The Co-construction of Spatial Memory

Abstract

While the disciplines of oral history and architectural history are beginning to engage with the expansive possibilities of oral testimony in relation to architecture, the question of how spatial memory operates in an interview is yet to receive thorough attention. Earlier approaches combining oral history and architecture tended to focus on interviewing architects. This research takes a different tack, interviewing workers about their experiences of working life and, in the process, discovering that these narratives often have strong spatial and architectural specificity. Interviews with former print workers about their memories of the NSW Government Printing Office in Sydney uncovered a wealth of spatial and architectural content embedded within the workers' recollections. The interview is also a site where meaning is made. Accordingly, this paper explores how, through oral history, a co-construction of spatial memory is produced between the interviewer and the interviewee, resulting in a mnemonic spatial reconstruction of architectural space. The results recover detailed accounts of much-loved fig trees, painted-on doors and dysfunctional woodblock floors, to name but a few. This method of charting architectural memories has important implications for how we interpret the architectural histories of oft-ignored institutional buildings, and it highlights disparities between “official” concepts related to modernist factory buildings and the lived experiences of workers.

Notes

^1. See, for example, John Peter, The Oral History of Modern Architecture: Interviews with the Greatest Architects of the Twentieth Century (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1994); Robert Proctor, “The Architect's Intention: Interpreting Post-War Modernism through the Architect Interview,” Journal of Design History 19, no. 4 (2006): 295–307.

^2. Arlene Oak, “Particularising the Past: Persuasion and Value in Oral History Interviews and Design Critiques,” Journal of Design History 19, no. 4 (2006): 345–56.

^3. UTS HREC Approval Ref No. 2011–285A. Between 2011 and 2013 I interviewed thirty-one former employees of the Gov, who had worked there from 1932 to 1989. While oral history conventions once stipulated that interviews ought to take place in quiet, neutral surroundings, my participants often preferred locations that were not so quiet or sterile. This included pubs with a proximity to the Gov's building – namely, the Lord Wolseley Hotel, Ultimo. When interviewing at the Lord Wolseley, the proximity of their former workplace gave those particular interviews a sense of spatial connectedness that enlivened particular recollections. Although it falls outside the scope of this article, the analysis of gender relations was a key part of the broader research project that I was engaged in. As a tertiary-educated younger woman, I found that some participants – particularly older men – would occasionally address me in a manner that might be construed as patronising or withheld details in deference to my gender. Throughout the duration of an interview, however, participants sometimes relaxed and became more open, once it became apparent that I was knowledgeable about the printing trade, their workplace and the building they had worked in. Sharing my knowledge of the names of places, people and technologies was a key part of earning the participants' trust.

^4. The building at 390–422 Harris Street housed the NSW Government Printing Office from 1959 until 1989. This article has emerged from a broader research and oral history project entitled “Precarious Printers”, undertaken between 2011 and 2014. The project focused on technological change and the culture of working life at the Government Printing Office between 1959 and 1989: a period of significant transformation and difficulty, both politically and technologically. From the late 1970s, hot-metal typesetting and letterpress began to be replaced by computerised phototypesetting and offset-lithography. The industrial interiors changed markedly, some becoming more like offices. In mid-1989, the institution was suddenly abolished, with only four weeks' notice – a decision made by the NSW Government under Premier Nick Greiner. Over 700 workers lost their jobs. The findings of “Precarious Printers” included a demonstration of the significance of material culture and spatial dynamics in developing insights into workers' creative and adaptive responses to technological change and workplace upheaval.

^5. Graham Brooks & Associates, Heritage Assessment: Government Printing Office and AML&F Site (Sydney: City West Development Corporation, 1998), 35–36.

^6. Cobden Parkes, “Unpublished Memoirs” (State Library of NSW, Sydney, MLMSS 8622 Box 1, 1973), 192; “Modern Government Printing Office Nearing Completion,” Sydney Morning Herald, 7 January 1958, 11. The problem was so acute that Parkes travelled to the United Kingdom in 1950 to research alternative building materials.

^7. Gaston Bachelard, La Poétique de l'Espace (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994 [1958]), 3–7; also quoted in Joyce M. Malnar and Frank Vodvarka, “Spatial Constructs,” in Sensory Design (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 15–18.

^8. Maurice Halbwachs, Space and the Collective Memory, trans. F. J. Ditter Jr. & V. Y. Ditter (New York: Harper & Row, 1980 [1950]). 128–56; Paul Ricœur, “The Documentary Phase: Archived Memory,” in Memory, History and Forgetting (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 147–53; Bachelard, La Poétique de l'Espace, 3–10.

