Arts, Volume 4, Issue 2 (June 2015) – 4 articles , Pages 34-74

Australian Aboriginal symbols are visual forms of knowledge that express cultural intellect. Being classified by a Western interpretation of “art” devalues thousands of years of generational knowledge systems, where visual information has been respected, appreciated and valued. This article highlights how Aboriginal creativity has little concept of aesthetical value, but is a cultural display of meaning relating to Creational periods, often labelled as The Dreamings. With over 350 different Aboriginal Nations in Australia, this article focuses of the Dharug Nation, located around the northern Sydney area of New South Wales. The Dharug term for the Creational period is Gunyalungalung—traditional ritualized customary lores (laws). These symbols are permanently located within the environment on open rock surfaces, caves and markings on trees. Whilst some symbols are manmade, others are made by Creational ancestral beings and contain deep story lines of information in sacredness. Therefore, creative imagery engraved or painted on rock surfaces are forms of conscious narratives that emphasise deep insight. Full article

The Shamsali and Gorgali rock shelters were discovered during an archaeological survey in 2009 at Kohgiluye Bouier Ahmad province, west of Iran. In total, 50 paintings occur at both rock shelters; 21 at Shamsali, and 29 remains at Gorgali rock shelter. The paintings consist of “ibex”, “Predators”, and “riders” in red and black. They are depicted stylistically in singular or plural subjects in profile. In addition, the most numerous images in the Shamsali and Gorgali rock shelters represent “ibex”, comparable with a large numbers of such motifs identified in other regions of Iran. There is no certainty in attributed dates, because we are lacking absolute dating methods. Full article

In this paper, we explore the effect that the increasingly powerful discourse of sustainability is having on the field of architecture. The term “field” derives from Bourdieu’s conceptualization of fields as dynamic spaces of social relations tending towards transformation or conservation. While the overlapping fields of sustainability and architecture have historically been characterized by resistance, shifts in environmental discourse towards complexity and systems thinking and the inclusion of cultural, social, political and economic concerns within the broader mandate of sustainability signal a more synergistic ideological terrain. We use methods of narrative analysis to explore these shifts through the localized discourse of the award for sustainable architecture within the Australian context and offer a brief comparative analysis of the sustainable architecture awards discourse in Britain and North America. As arguably the most public elucidations of the profession’s ideology, architecture awards are a productive place in which to explore constructions of “sustainable architecture”. The narrative analysis reveals a trajectory towards assimilation supported by the positioning of sustainability as fundamentally a social, as well as an environmental practice. Contentions surrounding the ultimate disappearance of the award, however, reveal a more perverse relationship between sustainability and architecture. Full article