HOUSE BUILDING AND MATERIALITY

Thinking about 'properness' and  proverb that goes "the proper way is that straight and narrow path that leads all the way to the land of mediocrity" it is not all that hard to imagine that the speculative 'houses' that Australians are expected to 'invest' in and make HOMEplaces are increasingly less fit-for-purpose than they ever might have been.

Indeed that 3RDlittlePIG's fabled BRICKhouse has undergone some cost cutting and is mostly built inside-out, over engineered and is hard to heat and difficult cool. Yet BUILDINGstandards have this underlying expectation that each and every one as a NEWbuild should last say three to four generation on the land upon which bit is built. 

Likewise, they must be able to withstand all kinds calamitous events. The TRICKLEdown being , that the default position that too many planners and Planning Authorities adopt is all to do with status quoism and what that delivers to them. And, then there is the spectre of CUTcorner BUILDINGdesigners – not architects by necessity however – which tends to mitigate against developments current understandings of 'construction materials', more relevant construction methods and contemporaneous CULTURALlandscaping and placedness.

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By way of contrast, all Pacific Islands by 20th C had been colonised with their indigenous populations variously deemed to be primitive, savages, noble savages, even ignoble savages. The indigenous architecture was likewise somewhat disparaged  – if considered 'architecture' at all. That was/is so albeit that these shelters'  placedness was quite 'enlightened' and that it fitted the local circumstance and whatever the local 'placedness' was/is plus the  geography and CULTURALlandscape quite well. 

As mentioned earlier, it turns out that in regional Vanuatu villagers are returning to their traditional 'building practices' because albeit somewhat ephemeral they provide safer and more amenable accommodation. The 'cement block and tin structures' that patronising Eurocentric 'missionaries' et al persuaded them that they were superior to what had served them very well for eons turned out to rather dangerous in a cyclone. Solid brick walls blew over and flying TINrooves can be, and have been, lethal. Moreover, the traditional structures that villagers depended upon, made of bamboo, in a cyclone out performed the imported so-called enlightened technology and everything needed was at hand and free. It is story that is repeating itself throughout the Pacific [LINK]. 

There is no value in the belief that there’s no particular virtue in doing things they way they’ve always been done except when the NEWways on offer turns out to be expensive and not as safe as the OLDways.

In Fiji an Australian, Peter Drysdale, has been building houses as a solution to the problem of growing squatter settlements to accomodate people suffering from the loss of their homes due to cyclones. His solution was Koroipita – AKA Peter's Village – and he played a role in every aspect of its development, including its ability to withstand cyclonic conditions. While this housing is fulfilling a real need it seems to lack the amenity and placedness the village life they no longer have.

Koroipita is just outside Fiji's second biggest city, Lautoka, an it 'shelters' some of the country's poorest people. Despite their disadvantages, residents live in homes designed to withstand powerful storms, at a cost of only $1 a day. Peter Drysdale, has  built more than 160 houses since he arrived in Fiji as a young man to work in forestry before building hundreds of houses for people left destitute by cyclones. Fiji has about 110,000 people squatting.

Links  [1] - [2] - [3] - [4] - [5]

Australia is not short of calamitous events that have left thousands of people without housing and it seems that when they strike governments find the possibility of looking for better ways to house and home people too hard. Also, finding innovative ways forward seems just that little bit out of reach. Looking back at Darwin's Cyclone Tracy 1974 sounds some alarms albeit that 40 plus years on the city functions as well as most cities despite everything.  

In Darwin and elsewhere in the Northern Territory to this day there is another CULTURALlandscape and sensibility that sits alongside the assumed dominant Eurocentric colonised, peri-colonial CULTURALlandscape that challenges its assumed dominance. The people known as LONGgrassers [LINK] [LINK] coexist outside the urban environment . Essentually, these people are imagined as living 'private lives in public places' and this is where the contentiousness begins. Add into the mix the notions of 'Crown Land' and 'traditional ownership' and the contest turns into a kind of TURFwarfare where there it will be unlikely that there can ever be a 'winner'. However, a mutual accommodation might be achievable with better understandings.

In the 'investment driven sensibility' and MINDset there are threats and dangers and in the CULTURALlandscape occupied by LONGgrassers there is a placedness affords a sense of security, safety and a space where, if needs be, a transitory HOMEplace  'gunya' might be  welcomed.

 

It seems that the Westernised FIRSTworld in the aftermath of colonialism somehow cannot acknowledge the impoverishing vectors that come with the attempt to transplant an 'ideologically enlightened' cultural into another where its 'placedness' offers quite different opportunities and a preexisting CULTURALlandscape with CULTURALrealities that predate their own elsewhere.

Interestingly Launceston on Tamar UK and Launceston on kamalukaTAMAR offers a rather poignant exemplar here. Launceston Tasmania's predisposition to celebrate its colonial 'heritage' comes loaded with irony given the richness and fecundity of the pre-colonial CULTURALlanscape populated as it was by people with an ongoing cultural reality that is among the oldest, if not the oldest, on the planet. To have that concept challenged by a city planner has a certain irony not to mention the 'terra nullius' idea seemingly informing the assertion [Pers Com circa 2019] well, there is something to be gleaned from the sensibility on display.

Like geographic locations all over the nation there are people for all kinds of reasons who are unable or unwilling to maintain or embrace the assumed common denominator one-size-fits-all mainstream pri-colonial housing MINDset. Many will be HUMbugged by 'the authorities' on this or that premise. Most often the possibility of living a private life in a public place will be vigorously contested and mostly because governments essentially exist to maintain the status quo given all that the decision makers have invested in it.