Academia.eduAcademia.edu
TAKE2 HOUSING DESIGN IN INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIA EDITED BY PAUL MEMMOTT EDITORIAL ASSISTANCE CATHERINE CHAMBERS TAKE 2 : Housing Design in Indigenous Australia Edited by Paul Memmott Published August 2003 Publisher: The Royal Australian Institute of Architects PO Box 2272, Red Hill ACT 2603 ABN 72 000 023 012 ISSN 1447-1167 Design concept and coordination: Michael Phillips, Brisbane Printing: (To be completed by graphic designer) Paper Stock: (To be completed by graphic designer) Copyright in this volume belongs to The Royal Australian Institute of Architects. Copyright in individual articles remains with the respective authors. All rights reserved. This publication is copyright. Other than for the purposes of and subject to the conditions prescribed under the Copyright Act, no part of it may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, microcopying or photocopying, recording or otherwise), now known or hereafter invented, without prior written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher. Whilst every care has been taken in the production of this publication, the authors and The Royal Australian Institute of Architects accept no responsibility for the accuracy of the information contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The authors have made every reasonable effort to identify and contact the authors or owners of copyright in the drawings and photographs included in this book and to attribute authorship. Where this has not occurred, their authors or owners are invited to contact the book authors or the publisher. Title page, detail, A house in an Alice Springs town camp designed by Mark Savage and Jane Dillon in the mid 1980s. [Photographer: James Ricketson, 1987, AERC Collection, University of Queensland.] ii Watercolour sketch of an Aboriginal village near Mt Shannon in north-west New South Wales. The function of the small domes (adjacent to the larger ones) is not known, but there are two plausible suggestions as to their use. One is that they were used to store grass seeds and other staple seeds and grains. The other is that they were dog kennels. [Source: Sturt, Capt. C. 1849 Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia, London: T. and W. Boone, 1849, Vol. 1 facing p.254. Artist: J. H. Le Keux.] RAIA SISALATION PRIZE This issue is the second in the recently established RAIA journal series, TAKE. which celebrates a new direction for the longstanding RAIA Sisalation Prize. Managed by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and sponsored by Insulation Solutions, this prize has been awarded annually since 1956. Over the years it has taken different formats—as a travel scholarship, as a commission to an author to write a book—and since 2001 as two separate prizes to an editor and associate contributors of the RAIA architectural journal series, TAKE. While retaining its objective to develop and apply architectural knowledge in Australia, a review of the RAIA Sisalation Prize in 2001 resulted in its restructure into two stages to make it more attractive to a wider range of potential applicants and to deliver an annual event. The first stage selects an editor, who as primary prize winner, proposes a theme and draws together in stage 2 a team of associate contributors to produce a journal volume featuring an edited collection of papers. The theme of each issue bridges academic and practice issues in architecture. The RAIA Sisalation Prize is awarded annually and seeks to further the development of architecture through both the annual publication of the guest edited journal TAKE and an annual symposium event addressing key issues of the journal publication. The RAIA Sisalation Prize is guided by a Steering Committee including practitioners, academics and a representative of the sponsor, Insulation Solutions. The Steering Committee is responsible for the overall management of the prize including selection of the major prizewinner, selection of the journal theme, guidance to the Editor, copy editing, management of editorial and publication issues and promotion of the prize. The Steering Committee reports to the RAIA National Education Committee. The RAIA Education Unit provides management support for the Prize, including the journal publication, and the RAIA Chapter Manager in the state/territory in which the event is held manages the annual symposium. The symposium launching this second issue was held in Brisbane, Queensland in August 2003. STEERING COMMITTEE MEMBERS Richard Blythe (Chair to March 2003) University of Tasmania, Member of RAIA National Education Committee Clare Newton (Chair from April 2003) University of Melbourne Graham Bell University of New South Wales Cameron Chick Insulation Solutions Dennis D’Arcy Insulation Solutions Antony Moulis University of Queensland Robert Riddel Robert Riddel Architect James Staughton Staughton Architects Julie Willis University of Melbourne Heather Woods RAIA Education Manager RAIA Queensland Chapter Judith Gilmore