Art, Architecture and the Environment

This issue of Artlink tries to flag some of the issues for designers in Australia today, and to document just some of the changes which are happening.

Published December 1991

2040: A Message from the Future

The Brisbane Community Action Group CART (Citizens Advocating Responsible Transport) have recently won two awards....

Published December 1991

Acoustic Futures. Sound Noise and Urban Design

Our town planners, our architects and we ourselves need to rethink the city. If downtown spaces, internal and external, are to become inhabitable, there needs to be a dramatic shift away from narrowly architectural conception of them and their functions towards an acoustic analysis.

Published December 1991

Aleks Danko: Day In Day Out

Two recent shows in Melbourne of installations by Alex Danko have investigated issues indirectly referring to architecture and the private and social body within the Australian environment.

Published December 1991

Andy Goldsworthy: Everything in the City is Nature

British artist Andy Goldsworthy came to Australia for three weeks in July to work on site at Mount Victor Station east of the Flinders Ranges. During the 1992 Festival of Arts photographs of the works made at Mount Victor and an installation was shown at the Artspace at the Adelaide Festival Centre, a survey of past works was on show at Yarrabee and Goldsworthy produced a permanent work for the Adelaide Botanic Gardens.

Published December 1991

Architecture and Lyndall Milani's Installations

Lyndall Milani uses sculptural installations to question the place of architecture in the landscape and within human life.

Published December 1991

Artists and the Mt Leuseur Campaign

Artist's involvement in the Mt Lesueur Campaign -- 200 km north of Perth, Western Australia.

Published December 1991

Arts to Ashes

In Tasmania particularly it can be difficult to be vocal about political issues. Here is a chance to be uncompromising, a chance to take risks, a chance to raise community cultural awarenes. And who says art needs to be permanent? Heres a chance to make something and then release it, to allow visual art to metamorphose into performance art. Intrigued? then follow up the article!

Published December 1991

Artworkers On the Urban Frontier

Australian cities cannot continue to grow in the manner to which we've become accustomed. The environmental, social and economic costs are simply too great. There needs to be a qualitative change to the way we build and live in them.

Published December 1991

Aspects of Earth Building in New Zealand

New Zealand is not only snake less and nuclear free but also has a tradition of earth buildings. In pre European times, Maori utilised the ground's insulating properties by partially sinking thatched roofed houses into the ground.

Published December 1991

Built Form for Well-Being, Not Just Comfort

Looks at issues of energy self sufficiency -- battery banks and photovoltaic solar collector panels.

Published December 1991

Collective Bargaining. Co-op Housing; an Overview

The South Australian Co-operative Housing Bill allowed for the creation of a new housing authority to administer co-operative housing independently of other forms of public housing was passed in October 1991. This coincides with the Federal Government's recognition, through the National Housing Strategy, of the need to explore "innovative forms of social housing which fit between the extremes of private and public tenure."

Published December 1991

Community Architecture: High on People Power, Low on Fossil Fuels

Gregory Burgess and Associates are a remarkable architectural practice which places high value on the collaborative design process with clients and users as well as low energy use now has three major community projects to its credit...

Published December 1991

Creating Livable Places

Affecting one's city, state or country requires wit, wisdom opportunity and a sense of fun. Robert McNulty, President of the extraordinarily successful Washington based 'Partners for Livable Places' gives a thumb-nail sketch of the last 15 years of the organisation and some of the tools they have used as operational forces for action.

Published December 1991

Designing from the Inside Out: Women, Design and Architecture

'Choose a woman architect - there is a difference!' proclaim a multitude of stickers all over Sydney. Constructive Women, the Sydney based association of Women Architects and Planners decided it was time for a new approach.

Published December 1991

Earth-Sheltered Building using Timber

Earth sheltered housing is not new. The most common way of keeping the soils at bay has been with reinforced concrete and masonry walls and roofs.

Published December 1991

Eco-design Conference at RMIT

Eco-design is probably one of the most far reaching topics to be assembled under the banner of one small hyphenated word. The linking of ecology with design is for many still a novel concept....conference held at RMIT 17 -19 October 1991.

Published December 1991

Exponential Losses, Collective Guilt: The Work of Jeannie Baker

Change, and how it effects the evironment and the quality of life, is a recurring theme and metaphor in the work of artist Jeannie Baker. While celebrating the beauty and fragility of the environment she delivers a provocative and powerful message about our responsibilities towards the natural world.

Published December 1991

Frogs and Serpents: Re-colonising the Suburbs

That the Aboriginal Peoples of Australia are part of the world thought is evidenced by Wonambi, the Rainbow Serpent....

Published December 1991

Further Reading and Glossary

Selected book list with notes. Includes a glossary of terms including acronyms.

Published December 1991

Gateways Project

..the response to a site was very much tied up with the way humans had mediated the experience. Yes trees and forests were sacred but that didn't mean that you couldn't touch them. Our mediation of course must be sensitive - be fearless yet thoughtful... Series of black and white photographs accompany the article.

Published December 1991

Getting our Shit Together

There is a video which shows the noted Viennese artist Hundertwasser sitting on a bucket in his public home unit in Vienna City, uttering this exhortation. He then takes the bucket upstairs to a roof garden of sorts and dumps the contents into a compost bin.

Published December 1991

Gilding the Lillipilli

Tree decorating was revived in Melbourne as part of the larger Treeproject. Looks at some of the issues faced with mounting such an event.

Published December 1991

Hook's Mountain - The Environment as Theatre

Tasmanian theatre company Zootango's touring production Hook's Mountain.

