Indigenous place-making in the city : dispossessions, occupations and implications for cultural architecture

This paper considers Indigenous place-making practices in light of an idea for a major Victorian Indigenous Cultural Knowledge and Education Centre in central Melbourne as championed by Traditional Owners in Victoria. With only eight Aboriginal architects in the country, collaboration with non-Indigenous architects will be inevitable. Two case studies from the recent past—the Tent Embassy in Canberra and a street corner in Collingwood—reveal that dominant cultures of place-making continue to marginalise Aboriginal people in urban Australia. This paper will contend that delivering spatial justice will require both an opportunity for Indigenous Victorians to build visibility in the centre of the city and a willingness within the dominant culture to be deterritorialised.

Antiga cerâmica São José Guaçu: uma proposta de memória e revitalização

O presente trabalho visa propor um estudo a fim de buscar um projeto para reverter o impacto de uma área ociosa no centro da cidade de Mogi Guaçu, levando-se em consideração o seu desenvolvimento histórico e sócio-econômico pelos anos que se sucederam desde seu surgimento. A intenção do projeto é atenuar ou modificar os efeitos prejudiciais à cidade nos aspectos de tipo de ocupação, desenvolvimento econômico e cultural e integração da área central. Para tal serão usadas ferramentas que permitam uma intervenção urbanística voltada para a dinâmica e para a imagem da cidade na atualidade

Architecture and Construction Management at Queens University Belfast:Regional Cultural Centre

The Regional Cultural Centre in Letterkenny is a new 2000sqm arts center containing theatre, galleries, workshops and ancillary offices. The site is set back from the street, on high ground with good views. The form and envelope of the building was derived from geometrically connecting the site with the town’s two other main public buildings, the Cathedral (1901) and new Civic Offices (2002, also designed by MacGabhann Architects). This geometrical connection or vectors informed the geometry and shape of the building. This urban matrix of geometrically connecting three corner stones of society, namely the ecclesiastical headquarters, the administrative head quarters and the art centre helps to improve the town planning and urban design of the disparate and chaotic development that Letterkenny has become.
The large cantilever, which houses a 300sqm gallery, is aligned towards the Civic Offices, marks the entrance, and signifies a change of direction of the pedestrian route past the building, like a modern day obelisk.
The circulation routes and stairs internally provide views towards the civic offices and cathedral, thus reinforcing the connection between the three buildings and helps visitors make some sense of Letterkenny as an urban center. The main stairs and vertical circulation are contained behind the large glazed foyer, which is framed to be viewed externally like a proscenium stage, with visitors to the building passively acting their routes through the building.

Cultural value of architecture in homes and neighbourhoods

This paper provides an account of the Cultural Value of Architecture in Homes and Neighbourhoods, (CVoA), a project developed with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). The first stage of the project was a critical review of ‘grey literature’ since 2000, industry based research on the value of architecture subdivided into themes: overall value; health and wellbeing; neighbourhood cohesion and heritage and belonging. Findings from the review revealed a marked absence of evidence of the value of architecture and an over preoccupation with the final building, the product of an interdisciplinary team not just Architects, as well as a general confusion about what it is that Architects do. Further consultation has led to the development of a framework for defining and communicating the skillsets of Architects and for developing an evidence base for their value. Our target audience is non-Architects as we are concerned with making the profession more inclusive hence our desire to create simple definitions and terminology.

Architecture, multiculturalism and cultural sustainability in Australian cities

The way that the built environment represents and accommodates people of different cultures is an important facet of developing a holistically sustainable future. Architecture intervenes, maps and signifies and in doing so it constructs identities. It helps to shape how we know the world by mediating power, social relations and cultural values. Events such as the settlement, inhabitation and establishment of diasporic communities involve the occupation of space. Architecture provides the armature of this space, its form and its image. Building is a potent means by which identity can be formed. A most significant part of people’s well-being and capacity is their participation in literally building communities. This paper will illustrate this issue through discussion of contemporary Australian cities. The buildings of a wide variety of immigrants to Australia have since the 1950s contributed greatly to the changing nature of its cities. They are the physical manifestation of the great demographic changes that have occurred across the nation during this period. The combination of people of different backgrounds and cultures lends a unique quality to Australian built environments, and this needs not only be understood but celebrated, as they are contributing to the development of Australian urban culture. Increased knowledge and understanding of the impact of immigration and multiculturalism on our built environment will add substantially to understanding of the diversity of Australia’s cultural heritage, and the potential of future planners, architects, and members of the general public to create inclusive and dynamic Australian cities.

Architecture, identity and cultural sustainability in contemporary Southeast Asian cities

Distinctive architecture, which once served to identify peoples and places, has now, across the world, been subject to the standardising forces of history. Built environments still reflect the conceptual, spatial and physical construction of communities, though straightforward correlations between particular forms of architecture, places and people can no longer be taken for granted. This article explores these notions through discussion of several Southeast Asian examples, seeing how the relationship between architecture and culture might be framed by each of them, and then how definitions of culture might be differently expressed depending on each context. The first context is the village. Here, recent buildings are produced within a traditional, rural culture, generally without recourse to architects. Indigenous symbolism is overlaid, but not necessarily subsumed, by imported typologies and ideologies. The second context is urban and more formalised and involves self-conscious architectural attempts to straddle tradition and modernity, as well as notions of broader collective identity. The third context is one of a more diffused globalisation. Issues of conservation and heritage are complicated by the imperial or colonial histories of many urban environments, as well as by the pressures of economic development and population growth. In cultural terms, however, it is the life of cities that is foregrounded here. This disparate collection of architectural projects and agendas reflects a region where the forces of essentialism and fragmentation continue to be in creative tension (Ashraf 2005).

‘Else-where’ : essays in art, architecture, and cultural production 2002-2011

“Else-where”: Essays in Art, Architecture, and Cultural Production 2002–2011 is a synoptic survey of the representational values given to art, architecture, and cultural production at the closing of the twentieth century and the opening of the twenty-first. Written primarily as a critique of what is suppressed in architecture and what is disclosed in art, the essays are informed by the passage out of post-structuralism and its disciplinary analogues toward the Real (denoted over the course of the studies as the “Real-Irreal,” or “Else-where”). The essays collected in “Else-where” cross various disciplines (inclusive of landscape architecture, architecture, and visual art) to develop a nuanced critique of a renascent formal regard and elective exit from nihilism in art and architecture that is also an invocation of the highest coordinates given to the arts – that is, formal ontology as speculative intelligence itself, or the return of the universal as utopian thought “here-and-now.”

A model of economic management of cultural heritage: the rehabilitation of fort christmas as an interpretation center of defensive architecture of the Mediterranean in Cartagena (Spain)

The Cultural Heritage constitutes a way to generate social identities and play an important role in the development of the Spanish Mediterranean cities that opt to sustainable quality tourism. The reflection on the necessity of intervention on this heritage, in addition to establishing what should be done, brings up the need to define the reasons for taking action, why and what-for. These decisions are essential to establish if its maintenance and recovery are economically sustainable. The Project "Cartagena Port of Cultures", with support from the European Union, is an example of effective instrument for ensuring the sustainability of our built heritage conservation. Its main objective was to enable sustainable development of tourism in Cartagena based on sustainability and seasonality. This was achieved through a process of recovery of heritage resources and their optimum promotion and marketing.