Chapter Manager Stephen Earle Member Services Manager All enquiries about the RAIA Sisalation Prize should be directed to the RAIA Education Unit, The Royal Australian Institute of Architects, PO Box 3373, Red Hill, ACT 2603. A photograph of Meriam men building a house in 1958 on the island of Mer (or Murray Island), the most easterly of the Torres Strait Islands. It was built of bamboo and bush timber, with woven coconut leaf walls. The grassthatched roof was about 2.4 metres high at the ridge of the gable. Elevated, split bamboo floors were also utilised, being raised about a metre from ground. Under the influence of Pacific Islander missionaries around the turn of the 19th Century, this gable roof design superseded traditional dome forms. [Photographer: J. Beckett, University of Sydney.] Ph: 02 6273 1548; Fax: 02 6273 1953; Email: national@raia.com.au iv v Contributor Profiles viii Paul Memmott & Carroll Go-Sam Synthesizing Indigenous Housing Paradigms: An Introduction to Take 2 12 Julian & Barbara Wigley Remote conundrums: The changing role of housing in Aboriginal communities 18 Paul Memmott Customary Aboriginal Behaviour Patterns and Housing Design 26 Jane Dillon and Mark Savage House Design in Alice Springs Town Camps 1 Su Groome Designing for the Northern Tropics (or how to avoid mango madness) 1 Paul Pholeros Housing for health, or designing to get water in and shit out 1 Catherine Keys Housing Design Principles from a Study of Warlpiri Women’s Jilimi 1 Shaneen Fantin Yolngu Cultural Imperatives and Housing Design: rumaru, mirriri and galka 1 Philip Kirke Designing for Spatial Behaviour in the Western Desert 1 Simon Scally Outstation Design – Lessons from Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation in Arnhem Land 1 Paul Haar Community Building and Housing Process: Context for Self-Help Housing 1 Geoff Barker More than a House: Some reflections on working with Indigenous clients on the Housing Process 1 Col James, Angela Pitts and Dillon Kombumerri Indigenous Housing Design: Social Planning Determinants at Redfern Bibliography Part of a discrete urban settlement on the outskirts of a rural town in the Murdi Paaki region of western New South Wales in 1999. The 'humpy' survives from a Town Camp established on a Town Common Reserve in the 1950s. As part of an ATSIC programme, most humpies have been replaced by modern houses on elevated platforms to reduce flooding risks presented by the nearby river. However the residents had retained a few humpies, partly for storage and visitor use, but also as symbols of a past lifestyle era. [Photographer: P. Memmott, AERC, University of Queensland.] 1 vi vii Paul Memmott Associate Professor Paul Memmott is an architect and anthropologist with 30 years experience in the field of Indigenous people-environment relations. He is currently Director of the Aboriginal Environments Research Centre (AERC) located in the School of Geography, Planning and Architecture at the University of Queensland, which maintains a national focus on Indigenous housing and settlement research. Memmott is also Principal of the consulting firm Paul Memmott and Associates (PMA), which is based in Brisbane and operates in close association with the AERC. The firm specialises in consulting on Aboriginal projects and since 1972 has had a long track record of involvement in Aboriginal housing practice and research. Memmott has undertaken numerous projects throughout Australia, ranging from anthropological and cultural heritage investigations for Indigenous groups, to architectural projects, settlement planning and housing policy development for government clients. Memmott’s general research interest is the cross-cultural study of the ethno-environmental relations of Indigenous peoples. He is the author of five books, 90 published papers and some 200 technical reports for clients ranging from Indigenous organisations, to state and federal governments. (see www.aboriginalenvironments.com) Carroll Go-Sam Carroll Go-Sam is a descendant of the yabulambara and gambilbara Dyirbal people from the Wild, Herbert and upper Tully River basins, and maintains connections and interests in townships and locations where Dyirbal people are located. Go-Sam’s Bachelor of Architecture degree was completed in 1997 at the University of Queensland, and was complimented with studies in anthropology. Go-Sam’s study focused on the issues of Aboriginal environmental design and culminated in the completion of her final year thesis entitled The Mutitjulu experiment: a study of decentralised houses by Paul Pholeros, which was awarded the Department’s thesis prize. Go-Sam has worked for Aboriginal community organisations such as Kambu Progress Association, Tangentyere Council and Musgrave Park Cultural Centre. She has been employed by various Brisbane architectural firms and worked on the Bidungu Housing Project, Gregory Crossing, North Queensland. Her professional services range from project management, architectural design, negotiation with authorities on town planning issues and