Published December 1991

Let There be Light and Power

Berwyn Lewis talks to solar physicist Bruce Robins. Imagine 6 billion people simultaneously turning on lights and electrical appliances. This apocalyptic drain on power would plunge us into an eternal blackout with devastating effects on the environement.

Published December 1991

Look See. Gnarogin Park

The headbutting syndrome which is normally associated with the oppositional mental locations of the engineering versus the environmental are here reconciled in the combined communities' new park. It should become their most treasured recreational amenity. Located two hours south of Perth, Western Australia.

Published December 1991

Material Re-Creation

A new paradigm of design is starting to emerge as a result of the efforts of those members of the design community who are concerned with the extent, as well as the underplaying, of our global environmental crisis.

Published December 1991

Meadows Under the Sea

The Seagrass Project has been cited as a model community arts project. Located in Hastings Victoria, the project has been documented on video and shown on television in Austria and Canada and could potentially achieve wide international exposure.

Published December 1991

Memories of Power

Placemaking in Newport, Geelong and North Carlton.

Published December 1991

Memories of Water

The Sandgate Environmental Sculpture has involved the local community in both designing and creating the sculpture.

Published December 1991

Merz: Tapping the Energy

Written with Paul Mutton. Merz is a new urban artist's village in the inner city suburb of Brompton, South Australia. Photos and drawings of the project.

Published December 1991

Mudflats: A Fertile Breeding Ground for Artists

Mudflat arts believes that the landscape is not there to be painted so much as to be protected. The role has changed from one of passive painter to active member of the community.

Published December 1991

Mundaring Community Park

The Shire of Mundaring is a large semi rural locality in the hills of the Darling Scarp some 35 km east of Perth in Western Australia. Large areas of natural bushland including the John Forrest National Park and the catchment areas of the Mundaring Weir are to be found within its boundaries--- so are some fascinating sculptures and installations.

Published December 1991

New Life for Gordonvale

Written with June Fermo. Looks at the issues in a townscape project, faced by the community of Gordonvale 21 km south of Cairns in northern Queensland.

Published December 1991

On Empowering Clients and Collaborative Design Processes

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." (Margaret Mead)

Published December 1991

Places for Souls to Play

Looks at the work of Gabriel Poole with statements by Gabriel Poole.

Published December 1991

Prospect: Building on its Imagination

In these days of environmental awareness it is pleasing to see a growing awareness of the need to improve urban environments. This is not to say that we should, yet again, be looking after the concerns of people over and above the needs of the natural environment.

Published December 1991

Reading the Land

The idea for a 7 day 'Reading the Land' Festival came to Wimmera River Catchment Group Chairperson, farmer, artist and environmentalist Barry Clugston during a series of salinity flights.

Published December 1991

Red Gum, Red Light

David Cranswick's work in Perspecta 1991 entitled Constructing Nature was one of the most successful and moving of the Western Sites Component.

Published December 1991

Res B: a Design Proposal for Brisbane

In Brisbane the older suburbs are distinctive and a prime source of identity for this sub-tropical city. The timber tradition has left us a rich heritage. For this proposal we have taken an existing suburb with houses on 800m2 blocks. The houses are simple single frontal address buildings.

Published December 1991

Response to the Climate in the Top End

It never gets really cold in the Top End. But it does get very humid during the Wet. However, simple steps in house design can make the house comfortable and you don't need fans and air conditioners.

Published December 1991

Restored to Life with a Bypass

Landscape art by Roger Noakes and Flightpath.

Published December 1991

Science, Art and Mangroves

The Mangroves Discovery Cycle was a Community Arts Project which gave a group of school children an opportunity to explore the environment. Located in Cairns, far North Queensland.

Published December 1991

Solar Houses: an Introduction

Faced with these complexities, it is hardly surprising that many designers find the proto-type solar house to be a preferable starting point.

Published December 1991

Supporting Remote Places

Published December 1991

Sustainable Canberra

Australia's capital shows the way in applying sustainability to a city.

Published December 1991

The Art of Living

The place Ecopolis 2, the world's first ecocity. The time -- mid-afternoon 3rd November 2007.

Published December 1991

The Art of Living Sustainably

Written with Andrew Bryan The increasing urgency for us to achieve a harmonious relationship with the environment is stimulating artists in many media and designers in a range of disciplines to work in new ways with one another and community groups who share this concern.

Published December 1991

The Essential Gift of Ceremonies: Towards a Poetics of Scarcity

"In modern architecture we find difficulty in managing the relation between the physical presence of a building and its intimations of the mental and spiritual. Our architectural objects rarely serve as objects of intermediation between the ordinary, the physical and the present on the one hand, and the mystical, the spiritual and the abstract on the other...."

Published December 1991

The Re-humanising of Water

Ecologically sustainable development is a stated aim of our national and state governments. Unless we can stimulate a higher and more sustained level of discussion on what this means, our progressis likely to remain fitful and unfocussed. Hopefully this article will stimulate the debate!

Published December 1991

Willmot Playspace Project

Willmot Play Space has taken place over a four year period and has involved the conversion of a disused football field inot a community park.

Published December 1991

Willunga Garden Village

Willunga Garden Village is a 20 acre allotment subdivision on a 10 acre site on the slopes of the north facing Willunga (South Australia) escarpment.

Published December 1991

Women's Ideal Environments

It seems clear enough that women feel loss and the lack at the heart of the consumer society. But the creation of other riches, even in imagination, is hard to achieve....We need nevertheless to imagine other worlds, other ways - all of us- in order to sustain hope and inform desire.

Published December 1991

Working with Rules

We all use rules. By looking at them critically we will precipitate a dynamic evolution in our understanding and practice of designing 'with the environment'.

Published December 1991