Beyond Heritage: First Nations’ involvement in climate mitigation and design
Researcher
Michael McMahon and Jack Isles
Published
25 June 2024
Funding
Design Strategy Grant
Beyond Heritage is an emergent research project and online resource celebrating, recognising and supporting the development of Australian First Nations design, as frontline responses to the climate and biodiversity emergency.
The Beyond Heritage website produced by architects, Michael McMahon and Jack Isles is a digital resource dedicated to strengthening ties between First Nations peoples, designers and stakeholders of Australia’s built environment. It has been developed as an online platform that focuses on affording exposure to First Nation’s experts and designers, already operational in the field of design and environmental management. The website offers a consolidated resource for architects and the design community to engage with the socio-economic and environmental agency of First Nations design within climate mitigation.
Strengthening, celebrating and centering First Nations design within the wider lexicon of Australian design and environmental innovation is one of the primary challenges of our current generations. A process in which increased access to First Nations expertise throughout architectural pedagogy and practice is vital.
Within the context of widespread climatic instabilities, First Nations design represents a vital lifeline which, if given the chance, can catalyze paradigmatic shifts within our conception of Australian design and the built environment. Whilst Indigenous knowledge has been central to Australia’s colonial project, through the often, uncredited adaptations of First Nations expertise into western science, it remains largely auxiliary to Australia’s contemporary built environment, and environmental planning. If we are to build towards a more resilient and equitable future, one divorced from a history of racial inequality, it is imperative we center First Nations design within the wider lexicon of Australian design and environmental innovation. Beyond Heritage focuses on directly addressing this need by equipping Australia’s architectural and design community with the necessary resources to engage, in earnest, with First Nations experts in design.
Michael McMahon