design assessment. She also participates in traditional owner organisations such as Budjubulla, Gumbilbara and Gooliwana Bana, which focus on service delivery for Dyirbal decendants. Julian and Barbara Wigley Julian and Barbara Wigley are practising architects who have specialised in community planning, housing management and building design for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander client groups for the past 31 years. Their architectural practice specialises in Aboriginal town planning, housing, land negotiation and facilitating community participation in development projects. They assisted in the establishment of Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs during their stay in Alice Springs between 1975 and 1979 while working for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Panel. The Wigleys continued an independent national architectural practice assisting community clients in northern Australia after the closure of the panel in 1979. They have co-authored a number of books on housing and housing management. Jane Dillon and Mark Savage During the 1980s Jane Dillon and Mark Savage spent eight years in Alice Springs working for Tangentyere Council, an Aboriginal community council and resource agency that provides architectural and planning services to Aboriginal communities and organisations within a 600 kilometre radius of Alice Springs. The range of work conducted by Dillon and Savage was considerable and included housing, schools, clinics, stores, sporting facilities, art and craft centres, community and childcare centres, offices and media facilities. The nature of their work in Central Australia provided an understanding of the broader issues surrounding the provision of housing, infrastructure and other community facilities for Aboriginal groups. viii Dillon and Savage currently run a small architectural practice in Sydney, which has focused on providing architectural services that require a high degree of community involvement. They have continued to work on a variety of planning and design projects with a wide range of Aboriginal communities and organisations in many parts of Australia. Su Groome Su Groome is a Cairns based architect and a founding partner of Studio Mango, with over ten years experience working in Tropical North Queensland. She has worked with Indigenous communities for more than seven years. Groome’s work with Indigenous communities includes: settlement planning with developing communities; design of housing, outstation facilities and community buildings; and housing maintenance projects based on the Housing for Health methodology devised by Healthabitat (see Pholeros below). Her work in Cairns includes a demonstration sustainable house, designed around passive design principles, and incorporating substantial renewable power and water conservation components. The Master Builders and Housing Industry Association gave this house an award. Groome’s published work includes numerous contributions to the Centre for Appropriate Technology’s Our House magazine, discussion papers on participatory planning and kitchen design for the Centre for Appropriate Technology, planning reports for the Port Stewart and Mona Mona communities, a report on the Housing for Health project in Pormpuraaw and the Your House book for Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing. Groome is also a contributor to the National Indigenous Housing Guide. Paul Pholeros Paul Pholeros is an architect and has a small architectural practice working on urban, rural and remote area architectural projects throughout Australia. He is also a co-director of Healthabitat Pty Ltd, in partnership with a specialist medical doctor and an environmental health professional. For over 17 years, Healthabitat has been involved in improving the health of Indigenous people by improving their living environments by means of community projects around Australia. Cathy Keys Cathy Keys graduated from the Department of Architecture, University of Queensland in 1993 after completing a final year thesis concerned with Indigenous birth practices and their implications for architectural design. She then commenced a doctoral thesis on Warlpiri single women’s camps or jilimi. Over the four years of this research based in the Warlpiri community of Yuendumu she completed a number of user-needs consultations for the community. She has tutored and lectured in Aboriginal environments to architecture students and written and published on aspects of Warlpiri women’s living environments. Keys currently works in the Queensland Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing. Shaneen Fantin Shaneen Fantin has eight years experience working with Aboriginal people on community and housing projects in the Northern Territory, Queensland and Canada. Between 1997 and 2002 she was consultation and design architect (with Troppo Architects and Richard Layton and Associates) on seven National Aboriginal Health Strategy housing and infrastructure projects in the Northern Territory