Vogue Living Australia
These First Nations firms are making waves in Australia’s design space
Craig Kerslake was interviewed by Vogue Living Australia as one of Australia’s leading First Nations designers. He talks about his vision, what designing from Country means, and how it can be applied to the built environment.
“Australia’s design landscape, as varied as it may be, falls short in one major area—the acknowledgement and celebration of Indigenous perspectives. Design ingenuity is a central tenet of Aboriginality, yet Australia’s design realm has failed to recognise the power and potential of the world’s oldest living culture in developing cities that respond to and merge with our environment. Fortunately, a lack of space in the field hasn’t deterred this group of First Nations Australians. If anything, it’s spurred on a desire to amplify Indigenous voices and stories within Australia’s design realm. From architecture to public art and film installations, a guard of multidisciplinary creatives is changing the landscape one project at a time, paying homage to and celebrating Australia’s rich and complex Indigenous heritage.
“The design narratives come from the Indigenous relationship with people and with nature,” Kerslake explains. “It's about connecting with traditional knowledge holders. We first seek permission to work on their Country—in Wiradjuri we call it Yindyamarra, which is to go quietly, respectfully and with honour, about everything you do.”
The notion of approaching a project with respect for the land upon which it is being built is, sadly, one that has only entered the design and construction vernacular in recent years. It is not, however, anything new to Indigenous culture. “I think we worked out about 72,000 years ago, Elders tell me, that if you don't live with nature, you are kind of daft and it won't work out for you,” Kerslake reflects. It is the centring of this inextricable relationship between individuals, Community and the natural world that governs the way Nguluway DesignInc approaches each project they take on. “We try to make all of our architecture relational,” Kerslake muses. “We start at that point, we map those spaces, and then we wrap the architecture program around that.”
This approach is, as Kerslake says, “a completely different way of thinking” to the yield-focused approach most common in the field, but one that offers a different kind of yield—one of enduring relevance. “[This approach] embeds sustainability, it embeds Community. It creates neighbourhoods and it manifests belonging and identity. We can create a full spectrum of relationships, and then we connect those neighbourhoods to nature.”
Article by Noni Reginato
