduit, a translator, a guide. It was always a pleasure to be alongside and a gift to slowly develop an understanding – his mantra was simple “respect nature”.

I recall when he smoked our freshly finished home five years ago. Friends had come to experience. He could feel energies. The special fungi was lit and smoke danced into the rooms, – he recited, and repeated a language blessing then moved purposefully around the home some places given more attention than others – reason – we followed, we slipped back to simpler times, to ancient times to connected times when they didn’t take all the eggs, just what they needed.

Otherwise, no chicks, no new eggs.

The old fella stood on a rock ledge at Riversdale and was explaining the winds to students, he was asked could he call up a wind. “Do you need

one?” was the answer. But as he left that ledge he looked west and talked to Koorah koo-rie the big wind – a little later on a still warm day for ten minutes the wind blew then stopped.

Many of us have a fascination with nature, Uncle was nature. He could see the connections, feel the life forces understand the indicators – it was like he was reading a book.

Over time I learnt to trust his perceptions, guidance and eldership, his wisdom.

We first met over two decades ago he had seen Israel House and asked if he could meet the architect. We met by a fire on a rock ledge overlooking the house six weeks later. He was dressed in his flannel shirt walking shorts and runners he heard me coming and didn’t move, as I asked to sit he looked up and introduced himself, “Hi I’m Max, I like the house.” We talked. He asked “Did you hear the men singing?” I replied “what men?” Pointing to a small grove of trees he said, “men’s ceremony, you’ve respected men’s ceremony.” I withdrew a little and felt I had to explain the site for the house was simply a feeling and that the previously chosen site was wrong, where we chose was respectful to the land – “and the ancients” he explained.

A powerful introduction, a foreign yet easily imagined world – how could this be? From then on Uncle became an educator and friend in our tribe also permitting us to walk with his tribe.

Impossible to cover in words that inclusion.

In mid 2021 I was visiting Ken (Israel House) it was dark, no moon, and the descent to the house is through a variety of bush pathways – the sound of rigging rattling against masts in Pittwater and the timeless mood of the West Head peninsula silhouetted against a deep cobalt blue sky across the bay. Fifteen seconds before I reached the plank that crosses to the dimly lit tiny vertical house, resting against the rock ledge I heard men softly singing, I turned then I remembered.

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Wisdom of the Elders WORDS: LINDSAY JOHNSTON / EDITED FROM AN ESSAY IN AREA107, MILAN 2009

Mother Earth births everything for us. Father Sky carries the water and oxygen for us to breathe.

Grandfather Sun warms the planet, warms our body, gives us light so we can see, raises the food that the Mother births and raises most of our relations, all our plants and trees.

Grandmother Moon moves the water and gives us the woman-time and our birthing (Uncle Max Dulumunmun Harrison, Aboriginal Elder of the Yuin people)1

We stood on the grass under the trees in the Botanic Gardens of Sydney, the traditional land of the Gadigal people with Glenn Murcutt, Aboriginal Elder Uncle Max Dulumunmun Harrison, Peter Stutchbury and a gathering of people for the launch of Uncle Max’s book My People’s Dreaming – an Aboriginal Elder speaks on life, land, spirit and forgiveness. The event took place with glimpses of Utzon’s Opera House through the treetops and with the tall buildings of Harry Seidler, Renzo Piano and many others looking down on us from the city centre across Macquarie Street. Richard Leplastrier

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was there with us as well, in spirit, although he was in Japan on his way to Denmark. Glenn, Uncle Max, Peter and Richard, with Professor Brit Andresen from Norway and Queensland, have become a close family, privileged with each other’s company and engaged in, one could say, spreading a teaching of thought and action that is commonly rooted in the accumulated wisdom of these two great men, Glenn and Max, now our Elders.

Glenn speaks often botanically, as he did in his Pritzker Prize acceptance speech, his knowledge and observation of the natural environment is extraordinary. To walk over a landscape with Glenn and to hear him identify and discuss the plant species with their botanical names, is to have revealed insights into geology, rainfall, water flow, wind direction, solar access, bushfire threats, the movements of the seasons, wildlife, scents. So, it is that his buildings are, first, grounded on the reading of the land, of the landscape. Walking with Uncle Max over this same ground is another, parallel and complementary journey. He will speak of the hillside and the trees as his family relations, of the traditions and journeys of his ancestors, of reading the land, of spirit lines, of totems, of sacred places and of the landscape as a source of food.