and Queensland. Fantin’s particular expertise is in cross-cultural consultation and design. Most recently she has worked on the consultation and design process of the Bwgcolman Youth Space on Palm Island for the Queensland Community Renewal Team. Fantin has recently submitted her PhD thesis entitled ëHousing Aboriginal culture in northeast Arnhem Land’ which focuses on the Yolngu people in Arnhem Land and the translation of their cultural beliefs and practices into ix architectural design outcomes. She has won numerous grants and awards for her research into Aboriginal housing design and culture, and has co-authored papers and reports on Yolngu traditional architecture, Indigenous homelessness and post-occupancy evaluations of Aboriginal Housing in the Northern Territory. Fantin is currently a lecturer in Design Studio, Remote Area Construction, Architecture and Technology, and History and Theory in the Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture and Design at the University of South Australia. Philip Kirke Philip Kirke is the Principal Architect of the Western Australian office of GHD. He graduated with an Honours degree in Architecture from the University of Western Australia in 1988. From 1990 to 1991 he worked in Manchester in the United Kingdom and was involved in community architecture projects for its inner city West Indian community. Kirke gained corporate membership of the Royal Institute of British Architects before returning to Australia. From 1992 to the present time he has been the architect for the major staged development of the unique multi-cultural Christmas Island District High School. From 1996 to the present time he has been continuously involved in remote Aboriginal community projects, chiefly in the Western Desert, but also in the Kimberley, the Great Victoria Desert with the Spinifex peopleand with Western Australia’s wheatbelt Nyoongar communities. Kirke has developed an interest in the idea that our own society has become too large and anonymous. A true culture, that is a culture born of the spirit of man and functioning as a living instrument of that spirit, is nowhere to be found, except in pockets as micro-cultures. He is currently designing a series of unique houses for local artists in Perth. These houses have been influenced by his cross-cultural work and with a fresh sense of what is unique and important in our own micro-cultures. Simon Scally Simon Scally graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1987. In 1992, he moved to Darwin and established Build Up Design Architects. The firm’s focus is the delivery of high quality, culturally appropriate housing, schools, clinics, community buildings and infrastructure for Aboriginal clients. Build Up Design has received a number of awards from the Royal Australian Institute of Architects’ NT Chapter, including the 1994 Institutional Award for the Bawinanga Womens’ Centres, the 2000 Institutional Award for the Belyuen School and the 2001 Public Building Award for The Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education study centre at Maningrida. Paul Haar Architect, Paul Haar, is a sole practitioner with offices in Melbourne and country Victoria. Much of his work as a young graduate was focused on researching climate-appropriate design, and the revitalisation of a community based housing culture amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in remote parts of northern Australia. Experience in these fields has led him to develop, in his practice design processes and building, solutions that are guided less by architectural ego and more by the essence of client and community in the context of a sustainable future. Underlying this thrust is a 28-year grounding in construction management and trade work, gathered from a broad range of small and medium scale projects. Haar was born to a migrant family of farmers, engineers and wood craftsmen. Thus his well-known appreciation of timber in architecture, his attention to detail in construction practice, and his love for community and the land are easily explained. Geoff Barker Geoff Barker has worked with Indigenous communities over a period of approximately 20 years. This period included eight years with Northern Building Consultants (NBC), an Indigenous owned and directed organisation operating in the Northern Territory and the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Five of those years were spent as the organisation’s General Manager. Practical Management and Development (PM+D), which he founded, has x been the focus of his activity for the last 10 years. The firm has been involved in housing and community facility design, asset management, and community planning and development projects, as well as major infrastructure development work and providing assistance to self-build schemes. Barker’s prime interest is in working with community groups to enable them to integrate their ideas and needs into an overall project methodology, and then to develop these into a community-based project delivery process. The