The Adelaide Parklands Symposium:
A balancing act: past - present - future
Friday 10 November
UniSA, City East Campus: Basil Hetzel Building, Mutual Community Theatre H2-02 (off Frome Road)
Co-presented by:
- The Centre for Settlement Studies, Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture and Design, UniSA
- The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, UniSA
- Adelaide Parklands Preservation Association
ORDER FORM for Symposium Proceedings
Click here for a copy of the summary of the day delivered by James Hayter
Papers delivered at the Forum on Sunday 12 November are available here
Elizabeth Ho, Director of the Hawke Centre speaking at the launch of
the Proceedings on 10 November 2006:
There are three main benefits in having these Proceedings.
Records are too often taken for granted. Online information is one thing but an in-depth perspective is quite another. These Proceedings offer much depth for current and future benefit, being the sifted and considered results of collective research in sixteen individual studies.
Many including Kaurna Elder Lewis O'Brien have welcomed the focus in this volume on Kaurna connections with country, and specifically the Park Lands, including continuing spiritual practices. This is an important appreciation.
This volume is a testament to the work of so many in preserving the Park
Lands over time. The depth of analysis is not simply conjuring up a past
reality, it is drawing on continuities. Indeed, it is the value of what the
Park Lands have represented over time that has spurred Adelaide people of
successive generations to preserve and protect them. Without that
determination these Proceedings would be the poorer.
The Symposium was opened by Allan Holmes, Chief Executive of the Dept
of Environment and Heritage.
The organisers are grateful to Planning SA for their generous support towards the published proceedings which will be made available and launched at the Symposium.
Program Summing up - James Hayter, Oxigen
A common aim of the papers given today is to explore some of the meanings
and attitudes towards the Adelaide Parklands. Some of the presentations are
descriptive: that is, they attempt to show how attitudes towards the
Adelaide parklands have evolved through time. Some are also prescriptive,
suggesting ways in which our current awareness might be heightened and more
finely tuned to the environmental and cultural needs of the landscape as it
relates to our current understanding. All of the presenters would agree with
the general proposition that we should become more sensitive to the special
needs of the Parkland’s unique landscape, but general agreement probably
ends there. We have different prescriptions, different diagnoses of the
past, some of them primarily cultural, some economic and the majority of
them environmental.
It is not surprising that there are differences of opinion. It cannot be
assumed that we know a great deal either about what our community sees or
about the forces that have shaped the way they look at the world. The
Parklands themselves are varied in their appearance, functioning and use.
There is no typical landscape, but many different landscapes held together
within a statutory boundary. The formal landscape of Palmer Gardens is not
much like the native bushland of Park 23 at the top of Anzac Highway or the
landscape of the Adelaide Oval. The population of Adelaide will see a great
variety of different places, in different ways, at different times, any one
person sees the same place in many different ways in the course of a day.
Part of the difficulty is that we are not always clear what we should be
looking at and what is important in a particular time and in a particular
place. The only real understanding we have is our own. We guess what others
think from what they say they experienced, what they record, what they omit,
how they behave. Poetry, painting, old films, advertisements, City Council
minutes and newspapers, are all records, but they all need interpretation –
early colonial pictorial artists drew the indigenous flora and fauna,
topography, the local Kaurna people, in certain ways, partly because of
current drawing styles popular at the time and partly because of the
function of their work. It is hard to interpret other peoples understanding,
it is harder to make useful statements about those as they relate to a
community.
We think of a camel as a creature created by a committee. Our discussion
today might be considered a kangaroo- it is easy to feel good about, despite
it jumping all over the place. Much of what was talked about in this
symposium was indigenous – the topic, the participants, the locale – but a
good deal also was not, including the comparative focus and the sense that
the Adelaide Parklands are worthy of much greater international appreciation
and indeed protection.
Different viewpoints are an inevitable and perhaps a desirable accompaniment
of gatherings such as this. Presenters preparing papers in isolation and
with little time for afterthought, are unlikely to reach cogent joint
conclusions. In fact, they were encouraged not to do so. The purpose of this
symposium was not to contrive a consensus, but to explore manifold insights.
Multifarious and often conflicting ideas about the Adelaide Parklands
landscape and the attitudes to it emerged, insights drawn from history and
geography, science and behaviors, and the special perspectives of planners
and ecologists, State and local government agencies, poets and artists. The
common themes that can be teased out are not so uncommon if we consider them
in the context of experience in other places concerned with similar themes.
One is Amenity and Sustainability. There are two particular polarities that
stood out as persistent themes: man and nature, and the conflict between
amenity and sustainability.