One of Uncle Max Dulumunmun’s penetrating sayings is “To keep it, we must give it away”, referring to the need for the Elders to reveal their knowledge and culture to younger generations, to be generous in the giving, to commit time to the giving.

NOTE 1 Max Dulumunmun Harrison and Peter McConchie (2009), My People’s Dreaming, Finch Publishing, Sydney.

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WORDS: BRIT ANDRESEN In the winter we would all gather at Riversdale for the Glenn Murcutt International Master Class to participate in the annual building design with landscape studio.

Some would arrive from places as far away as Africa, Asia, or Europe or the Americas and others from distant territories around Australia.

Each of us would arrive with personal memories of our childhood landscapes and sensual experiences of nature. From architectural practice we’d bring abstract concepts about sites and location and from myths and legends of our exotic societies. We’d all carry with us culturally embedded ideas about the land and the natural world. And while everyone was from a landscape elsewhere; Uncle Max Dulumunmun Harrison, Yuin Elder, was from this place, his Country, the south-east coast of NSW. On the first day of the studio since 2005 Uncle Max would come to welcome everyone to his Country and invite us to join a smokingin ceremony. A small fire would be lit on the hillside with views to the mountain and the river. Securing his red headband, he’d take hold of a branch of green leaves, and he’d pause to ask permission from the bush before snapping the stalk for the fire to create a plume of smoke. Uncle Max would tell us about Yuin cosmology, of grandfather sun, grandmother moon, father sky and mother earth and insert his personal teachings in conversation and add in a brainteaser, such as ‘I’ve got to give it away to keep it”.

On walkabout along the ridge, he’d reveal what we couldn’t easily see: reaching for a leaf or taking sap from a tree he’d demonstrate that the bush is both a supermarket and a pharmacy, he’d point out signs and areas vulnerable to landslip or prone to destructive wind and fire, then, he’d take us on a side track to feel the humidity increase on the southeast slope where the ferns thrive and finally on to the lookout where the rock orchids grow. These walks with Uncle Max also revealed that knowledge of Country comes from a dimension, beyond personal experience and ecology, a dimension where everything of the land is understood as integral with the spirituality of the culture.

It is with great sadness that we are not gathering at Riversdale this year with Uncle Max who died in December 2021aged 85 but we can continue to reflect on his teaching and the focus of his three truths: “See the land…the beauty; Hear the land…the story; Feel the land…the spirit.” ■ _____ Owen Kelly and Bobbie Bayley studied architecture at Newcastle, where they were lucky enough to learn from some incredible teachers including Uncle Max. Their Grand Section journey by bicycle across Australia allowed them to realise the power of these teachings. They work with Healthabitat and in residential architecture.

NOTE Words of Wisdom from an Aboriginal Elder of the Yuin People – Uncle Max Dulumunmun Harrison, accessed 12 April 2022, https://www.mercyworld.org/f/45074/x/a6a76d884a/uncle-maxwords-of-wisdom-tara-egger-a4.pdf

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Newcastle East End | SJB | Photo: Tom Roe

WHAT ARE WE DOING?

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2022 NSW ARCHITECTURE AWARDS

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2022 NSW AWARD WINNERS

NSW ARCHITECTURE MEDALLION WALSH BAY ARTS PRECINCT TONKIN ZULAIKHA GREER ARCHITECTS Photo: Brett Boardman

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COMMERCIAL ARCHITECTURE

AWARDS THE FOUNDRY | LEAD FJMTSTUDIO, FJMTSTUDIO + SISSONS – ARCHITECTS IN ASSOCIATION TO DA

THE SIR ARTHUR G STEPHENSON AWARD 52 RESERVOIR STREET | SJB Photo: Brett Boardman

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2022 NSW AWARD WINNERS

EDUCATIONAL ARCHITECTURE THE WILLIAM E KEMP AWARD ULTIMO PUBLIC SCHOOL | DESIGNINC SYDNEY, LACOSTE+STEVENSON AND BMC2 ARCHITECTS IN ASSOCIATION Photo: Brett Boardman