intention is to achieve specific project objectives concurrently with a range of community benefits, which can lead to improved conditions and wellbeing. PM+D’s staff are involved in a range of voluntary activities including technical advice to Yirra Yaarkin Noongar Theatre in Perth, and membership on the Graham (Polly) Farmer Foundation Board that funds Indigenous education projects in Western Australia. Col James Col James, AM, is a local resident architect/planner who has worked with the Aboriginal Housing Company since its inception in 1972. James is a graduate of the Universities of NSW, Sydney and Harvard, and director of the I.B. Fell Housing Research Centre, located in the Faculty of Architecture, at the University of Sydney. He is committed to the active involvement of university staff and students to support the local Aborigines. Angela Pitts Angela Pitts has over ten years experience in urban and regional development working in Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney and holds Masters degrees in Urban Planning and African Area Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Since arriving in Australia, Pitts has worked as a volunteer for the Aboriginal Housing Company as a social/urban planner on the Pemulwuy Redevelopment Project. Dillon Kombumerri Dillon Kombumerri, a Yugumbir man from the Gold Coast, Queensland, is a registered architect with 13 years experience. He set up Merrima in 1995 within the NSW Government Architect’s Office as a discrete business unit run by Indigenous design professionals. Kombumerri previously sat on the Aboriginal Housing Company Board and is currently a director of AISEAN (Australian Indigenous Scientists, Engineers and Architects Network Ltd). Incorporated in 2001, AISEAN is a national network of Indigenous professionals working in the fields of science, engineering, architecture and the built environment. Catherine Chambers (editorial assistant) As a Senior Research Assistant with the Aboriginal Environments Research Centre, University of Queensland, Chambers has been engaged in a number of cultural heritage, native title claim and site recording projects. She has co-authored a major published report on violence in Australian Indigenous communities, and a series of papers on how Indigenous homelessness can be categorised and responded to. Since early 2001, she has been involved in a Mentoring and Evaluation Program initiated by the Commonwealth Office of the Status of Women to assist its National Indigenous Family Violence Grants Program recipients. Chambers graduated from the University of Queensland in 1995, receiving a Bachelor of Architecture with honours. Her tertiary studies also included an anthropology component. She has worked professionally on architectural projects within Australia and overseas, including heritage conservation schemes, urban renewal, convention and conference centre projects, single and multi residences and educational facilities. She was a parttime design tutor at the Queensland University of Technology’s School of Architecture for three years. During 2003, Catherine has been employed as a Research Officer with the Cultural Heritage Branch of Queensland’s Environment Protection Agency, assisting with maintenance of the state’s Heritage Register xi The collection of specialist knowledge and skills related to the design of housing for Aboriginal Australians has emerged as an architectural sub-discipline1. One of its chief components centres on how an understanding of the cultural differences inherent in Aboriginal domiciliary behaviour can inform the design process. This can be described as the cultural design paradigm. Two other architectural paradigms have impacted on Aboriginal housing design in recent years; these are the environmental health paradigm and the housing-as-process philosophy, both of which contribute to its distinctiveness as a field of study and practice. Reconciling all these approaches within the design process has become a key challenge for contemporary practitioners. The cultural design paradigm involves the use of models of culturally distinct behaviour to inform definitions of Aboriginal housing needs. Its premise is that to competently design appropriate residential accommodation for Aboriginal people who have traditionally oriented lifestyles, architects must understand the nature of those lifestyles, particularly in the domiciliary context. This knowledge also increases understanding of the needs of groups who have undergone cultural changes, including those in rural, urban and metropolitan settings, by helping to identify those aspects of their customary domiciliary behaviour that have been retained. The approach was adopted by a variety of practitioners in the 1970s and is analysed here in Take 2. For example, the first essay by Julian and Barbara Wigley, who have 30 years of experience in the field, starts with a thumbnail sketch of Aboriginal history2, and goes on to outline a series of design conundrums in Aboriginal housing. It addresses some