New Zealand Books

Design City Melbourne

Leon Van Schaik
Photography by John Gollings

Wiley Academy, 2006
ISBN-13 978 470 01640 4 (HB)


With a light touch `Design City Melbourne' tells the wonderful story of Melbourne's late 20th century architectural renaissance as an incubator of local design culture. And who better to tell that story than Leon van Schaik AO, Professor of Architecture (Innovation Chair) at RMIT where for 20 years he has been a passionate teacher, curator, administrator and advocate of innovation across the arts. And who better to photograph that story than John Gollings.

The development of Melbourne as a Design City - a city Van Schaik defines as one which is temporarily "hot" with a catalytic mix of curators and creators - has been held in orbit by RMIT during his tenure and dominated by its vociferous architecture programs. Most of the book is taken up with brief biographies of the established and incipient Melbourne architectural glitterati, nearly all of whom are tethered to RMIT in some capacity. Most have been part of its graduate design school, a forum where the theory-practice nexus that Van Schaik insists upon, has been crystallized as nowhere else in this country and for that matter in only a few places around the world.

Descriptions of these people and their practices are framed by a main essay regarding the curatorial methods and agendas Van Schaik developed since his arrival in Melbourne in 1986. Other shorter essays map the links between architecture and the academy, between architecture and other disciplines, and most importantly, between architecture and the city itself.

In short, the story of Melbourne becoming a Design City in the course of the last 20 years is one of how, through this network of interconnections that Van Schaik in no small part engineered, a generation of designers has converted the crippling cringe that generally affects settler societies, in to the source of their liberation. As opposed to recoiling from the global so as to romanticize and essentialise the local, Van Schiak the immigrant, saw the cringe from all sides and exposed Melbourne to a consistent stream of international influences, trusting the locals to make their own, local sense of it.

They were steeled for this by Peter Corrigian and his partner Maggie Edmond who had already pioneered a gritty Melbournian brand of critical regionalism in several small suburban riots. But it was their high risk gymnastics across the front of RMIT's Building 8, a building Van Schaik championed, that came to headline Swanston Street as a new axis of innovation cutting across establishment lines. With this project the conversations inside both RMIT and the local journal `Transition' (RIP), literally started spilling out onto the streets and muscled their way in to the otherwise dull Melbourne grid.

Of course, many bright Melbourne architects, not least of all Howard Raggatt who nailed his own thesis on the cringe to RMIT's door in 1990 would have found their voices in the wilderness, and Van Schaik is not claiming credit for all, rather, as this book attests, the Design City is one of multiple synergies.

From Edmond and Corrigan the baton was handed to Ashton Raggatt McDougall whose Storey Hall next door to Building 8 was thought so radical that they kept a bag over its head until opening day. Completely misunderstanding its brilliance, many wanted the bag put back on - Ralph Neale, the former editor of this journal included. ARM have since reinforced their importance in Melbourne's inner city renaissance by digging in to the Shrine at one end of Swanston and opening Pandora's box with the Melbourne Central Shopping Centre at the other. Federation Square by LAB architects replete with Paul Carter's footnotes to an-other history of colonization and the new QV complex by Lyons, Kerstin Thompson, John Wardle and Rob McBride all consolidate Van Schaik's thesis of a Design City. The temporal and spatial linkages between these works and Van Schaik's role in the cultural life of Melbourne are no coincidence, although a finer grained history of these breakthroughs would reveal more.

As a somewhat overt homage to Libeskind, Federation Square is however more difficult to package as radically and originally local. Nonetheless, Van Schaik recoups it as a part of geometric arguments being waged in Melbourne, arguments between the platonic and the fractal to which he errs on the side of the latter. Whilst at this level he takes sides, this book makes clear that he never set out to form one school of thought and certainly not a style: quite the opposite. Just as it is the crucial factor in the biological world, diversity is the key to the cultural. But this is not to say that anything goes; the curator has to tie it all together and find commonalities without compromising the differences.

Although it provides a poetic, political and geographic structure, there is much more in this book than an appreciation of Swantson Street's well known trophies. The whole kaleidoscope of designers who have inspired or helped Van Schaik in his quest to create a Design City are all showcased. Risking the perils of writing his own story through theirs, Van Schaik's tone is humble and indeed humbled by the creative work of his colleagues. He played his role and they played theirs, both fulfilling the Design City contract.