AWARDS DOMREMY COLLEGE NANO NAGLE LEARNING CENTRE | HAYBALL SHOPFRONT FOR YOUTH PERFORMANCE AND ART | STEPHEN COLLIER ARCHITECTS INTERNATIONAL GRAMMAR SCHOOL | BVN COMMENDATIONS INNER SYDNEY HIGH SCHOOL | FJMTSTUDIO ROUSE HILL CHILDCARE | CO-AP (ARCHITECTS)

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HERITAGE THE GREENWAY AWARD WALSH BAY ARTS PRECINCT | TONKIN ZULAIKHA GREER ARCHITECTS Photo: Brett Boardman

AWARDS THE GREAT COBAR MUSEUM | DUNN & HILLAM ARCHITECTS DAWN FRASER BATHS | TKD ARCHITECTS COMMENDATIONS NGUNUNGGULA, SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS REGIONAL GALLERY AT RETFORD PARK | TONKIN ZULAIKHA GREER ARCHITECTS WESLEY EDWARD EAGAR CENTRE | SCOTT CARVER PTY LTD STEPHENSON’S MILL | HECTOR ABRAHAMS ARCHITECTS

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2022 NSW AWARD WINNERS

PUBLIC ARCHITECTURE THE SULMAN MEDAL BUNDANON | KERSTIN THOMPSON ARCHITECTS Photo: Rory Gardiner

AWARDS KEN ROSEWALL ARENA & PRECINCT | COX ARCHITECTURE WALSH BAY ART’S PRECINCT | TONKIN ZULAIKHA GREER ARCHITECTS KINGS LANGLEY CRICKET CLUB & AMENITIES | EOGHAN LEWIS ARCHITECTS COMMENDATIONS ERIC TWEEDALE STADIUM | DWP | DESIGN WORLDWIDE PARTNERSHIP CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD | CANDALEPAS ASSOCIATES

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URBAN DESIGN THE LLOYD REES AWARD NEWCASTLE EAST END | SJB Photo: Tom Roe

AWARDS PARRAMATTA ESCARPMENT BOARDWALK | HILL THALIS ARCHITECTURE + URBAN PROJECTS WITH MCGREGOR WESTLAKE AND JANE IRWIN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE QUAY QUARTER LANES | SJB, SILVESTER FULLER, STUDIO BRIGHT, CARTER WILLIAMSON, LIPPMANN PARTNERSHIP AND ASPECT STUDIOS COMMENDATION TERRIGAL BOARDWALK & ROCKPOOL | ARUP

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2022 NSW AWARD WINNERS

RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE – HOUSES (NEW) THE WILKINSON AWARD STABLE HOUSE | SIBLING ARCHITECTURE Photo: Kat Lu

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AWARDS SEAGRASS HOUSE | WELSH + MAJOR CURL CURL HOUSE | TRIAS COMMENDATION DIMENSIONS X OM1 / MOBILE STUDIO | PETER STUTCHBURY ARCHITECTURE AND OSCAR MARTIN

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RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE – HOUSES (ALTERATIONS AND ADDITIONS) THE HUGH AND EVA BUHRICH AWARD

AWARD ARGYLE WELL | WELSH + MAJOR COMMENDATIONS HIDDEN GARDEN HOUSE | TRIAS IRIRIKI | MADELEINE BLANCHFIELD ARCHITECTS ESCARPMENT HOUSE | VIRGINIA KERRIDGE ARCHITECT BEACHALET | MATTR STUDIO

NORTH BONDI HOUSE | ANTHONY GILL ARCHITECTS Photo: Clinton Weaver

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2022 NSW AWARD WINNERS

RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE – MULTIPLE HOUSING THE AARON BOLOT AWARD

AWARDS 9-15 YOUNG STREET - QUAY QUARTER LANES | SJB CLARION | SJB LIVING QUARTERS | HA ARCHITECTURE NEWCASTLE EAST END STAGE 1 | SJB, DURBACH BLOCK JAGGERS AND TONKIN ZULAIKHA GREER