contradictory cultural needs, a number of which are considered by later contributors. Julian Wigley’s work in Alice Springs during the mid-1970s included assisting with the establishment of Tangentyere Council, an umbrella Aboriginal organisation that now services some 18 or 19 Alice Springs’ town camps. Tangentyere is considered something of a benchmark in Aboriginal housing design and practice. In the mid-1980s, its architectural department was managed by the Take 2 contributors Jane Dillon Synthesizing Indigenous Housing Paradigms: An Introduction to Take 2 its housing stock. He attempted to apply the ‘cultural design paradigm’ to his analysis of the approximately Paul Memmott & Carroll Go-Sam 120 designs in the Tangentyere portfolio3. It was this early work, and the experience he gained by exposure and Mark Savage. At this time Paul Memmott was contracted by the council to carry out an evaluation of to other Central Australian projects throughout the 1990s4, which forms the basis of his essay in Take 2. Jane Dillon and Mark Savage’s contribution deals with the design approach that developed within Tangentyere during the 1980s in response to the town campers’ culture. The perspective of the first three papers in the monograph is, therefore, strongly focused on Central Australia. Meanwhile the cultural design paradigm has been taught, researched and applied from within the Aboriginal Environments Research Centre (AERC) at the University of Queensland, of which Memmott is Director5. Two of the AERC’s doctoral graduates, who are architectural practitioners in their own right, have also contributed to Take 2 and their work demonstrates elements of this approach at its strongest. Shaneen Fantin’s paper on Arnhem Land Yolngu people deals with the relationship between housing design, and avoidance behaviour and sorcery, whilst Catherine Keys’ discussion of women’s domiciliary camps built and occupied by Warlpiri people of the Northern Territory’s central west extrapolates design strategies related to their culturally distinct household needs. Their work is complemented by that of Philip Kirke whose essay considers further issues related to designing for spatial behaviour, as exemplified in his work with the Martu tribespeople of the Western Desert of Western Australia. Whereas Dillon and Savage’s paper draws readers into the specifics of tropical, arid-area climatic design, material choice and detailing, Sue Groome’s contribution provides an overview of these technical design aspects, which is illustrated by using a number of examples from Australia’s tropical north. These contexts are characterised by the monsoonal influence and reflect her professional experience with the Centre for Appropriate Technology6 before she established her own practice in Cairns. The attention given to technology and detailing by Dillon and Savage, and Groome leads readers into the 13 second paradigm: environmental health design. This approach emerged from within Nganampa Health Assessment for Bush Communities18, again provides case study material on seven Central Australian Council in Alice Springs, which services the Anangu Pitjantjatjara homelands in the north-west of South communities, but also contains useful housing design guidelines for that region. Another relevant housing Australia. Between 1986 and 1987, Nganampa, in conjunction with the South Australian Government, book, recently published, is Settlement: A History of Australian Indigenous Housing edited by the historian sponsored a review of environmental and public health in these homelands. The resulting document has Peter Read. Its themes are strongly focused on history and government policy but not design, even though become known as the ‘UPK report’7. In it architect Paul Pholeros combined his architectural skills with those some contributors were architects19. of Paul Torzillo, a doctor, and Steph Rainow, an anthropologist, to develop an understanding of the critical relationships between poor Aboriginal health and housing technology performance. A seminal project of a In selecting contributors for Take 2, we have assembled some general papers that provide an overview of similarly multi-disciplinary type, involving an architect and a doctor, had been carried out prior to the housing design principles and strategies being used across the Australian continent. Our apologies to those Nganampa et al study8. However, the former was the first that systematically isolated and causally linked colleagues whose housing designs and case studies we have had to unfortunately refrain from including due complexes of health problems with sets of design features and ranked them in a set of priorities based on to a lack of space. It is within their important work that one will discover a further range of design solutions the likelihood of improving health standards. Pholeros, Torzillo and Rainow have produced further books that emphasise in different ways, the three contemporary paradigms sketched out within the pages of this about their work, most