Although he connects the dots from the efflorescence of his time back into Melbourne's deeper architectural history, this book is not about dispassionate historical analysis; rather it is about recognizing that there is a latent ecology of creative intelligence in any city and that if you nourish it, things happen. Neither does Van Schaik tell us what to think about this outpouring of work and nor, as he so easily could have done, does he admonish other Australian cities for doing so little in the time that Melbourne has done so much. And although this book seems designed for a broad audience and is to an extent promotional for all included, Van Schaik doesn't tell us why the Design City is good nor amass data about its benefits - those arguments have been won and now the work speaks for itself. Those who define themselves by their distance from RMIT would be hard pressed to deny the remarkable achievement of this group of people.

By announcing what has been, however, books like this tend to also announce that which is about to pass and whilst Van Schaik worries for a future that could so easily acquiesce back into stylistic echoes, this is an uplifting book for anyone involved in the daily struggle to create serious cultural production.

Given the theme of innovation, the design of this book is surprisingly conventional and some essays are too short and too cool for such a hot topic. The conclusion, a proposal to erect a copper sheath over the Arts Centre seems unnecessarily heroic. As opposed to vertical triumphs over the inner city symbolic order, perhaps the future of this Design City, like most in the 21st century has to be about horizontality, about landscape.

In this book, Landscape architecture as a discipline and a profession, despite being there throughout it all, gets very short shrift. Van Schaik doffs his hat to VicRoads and RMIT landscape graduates, Cath Stutterheim, Patrick Franklyn and Leanne O'Shea are noted. Their works suggest that some of the rich conversations held in RMIT's landscape program are starting to find form but perhaps landscape is yet to be curated in the manner that Van Schaik has done for architecture. If that is so, then, the creators need to rise to the occasion and give the curator something inspirational to work with.

RW

First: If you are looking for information on how to play the Didgeridoo, don't buy this book.

However, if you are looking into the culture and history of the Yolngu and other Indigenous peoples of Australia that developed this musical instrument, look no further.

Very informative with interviews of many of the current key people in the Didgeridoo world.

In these times of racial tension, I sometimes find myself imagining the kind of book our current Prime Minister should read to begin escaping from his myopia about the present and amnesia about the past. I am referring, of course, to his stubbornly maintained innocence about the intrinsic nature of Australian race relations; his touching faith that somehow white mateship conquers all and his peculiar conclusion that those who expose racism in their research are somehow its instigators.

The kind of book which might conceivably begin to turn his head away from such quaint notions should not be too abrasive or confrontational. It should hint at rather than plunge him with too much brutal immediacy into the full horror of the situation. It should additionally be reader-friendly, judiciously weighted, lavishly illustrated and not too long.

As I was reading Timothy Bottoms' `Aboriginal history of North Queensland', Djabugay Country, it hit me that this might be just the book. Bottoms has worked diligently to produce a study of the Djabugay people of the Cairns hinterland (pronounced JAB-oo-GEYE) which covers their pre-contact history, their frontier and post-frontier relations with the European land-takers, their experience of segregation and institutionalisation and their contemporary struggles and triumphs in around just 100 pages of text and still manages to fit 74 thoughtfully chosen and sensitively captioned illustrations into the analysis. Sure, there is talk here of frontier battles, massacres, forced removals and a swag of sundry other brutalities, but they are not laid on too thickly. There is just enough for even the most obdurate of intellects to be stirred by the suspicion that it may not have been all `beer and skittles' under the tropical Queensland sun in those long bygone days.

Certainly, Mr Howard has admitted that "in the past wrongs were done" - "blemishes" he has also called them; but he has gone on to argue that dwelling too fulsomely on such matters may reflect "insidious" academic behaviour or - to borrow his words once more - "ideologically driven intellectual thuggery". As early as 1975, Howard, as Member for Bennelong, was arguing against legislation to curb racial vilification and defamation on the grounds that it threatened "freedom to disseminate ideas" and in 1988, as Leader of the Opposition, he peevishly told a Bulletin interviewer that "past wrongs ... weren't done by me. They weren't done by my parents. They weren't done by my generation ..." Since that time, the Prime Minister has been nothing if not consistent.

