Concerning the house museum and the picturesque landscape in the work of Sir John Soane : with raw hints for post-heritage museum space

The picturesque aesthetic in the work of Sir John Soane, architect and collector, resonates in the major work of his very personal practice – the development of his house museum, now the Soane Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London. Soane was actively involved with the debates, practices and proponents of picturesque and classical practices in architecture and landscape and his lectures reveal these influences in the making of The Soane, which was built to contain and present diverse collections of classical and contemporary art and architecture alongside scavenged curiosities. The Soane Museum has been described as a picturesque landscape, where a pictorial style, together with a carefully defined itinerary, has resulted in the ‘apotheosis of the Picturesque interior’. Soane also experimented with making mock ruinscapes within gardens, which led him to construct faux architectures alluding to archaeological practices based upon the ruin and the fragment. These ideas framed the making of interior landscapes expressed through spatial juxtapositions of room and corridor furnished with the collected object that characterise The Soane Museum. This paper is a personal journey through the Museum which describes and then reviews aspects of Soane’s work in the context of contemporary theories on ‘new’ museology. It describes the underpinning picturesque practices that Soane employed to exceed the boundaries between interior and exterior landscapes and the collection. It then applies particular picturesque principles drawn from visiting The Soane to a speculative project for a house/landscape museum for the Oratunga historic property in outback South Australia, where the often, normalising effects of conservation practices are reviewed using minimal architectural intervention through a celebration of ruinous states.

Doing cultural heritage using the torque game engine: supporting indigenous storytelling in a 3D virtual environment

Digital Songlines (DSL) is an Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID) project that is developing protocols, methodologies and toolkits to facilitate the collection, education and sharing of indigenous cultural heritage knowledge. This paper outlines the goals achieved over the last three years in the development of the Digital Songlines game engine (DSE) toolkit that is used for Australian Indigenous storytelling. The project explores the sharing of indigenous Australian Aboriginal storytelling in a sensitive manner using a game engine. The use of the game engine in the field of Cultural Heritage is expanding. They are an important tool for the recording and re-presentation of historically, culturally, and sociologically significant places, infrastructure, and artefacts, as well as the stories that are associated with them. The DSL implementation of a game engine to share storytelling provides an educational interface. Where the DSL implementation of a game engine in a CH application differs from others is in the nature of the game environment itself. It is modelled on the 'country' (the 'place' of their heritage which is so important to the clients' collective identity) and authentic fauna and flora that provides a highly contextualised setting for the stories to be told. This paper provides an overview on the development of the DSL game engine.

An activity theory framework for industrial design

Ethnography has gained wide acceptance in the industrial design profession and curriculum as a means of understanding the user. However, there is considerable confusion about the particularities of its practice accompanied by the absence of an interoperable vocabulary. The consequent interdisciplinary effort is a power play between disciplines whereby the methodological view of ethnography marginalises its theoretical and analytical components. In doing so, it restricts the potential of ethnography suggesting the need for alternative methods of informing the design process. This article suggests that activity theory, with an emphasis on human activity as the fundamental unit of study, is an appropriate methodology for the generation of user requirements. The process is illustrated through the adaptation of an ethnographic case study, for the design of classroom furniture in India.

Submission to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage : Inquiry into a Sustainability Charter by the Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation

The Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation1 (hereafter called Construction Innovation) supports the notion of the establishment of a Sustainability Charter for Australia and is interested in working collaboratively to achieve this outcome. A number of challenges need to be addressed to develop this Charter. This submission outlines these challenges and possible responses to them by a Sustainability Commission.

Discrepancy between human resource research and practice : comparison of industrial/organisational psychologists and human resource practitioners' beliefs

There is a large and growing body of research to show that human resource (HR) practices affect individual performance, organisational productivity and organisational performance. Academic findings about effective HR practices, however, have not readily been adopted by practitioners. A variety of theoretical and practical explanations have been advanced about the research-practice gap. Research by Rynes, Colbert, and Brown (2002) suggested that the research-practice gap is due to a lack of knowledge, but the extent to which these findings apply to the Australian context is unknown. The sample consisted of 102 industrial/organisational (I/O) psychologists and 89 HR practitioners. The main aim of the present study was to replicate and extend the work of Rynes et al. by examining and comparing the knowledge of I/O psychologists and HR practitioners. It was found that overall I/O psychologists were better informed about HR research than HR practitioners; in particular, they were more knowledgeable about management practices and recruitment and selection. In both groups, of the five content areas examined (Management Practices; General Employment Practices; Training and Development; Recruitment and Selection; and Compensation and Benefits), the greatest gaps were in Recruitment and Selection.