recently under the logo of Healthabitat, as well as a series of important papers9. Their monograph. work culminated in a commission from the Commonwealth, State and Territory Housing Ministers’ Working Group on Indigenous Housing to prepare The National Indigenous Housing Guide10, and their methodology has been practically applied through a large-scale ATSIC project entitled, Fixing Houses for Better Health Project. Endnotes Despite some contradictions existing between the design practice guidelines or methods advocated by the 1 In making this statement, we are not suggesting the approaches to Aboriginal housing design that we discuss are somehow paradigm11, these two approaches fundamentally different to those adopted in mainstream practice. Indeed, all of the normal principles, methods and precepts proponents of the cultural design paradigm and the environmental health can and should be complementary. They lead into a third architectural paradigm: the housing-as-process apply. But in addition there is a gradually accruing body of knowledge and techniques focused on a range of problems philosophy, which aims to firmly situate housing design and provision within the broader framework of an Aboriginal community’s planning goals and cultural practices, as well as its socio-economic structure and encountered in this field of work, which in combination, if not in their inherent nature, are rather unique. 2 The reader interested in Aboriginal housing history would benefit from perusal of Read, P. (ed.), Settlement: A History of development. One fundamental aspect of this approach involves design attention being given to the Australia Indigenous Housing, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2000; Memmott, P., ‘Aboriginal Housing, State of the Art (or community’s housing management capacities to ensure that all technology is locally sustainable. This non-State of the Art)’, Architecture Australia, (June 1988): pp.34–47; Memmott, P. (ed.), ‘Aboriginal and Islander Architecture in subject is introduced in Simon Scally’s essay on outstation architecture in the Top End. A second grass-roots Queensland’, Special Edition, Queensland Architect: Chapter News and Views, Brisbane: Royal Australian Institute of Architects, proponent of this philosophy is the architect and builder Paul Haar, who has extensive experience in self- September 1993; and Wigley, B. & Wigley, J., Black Iron: A History of Aboriginal housing in Northern Australia, Darwin: Northern help housing projects involving Indigenous Australians and whose essay draws on his experiences at Mt Territory National Trust, 1993. 3 Memmott, P., ‘The Development of Aboriginal Housing Standards in Central Australia: The Case Study of Tangentyere Catt, another Top End outstation, and St Pauls in the Torres Strait. (Thus, four contributions in Take 2— Groome, Fantin, Scally and Haar—focus on northern Australia.) The housing-as-process philosophy is Council’ in Judd, B. & Bycroft, P. (eds), Evaluating Housing Standards and Performance (Housing Issues 4), Canberra: Royal considered more systematically as a design methodology in the essay by Geoff Barker12. Finally, the Australian Institute of Architects, National Education Division, 1989, pp.115–143. 4 For example see Memmott, P., Long, S., Fantin, S. & Eckerman, E., Post-Occupancy Evaluation of Aboriginal Housing in the integration of social planning and architectural design in the context of a metropolitan setting that has been rife with drug abuse, violence and police conflict is examined in the paper on Redfern by Col James, Angela Pitts and Dillon Kombumerri. N.T. for IHANT: Social Response Component, Brisbane: Aboriginal Environments Research Centre, University of Qld, 2000. 5 Formerly in the Department of Architecture, now the School of Geography, Planning and Architecture. The AERC grew out Why has this monograph been prepared? Despite the specialist nature of Aboriginal housing design, there of the Aboriginal Data Archive, which was founded in 1976 by Peter Bycroft and Paul Memmott. 6 Mention of technical design issues and the Centre for Appropriate Technology (CAT) raises the subject of alternate technology, has not been a book produced that deals with this subject from a broadly architectural perspective, that as explored and publicised by CAT. The concept originally stems from the design philosophy of its Director, Bruce Walker (1986, encompasses general principles and contrasting paradigms and that offers examples from around the 1990–91, 1994). It might be argued that alternate technology as it applies to Aboriginal housing and settlement design is another continent. However, there have been other important books on Aboriginal housing published. The first, A Black Reality13, collected a series of essays written mainly by anthropologists, which were headed by an design paradigm; however, in our view, it can be readily examined and analysed within the other paradigms. 