FIRST NATION BUILDING

“THERE ARE ALSO A HUGE NUMBER OF PROJECTS THAT INTERFACE WITH INDIGENOUS CULTURE, SO THERE’S NOW AN ACTUAL TANGIBLE NEED FOR INDIGENOUS PEOPLE TO BE CONTRIBUTING INTO THIS SPACE.” – JEFA GREENAWAY

Hosted on the Yalukit Willam land of the Boon Wurrung people, in a leafy clearing of Melbourne’s verdant Royal Botanic Gardens civic space MPavilion hosted BLAKitecture late last year, a public forum discussing how the architectural industry might respectfully embrace Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture at all levels of the design process.

It highlighted a striking fact: there are only five practising Indigenous architects in Australia. There’s a growing sense that unless we encourage more First Nations voices to join the architectural industry, becoming an active part of the country’s built future, we will be all the poorer for it.

RAISING VISIBILITY

One of the keynote speakers at the BLAKitecture event, Jefa Greenaway of Greenaway Architects has been a loud andIt aims to facilitate First Nations interactions with the design professions, including architecture, by increasing the visibility of Indigenous practitioners, highlighting a focus on people, place and purpose. It also challenges non-Indigenous architects and designers to be more engaged with our rich Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage.