Indigenising the Built Environment in Australia
Connecting First Nations Communities, Country and the built environment sector
This project aims explore the efficacy of First Nations specific performance criteria in architecture and its role in activating greater cultural competency and agency for First Nations representatives and issues in the built environment in Australia.
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This project investigates the Architects Accreditation Council of Australia’s (AACA) National Standard of Competency for Architects 2021 (NSCA). This document details performance criteria for schools of architecture and practitioners in Australia. Carefully developed by the Australian Institute of Architects First Nations Advisory Group and Cultural Reference Panel, the AACA introduced Country and First Nations Communities and Cultures as core components to learning and practice implementation. This Indigenous-led research project will investigate the efficacy of these performance criteria through interactions with key stakeholders. The objective of the interactions is to collect critical information that can inform future iterations of the National Standard of Competency for Architects and provide important observations for the profession in 2024, 2025, 2026, and beyond.
The project will explore the National Standard of Competency for Architects, the key document for accreditation of architecture schools, graduates of architecture aiming to register as an architect, and annual requirements for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for architects in practice. The inclusion of broader First Nations Community representatives and practitioners in architecture and allied disciplines will provide vital commentary on the NSCA 2021. While there is currently little dedicated research information collection across a longitudinal study for the NSCA 2021 relative to the Country and First Nations Communities and Cultures specific performance criteria (FNPC), there is a broader AACA survey that touches on the performance criteria. This project will fill gaps in knowledge through a rigorous research process and activate new knowledge from an Online Survey, Group and One-on-One semi-structured Yarning Workshops to provide a rich dataset and evidence base for professions in the built environment such as architecture and broader society.
This project will privilege Indigenous Research Methodologies to accompany the study of Country and First Nations Communities and Cultures in the NSCA. Principles of moral and cultural competency, cultural safety and respect are foregrounded by Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing. Key Indigenous Australian research propositions such as the “cultural interface” (Nakata 2007), “third space” (Mossman 2021), “Indigenous standpoint” (Martin & Mirraboopa 2003), and “Indigenist research” (Rigney 1999) will provide a framework within which to situate pertinent conversations in this study. The research will also look to the international Indigenous methodological scholarship of Tuhiwai Smith (2021) and Tuck (2013) to enact further capacity building outcomes for the team and for sharing with research participants and the Australian Research Council.
Through utilising an Indigenous Research Methodology, this project will be undertaken and allow for feedback to be received in a variety of ways that facilitate and promote cultural safety and inclusiveness. As the project involves research content relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities and Cultures, and Country, all processes will implement principles that align with the AIATSIS Code of Ethics 2020 and the NHMRC Research Principles.
For research project participants, participation will be voluntary and the project will obtain free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) in line with protocols and definitions outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 2007, the AIATSIS Code of Ethics 2020 and visible cultural protocols such as Terri Janke’s True Tracks (TT) methodology. The application of processes that respect Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property is a culturally specific methodology for research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Community individual participants. The project will apply these principles with non-Indigenous participants to ensure they are informed on processes that may impact their own capacity building when engaging with Indigenous participants in studies, research, teaching, work and advocacy in the future.
The built environment is understood as a constructed environment by humans as distinct from the natural environment. (GANSW, Connecting with Country Framework, 2023. 85)
This research has been approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC Reference No.: 2024/HE000335).
If you have concerns or complaints about the conduct of this research study, you may contact the Manager of Human Ethics Administration at the University of Sydney on +61 2 8627 8176 or by emailing human.ethics@sydney.edu.au.
The project will establish an Indigenising the Built Environment in Australia Steering Committee to ensure the ongoing governance and trajectory of the project is moving forward relative to its vision, objectives, methodologies and outcomes. Annual reviews will be undertaken with the Australian Research Council reporting on the progress of the project. In addition, an Indigenous Working Group will be established to review and provide feedback on cultural safety and provide comment on ongoing findings throughout the project delivery.
Since time immemorial, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures have thrived with the lands, waters and skies of the Australian continent. Ongoing continuing cultures of Country with many cultural practices have shaped, designed and created places to inhabit in connection with Country. The richness of this narrative exists yet has been disrupted in the context of British colonising practices of the late 1700s.
With the onset of the colonial Australian state, the architectural profession has emerged as a key actor in determining the expertise, norms, styles, and materials of its built environment. However, for much of this time, acknowledgement of, and engagement with, First Nations’ understandings of place have been significantly lacking in the architecture profession in Australia. Architects’ training in universities and the profession has largely followed Western norms, where land is detached from Country; clients are rarely First Nations groups; and methods in assessing site, materials, and designs exclude Traditional custodians and Indigenous groups.
This project focuses on the recent evolution of architectural education and practice in response to the First Nations Performance Criteria of the NSCA 2021. This has seen the gradual integration of First Nations knowledge systems in architecture that distinctly engage with Country, Local Communities and Cultures. Graduates of architecture and practitioners are now provided with the framework to structure learning and practices relationally with Country and First Nations Communities and Cultures.
While this change is a landmark shift for the Australian built environment university and professional domains in terms of inclusive practices in architecture, its implementation is complex and contested. There are many stories of architectural design processes and built environment interventions where First Nations Voices are heard but less than ideally implemented. For example, First Nations Community knowledge and wishes might be reduced and packaged within a tick-box ‘engagement’ process, curtailing more generative co-design. To provide a tight focus on this issue, the aim of this Research Project is to conduct targeted quantitative and qualitative research methods to explore and analyse the efficacy of the implementation of the 2021 NSCA FNPC in New South Wales.
