BOOKSHELF

DESIGN: BUILDING ON COUNTRY by Alison Page and Paul Memmott with the National Museum / MADELEINE SWAIN

Design: Building on Country is the second book in the six-book First Knowledges series (edited by Margo Neale), a series that aims to provide “a deeper understanding of the expertise and ingenuity of Indigenous Australians”.

Page and Memmott’s contribution to the project is a deep exploration of design and architecture, but is casting a much, much wider net to fully contextualise the cultural meanings, relevance and history of Indigenous design and practice, by referencing everything from the design of boomerangs to fish traps, Songlines, kinship and camps.

The book o ers a definition of Australian Aboriginal architecture as a “selected, arranged and constructed configuration of environmental properties, both natural and artificial… to result in human comfort and quality of lifestyle”.

Commencing with personal accounts of their own stories and relationships to the material, Page and Memmott go on to examine spirituality and the Dreamtime, shelters and Country, engineered structures, materials, kinship, placemaking and contemporary Indigenous architecture and design, concluding with thoughts and suggestions for a new Australian design, and the implications it may have for a country needing to develop its response to climate change and future challenges. PAST AS TEACHER

“The teachings of the elders are not the teachings of the past. They are the teachings of the future.” – First Nations architect, Douglas Cardinal, from Blackfoot, Red Deer, Alberta.

The book not only sets out to disprove colonial and current misconceptions (and untruths) about Indigenous relationships to Country and the objects First Nations people make and use, but also to clearly propose that the traditional knowledge and practices that have been ignored, suppressed or marginalised should be not only reappraised but used to inform future practice.

This overarching theme is something that has become increasingly apparent in recent decades, but is persuasively and cogently presented by Page and Memmott.

They examine the connection between wayfinding and Songlines, and the importance of placemaking that is inextricably connected to the resources available – emphasising the increasingly popular practice of restaurants making space for attached spaces to grow their own produce, for example.

Page and Memmott cite architects like Ken George, who was attempting to implement an architecture informed by traditional practices nearly 50 years ago, but was perhaps “too visionary for the conservative bureaucracies of the era”. Today, however, they see greater cause for optimism through the work and e orts of contemporary practitioners such as Kevin O’Brien, Dillon Kombumerri, Jefa Greenaway and Merrima Design.

Contemporary Indigenous practice comprises three elements, they say – ingenuity, sustainability and storytelling – and the book’s raison d’être is explaining what this means.

Deceptively easy to read, Building on Country contains concepts and descriptions that may require revisiting, particularly for non-Indigneous readers, but it will act as a useful resource. One small criticism is the placement of the illustrations – they are sometimes separated from the text and referenced by chapter and figure numbers alone, when an identifying page number may have been more helpful.

The book is full of profound ideas and revelations, none more so than this observation from Page, which appears in the closing chapter:

“When this country was colonised, my ancestors buried their systems, technologies and knowledges in the ground, like seeds they were preserving… and designed them to lie dormant, knowing that when Country cried out for them and fires came ravaging through, the seeds would germinate and the time would finally come for them to grow. That time is now.” ar

Design: Building on Country is published by Thames and Hudson.

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