Subject - Design
Welcome
Torrens University Australia acknowledges the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first inhabitants of the nation and the traditional custodians of the lands where we live, learn and work. Torrens University Australia respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present.
In this guide you will find
First Nations Protocols and Copyright - The Copyright Agency and the Australia Council for the arts provide a framework for working with Indigenous Intellectual Property.
Books - View a selection of current titles in our First Nations collection
Authors - Read the bio of Indigeous and Non-Indigneous scholars and the work their publication on indigensou design, architecture and visual arts.
Databases - Search for articles in these databases.
Examples of students work - Put is all in context, with an example of a Work Intergrated Leaning project by Billy Blue School of design students.
Indigenous Copyright
First Nations Protocols and Copyright
Protocols produced by the Australia Council for the Arts take you through the legal, ethical and moral considerations for the use of First Nations cultural and intellectual property. The guidelines are based on ten principles that include self-determination; communication, consultation and consent; attribution; and recognition and protection.
Join Lucy Byrne with Patricia Adjei, Dr Paula Abood, Travis De Vries and Jake Smithers as they discuss the Protocols for using First Nations Cultural and Intellectual Property in the Arts. The Protocols were written by Dr Terri Janke and Company.
International Indigenous Design Charter: Protocols for sharing Indigenous knowledge in professional design practice
By Dr. Russell Kennedy, Dr. Meghan Kelly, Mr. Jefa Greenaway, Prof. Brian Martin
When working on projects involving the representation of Indigenous culture, design practitioners and buyers of design (non-Indigenous and Indigenous) are expected to adhere to ten protocols. Access the protocols here.
Books
The Torrens University Library is committed to growing our First Nations collection to support the embedding of Indigenous perspectives. This is a small collection of what is available for Design and Creative Technology students
Gunyah Goondie + Wurley : the Aboriginal architecture of Australia by ISBN: 9781760762513Publication Date: 2022
Learning Country in Landscape Architecture Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Respect and Appreciation by ISBN: 9789811588761Publication Date: 2021
Assembling the Centre: Architecture for Indigenous Cultures by
Metropolitan Indigenous Cultural Centres have become a focal point for making Indigenous histories and contemporary cultures public in settler-colonial societies over the past three decades. While there are extraordinary success stories, there are equally stories that cause concern: award-winning architecturally designed Indigenous cultural centres that have been abandoned; centres that serve the interests of tourists but fail to nourish the cultural interests of Indigenous stakeholders; and places for vibrant community gathering that fail to garner the economic and politic support to remain viable. Indigenous cultural centres are rarely static. They are places of 'emergence', assembled and re-assembled along a range of vectors that usually lie beyond the gaze of architecture. How might the traditional concerns of architecture - site, space, form, function, materialities, tectonics - be reconfigured to express the complex and varied social identities of contemporary Indigenous peoples in colonised nations? This book, documents a range of Indigenous Cultural Centres across the globe and the processes that led to their development. It explores the possibilities for the social and political project of the Cultural Centre that architecture both inhibits and affords. Whose idea of architecture counts when designing Indigenous Cultural Centres? How does architectural history and contemporary practice territorialise spaces of Indigenous occupation? What is architecture for Indigenous cultures and how is it recognised? This ambitious and provocative study pursues a new architecture for colonised Indigenous cultures that takes the politics of recognition to its heart. It advocates an ethics of mutual engagement as a crucial condition for architectural projects that design across cultural difference. The book's structure, method, and arguments are dialogically assembled around narratives told by Indigenous people of their pursuit of public recognition, spatial justice, and architectural presence in settler dominated societies. Possibilities for decolonising architecture emerge through these accounts.
ISBN: 9780415815321Publication Date: 2014
Researchers and Authors
Indigenous Authors
Dr Mandy Nicholson - A Wurundjeri Traditional Custodian.
Dr Mandy Nicholson is a multidisciplinary artist and educator, she is currently working with the University of Melbourne in design of a Architecture course. She has undertaken a Fellowship through the Stats Library of Victoria investigating Wurundjeri women's culture.
Dr Paola Balla - A Wemba-Wemba and Gunditijmara woman
Dr Paola Balla has published multiple articles specialising in contemporary indigenous art and Aboriginal wormens art and practices of resistance and revitalisation.She lectures with Moondani Balluk Indigenous Academic Centre, Victoria University.
Non-Indigneous Authors
A researcher and Senior Lecturer in Architecture from the University of Queensland, Tim's current research focuses on the design and social histories of Indigenous housing from the 1950s assimilation era to the 2000s.
Paul is the author of many of the the books in this guide, including this one 'Gunyah, Goondie + Wurley: Aboriginal Architecture of Australia'. He has published over 300 research outputs.
Databases
- Informit: Indigenous collection This link opens in a new window
An interdisciplinary full-text collection with an emphasis on Indigenous communities in Australia, New Zealand and beyond. It offers a broad scope of informed scholarship related to Indigenous culture, health and human geography.
- Art & Architecture Source This link opens in a new window
Art research database covering fine, decorative and commercial art, as well as architecture and architectural design. With strong international coverage, it offers hundreds of full-text art journals, magazines and books, plus detailed indexing and abstracts and thousands of images.
Examples of students work
Design students at Torrens University Australia were challenged in a Work Integrated Learning (WIL) brief to create a physical memorial to pay respects to survivors of Australia’s Stolen Generation. For the students involved, it quickly became so much more than just an assessment.
The initial brief, presented by Sylvia Akusah, aka ‘Aunty Sylvia,’ from The Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council of New South Wales (AH&MRC) was for students to design a memorial site to be located at the AH&MRC College in Little Bay. The location is significant to Stolen Generation survivors, descendants and communities.
The memorial is intended to be a place where people can come and pay respects to survivors of the Stolen Generation, as well as their families, and will be designed in collaboration with the NSW Government.
Billy Blue College of Design at Torrens University Australia Common Core design students met with Aunty Sylvia, a Stolen Generation survivor, for cultural mentorship at key milestone points over the 12-week project. Students learned from her experience and through her stories to interpret their concepts and fulfil the brief in groups.
Read more here - https://www.torrens.edu.au/stories/blog/design/bulbuwil-project-brings-stolen-generation-stories-to-life
The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture
The Garma Cultural Knowledge Centre in North East Arnhem Land (2024), built on the land of the Yolngu people and designed by Build Up Design, is an example of a project that combines Indigenous customs with introduced ways to negotiate a creative synthesis. From the book - The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture Read the review of this book by Julie Willis (2020) in Architecture,Au https://architectureau.com/articles/the-handbook-of-contemporary-indigenous-architecture/