First Nations Communities and Cultures have deep connections to place that extend up to 65,000 years in Australia and practiced placemaking (Memmott, 2007) and place-shaping (Gammage, 2011). These timeframes extend well beyond the British occupation of the Australian continent which commenced in 1770 with James Cook, the declaration of terra nullius and possession by the British Crown. Sydney was the main point of early contact between First Nations Australians and British colonisers; many of the journal records of colonisers confirm the connection between First Nations Australians and place, and the specific modes of their placemaking (Memmott and Page, 2021, Memmott, 2022; Karskens, 2020). First Nations peoples' knowledge of place and of the interconnected ecologies that are critically dependent upon one another in order to thrive in the varied environments of the Australian continent are part of place.
Recent scholarship and professional practice concerning First Nations’ conceptions of place and placemaking demonstrate the critical significance of these for architects and built environment professionals in applications pertaining to contemporary placemaking practices in Australia. The Government Architect New South Wales’s Connecting with Country Framework (GANSW, 2023) is a critical contribution to the discourse of the built environment in NSW, asserting the tremendous impact and potential for the implementation of First Nations’ principles and practices in built environment design across Australia. The inclusion of FNPC has seen preceding publications that highlight the reconnection of architecture and design with important Indigenous ontological considerations of place, language, story and custodianship.
The introduction of First Nations Performance Criteria in the NSCA 2021, and the mandating of these criteria by the peak architectural registration body in NSW Australia, recognises the importance of First Nations’ conceptions of place and placemaking and relationship to Country and recalibrates cultural awareness in the profession for architects, graduates of architecture and students of architecture.
Critically, from 2023 the NSCA First Nations Performance Criteria are mandatory inclusions in university curricula in all nationally accredited architecture programs. For practitioners, NSW is the only state in Australia mandating that one Continuing Development Point (CPD) is dedicated to the Performance Criteria for graduates of architecture aiming to register to become an architect and for registered architects. The First Nations Performance Criteria are included in all four Units of Competency for the architectural profession—Practice Management and Professional Conduct; Project Initiation and Conceptual Design; Detailed Design and Construction Documentation; and, Design Delivery and Construction Phase Services—for all three industry competency profiles: those graduating from an architectural program; those completing their formal registration; and practising architects post-registration.
Significantly, this is the first time FNPC have been included and enshrined in the NSCA since its inception in 1993. This has provided a framework of structural reform for curricula and practice to enhance design outcomes and mutual benefits for Country, First Nations Communities and Cultures, non-First Nations participants in the built environment disciplines and the broader public at large. Exploring the efficacy of the implementation of FNPC with these groups will generate recommendations for broader implementation, further development in the 2027 NSCA, and contribute to the national discourse between Country, First Nations peoples and the built environment.
This research project is led by Dr Michael Mossman and Professor Donald McNeill. This research project will be supported by a team of support officers including Liam Coe, Ebony Syron, Bradley Kerr, Byron Kinnaird, and Justine Anderson.
You can get in touch with the research team at adp.ibea@sydney.edu.au.
| Research Activity | Activity | Timeline | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Survey for Community + Industry | Online Survey 1 | Survey open: January 2025 - February 2025 Prelim results: March 2025 Interim report: May 2025 |
Opening soon |
| Intensive workshops | Yarning Workshops 1 | Yarning Workshop + Individual Interactions: June - September 2025 Interim Report: December 2025 |
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| Survey for Community + Industry | Online Survey 2 | Survey open: February - March 2026 Prelim results: May 2026 Interim report: June 2026 |
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| Intensive workshops | Yarning Workshops 2 | Yarning Workshops + Individual Interactions: July-October 2026 Interim Report: December 2026 |
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| Symposium | Gathering Event | Event: June 2027 Coincide with AIA National Conference |
The project will provide vital information to individuals with affiliations to communities, universities, professional practices, peak governing bodies, allied disciplines and government agencies about the FNPC and how they can be meaningfully activated in relation to communities, policy, practice and academia. The Online Survey will have an Australia-wide and International focus with outcomes to facilitate the formulation of complementary research exercises that follow. These will include semi-structured in-person Yarning Workshops in and around the Sydney Coastal Region, and One-on-One conversations with key stakeholders. More information on these exercises will be available soon. This first round of research engagements will conclude in August 2025. This will provide an important dataset for analysis and sharing with the built environment industry for strategies moving forward. A second round of research will activate in Early 2026 utilising the same research exercise to establish a longitudinal dataset to compare and contrast findings from the first round of research.
The project will provide future research opportunities for the correlation of transdisciplinary datasets between built environment practices and content relating to Country and First Nations Communities and Cultures, and its potential mutual benefits for society. This will encourage cross-pollination of the study findings into other disciplines in areas of sustainability, ecology, health, education, social science and economic opportunities. This research offers significant economic, environmental, social and cultural benefits including evidence and recommendations that will inform First Nations built environment awareness and competence across Australia relative to social determinants of health; awareness of First Nations Culture and Communities in the discourse of architecture and allied disciplines and providing individuals with a voice about content and relationships between Country and the built environment. The research will also identify and assert the role of the architectural and built environment disciplines in enacting positive societal evolutions in nationwide scholarship on Country and First Nations Communities and Culture.
This project directly contributes to the Australian Government’s National Science and Research Priorities in the areas of Environmental Change. By researching the efficacy of FNPC in the context of the built environment, this project will promote First Nations knowledge systems and the interconnected ecologies of Country, Communities and Cultures. It is also a recognition within the built environment that these practices developed by First Nations Cultures over millennia on the Australian continent are continuous and ongoing for future implementation.
The project is funded through the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Indigenous Project scheme under the number IN240100037
