Design: Building on Country
Alison Page and Paul Memmott overturn old paradigms of design practice and offer a “New Australian Design” framework, based on First Nations knowledges, whereby urban space is organized through doing and being.
Alison Page and Paul Memmott have written this timely and powerful book as part of a First Knowledges series, edited by Margo Kneale, which brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors in an act of reconciliation. Design: Building on Country (Thames and Hudson, 2021) draws on Indigenous knowledges to illuminate how design can become an expression of respect for Country, and how it can begin to “pick the scabs and allow country to breathe again” (page 17). It is a call to the design professions to accept and step into the obligations inherent in the now customary Acknowledgment of Country and to develop responsibility for this knowledge relationship.
Page and Memmott outline the implications of practising what they call “New Australian Design” by linking a series of Indigenous-led-and-designed projects with knowledge of Country and measuring the social, experiential and cultural outcomes achieved. The book emphasizes design practices that privilege knowing through doing and being. Through these practices, space moves towards place as an enabler of desirable social, environmental and cultural outcomes.
The authors outline an astonishing range of traditional Aboriginal knowledges gathered through their lived practices: Page as a Walbanga and Wadi Wadi woman working with Merrima Design, and with a lifelong method of aligning traditional knowledge and practice with contemporary design; and Memmott across a lifetime’s work as an architect, anthropologist and academic. We learn that in traditional Aboriginal architecture, materials and objects are not inanimate but spiritually loaded, that the relationships between physical and social environments are intertwined, and that design occurred in what we now call a “sustainable” way – in a sympathetic and responsive relationship to its environment.
The second half of the book is devoted to exploring how these knowledges can inform contemporary practice.
The authors draw heavily on the key concepts of “place” and “Country,” linking these back to traditional knowledges and to the way these concepts can contribute to more positive environmental outcomes. By acknowledging the intrinsic link between place or Country and traditional knowledge, New Australian Design foregrounds the positive environmental impacts of outcomes achieved through the framework. The authors note that design generated in this way has a lighter environmental footprint, requires fewer natural resources and is often biophilic.
Page asks how we might translate the spatial practices of traditional cultural landscapes into contemporary Australian urban design. She draws on the British geographer Tim Cresswell in describing place as “providing the conditions of possibility for creative social practice … [Place] becomes an event rather than a secure ontological place … marked by openness and change rather than boundedness and permanence” (page 138). This concept of place rather than space then becomes a way of understanding how traditional knowledge can offer a pathway for reconceptualizing contemporary urban conditions. This is exemplified by a 2019 project in Redfern by Indigenous design firm Yerrabingin, where a native bush tucker farm has been created on an inner-city rooftop, inviting visitors to learn about traditional knowledge systems and sustainable food production. Importantly, the design incorporates opportunities for cultural practice through attention to place, talks, workshops and educational tours but also through the day-to-day “doing” of the farm.
Place is then situated in relation to Country and operationalized through it as a practice-oriented endeavour.
Page quotes researcher Danièle Hromek’s wonderful definition of Country, which is both poetic and pragmatic: “Country soars high into the atmosphere, deep into the planet crust and far into the oceans ... incorporating the tangible and intangible … caring for Country is not only caring for land, it is caring for ourselves” (page 151). Quoting the work of her colleague, architect Dillon Kombumerri, Page invites us to see the “gaps in memory” – manifestations of the devastating impacts of colonization – as opportunities for the rebuilding of knowledge through the integration of Country into all new infrastructure projects. This has now been mandated in New South Wales through Kombumerri’s work at the office of the Government Architect NSW. The work of Merrima Design at Wilcannia Hospital is offered as a powerful exemplar of the possibilities inherent and realizable in this approach. This project draws on the intangible cultural values of the Barkandji people of Wilcannia to achieve a form that is mnemonically expressive, inclusive, experientially rich and utterly functional. In doing so, it exemplifies the multiplicity of benefits of a practice in which design with Country is embedded.
The book upends old, often paternalistic paradigms of deficit-driven design practice that address Indigenous knowledges and communities through a problematized lens. Instead, it invites the design professions to engage with and through Country and the relationships inherent, and provides an outline of the rich benefits of such an approach. According to the authors, New Australian Design will “improve the wellbeing of people and create places that ultimately mean more to all of us ... because we are all connected to [and through] Country” (page 197).
— Christine Phillips is a registered architect, senior lecturer at RMIT University, director of OoPLA and an alternate member of the Heritage Council of Victoria. She is passionate about Australian architecture and cultural heritage.
— Jock Gilbert is a registered landscape architect with expertise in community engagement and Indigenous-led research. He lectures in landscape architecture at the School of Architecture and Design, RMIT University.