Designer Alison Page speaks to Australian Design Review (ADR) about her new book, Design and Building on Country: First Knowledges for Younger Readers, co-authored with anthropologist and architect Paul Memmott.

“I’m really obsessed with training up a new generation of Aboriginal designers,” Alison Page tells ADR. It’s a mission self-evident in the Walbanga and Wadi Wadi designer’s body of work, from her current role as associate dean of Indigenous leadership and engagement at the University of Technology Sydney to a new cross-disciplinary design lab she is spearheading that specialises in Country-centred design thinking.

Page’s ambition to train up the next generation is also a driving force behind her new book Design and Building on Country: First Knowledges for Younger Readers, co-authored with Memmott.

Design and Building on Country: First Knowledges for Younger Readers

If the book’s title sounds familiar, that’s because it’s a rework of Page and Memmott’s Design and Building on Country, published in 2021 as part of Thames & Hudson’s First Knowledges series. 

The original traversed largely Aboriginal design ingenuity – from fish traps to community settlement layouts – looking at how sophisticated and sustainable design principles refined over millennia are now being applied to contemporary practices. 

The new edition for younger readers translates these design concepts into plain language for an audience of around 12 years old. With stories illustrated in striking colour by Archibald Prize-winning artist Blak Douglas, Design and Building on Country fosters an early appreciation for the inventions created by the oldest continuing culture in the world. 

‘Designing for us and by us’

Page hopes the new edition will offer a blueprint for the future of design to all young Australians, especially First Nations children. 

“To see our world around us from our lens – which is very much with a filter of sustainability, stronger communities and our cultural values – I think there’s going to be value in that for all Australians,” she explains. 

“But I want to get street kids into architecture. I’ve been in the industry for a little while and it’s still very much the industry for upper-middle-class white kids. I would love to see an Australia where kids from ‘houso’ are designing housing estates, and we are designing for us and by us.”

Page, who grew up in a housing estate, says many First Nations children in the same position have “horrific” experiences of architecture. Training up more Aboriginal people to think creatively and laterally about problems could lead to “transformational shifts” in health, housing and education, says Page, addressing issues that have plagued communities for decades.

“We want to open their eyes to this idea that design can be a beautiful thing… It’s about problem-solving – and our people have some of the most wicked problems to solve,” she says. 

Illustrating Indigenous design ingenuity 

Design and Building on Country brings the wonder of design to life for young readers through stories and illustrations.

One story is that of Lardil man Jackson Jacob, a famous boomerang maker from Mornington Island. In the book, Memmott explains some of the details of Jacob’s design process, including the moment he would sing apologies to the tree he cut wood from to make a boomerang. 

On the following pages, this becomes a lesson on asking permission, designing with a light touch and with respect for Country – methods in direct opposition to the intensive farming practices brought by colonists.

Meanwhile, Page’s favourite illustration by Blak Douglas is ‘Bungarees Organic Hardware Store’. It imagines ochres, barks and twines lined up for different uses in a modern tool shop.

“All Australians love Bunnings, don’t they? And going to the hardware store. But it’s nice to think about these organic materials and our relationship to materiality,” Page says.

The book purposefully melds history and tradition with modernity, stirring fresh visions for the future in the process.

“The book explores this idea that Australian design is 65,000 years old and that Australian design, as it was traditionally, is totally what we need to be looking at in terms of how a new Australian design can evolve,” Page explains.

“I don’t think it’s enough now to just borrow styles from overseas and have this pastiche of design responses. There is value in looking at our whole environment, both the built and the grown, as a system that is part of the ecology.”

A proud new lens for Australian design

Page hopes Design and Building on Country: First Knowledges for Younger Readers can be a “source of pride” for Aboriginal children, encouraging more to study design.

“Their culture gives them an advantage; they’re told about their disadvantages all the time,” she says.

More broadly, the book contributes to a global design movement that is looking to the past to “redesign our future”, Page says.

“This book is an invitation for all young people to see design through a different lens and to practise it that way.”

Design and Building on Country: First Knowledges for Younger Readers is available from Thames & Hudson Australia and other bookstores for $26.99.

Read more about Country-centred design.