QUAY QUARTER LANES - 8 LOFTUS STREET | STUDIO BRIGHT

COMMENDATIONS

Photo: Rory Gardiner

KING AND PHILLIP RESIDENCES | FJMTSTUDIO QUAY QUARTER LANES - 18 LOFTUS STREET | SILVESTER FULLER 5 UHRIG ROAD, STAGE 1 | BVN ST MARYS HOUSING | MCGREGOR WESTLAKE ARCHITECTURE

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INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE THE JOHN VERGE AWARD

AWARDS MULTIPLEX HEAD QUARTERS | BVN THE WOOLLAHRA HOTEL | RICHARDS STANISICH 9-15 YOUNG STREET | RICHARDS STANISICH

60 CASTLEREAGH STREET | AETA STUDIO Photo: Anthony Fretwell

COMMENDATIONS KING AND PHILLIP FOYER | FJMTINTERIORS WALSH BAY ARTS PRECINCT | TONKIN ZULAIKHA GREER ARCHITECTS NAB 3 PARRAMATTA SQUARE | WOODS BAGOT

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2022 NSW AWARD WINNERS

SMALL PROJECT ARCHITECTURE THE ROBERT WOODWARD AWARD THE SANCTUARY | WELSH + MAJOR Photo: Clinton Weaver

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AWARDS NO SHOW AT CARRIAGEWORKS | YOUSSOFZAY AND HART HYDE PARK CAFE AND MUSEUM STATION UPGRADE | ANDREW BURNS ARCHITECTURE COMMENDATION SUMMER PLACE PAVILION | AKIMBO ARCHITECTURE

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SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE THE MILO DUNPHY AWARD

AWARDS PEPPER TREE PASSIVE HOUSE | ALEXANDER SYMES ARCHITECT DIMENSIONS X OM1 / MOBILE STUDIO | PETER STUTCHBURY ARCHITECTURE AND OSCAR MARTIN BUNDANON | KERSTIN THOMPSON ARCHITECTS

PHOENIX HOUSE | HARLEY GRAHAM ARCHITECTS

COMMENDATIONS

Photo: Andy MacPherson

CURL CURL HOUSE | TRIAS EDEN PORT WELCOME CENTRE | COX ARCHITECTURE ROSBY WINES CELLAR DOOR & GALLERY | CAMERON ANDERSON ARCHITECTS

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2022 NSW AWARD WINNERS

COLORBOND® AWARD FOR STEEL ARCHITECTURE THE FOUNDRY LEAD FJMTSTUDIO, FJMTSTUDIO + SISSONS - ARCHITECTS IN ASSOCIATION TO DA Photo: Steve Brown

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EMAGN PROJECT AWARD THE GREAT COBAR MUSEUM DUNN & HILLAM ARCHITECTS Photo: Katherine Lu

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2022 NSW AWARD WINNERS

LORD MAYOR’S PRIZE

LORD MAYOR’S PRIZE

52 RESERVOIR STREET

QUAY QUARTER LANES

SJB

SJB, SILVESTER FULLER, STUDIO BRIGHT, CARTER WILLIAMSON, LIPPMANN PARTNERSHIP AND ASPECT STUDIOS

Photo: Rory Gardiner

Photo: Brett Boardman

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BLACKET PRIZE

ENDURING ARCHITECTURE

EDEN PORT WELCOME CENTRE

WOOLLEY HESKETH HOUSE

COX ARCHITECTURE

KEN WOOLLEY

Photo: John Gollings

Photo: Rory Gardiner

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2022 NSW AWARD WINNERS

EMERGING ARCHITECT PRIZE QIANYI LIM | SIBLING ARCHITECTURE Jury Citation The 2022 NSW Emerging Architect Prize has been awarded to Qianyi Lim, Director at Sibling Architecture.

Among a group of highly talented nominees, the jury considered that Qianyi’s impressive and rounded career portfolio that spans across private practice, education and advocacy made her the ideal candidate for this prize. Qianyi has used her reach in the profession to champion diversity and advocate for women in architecture through invited panels and talks. Further to this, her built work puts Sibling’s research into practice exploring relevant societal themes such as models of home ownership, ageing and multigenerational housing.

As a co-founder of Sibling Architecture, Qianyi established the Sydney office in 2017 and has grown the team and led the expansion of the firm’s work across project scales ranging from exhibitions, residential through to civic projects, which have been recognised through multiple publications and awards.

