Learning to Walk A 5km Odyssey Peter Jorgensen

Learning to Walk: A 5km Odyssey

Peter Jorgensen Graduating Bachelor of Design in Architecture student

It’s my third walk of the day, feet beating a metronomic rhythm as I weave my way through the back streets of another Inner West suburb. The daily routes have varied, but remain predominantly aimless meanderings in the general direction of a takeaway flat white. These walks have become mappings, street-by-street reinterpretations of local neighbourhoods. The way magnolias flowering in front yards announce the coming of spring, and the daily patterns of sun and shade in Henson Park. The realisation that all the cherry blossom trees between my front door and the Marrickville Library (caffeine refill station of choice) are hybrids, twin trunks that flower in sequence – pink then white. None of this should be taken as the all-too-common romanticisation of what has undoubtedly been a traumatic period: magnolias signal spring, but also the darkest depths of a frantic, monotonous solitude. Instead, walking can be used as an analogy for the reimagining of our relationship to place, and how this might inform a future design process in education and practice.

Australia’s First Nations peoples have long been aware of the rhythmic potential of walking. Songs were learnt ‘as people travelled to the places named in the song and the rhythm of walking took the song into the body. Through the body, song became dance, which in turn became ceremony.’1 The landscape acts as a mnemonic device, a vast archive of knowledge stored within the land, sea and stars, accessed through song, dance and ceremony. Body and place are mutually constitutive, the identity of the body incomplete without a relationship to place, and the potential of place dormant until ‘unlocked’ by the dancing body.2 Within this relationship of memory, movement and landscape is the potential for a uniquely Australian process of placemaking, a ‘third space,’ that does away with the traditional dichotomy of architecture versus landscape. An architecture that centres on the exchange of stories and an ongoing engagement with community and Country.

1 John Carty et al., We Don’t Need a Map: A Martu Experience of the Western Desert, (Fremantle, WA: Freemantle Arts Centre,2013), 40. Quoted in Neale and Kelly, Songlines: The Power and Promise, p.54. 2 Margo Neale and Lynne Kelly. Songlines: The Power and Promise, edited by Margo Neale (Melbourne: Thames and Hudson, 2020), 54-5. 3 Lee Stickells and Glen Hill, Pig Architecture, Architectureau, June 22, 2012, https://architectureau.com/articles/pig-architecture/?fbclid=IwAR29ejwcKapFt_HJEN-S2vhDK95Mtcdg2lWxTvqgH3VnWj-rBWdq5wngJOU. 4 Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1960), 20. 5 Luke Henriques-Gomes, “Government’s ‘Pitiful’ Boost to Welfare Payments Does Not Go Far Enough, Opposition Says, Guardian Australia, March 12, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/12/governments-pitifulboost-to-welfare-payments-does-not-go-far-enough-opposition-says 6 I would particularly like to give my deepest thanks to Lucy Small, Antony Fenhas and Kate Goodwin for their time, conversations, edits and revisions in the process of writing this piece.

If how we build is indicative of collective values and societal identity, then our journey as architects-to-be is deeply connected to an examination of those collective values. What is the significance of place in Australian identity? Is architecture an inherently environmentally destructive endeavour or can it be otherwise? What are we doing, as architects, to emphasise marginalised narratives and acknowledge that everything we build in this country is on unceded First Nations land? What is the role of an architectural education, particularly in Australia’s oldest architectural school in one of its longest standing colonial institutions, in the examination of a collective identity?

These are all questions that we need to answer communally, and recently some spaces have been created within the architecture school to begin tackling some of these topics. Spaces like the Yarning Circle, a semi-regular, informal meet-up for staff and students to listen to indigenous voices and to share stories. Or the collaborative organisation of teach-outs in the Wilkinson courtyard in protest of university-wide course cuts. Some course directors have started regular meetings, open to all students, aimed at providing immediate feedback on course content and structure. Still lacking, however, are spaces that provide opportunities for students to play an active, ongoing role in the creation of our education as a whole. Spaces for the collaborative critique of the way things are, and speculation as to what could be. The architecture school has a long tradition of experimentation in these areas, with various student and staff movements in the early 70s, such as The Autonomous House from 1974-78, radically redefining student ownership and direction in our education.3 What lessons can be learnt from this tradition, and how relevant are they in our current political, environmental and architectural context?

The significance of where we learn could also be examined. As the daily walk teaches us, it takes repeated engagement with a place to begin to understand it. While the studio and the office are practical necessities to architectural practice, there is a reason that our most revered architects, LePlastrier, Murcutt and Stutchbury, physically locate their masterclasses on the site for which students are designing. The past two years have shown that we can study from almost anywhere in the world, but maybe we should be looking to spend more time studying from site. If, as Robin Boyd writes, the Australian Ugliness is rooted in an anxiety in the face of the sheer scale of our continental landscape,4 then this could be a step towards its cure.

As much as walking teaches us about space, it is also about time. Slower practice allows for more experimentation, and a deeper engagement with our context and our place in it. On the whole, more time would make us better architects. The biggest barrier to student involvement in many of the existing collaborative spaces is that they require students to go above and beyond an already extreme workload. Of course, in many cases this workload comes from structures beyond the architecture school and even beyond the university. Ballooning costs of living and barely an increase in government support in the past 35 years5 has led to exponentially increased stresses on students. This is, however, exactly why we need spaces of intersectional critique, not just of the university or the current degree structure but of the wider social context in which we practice. How do we remain flexible, as students and as educators, in this changing context? As future architects, are we content with perpetuating existing structures or do they need to be dismantled and rebuilt?

Learning to walk as placemakers means learning to listen and draw meaning from a multitude of overlaid social, political, environmental and cultural narratives. It means amplifying traditionally marginalised voices and centring Indigenous stories. It also means gaining a deeper understanding of our own individual stories and their relationship to a wider cultural identity and concept of place. My own conversations with various tutors, lecturers and students have been instrumental in furthering my own interest and investigation of the ideas in this reflection, and I am deeply grateful for it.6 As graduating students, these are our first steps on a long and complex journey towards an understanding of not only how, but why we build.

Let’s make sure we find time for a yarn or two along the way.