Architect embraces Indigenous worldview in Australian designs
Jefa Greenaway will never forget the first time he heard his father's voice. It was in 2017, when he watched a documentary about the struggle of indigenous Australians to be recognized in the country's constitution.
“It was harrowing, surreal,” Mr. Greenaway recalled. “In a word: emotional.”
In the film, his father, Bert Groves, an Indigenous man and civil rights activist born in 1907, tells how he was prevented from getting an education because of the size of his skull, a victim of phrenology, the pseudoscience that stuck in Australia. until the 20th century.
Now 53, Mr Greenaway was just a baby when his father died, leaving him to be raised in Australia by his German mother. Yet his father's values – such as standing up for indigenous rights and valuing education – were instilled in the young boy.
Mr Greenaway is one of what he estimates are fewer than 20 registered Indigenous architects in Australia today. He is also a leading proponent of what is known as 'Country-centered design', which brings an Aboriginal worldview to construction projects.
“People like Jefa are rare,” says Peter Salhani, an Australian architectural journalist who has admired Mr Greenways' work in Melbourne for several years. His projects, Mr. Salhani said, “are without a doubt the voice of indigenous people – we need them now more than ever.”
For many Indigenous Australians, the country where they were born or to which they belong is of spiritual importance. When people speak of 'Land' they mean not just physical land and waterways, but a belief system in which everything is animate and there is no separation between people, animals, buildings, plants, rocks, water and air.
One goal of the design approach that embraces this worldview is to reveal what was found in a place before European settlement and to do so in a way that puts the environment first.
One of the best examples of a Greenaway project that reflects these values is an amphitheater and plaza that connects the University of Melbourne, where the architect studied, with Swanston Street, considered the civic backbone of the city. Sitting under a baby gum tree, Mr Greenaway pointed to mudbrick tracery on the amphitheater ground that wound around clumps of native plants and invaded the interiors of buildings.
“This represents a creek that was once here,” Mr. Greenaway said. For thousands of years it was an aquatic highway for migrating eels before being channeled into a stormwater drain. Today, occasionally an eel is found disoriented in university pondslost as they try to continue their migration route.
Land-oriented design is less aesthetic and more of a different approach to the construction process. It starts with an indigenous architect leading the project and working with the local indigenous community. Mr Greenaway described it as 'co-design'.
Land-centered design also puts sustainability at the forefront, seeking to give back to the land, not take from it. “That's how we've always done it,” Mr. Greenaway said, referring to indigenous cultures.
Indigenous Australians are better represented in much of the creative sector, from music to visual arts to theater and literature, than in architecture, which Mr Greenaway says remains “a kind of last bastion”.
“There is still a feeling that architecture is not for us because it has been complicit in colonization,” he continued. “Now that we have more voices contributing to this space, we are going to really change the idea of what design and architecture can do for the community in the coming years.”
A short tram ride away from the amphitheater is the first project Mr. Greenaway tested his design ideas: Ngarara placeat the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
The first thing you notice is the small scale. Ngarara Place consists of a segmented garden bed of native plants, with each section representing one of the six or seven seasons observed by the Kulin Nations, the Aboriginal people who inhabited the area. It also has a fire pit for smoking ceremonies, a wooden amphitheater and an installation of contemporary indigenous art.
Ngarara means “gathering” in the language of this country's traditional custodians, and the site is “activated,” Mr. Greenaway said, when it is used in ceremonies or even when students are just hanging out.
“It still amazes me that this little place has increased interest in these concepts,” Mr. Greenaway said as he surveyed the site. “It kind of changed the conversation and had a ripple effect.”
Before Ngarara Place, his company, Greenaway Architects, which he founded with his wife Catherine Drosinos, worked almost exclusively on residential projects. Today he is involved in larger public projects, reflecting the growing interest in this design in mainstream Australia.
In the state of New South Wales, major infrastructure projects must now take Indigenous design into account, and there are mandatory credits in Indigenous design to earn an architecture degree in Australia.
“We have reached a level of cultural maturity where we can now have these conversations,” Mr. Greenaway said.
Asked about last year's referendum that failed In his bid to give Indigenous Australians a voice in parliament in the form of an advisory body, Mr Greenaway said there were still reasons for optimism.
“I am encouraged because there is a very strong appetite to engage with Indigenous culture and find pathways to reconciliation,” he said.
At Melbourne's central meeting point, Federation Square, stands the Koorie Heritage Trust, a cultural center celebrating South East Australia's First Nations heritage. Mr Greenaway has recently completed the fit-out of the building, which is spread over three levels. The overhead lighting layout speaks to native astronomy and is reminiscent of nearby concrete columns scar treesand images on walls symbolize a smoking ceremony.
Many objects from the cultural collection were housed in drawers that invited people to open them, but information panels were missing. When this apparent omission was pointed out, Mr. Greenaway smiled.
“You look at it from this Western way of thinking about what a cultural collection should be,” he said. “What this is is an invitation to be active, not passive, to go up and start a conversation” with museum staff.
When Mr Greenaway was a student, he was the only Indigenous person in his class studying architecture at the University of Melbourne. Today, he estimates that there are between 70 and 80 Indigenous students enrolled in design and architecture programs across the country.
Many of these students know Mr. Greenaway as an accessible mentor.
He co-founded a non-profit organization – Indigenous Architecture and Design Australia – to support Aboriginal people pursuing design careers, and help them navigate an industry that is still adapting to Indigenous design thinking. He also recently co-authored the International Indigenous Design Charter, a global blueprint for working with indigenous knowledge in commercial design practice.
His focus on the ecological and ancestral stories of Aboriginal people makes him a pioneer whose projects are “inherently political,” says Alison Page, a Dharawal and Yuin woman and co-author of “Initial knowledge design”, a book that discusses indigenous architecture in contemporary Australia.
His approach, Ms. Page said, has helped pave the way for other projects to grapple with the legacy of injustices that arise from the history of Indigenous and colonial encounters.
“When you design this way, you start to reveal stories and narratives,” she said. “Some of these can be hard to face, but they are part of the truth of a place. That kind of truth telling is not so far away now.”
Next up for Greenaway Architects will be a national first: a college at the University of Technology Sydney, designed specifically for First Nations students.
From the steps of Melbourne's war memorial, the Shrine of Remembrance, the views of the city are breathtaking. While the cityscape from this perspective is dominated by skyscrapers rising above Victorian-era boulevards, Mr. Greenaway's projects are subtle and intimate at ground level.
Mr Greenaway said his aim was to create places “coded with meaning, but never ostentatious” and to “embed a layer in Melbourne's urban fabric that gave First Nations Peoples agency”.
Asked about his future ambitions, he said: “My hope really is that through our practice we have charted a new direction around design equity, to ensure that the voice of the voiceless is normalized within design practice in Australia. but also beyond. It starts now, but we have to keep the momentum going.”