Soft-sediment deformation structures in the middle permian Wandrawandian siltstone, southern Sydney basin: implications for depositional environment and basin tectonics

The Middle Permian Wandrawandian Siltstone at Warden Head near Ulladulla in the southern Sydney Basin is dominated by fossiliferous siltstone and mudstone, with a large amount of dropstones (lonestones) and some pebbly sandstone beds. Two general types of deposits are recognised from the cliff succession in view of the timing and mechanism of their formation. One is represented by the background (or primary) deposits of offshore to slope environments with abundant dropstones of glacial marine origin. This facies occurs throughout the cliff sections at Warden Head. The second type is distinguished by secondary, soft-sediment deformational deposits and structures of the primary (background) deposits, and comprises three successive layers of sandy mudstone dikes. In the second type of deposit, metre scale, laterally extensive syn-depositional slump deformation structures occur extensively in the middle part of the Wandrawandian Siltstone. The deformation structures vary in morphology and pattern, including large-scale complex-type folds, flexural stratification, concave-up structures, small-magnitude -faults accompanied by folding and brecciation. The slumps and associated syn-depositional structures are herein attributed to penecontemporaneous deformations of soft sediments (mostly mud and silty mud), formed as a result of mass movement of unconsolidated and/or semi-consolidated substrate following earthquake events. The occurrence of the earthquake event deposits (or seismites) at Warden Head supports the current view that the Sydney Basin was located in a back-arc setting near the New England magmatic arc on an active continental margin during the Middle Permian, and the timing of the earthquake events is here interpreted to indicate the onset of the Hunter Bowen Orogeny in the southern Sydney Basin.

Place, progress and memory : McGlashan and Everist at Geelong College

Building in an historical setting engages the problem of progress and authentic dialogue between tradition, contemporaneity and visions of a future. Since 1960, McGlashan and Everist have been the sole architects for Geelong College's Talbot Street campus, established in 1871. They have designed its master plans and all new buildings and alterations to the existing eclectic stock. As modernists with a task providing no opportunity for stylistic coherence in an age of universality, the architects were caught between protecting the College's perceived authenticity by continuing its historicist links with English collegiate architecture on the one hand, and their own modernist ethic on the other. Adopting what Frampton has called in his essay, 'Critical Regionalism', an 'arriere-garde' position (an 'identity-giving culture' rather than reversion to the past or to the 'Enlightenment myth of progress'), the architects avoid overt display of nostalgic historicism, modernist tectonics and populism. This paper asks whether and to what extent they have been capable of an authentic dialogue. Have they created an existential place in an 'architecture of resistance' as Frampton would have it, attending sufficiently to 'identity-giving culture' and the future? What is the role of implacement in the problematic of 'progress' in this context and how might it have affected a particular approach and the outcome?

Media use in the design studio: a case study of second year architecture

This paper outlines a case study of media use within a second year design studio at Deakin University in Victoria. Australia. The case study involves an active cohort of students working on four design projects, each staged to address specific aspects of tectonics and conceptual design. The research is based on three questionnaires, a focus group discussion and analysis of assessment and digital folios to explore the way students use digital, analogue and hybrid media within their design projects. Relationships arc drawn between media use within projects and student perceptions of the benefits of using particular media within projects of a conceptual or tectonic nature.

Earthquake-controlled event deposits and its tectonic significance from the Middle Permian Wandrawandian Siltstone in the Sydney Basin, Australia

The Sydney-Bowen basin in eastern Australia is an elongate back arc-converted foreland basin system situated between the Lachlan Fold Belt in the west and the New England Fold Belt in the east. The Middle Permian Wandrawandian Siltstone at Warden Head near Ulladulla in the southern Sydney Basin is dominated by fossiliferous siltstone and mudstone, with a large amount of dropstones and minor pebbly sandstone beds. Two general types of deposits are recognized from the siltstone unit in view of the timing and mechanism of formation. One is represented by the primary deposits from offshore to subtidal environments with abundant dropstones of glacial marine origin. The second type is distinguished by secondary, soft-sediment deformational deposits and structures, and comprises three layers of mudstone dykes of seismic origin. In the latter type, metre scale, laterally extensive syn-depositional slump deformation structures occur in the middle part of the Wandrawandian Siltstone. The deformation structures vary in morphol-ogy and pattern, including large-scale complex-type folds, flexural stratification, concave-up structures, faulting of small displacements accompanied by folding and brecciation. The slumps and associated syn-sedimentary structures are attributed to penecontemporaneous deformations of soft sediments (mostly silty mud) formed as a result of mass movement of unconsolidated and/or semi-consolidated substrate following an earthquake event. The occurrence of the earthquake event deposits supports the current view that the Sydney Basin was located in a back-arc setting near the New England magmatic arc on an active continental margin during the Middle Permian.

Diversity and architecture

Architecture can be defined as the art and tectonics of place making. The discipline of architecture involves a broad set of practices including design of the built environment, development of architectural projects either community~ based or oriented towards a (private) client, and advisory work for governments. Architecture also involves a wide spectrum of knowledge including urban design and urban planning, and a variety of architectural ideas, theories and movements. Various dominant ideologies have manifested themselves in built form, whereas other, marginal cultural parameters have emerged in the vernacular or traditional architecture. Architecture is considered the medium through which society is organised and materialised. It resonates with symbolic meaning as well as pragmatic order through built places.

Palaeobiogeographic distribution patterns and processes of neochonetes and fusichonetes (brachiopoda) in the late palaeozoic and earliest mesozoic

The global palaeobiogeographic distributions of two resembling genera, Neochonetes and Fusichonetes (Brachiopoda), from the Carboniferous to Griesbachian are analysed. This analysis provides insight into the biotic response of two related genera to changing palaeoclimate, regional tectonics, and environmental crises. Neochonetes originated in the equatorial area in the Mississippian, and it mostly retained this position during the peak of the glaciation in the Carboniferous–Permian ice age (namely in the Pennsylvanian). Neochonetes then dispersed globally during the Cisuralian when the climate became warmer and the ice sheet started to retreat. In the Guadalupian and Lopingian, following the closure of the Ural seaway at the end of the Cisuralian and the regression at the end-Guadalupian, Neochonetes almost disappeared in the western part of Gondwana. Subsequently during the Lopingian the genus retracted to the middle- and low-latitude Palaeo-Tethys and Tethys. In comparison, Fusichonetes originated in the equatorial area in the late Guadalupian and was still present in that area in the Lopingian. Both genera occurred only in South China in the Griesbachian. It is inferred that this could be related, not only to the deteriorated palaeoenvironmental conditions (e.g., anoxia, global warming) leading up to the extinction of most of the Neochonetes and Fusichonetes species in other areas, but also to the better physiological adaptation of the smaller shells of Neochonetes and Fusichonetes species in South China.