Yet, as Bottoms' careful research shows, well within the life span of Howard's and his parents' generations, Djabugay and Bama people were being forcibly removed in handcuffs from Kuranda and other places to Mona Mona mission. Others were snatched from such centres as Mossman, Ravenshoe and Normanton. As late as 1948, "inmates", for minor infractions, were subjected to canings and public floggings under the aegis of Superintendent L. A. Borgas: Family members were often forced to implement this corporal punishment. In the '60s, when John Howard was shaping up as a young politician, Queensland police were once more forcibly shifting Mona Mona inmates to Yarrabah. From the '60s to the '90s, living conditions for the Djabugay and Bama at Redlynch, Mantaka and Kowrowa remained intolerable, with appalling levels of shelter, sanitation and hygiene. As Bottoms records, between 1989 and 1992, Pastor Gory of the Seventh Day Adventists presided over 90 funerals of Bama people.

So, yes, that murky past where all the racial wrongs are conveniently minimised and segregated by our national leader was just about yesterday. And, as John Howard's trajectory towards the Prime Ministership advanced over these years, so too his moral responsibility for what was happening (and continues to happen) correspondingly grew. These wrongs were done by John Howard's generation, as they were by mine and Timothy Bottoms' too. The only difference is that Timothy and I have already realised this while Mr Howard still has a lot of catching up to do. This book is a persuasive antidote for the resistant mind and it just might help to set the Prime Minister on a path - or perhaps a bridge towards enlightenment which hundreds of thousands of his fellow Australians have already crossed.

The main countries considered here are Australia and New Zealand. Alley explores how external relations have impacted internal politics in those countries. Though attention is also given to Papua New Guinea vis-a-vis its Bourgainville conflict.

For Australia, climate change is used as a good case study. Revolving around the Kyoto Treaty and the fear of global warming. We see how domestic Australian companies in affected industries raised many objections. Leading to the government stalling for time regarding ratification. With perhaps a dimunition in Australia's international credibility.

Many mushroom enthusiasts have done it. This book tells you how, beginning from how to collect dung specimens and incubate them to identifying the growing mushroom.There are no photos but the illustrations are pretty good and what they lack is compensated by descriptions and keys. I would recommend this book,( amongst other guides) for anyone serious about mushroom hunting.

This book is from the My Story series published in New Zealand, which is their version of the Dear America series. The books are diaries of fictional boys and girls during important events and eras in New Zealand history.

It is June 1930 in the town of Napier, New Zealand. Eleven-year-old Katie Bourke's father has just died, and she decides to begin a journal, writing down her feelings for her father who she greatly misses. She describes school, friends, the hardships faced by her family as a result of the Great Depression, and finally, the earthquake in February 1931 that devastates the city.

This was an enjoyable book in the My Story series from New Zealand. Katie was a likable character, describing both ordinary childhood concerns with school and friends, as well as the hardships of losing a parent, and dealing with economic hardships and a devastating natural disaster. I'd recommend this book to readers who enjoy historical fiction in diary form.

This is a very informative book for someone interested in moving to New Zealand - FROM EUROPE (not from the U.S.) but, it is still a good start to my interest in moving there.

This subject of this book is listed as economics and business. I don't know why. In fact, the book tells the story of the author's family, from the time his grandparents arrived in Australia. It goes beyond a nostalgic tale of pioneers and interweaves the intimate story of his family with the broad scale economic history of the country- and in particular, its dependence on exploiting and desecrating nature. Among Lines' targets are economics (in general), Keynesian economics in particular, materialism, bureaucracies and (some) environmentalists. Its general approach is, I think, a deep-ecology one.

This is a challenging book that has no simple message about how we can change our lives for the better.

FAMILY FROM BARRA by Beryl Martin is the true story of the author's childhood in New Zealand, growing up as Pat Ridge, the daughter of a working man and his emotionally unbalanced wife. It is not until after years of abuse that the author learns that she was adopted and begins the search for her blood relations that eventually leads her back to the island of Barra in Scotland. The descriptions of her early years are captivating, not only because they are a window into the mind of her eccentric and sometimes brutally unfair step-mother, but also because they so clearly capture the spirit of the Depression era with its escapes through endless movies and its many economies. Eventually the author becomes acquainted with her brothers in New Zealand and finds a sense of belonging and happiness. This true story is a triumph of the human spirit, full of admitted failings, but never despairing that there is a place in the world for everyone.

This book traces the origins and paths taken by a number of immigrants from various parts of England to their new life in New Zealand. A word of advice; it is very academic in style and takes a little bit of persistence but it is well worth the effort.