Contemporary urban life is complex and, with it, the role of urban space has
changed. For those happy to experience their days and nights on the
internet, there is less need now to actually use open space other than a
conduit between one place and the next. Phil Bagust argued that we should
see the Parklands as an opportunity for enlivening the quality of our lives
by active participation and experience. Sheryn Pitman reminded us of the
limitations the landscape itself imposes on our active uses and the
importance of treating the Parklands as a sustainable resource.
The second common theme concerns Environment and Heritage. A positive sense
of the past is an essential but somewhat neglected aspect of environmental
appreciation. Many Australians seem to prefer to forget history than to
celebrate it, because nothing in Australia seems old, interesting or
virtuous enough to be historic. Uncle Lewis O’Brien, Rhondda Harris, Rob
Emery and Lester-Irabinna Rigney reminded us of the rich indigenous
tradition inherent in our landscape and a consciousness of continuity and
presence of local heritage.
The historical traces evident in post colonial settlement were chronicled by
Donald Johnson, Roy Montgomery, Alan Hutchins and Robert Freestone. Their
contribution adds to the urgent need for preservation and public education
programs. The uncovering of the past and the precedents for what we
experience now presage a lengthening but increasingly unpredictable future.
Many of us here will agree with George Seddon’s argument that planning and
design are central to Adelaide’s future. To know its history is the basis on
which good planning and design can be achieved.
To stress these common themes, however different the participants’ views
about them are, would give a false general impression of the symposium.
Heterogeneity not homogeneity, catholicity not unity, variety rather than
uniformity, featured in presentation and discussion, tone and content. Not
all presenters seemed to be willing to recognize the multiplicity of the
different values which are ascribed to the Parklands and, still more, to
accept the potential validity of them all. And, we shouldn’t ask them to do
so. Attitudes ranged from admiration of the multi-layered and all-inclusive
use of the Parklands to the focus on a single value and its presence above
all else. The subject matter was multifarious: trees and playing fields,
olive production and bush regeneration, tourism and facilities management,
all the sciences and arts of environmental activities and contemplation.
We can expect that each presenter will stress his or her specialty, however,
we learned little about how he or she viewed the everyday view of the
Adelaide Parklands by, if you like, the common man and less about what
other, mainly non-reflective, Adelaidians made of their experience there. We
heard advocates of preservation and of limited carefully controlled
development, of elite, and of popular, visions, but each of us is at various
times a resident and a traveler, a conserver and a polluter, a mystic, a
seer, a poet and an artist, now environmentally aware, now oblivious. It is
the combination of all these amateur and professional roles that may one day
yield an environmental and cultural consensus for the Parklands.
Presenters were particularly alerted to the interaction of local and
environmental ideas. But we vary enormously in how far we are prepared to
accept our perceived transplanted or indigenous landscapes. A combination of
indigenous and imported now becomes natural, and, expected, although we are
still, in the words of George Seddon, learning to see our own land and to
forgive it for not being England. A compensatory nationalism may
deliberately favour the indigenous.
The most we can expect is to share a common mood: a sense of being on the
road to a mutual destiny and of being able to influence that destiny. This
is the more noteworthy considering the recognized constraints – the
fragility of ecosytems, the push from some to utilize the parklands to their
full potential, defined of course in a variety of ways, and the necessity of
large scale government planning.
There are 4 questions we have to continually ask ourselves and the answers
to these will enable us to reflect more deeply on our own attitudes, and our
own ability to represent them to the Adelaide community.
- What there is?
- What we have done to it?
- What it has done to us?
- What we can and should do in the future?
Let us continue to think through these questions, grateful that there are those willing to contribute, as those who have presented today have.
James is a Director of Oxigen, practising landscape architects and
urban designers. His experience in practice and teaching extends over a 25
year period and includes the realisation of many of Adelaide’s designed
places which we are familiar with.
James was the former Principal Landscape Architect for the National Capital
Development Commission in Canberra, responsible for the design and
management of Canberra’s open spaces, including the Parliamentary Triangle.
The Parliamentary Triangle is one of Australia’s most loved, studied,
planned and commented on public spaces, not only by Australians, but by
visitors from overseas.
James is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects and
current Vice President of the International Federation of Landscape
Architects. He has assisted the Adelaide City Council over the last two
years in the preparation of the master plans for each of the parks
comprising the Adelaide Parklands which have been included within the City’s
Community Land Management Plans.
