Ursula de Jong

Blairgowrie: The Meaning of Place

Defining the meaning of a specific place is difficult. Blairgowrie is a peaceful and naturally protected beach haven on the Nepean Peninsula on the tip of the Mornington Peninsula, in Victoria, Australia. When a major development is perceived as threatening the quality of place, it is perhaps already too late to begin to name its characteristics or particular attributes. The evocative and poetic qualities of Blairgowrie do not reveal themselves immediately. Only over a period of time, and by visiting at various times of the day in all seasons, can one begin to fathom its moods, its soul, its many colours; and to touch its memories. Here sea and sky can meet, or divide, totally unobstructed, depending on climatic conditions, seasonal weather patterns and diurnal changes. It is still possible to get a sense of scale and wide-angle limitless vision. When a Safe Boat Harbour was proposed for Blairgowrie, residents came out in force to voice their objections or their support. A tribunal hearing was put in plac...

The Ethics of Sustainable Housing Design: The Dilemma for Practising Architects

Abstract Globally we are grappling with the concept of sustainability. What does it mean and how should we respond to ensure that the planets current ecosystems survive? Architects are in the ‘front line’ because of the impact of buildings on resource use and waste generation. Most definitions of sustainability are unhelpful because of their wordiness, lack of detail or ambiguity. Others distort the concept of sustainability to allow business-as-usual (i.e., unsustainable) activity to continue. Using one particular model of sustainability, this paper explores the ethical dilemma faced by architects in the residential sector when confronted by a client who wants a house that is clearly unsustainable. The paper begins with definitions of sustainability and ethics; then the literature examining sustainable architecture is reviewed for possible solutions to the dilemma. Two indicators are suggested to make a broad-brush assessment of sustainability. Finally, some practical options for the practising architect are suggested.

‘Slipping through the Net’: The Impact of Incremental Development on the Built Environment of the Historic Coastal Town of Queenscliff in Victoria, Australia

Abstract Studies of the impact of development on the built environment often concentrate on areas of sudden change, where new constructions of a radically different scale, purpose or style are clearly seen to dramatically alter existing places. However, change is often more gradual. The cumulative effects of a large number of individual small changes are both extensive and often unrecognized until after they have taken effect, each individual development having ‘slipped through the net’ cast by planning authorities. The problem with this incremental process is that the result is often the erosion of the spatial and experiential qualities previously valued in that locality. As an example, this paper investigates four residential planning case studies in Queenscliff, a small historic coastal town in Victoria, Australia. Through analysis of their individual and cumulative impact on the neighbourhood character of this town, the paper explores the broader implications for the built environment of other Australian coastal towns and highlights the difficulties faced by all planners and residents trying to protect the character of their towns.

Imperial Gothic: Religious Architecture and High Anglican Culture in the British Empire c.1840-1870

Bremner is a well-qualified and feted architectural historian: he joined the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA) as an academic in 2005, after holding a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art at Yale University, which followed his doctoral studies at Cambridge. He is a recipient of both the Hawksmoor Medal (Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain) and the Founders’ Award (Society of Architectural Historians, US) for outstanding scholarship in the field of architectural history. At 170,000 words long, and featuring 370 illustrations (both historic and contemporary photographs, paintings, drawings, plans and numerous portraits of bishops), the book brings together a great quantity of new information, the result of years of research and many miles of arduous travel (however, I would note that given the scope of the book, captions to illustrations should have included the country/colony). Yet the keywords – church architecture; Great Britain; colonies; history; nineteenth century – simply ignore the missionary history upon which this tome focuses. It is a scholarly history – well cited and accompanied by fulsome and informative footnotes – of the Anglican mission in the British Empire during the mid-nineteenth century. The text is largely a historical narrative, breathtaking in its sweep across the globe, in its compass of the Empire over the years from 1840 to 1870, thus succeeding where previous publications have rarely outgrown their status as compendiums of Anglican building projects in the colonies. Bremner revisits “the history of Anglican architecture and its reverberations worldwide” (p. xii). This historical narrative of numerous ecclesiastical projects built by the bishops and priests of the Anglican Church across the British colonies is as much the story of individual missions as it is of architecture in the service of mission. The introduction, titled “Anglicanism and the British Colonial World: Transplanting the Faith”, is perhaps a truer descriptor of the contents of this scholarly tome than its title, Imperial Gothic: Religious Architecture and High Anglican Culture in the British Empire c.1840–1870. The breadth of the book is evident from its contents: 1. In Principio: the Foundations and Early Development of Colonial Ecclesiology; 2. The Colonial Cathedral: Monumentalising the Apostolic Tradition; 3. Adaptation and Invention: The Theory and Practice of Acclimatisation; 4. Symbolism and Identity: Faith, National Form and the Politics of Empire; 5. Conflict and Confrontation: Architecture in an Age of Sectarianism; 6. ‘A church [almost] as it should be’: The HighNoon of Colonial Ecclesiology; and 7. Bringing the Empire Home: Mission Work and Church Extension in the British Isles. A brief conclusion, “The Imperial Dimension: Anglican Architecture and its Influence”, ends the substantive part of the text. The book includes, rather oddly and separately at the end, a bibliographic essay, titled “Rethinking British Architecture: Towards an Expanded Methodology”, to be read in conjunction with the preface.