“… but in the end, unless there are attitudes of respect and a becoming humility when you are engaging with communities, so that their voices are genuinely heard, I think the game is over.”
Fred Chaney, Which Way? Directions in Indigenous
“… but in the end, unless there are attitudes of respect and a becoming humility when you are engaging with communities, so that their voices are genuinely heard, I think the game is over.”
Fred Chaney, Which Way? Directions in Indigenous Housing, 2007
“We have to remember that if you want things to work, you have to involve the people who are affected. Otherwise it is destined to fail, and when it does we all suffer.”
William Tilmouth, Which Way? Directions in Indigenous Housing, 2007.
Architecture has traditionally operated at the juncture of patronage and political economy, translating historically located desires into images and built form. Never more so than where architecture and Indigenous housing are concerned – here the task of translating is layered, not only with the policies of the day, but also with a culture and language foreign to the non-Indigenous architect, who carries their own assumptions and priorities.
What other architectural brief for a single family house has, at its core, cultural practice, health outcomes and community employment? What other architectural program has such a tangled arrangement of federal, state and local government structures? And in a country where owning a home is a dream for many, what sort of uncanny dream conjures a built form that, for traditional Indigenous Australians, has little cultural value and yet such dire effects?
It has been suggested that Western-style housing may indeed be another means of colonizing Indigenous Australians, of forced assimilation, of controlling mobility and cultural expression. Housing in this analysis is a fixed physical entity that fails to respond to deep-seated cultural requirements for moving within and around country. Yet housing is not mute. There are undeniable and challenging problems with Indigenous health and standards of living, which poor housing exacerbates and which better housing can alleviate.
In light of the federal government’s emergency intervention into the Northern Territory and the promise of many hundreds of millions of dollars in housing funds, it is worth reflecting on the experience of a group of architects who have been engaged with housing for Indigenous Australians for more than thirty years.
Tangentyere Design is an Aboriginal-owned architectural practice based in Central Australia. It began in the late 1970s as a division of Tangentyere Council, an Aboriginal organization established to represent the interests of Indigenous people in their quest for land tenure, housing, infrastructure and basic standards of living in the town camps of Alice Springs. When it was first created, the design division of Tangentyere Council provided architectural advice and designs for housing and community facilities as well as masterplans for community layouts in the town camps. Over the decades, Tangentyere Design – as it has since become known – has provided architectural services to Indigenous people living in Alice Springs and in other, more remote central desert areas. It has won numerous design awards, helped to build a range of housing and community buildings throughout the Northern Territory and, above all, it has remained committed to engaging with Aboriginal people in the creation of a healthier built environment.
The breadth and complexity of Indigenous housing research is well documented in collections such as Take 2: Housing Design in Indigenous Australia and the more recent Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute survey of literature on Indigenous housing. It is useful to locate Tangentyere Design within this context.
It is now accepted within the architectural profession that three paradigms broadly characterize Indigenous housing design. The Cultural Design paradigm starts from the premise that appropriate design will only come from observing the culturally distinct domiciliary behaviours of Aboriginal people, and addressing the range of customary family units and behaviour patterns with appropriate design responses. The Environmental Health model is a technological approach and is exemplified by the work of Healthabitat and the Fixing Houses for Better Health program, out of which has come the National Indigenous Housing Guide and the nine healthy living practices. The housing-as-process model is a wider framework that includes consideration of culture and technology, but is also focused on community aspirations and capacity, and assumes a broad consultative approach to housing provision. Other practitioners have recently begun to frame a multidisciplinary or hybrid approach called the Design Framework, which attempts to synthesize the complexities of each of the paradigms into a comprehensive methodological approach to housing design and delivery.
Tangentyere Design’s work has not been consciously allied with one or other of these paradigms. Its practice can be broadly described within each, and indeed its work has contributed much to formulating the modes of understanding architectural work with Aboriginal clients.
Tangentyere Design has had an exemplary range of architects pass through its doors over the decades. Many have moved on to f