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Qianyi’s contribution and esteemed expertise to the wider profession is through her involvement co-chairing the Australian Institute of Architects NSW Education and Research committee, award juries and as panel member on the State Design Review Panel. Most notably, after years of teaching at various universities in Melbourne and Sydney, her appointment as Associate Professor of Practice at the University of Sydney School of Architecture, Building and Planning sees Qianyi contributing directly to the development of the master’s curriculum and shaping the next generation of architects.

The jury congratulates Qianyi Lim on this well-deserved recognition of her extensive contribution to the profession.

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NEWCASTLE ARCHITECTURE MEDAL NEWCASTLE EAST END STAGE 1 SJB, DURBACH BLOCK JAGGERS AND TONKIN ZULAIKHA GREER Photo: Tom Roe

EDUCATIONAL ARCHITECTURE AWARD ST PHILIP’S CHRISTIAN COLLEGE CESSNOCK SENIOR BUILDING SHAC Photo: Alexander McIntyre

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2022 NEWCASTLE AWARD WINNERS

HERITAGE ARCHITECTURE COMMENDATION NIHON UNIVERSITY NEWCASTLE CAMPUS DESIGN WORLDWIDE PARTNERSHIP WITH AZUSA SEKKEI CO. Photo: Rodrigo Vargas

INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE AWARD KINGSLEY BY CRYSTALBROOK COLLECTION EJE ARCHITECTURE WITH SUEDE INTERIOR DESIGN Photo: Nic Gossage

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INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE AWARD LAKE MACQUARIE CITY COUNCIL ADMINISTRATION OFFICE FIT-OUT EJE ARCHITECTURE Photo: Alex McIntyre COMMENDATIONS THE LAIR ODE STUDIO WITH ASH GREENAWAY VAMP SDA ARCHITECTS

PUBLIC ARCHITECTURE AWARD TUNCURRY MUSEUM AND GOLF FACILITY MICHAEL FOX ARCHITECTS Photo: James Bowman

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2022 NEWCASTLE AWARD WINNERS

RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE (NEW) AWARD HAMILTON GARDEN HOUSE MSDS Photo: Tom Ferguson

RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE – MULTIPLE HOUSING AWARD NEWCASTLE EAST END STAGE 1 SJB DURBACH BLOCK JAGGERS & TONKIN ZULAIKHA GREER Photo: Tom Roe

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COLORBOND® AWARD FOR STEEL ARCHITECTURE CATHERINE McAULEY CATHOLIC CHAPEL WEBBER ARCHITECTS Photo: Grey Griffin

COMMERCIAL ARCHITECTURE AWARD KINGSLEY BY CRYSTALBROOK COLLECTION EJE ARCHITECTURE Photo: Nic Gossage COMMENDATION THE PANGOLIN FABRIC ARCHITECTURE STUDIO

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2022 NEWCASTLE AWARD WINNERS

URBAN DESIGN AWARD NEWCASTLE EAST END SJB Photo: Brett Boardman COMMENDATION NEWCASTLE STATION AND PUBLIC DOMAIN CONRAD GARGETT

SMALL PROJECT ARCHITECTURE COMMENDATION DOMESTIC VIOLENCE COURT ADVOCACY SERVICE MOCK COURTROOM OUT(FIT) Photo: Jed Cranfield

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PROFILE

Dulux Study Tour WORDS: SIMON ROCHOWSKI, STUDIO PLUS THREE

The fog-shrouded hills of southern Tasmania provided a suitably atmospheric backdrop for our first project visit on the second day of the Dulux Study Tour. As it turned out, this was exactly what the client of Sunnybanks House had in mind for their home – the misty cover-art of ECM records had become a pivotal reference in their brief to architect Ryan Strating and his team at Core Collective. We were interested to discover that the aesthetic quality of the house was matched by its sustainable credentials.

Technical talk about energy performance and drainage details took place against the canvas of the sustainable, comfortable and serene home. Ryan’s commitment to sustainable design compelled us to think about our own responsibilities and available opportunities as designers working in the era of accelerating climate change.

After a bus-ride and ferry crossing to Bruny Island, we arrived on site for two project visits that required very little introduction but rewarded exploration – John Wardle’s Shearer’s Quarters and Captain Kelly’s Cottage.

