Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemBeneath the veneer : negotiating British and colonial Australian relationships in Queensland domestic interiors, 1880-1901( 2012)Australian histories of design have largely characterised furnished interiors as passive imitations of European models, with Australia seen as marginalised by time and distance, and lacking in agency from the centres of international design. These interpretations have over-shadowed a range of cultural meanings attached to furnishings at this time. The examination of the discourse of design, business trade and consumer choice on furniture in this thesis, using the case study of Queensland in the late nineteenth century, exposed the dynamic co-dependent relationship between Britain and the Australian colonies, where issues around the materials and making of furniture figured prominently in the construction of colonial identity. Using a wide range of primary source material, including furnishing guides, trade journals and catalogues, parliamentary debates and inventories, the study showed that colonial Australians used their knowledge of the material and cultural aspects of furnishing acquired from British-based texts to maintain the overall appearance of British genteel middle-class interiors. Colonial Australians faced contested local issues around climate, local materials, race and labour relations, which saw colonial loyalty divided between Britain and their local industries. In response, they adopted new construction and branding techniques to subtlety distinguish locally made items from British ones based on native timbers, their functional performance and the employment of local European labour, rather than their visible aesthetic design. This thesis contributes further context for Australian interiors, and argues that the inclusion of more detailed business histories for objects designed for global consumption, such as domestic furniture, are required understand the subtle transfers of cultural meaning between imperial powers and settler nations which change over time. Ultimately, a combination of locally made and imported items and practices observable in different rooms of the home reflected the composite or hybrid nature of an emerging colonial Australian identity. Issues of materials and labour revealed agency on the part of colonies, which has hitherto been obscured by an over-reliance on surviving images of complete interiors and single nation studies. This is to certify that: - the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD except where indicated in the Preface; - due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used; - the thesis is less than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices.
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ItemImpersonal effects : architecture, Deleuze, subjectivity( 2007)This thesis imagines and articulates an image of architectural subjectivity in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Subjectivity for Deleuze does not refer to a person but is rather a power to act and to produce effects in the world. Deleuze in fact tends not to use the word subjectivity, speaking instead of what he calls prepersonal singularities, meaning those irreducible qualities or powers that can be seen to act in the world, independently of any particular person with fixed traits. To walk, to see, to love-these are general or anonymous capacities that function in a very real sense prior to the personological subject. Singular, here, does not mean specific or rare, but the reverse: the function "to sleep" or "to laugh" is singular for Deleuze because "a sleep" always retains a certain abstractness and `impersonality,' no matter who sleeps. For Deleuze, the world is composed of so many singularities, which together resonate silently towards a mystery of something yet to come; this primary field of a pure encounter transcends formed identities and things. The `subject' is understood therefore not primarily as identity but as a convergence of singularities immanent to the encounter. While to speak of the `subject' in these terms-to rid oneself of identity-is a difficult thing, we might say architecture is already such a singular encounter and deindividualisation of self. There is, as soon as I step into a room, a street, or a town, a palpable mystery of the singularity "to walk inside," "to see an unfamiliar street"; each echoing and anticipating in that moment every other instance, past and future, of this primitive encounter. It is an anonymous sense of a primary production that lies beyond the individual, spatio-temporal experience I call "mine." To encounter, then, does not mean an in-between, a space between persons and concrete forms; rather, it is an event that comes before the crystallisation of these things, it is the abstract surface of all singularities. I will call architectural singularities the impersonal effects, to think the inchoate, not-yet determined fragments of architectural encounter (these I oppose to the `personal' effects of identity, such as a watch, a wallet, a cigarette case). I use "effect" in Deleuze's sense of production, in which the effect is not ephemeral, an effect of something more primary, but is in itself a primary production, an effect that works, and creates. The project here is to express, by architectural means, the image of effects. Image, here, does not mean a representation, such as a photograph or a media image, but refers to a live "arrangement" of effects. What individuates an image is precisely the mode in which it causes the effects to proliferate. I begin the project with an account of Deleuze's reception in the American architectural academy, so as to reveal the historical conditions that make Deleuze's theory of subjectivity important now. Chapter Two introduces the concept of the effect and the architectural formulation that functions in the dissertation; Chapter Three extends this work in the effects-image; Chapter Four turns to Guattari's reception in Japan, and what I observe to be a pursuit after the effects-image in Guattari's encounter with architecture; finally in Chapter Five I explore the psychoanalytic lining of Guattari's project, further engaging the working of the effects-image.