^9. Malnar and Vodvarka, “Spatial Constructs,” 3.

^10. Juhani Pallasmaa, “Space, Place, Memory and Imagination: The Temporal Dimension of Existential Space,” in Spatial Recall: Memory in Architecture and Landscape, ed. Marc Treib (New York and London: Routledge, 2009), 17.

^11. Halbwachs, Space and the Collective Memory.

^12. Halbwachs, Space and the Collective Memory, 140.

^13. Ricœur, “The Documentary Phase,” 148–53.

^14. Ricœur, “The Documentary Phase,” 150–53.

^15. Ricœur, “The Documentary Phase,” 150–53.

^16. Pallasmaa, “Space, Place, Memory and Imagination,” 27.

^17. Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History, 2nd ed. (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1988 [1978]), 68.

^18. Paula Hamilton, “The Knife Edge: Debates About Memory and History,” in Memory and History in Twentieth Century Australia, eds. Kate Darian Smith and Paula Hamilton (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994), 14–15.

^19. Oak, “Particularising the Past,” 345–56; Linda Sandino, “Oral Histories and Design: Objects and Subjects,” Journal of Design History 19, no. 4 (2006): 279; Ralph Samuel, “Perils of the Transcript,” in The Oral History Reader, eds. Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson (London: Routledge, 1998), 389–92; John Shields, “Working Life and the Voice of Memory: An Introduction,” in All Our Labours: Oral Histories of Working Life in Twentieth Century Sydney, ed. John Shields (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1992), 3.

^20. Siobhan McHugh, “The Aerobic Art of Interviewing,” Asia Pacific Media Educator 18 (2007): 147–54.

^21. Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 1998), 3–4.

^22. Shields, “Working Life and the Voice of Memory,” 3; Alistair Thomson, “Fifty Years On: An International Perspective on Oral History,” Journal of American History 85, no. 2 (1998): 584.

^23. Richard C. Peck, NSW Government Printers and Inspectors of Stamps (Sydney: self-published, 2001), 9, 23; G. Powell, “Tickets by the Hundred Million,” Sydney Morning Herald, 28 June 1958, 7; William Applegate Gullick, History of the Government Printing Office (Sydney: New South Wales Government Printing Office, 1916), 3–5; Anon., “The Old Government Printing Office,” Staff Journal 1, no. 1 (1947): 3.

^24. Gullick, History of the Government Printing Office, 3–5; “Government Printing Office – Inadequate and Ill-ventilated,” Sydney Morning Herald, 15 September 1911, 5.

^25. George Larden, interview by author, 14 March 2013.

^26. Victor Gunther, interview by author, 15 August 2012.

^27. Victor Gunther, interview by author, 15 August 2012; Ray Utick, interview by author, 13 November 2012; George Larden, interview by author, 14 March 2013.

^28. Peck, NSW Government Printers, 43, 47; “Government Printing Office – Inadequate and Ill-ventilated,” 5; NSW Government Printing Office, Annual Reports to the Public Service Board (NSW State Records, GPO General Correspondence Files, 18/2051, 1949–59); Victor C. N. Blight, “Address at the Opening of the NSW Government Printing Office,” Staff Journal 12, no. 1 (March 1959): 4–6.

^29. Parkes, ‘Unpublished Memoirs,’ 150.

^30. Casey & Lowe Associates, Archaeological Assessment: GPO/AML&F Sites, Harris & Pyrmont Streets, Ultimo (Sydney: City West Development Corporation, 1998), 13.

^31. George Bryant, interview by author, 28 September 2012.

^32. Arthur H. Pettifer, New Government Printing Office New South Wales (promotional pamphlet) (Sydney: NSW Government Printing Office, 1957); Peck, NSW Government Printers, 43, 47.

^33. City of Sydney Archives: 390–422 Harris St Ultimo, File no. 0034/51; Letter from C. E. Jenkins to the County Clerk, Cumberland City Council (City of Sydney Archives, 390–422 Harris St Ultimo, file no. 337/56, 26 April 1956).