These buildings can be understood as a form of creative archaeology, with every detail and item revealing a chain of design thinking and association with the history of the site.

Roof geometry, neither/ both skillion or gable, establishes a formal relationship between the two buildings while a host of ancillary structures and objects reveal a network of experimentation

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and collaboration – from the exterior bath by Laura McCusker to the glazed kiln by ceramicist Ben Richardson. These projects are dense expressions and vessels of history, materials, and craft that link industrial apple-picking processes to current concerns about environmental degradation and industrial heritage.

A collection of objects from around the world – including Japanese glazed ceramic tiles and inlay wood carvings from Palermo – speak to the influence and pursuit of craft within the architecture. It was truly inspirational to be guided through this complex embodiment of activity and ideas by their author, John.

As the winter sky started to darken, we approached the nearby Killora House by Tanner Architects, which was designed and largely built by owners Lara and Tim. This house is also something of an informed experiment, with the whole family engaged in the processes of fabricating and installing different built elements.

This tight envelope emphasises the sense of sky and the tree canopy surrounding the site, which is further enhanced by the dark coloured finish applied to the building’s Silvertop Ash cladding.

Splitting the house into two – one side for kids’ bedrooms, the other side for living spaces and main bedroom – each area visually engaged with the surrounding bushland and the lake beyond – the restrained material palette of dark timbers and white walls enhancing the architecture’s relationship to its sit. ■

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Above: Shearer’s Quarters and Captain Kelly’s Cottage by John Wardle Architects Above left: Shearer’s Quarters, Interior Above right: Glazed kiln by ceramicist Ben Richardson

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PROFILE

Studio Prineas is certified carbon neutral

Studio Prineas is certified carbon neutral.

Director, Eva-Marie describes the rewarding process of taking her studio carbon neutral and how it represents a key step in providing care and respect for Country.

Attaining our carbon neutral certification through The Carbon Reduction Institute of Australia was a simple but interesting exercise for every member in our team. The process provided us with an opportunity to carefully consider and quantify our environmental footprint – waste creation, recycling quantities, car usage, and energy provider choices, as well as other everyday things that impact carbon production.

As a studio, we aim to tread lightly on Country, and undertaking a carbon audit helped us understand the impact of our efforts to date, as well as provide a framework for continuing to set new targets that will further reduce our footprint into the future.

Being certified carbon neutral has been a really positive experience for our practice.

It represents a continuation of our values – we take pride in leading by example and playing an active role in creating the change we want to see in our industry.

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We are concurrently embarking on a journey of learning in regard to working on and connecting to Country, with deep respect for our First Nations people. A key step in connecting to Country is caring for Country and becoming a carbon neutral studio is one simple way that we are able to help mitigate the effects of climate change and practice in a way that respects the land on which we live and work.

As architects, we have a responsibility to act as leaders within the building industry, which we know is a major contributor to carbon emissions. Architects have an opportunity to make tangible change through the buildings we design and the products we specify. Leading by example, beginning with how we conduct our own practices is the logical first step. We found taking our practice carbon neutral to be entirely manageable, constructive and rewarding and we encourage our peers to do the same.

We’re supporting Australian Institute of Architects members in their shift to carbon neutral – it’s the simplest step towards reaching zero. ■

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Above: Cnr Virginia by Studio Prineas. Photo: Chris Warnes.

Left: Eva-Marie Prineas (centre) with the Studio Prineas team.

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PROFILE

Carter Williamson is certified carbon neutral FACILITATED BY GEMMA SAVIO

Vivienne Hinschen and Ben Peake from Carter Williamson met with the Australian Institute of Architects to talk about the studio’s carbon neutral journey, supporting cleaner power, local ecologies and projects led by First Nations peoples.

Vivienne Hinschen (VH): We decided to take the studio carbon neutral in 2019. It was a process we started when we become signatories of Architects Declare but as a practice, we’ve always been aware of the environmental impact of the buildings we design. Bringing that same ethic to the day-to-day running of the studio made sense because we felt that we couldn’t confidently advocate for sustainabilitydriven initiatives to our clients without being responsible and taking care of our own carbon footprint as well.

