Postcards from the edge: A critical reading of representations of the interior in Australian landscape architecture

Abstract

The arid interior of Australia has been conceptualized as the site of a barren wasteland in need of ‘improvement’, a place of symbolic sacrifice by European-Australian culture to the archetypal interior, a powerful symbol of the ‘other’, and a source of Australian authenticity. Since 2001, a number of key public projects located in Australia’s capital cities have sought to represent and refer to the landscape of the interior through landscape design. This paper explores two such projects for how the profession of landscape architecture has applied the narratives of the Australian interior. These projects openly reflect the fact that European-Australian culture remains typically estranged from the landscapes of Australia’s interior_a situation that has implications for the way landscape architecture deals with the drying of Australia’s fertile fringes and engages with indigenous culture.

• Australia
• Australian interior
• indigeneity
• colonialism

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Richard Weller who supervised the research which formed the first section one of this paper. Thanks to Taylor Cullity Lethlean and Ashton Raggatt McDougall for providing imagery. Finally, thanks to the reviewers of earlier drafts of this paper for their constructive and insightful comments.

Notes

1 For example Bull 2002, Lee 2011, Mossop 2006, Saniga 2012, and Sinatra and Murphy 1997.

2 For example Bull 2002 and Mossop 2006.

3 Examples for the National Museum included Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin, Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, and Jackson Pollock’s painting Blue Poles (Gelernter 1996: 286).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Julian Bolleter

Julian Bolleter is an assistant professor at the Australian Urban Design Research Centre at the University of Western Australia, where he teaches a Master’s programme in urban design and conducts research and design projects. He is a landscape architect and urban designer and has worked in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Middle East. He completed a PhD on landscape architectural practice in Dubai and has published three books: Made in Australia: The Future of Australian Cities (with Richard Weller), Take Me to the River: A History of Perth’s Foreshore and Scavenging the Suburbs.