Foreword by Professor William (Bill) M Taylor

Foreword by Professor William (Bill) M Taylor

‘Cold comforts’

Welcome to the 2021 Winter Collection of student work from the School of Design. Winter can be a time of discontent or so Shakespeare wrote in the opening line of Richard III. John Steinbeck was so taken with the seasonal metaphor he appropriated The Winter of Our Discontent (1961) for the title of his last novel. The season of restlessness shadows the book’s main character who seeks former fortunes, but loses his moral compass as he flirts with fraud and theft to restore them. (The character’s son, a student, is also found to be a plagiarist and so the malaise spreads.) Exhibitions should dispel these and other darknesses. For me, the mid-year shows at the School’s Cullity Gallery have always held a special appeal. The lights emanating from the Gallery and the Hub seem brighter at exhibition time given the season’s shorter days. Through the glass doors Graeme Warburton can often be seen making final adjustments to the spotlights, a welcoming sign. Waiting in the newly swept and near empty galleries for the guests to arrive is a time to survey the work and take stock of what has come to pass. The Collection comes with the end of a long semester and passing of the winter solstice. The exhibition and online catalogue appear to erase any likely remnants of discontent, like our sighs of relief that followed the interruptions of two weeklong COVID lockdowns in Perth earlier this year. The first was imposed just before the start of term and the second arrived as major assignments were due. (Assignment extensions fell like trees in an ice-storm, one leading on to another.) Fears of an even longer withdrawal of face-to-face teaching were hardly dispelled by news of pandemic outbreaks in Sydney and Melbourne, COVID variants arriving from overseas (but not yet many of our international students and friends), and disappointment over the shemozzle of the vaccine rollout. Meanwhile, the gloom of yet further “structural” and cost-cutting reforms continue to hang over the University, like the leaden clouds of an English winter. Will this season give way to a time of optimism, as discontent is “made glorious summer” (Shakespeare) by the arrival of plentiful sunshine and promise shown by the creative energies and projects demonstrated here? Perhaps. Perhaps, though like most, if not all transformative periods, there is hope but also responsibility to insure we get the outcomes we need and want. Looking over the Collection of projects and taking stock of the past decade of changing tertiary and design education sectors, there are developments that offer hope, but also demand action to insure the best of our dreams are realised. We often hear that design entails a unique form of research, and it often can be, and should be. There is much evidence in the Collection of imaginative and thoughtful approaches to the preeminent challenges facing our communities and professions. However, as Mark Cousins wryly observed “At the moment anyone who expresses a mild curiosity in something, describes it as research. Anyone who reads up a number of books on something is thought to be engaged in a research project. And anyone who is paid

his or her bus fare to the library is thought to have won research funds.” This is to warn that more can always be done to insure our design ideas and projects are accountable, that they can pass the test(s) of time and informed scrutiny, as well as environmental sustainability and social justice. These are important measures of sound and responsible research. They are rarely encompassed by the acclaimed goals of “workplace relevance” and those tedious “change-managers” who commonly profit from fear and occupy the shadows of the unknown or indeterminate. The trend towards “precedent studies” promises to re-validate the learning of history, a requirement not only of professional accreditation guidelines, but also of moral judgment. These studies commonly reinvigorate the forms of typological understanding that has long shaped design education. A brief for a house can assert, more or less, that a “house” is not a “school” or “factory” for instance. These terms and distinctions are fine; one might say they are even necessary for architecture, landscape architecture and urban studies to have any kind of stature as knowledge. However, without due critical analysis or even a moment’s pause for reflection, the same distinctions can reinforce untenable patterns of habitation and miss opportunities for environmental and social renewal. The designer walks a narrow line here. History provides a range of precedents for elaborating on one or the other project brief. But then again, there are also, always, precedents for designing the most egregious abuses of nature and human rights. Urban sociologist David Brain observed that “Every design and planning decision is a value proposition, and a proposition that has to do with social and political relationships.” Seen in this light the projects in the Winter Collection have much to say. As the Finn Brothers wrote “Everywhere you go you always bring the weather with you” and so perhaps the most important thing confirmed by the Collection is that hard-work, perseverance and resilience are the necessary adjuncts of hope. At the same time, given the necessary balancing act between assertions of value and critical engagement with context (social, political and environmental – possibly others) we need to talk about integrity. This is a pressing concern so we can all, successfully—with thoughtfulness, honour and a sense of justice— confront the challenges of the day.

Professor William (Bill) M Taylor, UWA School of Design