Ben Peake (BP): There’s an uncomfortable truth to the fact that the built environment is one of the largest contributors to carbon emissions.

It’s an industry that’s heavily influenced by capitalist structures so as architects, particularly over the last decade, we’ve been looking for opportunities to make positive change. You can see how that manifested in our personal lives – more and more people started using keep cups, recycling carefully and eating a more plant-based diet. That same mentality now influences the workplace where we all understand that small steps like going carbon neutral can lead to

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broader change. It’s a step towards a carbon neutral industry but it works with bigger moves like supporting clients to choose cleaner power or more sustainable materials. It’s really a collective effort.

VH: There’s a movement in the industry where architects are increasingly committing to carbon neutral certification. There’s now a general understanding in the design community that the urgency of our environmental situation means we need to work together to make small changes, like carbon offsetting, actually have impact.

BP: There are so many design-led practices that are carbon neutral certified and that has set the standard for our industry. In order to be part of the conversation and to remain contemporary it’s something that now forms a facet of practice and we hope our clients have that expectation of us as well. In most industries businesses are being held accountable and better practices are being demanded and we’re seeing that in architecture too.

VH: We’re a studio of 18 people and the process for achieving carbon neutral certification was very simple. What we’re interested in now is how we can be more specific about where we retire our carbon credits. While we understand there’s efficacy in international investment, we would like to align our values with Australian offsetting companies or groups to support our local ecologies and projects led by First Nations peoples.

BP: We see carbon auditing and offsetting as just one part of a bigger picture. We try to be active in looking for ways we can contribute more broadly. We support Bush Heritage Australia, which assists in reconstructing local ecologies and we’ve recently installed solar panels at the studio so we’re now producing more energy than we use. The principal of being carbon neutral isn’t enough at this point, we actually need to repair some of the damage that’s been done by investing in initiatives that are regenerative. ■

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Above left: Woodcroft Community Centre. Photo: Brett Boardman Above: Gesticulating Wildly. Photo: Pablo Veiga Left: Vivienne Hinschen and Ben Peake with the Carter Williamson team. Photo: Katherine Lu

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OBITUARY

Vale Dr Jacqui Goddard WORDS: BOB MOORE

Family, friends and colleagues of Dr Jacqui Goddard were shocked and saddened by her sudden recent passing, a victim of stroke, at only 64. A stalwart National Trust member and its conservation director in the years 20012007, Jacqui was an expert conservation architect and a formidable advocate for good architecture of any time. She was also a patient, effective teacher and mentor, for whom respect and affection are mixed in an overwhelming abundance, like the ingredients of her fine baking. Not one to suffer foolishness, or an apologist for mediocracy, Jacqui was a warm and generous colleague and advisor to fellow practitioners, students and government.

Trained at UNSW and after working in heritage conservation practices in Sydney, Jacqui travelled to Scotland (her alternative spiritual home) and across 1990-1994 worked with Law & Dunbar-Naismith Architects, an Australian on first-name terms with her often-titled, castleowning clients. She observed that rising damp was the same in both hemispheres and in older masonry buildings large or small. Her interests in traditional construction and particularly lime mortars and renders, became an enduring passion. Her advocacy for their understanding, use and conservation continued through teaching and technical papers continued after her return to Sydney to join the National Trust staff in 2001.

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While at the Trust she represented it on the NSW Heritage Council, chairing its Archaeological Advisory Panel and Technical and Materials Group. Subsequently she worked for the NSW NPWS and Sydney Water, and ecumenically taught conservation skills at UTS, UNSW and University of Sydney, leading to her PHD. She showed us the breadth to which a passionate, ever-learning, and enquiring architectural career can extend.

Beyond this full professional life, Jacq found great happiness with Ray and her family life expanded from sister and aunt to “gran” and a pivotal role in its multi-generational richness.

With Ray she battled his cancer diagnosis and valiantly sustained his loss, and was facing the world again with those immense reserves of courage and optimism she always displayed, and from which her community, profession and we who were lucky to know her always benefitted.

Jacq had so much still to do and as ever, so much to give. The worlds of cultural heritage, of our common architectural heritage, challenged as it is by the ignorant forces of our time, are so very much the poorer for her loss, and her family and friends face the absence of her smile, her wit, and her warm counsel.