7 Nganampa Health Council Inc, South Australian Health Commission, & Aboriginal Health Organization of South Australia, overview of housing policy completed by the editor. It contributed to the ‘cultural design paradigm’ that was 1987 Report of Uwankara Palyanyku Kanyintjaku: An Environmental and Public Health Review Within the Anangu Pitjantjatjara emerging in the 1970s through its anthropological documentation of domiciliary behaviour in traditionally Lands, Alice Springs, December 1987. 8 In Wilcannia in 1974–75, see Memmott, P., Humpy, House and Tin Shed: Aboriginal Settlement History on the Darling River, oriented camps but, as architects did not write it, it failed to translate its findings into design strategies. Three successive books, written by architecturally trained authors, did engage in design issues but were largely case studies of single settlements. These were: Black Out in Alice14 that considered the Mount Nancy Town Sydney: Ian Buchan Fell Research Centre, Department of Architecture, University of Sydney, 1991, pp.151–154. 9 For example, see Pholeros, P., ‘The Provision of Housing—An Improbably Dream?’ in 1987 Report on Uwankara Palyanku Camp in Alice Springs; Humpy House and Tin Shed15 that dealt with Wilcannia in western New South Wales; Kanyintjaku: An Environmental and Public Health Review within the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands, Alice Springs, December 1987; and Housing for Health16 that examined the Pipalytjara people living in the north-west corner of South Pholeros, P., AP Design Guide, Building for Health on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands, Alice Springs: Nganampa Health Council, Australia. Helen Ross’s 1987 book Just for Living17 is a further example of the case study type, centring on 1990, (Reprinted 1994); Pholeros, P., Rainow, S. & Torzillo, P., Housing for Health: Towards a Healthy Living Environment for the Aboriginal community at Halls Creek in Western Australia. It was written by a social scientist whose Aboriginal Australia, Newport Beach, New South Wales: Healthabitat, 1993; and Pholeros, P., Torzillo, P. & Rainow, S., ‘Housing perspective was essentially one drawn from environmental psychology, and like Heppell’s first book, while for Health: Principles and Projects, South Australia, Northern Territory and Queensland, 1985–97’ in Read, P. (ed.), Settlement: it offered important insights into cultural values and behaviour in relation to housing, it did not translate these A History of Australian Indigenous Housing, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2000. 10 Healthabitat, The National Indigenous Housing Guide: Improving the Living Environment for Safety, Health and Sustainability, into design strategies that could be readily implemented by architects. A fifth book, Housing Design 14 15 Canberra: Commonwealth, State and Territory Housing Ministers’ Working Group on Indigenous Housing (Australian Department of Family & Community Services and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission), 1999. 11 For example, see Shaneen Fantin’s essay in Take 2. 12 One of Geoff Barker’s major contributions to Aboriginal housing has been to facilitate the second sustained integration of an Indigenous organisation and an architectural service, after Tangentyere. This organisation is known as Northern Building Consultants (NBC). NBC evolved in the 1980s under different structures, with the duration of Barker’s involvement being from 1984 to 1991. NBC now has two successful independent companies, one operating in the Northern Territory and one in Western Australia. 13 Heppell, M. (ed.), A Black Reality: Aboriginal Camps and Housing in Remote Australia, Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1979. 14 Heppell, M. & Wigley, J., Black out in Alice: A History of the Establishment and Development of Town Camps in Alice Springs, Monograph 26, Canberra: Development Studies Centre, Australian National University, 1981. 15 Memmott, Humpy, House and Tin Shed, 1991. 16 Pholeros et al Rainow & Torzillo, Housing for Health, 1993. 17 Ross, A., Just for Living: Aboriginal Perceptions of Housing in North-west Australia, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1987. 18 Morel, P. & Ross, H., Housing Design Assessment for Bush Communities, Alice Springs: Tangentyere Council, NT Department of Lands, Housing and Local Government, 1993. 19 See Memmott, Keys, Smith, Pholeros et al, and Haar in Read, (ed.), Settlement, 2000. All except Smith are contributors to this journal. 16 Above A typical cross section through a domestic space illustrating the climatic and functional relationships between a house and related bower shades, windbreaks and other outdoor facilities. [Source: Wigley, B. & J., ‘Community Planning Report: Barkly Region’, 1990, p.62.] Below An architectural impression of a cook house unit and bower shades with a timber floor platform located in a yard space or near a house used during rainy periods. [Source: Wigley, B. & J., ‘Community Planning Report: Barkly Region’, Prepared for ATSIC on behalf of the Jurnkurakurr Aboriginal Resource Centre, 1990, p.58.] 17