^34. Pettifer, New Government Printing Office, 8; “New Printing Office Cost £2.5m,” Sydney Morning Herald, 24 February 1959, 25; Peter Tyler, “Building for the Future,” in Humble and Obedient Servants: The Administration of New South Wales, Vol. 2 1901–1960 (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press and NSW State Records, 2006), 202; Peter Reynolds “Parkes, Cobden (1892–1978),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 2000), visited 26 June 2012, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/parkes-cobden-11342/text20257. As Government Architect, Parkes was also known to give free reign to staff architect E. H. Rembert. It remains unclear who exactly designed the building; collaborative work and anonymity was the lot of a government architect.

^35. “Ceramic Veneer Facing,” Sydney Morning Herald, 24 February 1959, 25.

^36. Ray Utick, interview by author, 13 November 2012.

^37. Government Printer VCN Blight wrote to the Secretary of Public Works complaining that the building was, in fact, still incomplete (NSW State Records B Files, Series 4351, Item B1596/3, file no. 10/3030, 3 May 1960).

^38. “Premier Opens Printing Office,” Sydney Morning Herald, 24 February 1959, 11; “New Printing Office Cost £2.5m,” 25; “Office is 118 Years Old,” Sydney Morning Herald, 24 February 1959, 27; “Service for Citizen's Lifetime,” Sydney Morning Herald, 24 February 1959, 26; “No Hitches in Big Removal,” Sydney Morning Herald, 24 February 1959, 26; “New Plant Cuts Costs,” Sydney Morning Herald, 24 February 1959, 26.

^39. Alan Leishman, interview by author, 28 October 2011.

^40. “New Printing Office Cost £2.5m,” 25.

^41. Bob Law, interview by author, 27 February 2012.

^42. Terry Hagenhofer, interview by author, 5 December 2011.

^43. Sandra Elizabeth Stringer, interview by author, 17 October 2012.

^44. Philip James, personal communication with author, 1 October 2013.

^45. Letter from R. A. Johnson, Printing Industry Employees' Union of Australia (PIEUA), to the Under Secretary and Comptroller of Accounts, NSW Treasury, 30 November 1959, NSW State Records, B Files, Series 4351, item B1596/3, File no. 10/3030.

^46. Lindsay Somerville, interview by author, 15 December 2011.

^47. Norm Rigney, interview by author, 30 January 2012.

^48. Pallasmaa, “Space, Place, Memory and Imagination,” 28.

^49. Pallasmaa, “Space, Place, Memory and Imagination,” 36.

^50. “Printers' Office Paved in Blocks,” Sydney Morning Herald, 1 September 1958, 39.

^51. Alan Leishman, interview by author, 28 October 2011.

^52. Graeme Murray, interview by author, 9 September 2011.

^53. Hurked: slang for vomited.

^54. Norm Rigney, interview by author, 30 January 2012.

^55. Neil Lewis, interview by author, 17 January 2012.

^56. George Woods, interview by author, 21 February 2012.

^57. Don West, interview by author, 12 September 2012.

^58. Pettifer, New Government Printing Office; “Sydney Improved, says Government Architect,” Sydney Morning Herald, 1 August 1958, 5.

^59. Parkes, ‘Unpublished Memoirs,’ 162; “NSW Minister's Tour,” Sydney Morning Herald, 22 December 1938, 11; “To Investigate Hospitals Abroad, NSW Health Minister on Way to London,” The Advertiser, 3 March 1939, 26.

^60. Parkes and Fitzsimons visited Hamburg, Berlin, Potsdam and Dresden in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II.

^61. Herbert P. Fitzsimons, Report of Inquiries and Investigations Made into Health and Hospital Administration During a Visit to the United Kingdom, Europe, Canada and the United States of America (Sydney: NSW Ministry for Health, 1940).

^62. The plans of the Government Printing Office building are available on microfilm with the NSW Department of Finance and Services.

^63. NSW Government Printing Office, Annual Report to the Public Service Board (NSW State Records, NSW GPO General Correspondence Files, 18/2051, 1947).

^64. Radoslaw Poczykowski, “Hand-drawn Memory – How to Read a Mental Map?” in Cartographies of Culture: Memory, Space, Representation, eds. Wojciech Kalaga and Marzena Kubisz (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2010), 42–45; Peter Gould and Rodney White, “The Images of Places,” in Mental Maps (Middlesex and Baltimore: Pelican Books, 1974), 15–50. The process of mapping memories has also been used in indigenous oral histories, see Maria Nugent, “Mapping Memories: Oral History in Aboriginal Cultural Heritage in New South Wales, Australia,” in Oral History and Public Memories, eds. Paula Hamilton and Linda Shopes (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), 47–64.

^65. Pseudonym.