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ItemCommunity struggles for land in Jakarta( 2004)In Jakarta, kampung settlements have provided access to urban land and housing for a large part of the population. Some kampung settlements have been integrated and part of the city through the granting of administrative status. However, for residents in particular kampung settlements continuing to live in their kampungs has been a struggle because of the constraints imposed on them by the state. The fall of the New Order government in May 1998 marked the beginning of the reformasi era, and with new hope for better governance and democracy. Nevertheless, there seems to be a growing movement of kampung communities led by NGOs struggling for their right to the city. This dissertation is concerned with the struggles of kampun communities how they have evolved under the changing social and political changes in the reformasi era. It argues that the kampung communities' claims to lands were essential in gaining their social rights as citizens, and that the success of the outcomes depended on their ability to seize political opportunities. Through fieldwork in two kampungs, Kelurahan Kebon Kosong and Kampun Penas Tanggul, the research showed the complexities of power relations in land resulting from weak land management by the state. The distinction between legality and illegality is unclear, and depends on the social attitudes and relations between. the residents and government officials. The analysis of the findings showed the importance of the communities' claims on land and how they are related to gaining their social rights as citizens. The success of gaining claims to land depended on the empowerment of the community, which includes understanding their rights to land evolving from a locally based struggle to a network-based struggle with other kampung communities in Jakarta. The role of NGOs was crucial in the empowerment process, as well as in building strategic alliances with government officials. However, despite the change in the reformasi era that opened up opportunities for greater participation in development, the process is dependent on the response of the state, which unfortunately, is still trapped in the ways of the New Order government. These findings show the necessity of acknowledging the diversity of legality and illegality of land tenure at the kampung level, and finding alternative tenure arrangements for kampung settlements that are more feasible than individual land titles, yet could provide long-term certainty for the residents. The empowerment of kampung communities demonstrates the creation of a stronger civil society that could play a larger role in local land management. However, the major barriers have been the unaccountability of the state and the reluctance of state officials to open the door to wider participation. Without these changes, there is no doubt that any policy to improve security of tenure will fail.
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ItemSex and the slum : imperialism and gender in nascent town planning, Australia and New Zealand, 1914-1919( 2003)This thesis explores early 20th century town planning discourse in two of Britain's dominions, Australia and New Zealand. It uses the first national town planning conferences held in Australia and New Zealand (1917, 1918 and 1919) as a vehicle for examining themes of imperialism and gender within town planning discourse. In both dominions, women had a visible presence and an increasing voice in the nascent town planning movement. The women planning advocates were predominantly middle-class, they supported the continuation of women's traditional domestic role and they celebrated women's position as the `mothers of the race'. They wanted improved housing standards in order that women could undertake their important work of mothering to better effect. Similarly, they wanted more extensive kindergarten and playground facilities in order to shape and mould the citizens of tomorrow. But more than this, the women who took the most active role in the Australian and New Zealand town planning conferences were imperialist, win-the-war loyalist and in some cases even militarist. It was the imperial race that was at stake. The term `planning's imperial aspect' has been used by others to describe the initiatives of imperial powers in exporting town planning to their colonies and dominions. However, in view of the Australian and New Zealand enthusiasm for importing town planning, and the extent to which Australian and New Zealand planning advocates promoted town planning in terms of its potential to benefit the imperial race, this thesis expands the usage of the term to encompass colonial/dominion initiatives in importing town planning from the relevant imperial power, in this case from Britain. The thesis shows that in early 20th century Australia and New Zealand, the activities of women planning advocates clearly demonstrate planning's imperial aspect. This is because the women recognised the particular plasticity of children's bodies and minds and the consequent opportunities that infancy and youth provided for the instillation of middle-class values and behavioural norms, and thus focused their attention on the sites and activities that had the greatest potential to positively modify the fitness, health and morality of children - the imperial soldiers, workers, wives and mothers of tomorrow.