Program (copy of abstracts) *
|
Time |
|
|
| 8.00am - 8.55am | Registration | |
| 9.00am - 9.30am |
Kaurna Welcome |
|
| 9.15am - 11.00am | Opening plenary session Chair: Bronwyn Halliday, Executive Director, Planning SA |
|
| The Adelaide Parklands: past-present-future | ||
| 9.30am - 10.00am | Rhondda Harris: 'The Aboriginal Location' in the Adelaide Parklands (1837-1851) | |
| 10.00am - 10.30am | Patricia Sumerling: Activities in the Park Lands over time | |
| 10.30am - 11.00am | John Senior: The intrinsic value of parks | |
| 11.00am - 11.30am | Morning Tea | |
| 11.30am - 12.30pm | Parallel sessions Chair: Margaret Anderson, History Trust of SA |
Parallel sessions Chair: Kevin Lowe, Adelaide City Council |
| Historical background through texts and maps | Looking at landscapes past and future | |
| 11.30am - 12.00pm | Donald Johnson: Foundations for Adelaide's Park Lands | Sheryn Pitman: Sustainable landscapes: working with our semi-arid land in changing times |
| 12.00pm - 12.30pm | Roy Montgomery: The Adelaide Parklands: framing a settlement | Phil Bagust: Parklands of opportunity: a possible biodiversity, sustainability, education and tourism future for the Adelaide Parklands |
| 12.30pm - 2.00pm | Lunch During the extended lunch break, there will be two brief presentations about Adelaide Parklands design studio projects to be displayed at the Symposium. Additionally we are hoping to offer a walk to the site of a parklands reclamation project off Frome Road and near to the Symposium venue. |
|
| 2.00pm - 3.00pm | Parallel sessions Chair: Stephen Hamnett, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, School of Natural and Built Environments, UniSA |
Parallel sessions Chair: Leanne Liddle, Aboriginal Parks and Wildlife Co-ordinator, Aboriginal Partnerships Section, Department for Environment and Heritage |
| Planning history and the Adelaide Parklands | Cultural significance: Indigenous and European perspectives | |
| 2.00pm - 3.30pm | Alan Hutchings: A Speculation: the Adelaide Plan and the Spanish Laws of the Indies | Rob Amery and Lester-Irabinna Rigney: Recognition of Kaurna cultural heritage in the Adelaide Parklands: a linguist's and Kaurna academic's perspective |
| 2.30pm - 3.00pm | Robert Freestone: Contribution of the Plan of Adelaide to modern town planning theory | Kelly Henderson: History and myth: the origin of Colonel William Light's 'Park Grounds' and their universal value |
| Marco Amati: Ascribing changing values to suburban green spaces: the inception of Wellington's green belt | David Jones: Uncovering heritage merit and significance: assessing the cultural landscape of the Adelaide Park Lands | |
| 3.00pm - 4.00pm | Afternoon tea | |
| 4.00pm - 5.00pm | Closing plenary Chair: Stephen Forbes, Director, Science and Conservation, Department for Environment and Heritage |
|
| Stirring thoughts for the future | ||
| 4.00pm - 4.30pm | George Seddon: Adelaide's alter-ego | |
| 4.30pm - 5.00pm | Trevor Nottle: The past and present as essential exemplars for the future | |
| 5.00pm - 5.15pm | Symposium roundup: James Hayter: Oxigen | |
| 5.15pm - 5.45pm | Closing session | |
| 5.45pm - 7.00pm | Informal drinks and launch of proceedings | |
This program is subject to change at any time.
Lunchtime presentation
Jen Smit, Louis Laybourne Smith School of
Architecture and Design
In the first half of 2006, student’s undertaking the urban design theory
and practice elective at UniSA’s LLS School of Architecture and Design,
practised a technique of ‘tissue grafting’ to generate a series of
hypothetical scenarios for the future of the Adelaide Parklands.
A teaching technique originally developed at the Joint Centre of Urban
Design, a research centre at the Oxford Schools of Architecture and
Planning, ‘tissuing’ or urban tissue grafting, provides a rapid and
provocative strategy for exploring the potential of sites. The students were
encouraged to select tissues, not only for their ability to best fit with
the more likely projected Parkland uses, but for the ability of the
resultant grafts to promote discussion and critique.
The academic leadership and management for the Symposium is being provided by Dr Christine Garnaut, Research Fellow in the Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture and Design. An historian, her research focuses on the planning, design history and heritage of planned twentieth century places. She has a particular interest in the application of planning history to planning and heritage policy. Much of her work lies at the nexus between the disciplines of planning and architecture and the contribution of both to academic, professional and community action.
Adelaide Parklands Tours – Saturday 11 November 2006
A series of walking, coach and bike tours will take in aspects of the Parklands.
* Registration form and abstracts available in PDF format – Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view and print. You can download a free copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader from Adobe.
Sponsors
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South Australian Government in particular Department for Environment and Heritage and Planning SA Capital City Committee Adelaide |
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While the views presented by speakers within the Hawke Centre public program are their own and are not necessarily those of either the University of South Australia or The Hawke Centre, they are presented in the interest of open debate and discussion in the community and reflect our themes of: strengthening our democracy – valuing our cultural diversity – and building our future.
* Registration form and abstracts available in PDF format – Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view and print. You can download a free copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader from Adobe.