 | RADARLANDSCAPE CATHERIN BULL HAS JUST PUBLISHED THE FIRST OVERVIEW OF AUSTRALIAN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. JULIAN RAXWORTHY REVIEWS THE VOLUME AND SUGGESTS FURTHER RESEARCH DIRECTIONS TO BUILD ON THIS WORK.
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Forest Gallery, Melbourne Museum, by Taylor
Cullity Lethlean. Photograph Ben Wrigley.
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The old
slipway at Longnose Point, Sydney, by Bruce
Mackenzie and Associates. Photograph Peter Bennetts.
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Darling Harbour. Cabbage tree palms under the
Western Distributor.
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Amphitheatre and jetty at
Burrogi Point, Sydney, by Craig Burton. Photographs
Peter Bennetts.
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FOR AUSTRALIAN landscape
architecture, the relationship between design
projects and their indigenous setting has
long been the most significant (and often,
only) intellectual question. This preoccupation
was best put by Bruce Mackenzie, one of the
main innovators in the industry, in 1966
when he noted “a unique opportunity exists
for achieving a cohesive and powerful theme
for landscape design throughout this country
by realising and promoting the potential of
the indigenous environment”. Since that
time, most celebrated landscape projects
have attempted in some way to address this
challenge. Harmony and appropriateness
have become the twentieth-century
Australian equivalent of “taste” in eighteenthcentury
discourse on the Picturesque.
Catherin Bull’s recent book New
Conversations with an Old Landscape brings
together a range of projects that address this
preoccupation. It is also the first major
collection of Australian landscape
architecture projects in book form –
something that local landscape architecture
culture has been waiting a long time for. This
puts a tremendous pressure on the book: as
the first of its kind it must be comprehensive,
while also articulating its own curatorial
intention of documenting projects with a very
specific type of relationship to places.
Considering the significance of this book,
Bull is undoubtedly the person to have
written it. She is a major figure in the
establishment of corporate landscape
architecture practice in this country, notably
through EBC (with Robin Edmond and Noel
Corkery, which, much later, became the
landscape section of Hassell). She has been
an academic with UNSW, QUT and now holds
the Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Chair of
Landscape Architecture at the University of
Melbourne. Bull is the academic as far as
many landscape practitioners are concerned,
and she has been both an active participant
in, and a keen observer of, the development
of landscape architecture in this country.
Beautifully illustrated with photographs by
Peter Bennetts, the book documents a range
of projects that engage with both specific
places and general environmental notions.
Bull’s proposition that the “interplay between
human use and natural process is
fundamental to landscape quality” provides
the rhetorical device of “the conversation” through which these projects are discussed,
itself an interesting notion. Establishing the
framework for the book, Bull asks if
“Australians [are] capable of making and
living with designed landscapes that respond
more directly to the essential qualities of the
places they inhabit” – a question that mirrors
Mackenzie’s concerns 25 years earlier.
This framework suggests that there is an
inherent trajectory or intention within the
discipline. However, one might also broaden
this conversation and consider other
trajectories. For example, there is an
evolving, increasingly rich body of work
reflecting cosmopolitan and lateral
responses to diverse sites, briefs and users
that have nothing to do with Australia as an
emblematic ideology. Nonetheless, this work
is very Australian in approach – it is perhaps
more about how we do things than what is
actually done.
Interpretations of “Australian-ness” pervade the projects selected and seem to
provide the content of the “conversations” Bull alludes to. Yet this is not directly
discussed as a cultural phenomenon,
instead the book privileges empirical
ecological solutions. As a result, the
projects often appear didactic rather than
having the dynamic interplay that one would
expect from a compelling dialogue.
When reading the book, it is sometimes
difficult to balance the responsibility to
cover the breadth of significant projects
(incumbent on it as the first book of its
type), with its environmental focus. For
example, although projects that attempt to
remediate or negotiate a zone between the
urban and the bush are discussed, many
important urban projects are missing
because they do not fit the environmental
agenda. Examples include the work of Ron
Jones and the City of Melbourne, the
building setting projects of Patterson +
Pettus (now EDAW, Melbourne) and the
civic design/public art collaborations of
Oculus in Sydney. While these projects are
not about the overt Australian-ness of the
bush, they do cut directly to a conversation
of why and how we choose to live in cities
on the coast. This is not simply about the
environment, but also about a rich cultural
and social life. The urban projects are
important as they are part of an interest in
the idea of “the urban” that developed in the
1980s and 1990s. This provided a welcome
tonic to the relentlessness of the bush for
landscape architecture, in the same way that
multiculturalism in provided a refuge from a
pre-occupation with Australian-ness in the
general culture. Indeed, there is something
quite colonial about landscape architecture’s
fascination with “the bush” – I get the sense
that if we were comfortable in this country
we would just get on and do stuff.
The language in which Bull conducts her
conversation is broad and inclusive,
suggesting that this book is a general
audience as well as the industry itself.
Correspondingly, the book acts as advocate
for, and exponent of, landscape architecture.
This means that while it articulates the
discipline’s broad paradigms, it often ignores
the internal discussions and disputes that
have allowed the discipline to gain its relative
contemporary richness. The most notable
absence is a discussion of the role of design,
which has consistently been sidelined to the
environmental agenda.
Similarly, the book notes general, wellacknowledged
international influences on
the development of the country’s colonial
landscape (such as the Picturesque) but it
does not discuss contemporary influences
from American Modernism. These
influences have helped shape the
conversations about conservation, outdoor
living, site planning, as well as formal
language and many of the projects covered,
such as the freeway work at Darling
Harbour, directly result from the influence of
international key practitioners (Lawrence
Halprin, in that case). However, this
dimension of has been left out of Bull’s
account in favour of an immaculate and
self-contained local angle.
The conversation in American landscape
architecture mirrors that in Australia. As
colonial cousins, a cross-critique could
enrich our understanding of what is unique
about our approach, in the same way that
comparisons between the Australian and
American “Frontier” have been important in
understanding our development history.
A consideration of these issues,
combined with a discussion of the lineage
and evolution of practices (the subject of
Andrew Saniga’s forthcoming doctorate),
would add much to our knowledge of the
culture of Australian landscape architecture.
Like all historical documentation and
discussion, each discussion of landscape
architecture represents a threshold of
sophistication upon which successive
histories will build, until we develop a
seriously rich and diverse understanding of
our history. In fairness, any book that is the
first of its type can never hit all the marks.
The existence of this book is a marvellous
thing for Australian landscape architecture
and others will be able to build on it. It
documents, finally, some important projects,
notably those of Bruce Mackenzie. However,
25 years on from Mackenzie’s challenge, it
might be worth considering if it is still
something we should be plagued by.
JULIAN RAXWORTHY IS A LECTURER IN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AT RMIT UNIVERSITY.
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