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ItemAustralian flats : a comparison of Melbourne and Sydney flat developments in the interwar period( 1998)The differences between the architecture of flats in Melbourne with flats built in Sydney during the 1920s and 1930s, suggests that these differences were manifest by factors in addition to topography. This study compares the development of architectural forms and expression in the two cities, discussing them in relation to concepts of architectural regionalism and modernism. The planning and urban redevelopment contexts result in differences in number, location, building height, lot size, site coverage, flat size, image, lifestyle and modern technology.
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ItemIranian modernity: its expression in the daily life of public spaces in Tehran( 2009)The thesis investigates how modernity is manifest in the public spaces of post-Revolutionary Tehran. Contemporary everyday life and interactions were investigated in three types of public spaces (park, street, square) in suburban and urban areas that had been developed during the two periods of modernization associated with the two Pahlavi reigns and after the Revolution. Modernization and modernity are explored as they relate to cities, public spaces and everyday life. First the effects of different stages of modernization on social and spatial structures in European and north-American cities are investigated including changing community relations and the division of cities into the urban and suburban realms. The way public spaces are transformed from places of socialization to realms of spectacle, commodity and control via different planning ideas are also considered, along with the relative lack of theory on suburban environments and parks. Theories that focus on the way different ways in which public spaces are regulated by physical, institutional and socio-cultural frames and how users respond and resist these through their everyday life practices and interactions by using different tactics and the activity of walking provide a particular focus. After reviewing the literature and Tehran's socio-spatial transformation since its connection to the global economy in the pre- and post-Revolutionary periods, a theoretical framework is established that weaves together concepts from cultural studies, environmental-behaviour, psychology, sociology and structural and post-structural theory. A case study method is then applied, using that framework to provide the criteria for evaluation, contrasting and comparing the three types of spaces (streets, squares and parks) in central city areas and a middle class suburb designed by French consultants in 1951. The findings suggest that daily interactions in both contexts are framed by regulations and rationalities that differ from the forces of instrumental rationality, surveillance and commodification described in the literature of modernity and everyday life. Different groups defined across lines of age, gender and access to power, use different tactics to negotiate space. The provision of a diverse range of user settings supports an equally diverse range of uses and demographics with interaction mediated spatially by behaviour settings, policing, temporal negotiation and the practice of civility. The dichotomies that are prevalent in the literature such as the urban/suburban appeared less significant here, as both contexts have experienced increasing intensification, commodification and migration. Differences between the two contexts were however, revealed in terms of: 1 - Communal activities and neighbourhood identity, with these more strongly manifest in the suburban cases; 2 - Major users/walkers and rhythms of activities, with more females, elderly and youths observed interacting in the suburban cases; 3 - Parks support deeper levels of interaction amongst users and a greater variety of uses than streets and squares which are the focus of flanerie activity. Although they use a rational design, the spaces in the suburban site designed by the French planners using a combination of urban typologies (parks, squares and boulevards), have been remarkably resilient/robust through time. They provide spaces of local meaning and encourage more traditional forms of activity, association and civility in a non-traditional urban environment by including traditional forms and elements such cul-de-sacs. Rather than the predicted displacement or replacement that accompanies modernisation, the co-existence of modern and local traditions was evident here, suggesting an evolving form of specifically 'Iranian' modernity. The findings also reveal a city of social complexity that differs from the simplified image projected by global geo-politics. Everyday life practices, apparently based on both resistance to and communication of both local and global culture, accommodate the paradoxes embedded in the juxtaposition of Iranian, Islamic and modern culture.