The integration of First Nations knowledge into urban planning, architecture and landscape design has long been acknowledged as important. But according to Christian Hampson, co-founder and CEO of Aboriginal-owned design practice Yerrabingin, the shift underway now goes deeper – it is no longer about adding Indigenous perspectives onto projects, but embedding them into the very fabric of design.

The entry point into what it truly means to design with Country can be found in the translation of Hampson’s design practice name. Yerrabingin translates to ‘we walk together’, and for Hampson, his team and hopefully the wider design community of Australia, the act of walking together will become the norm in the not-too-distant future. “Designing with Country is evolving into a new discipline,” Hampson says. “It’s becoming something that sits alongside architecture, landscape and urban design. At its heart is caring for Country, but it also creates a future of shared custodianship where everyone participates in regenerating the planet.”

While this might seem like the only logical approach in 2025 – to create shared futures of participation for regenerative rather than consumptive ends – this hasn’t always been the case. 

Moving beyond symbolism 

Hampson, a proud Woiwurrung and Maneroo man, challenges traditional responses to Indigenous design, where engagement has, in the past, tended to manifest as surface-level motifs, public art or symbolic gestures. Instead, he advocates for a more intrinsic approach – one that begins at the outset of a project giving shape to fundamental design decisions.

“I think it’s continually changing and advancing,” Hampson reflects. “I feel like the idea of transformation and innovation in designing with Country is becoming part of that [the shift towards embedding First Nations design principles into projects.] It’s found in the things you can’t see, but that you can sense or you can feel, as opposed to the things that probably feel like they’re put onto projects. 

This shift in approach to one of convivial collaboration certainly hasn’t happened overnight. Which is typical of many developments and evolutions within the realm of the built world. As the saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day. The vital aspect is that a mutual desire for embedding Country – both philosophically and practically – is happening.

“Things that five years ago would have been seen as great outcomes –like an Indigenous rooftop garden that we worked on – now would potentially look like something that’s not deep enough,” Hampson says. “When we first worked, it was a lot about art and landscape. I feel like the idea of transformation and innovation in designing with Country is becoming part of that. It is possible to have both [embedded and more externally symbolic approaches]. It’s about what that project is actually best at containing rather than putting lots of things on it.”

This shift moves design beyond a human-centric lens to embrace kinship – an Indigenous worldview that considers the interconnections between people, plants, animals, water and landforms.

In Hampson’s view, designing with Country isn’t about imposing a viewpoint. Rather, it’s an invitation to participate, ask questions and explore the specific design problem that needs solving. It encourages people to connect with Country in ways that feel meaningful to them. How this takes shape is as diverse and nuanced as Country itself. “It might be as simple as sitting in your backyard, listening to the birds,” Hampson offers. “It also allows people who already have amazing design skills to find new opportunities to inform themselves and create additional benefits and impact.”

The impact of deep collaboration

Through Yerrabingin, Hampson has worked on projects at every scale, from masterplans to playgrounds. Irrespective of what the project is, the potential for the outcomes to be greater than anticipated and greater than the sum of their parts, arguably materialises when Traditional Custodians are involved from the beginning, contributing to the shape of systems intrinsic to the project and site collectively. 

“Some projects we’ve been involved in at some very significant scale, and very early on – whether it be an entire suburb or a very large development that has lots of different components at a masterplan level – we begin by thinking about the elements of Country that are on that site, and then the systems of those, the social, cultural, ecological systems of those and how they can be an underpinning to outline an approach”, Hampson explains. “It’s this system’s thinking approach that has then resulted in unexpected positive outcomes.”

One example of this where an Indigenous holistic worldview has been applied to generate outcomes beyond expectations is an industrial masterplanning project at Western Sydney’s Aerotropolis. “There’s all these guidelines around recognising Country that talk about place names, whereas the biggest thing out there is an incredible, industrial-scale restored water landscape,”  Hampson says. 

Another recently announced project, the regeneration of a sand mine in the Western Sydney suburb of Botany, demonstrates how designing with Country can unlock opportunities beyond environmental restoration. “There’s an opportunity to create a highly functioning social, cultural, ecological landscape because it needs to be regenerated,” Hampson says.

Opportunities like this only arise through open-minded, open-hearted collaboration. In this case, Yerrabingin has worked closely with the developer. They have ‘walked together’ to identify that the place has been impacted by Western industrial operations and determined how to collectively restore and enhance this space, creating a positive impact for future generations of Australians and beyond. “There are lots of outcomes we’re looking at around community partnered eco-tourism, aged care for the local Aboriginal community and also a school,” says Hampson, expanding on what shape these initiatives will take. “We’re thinking multi-generationally, which is really cool.” 

Art as a communication tool, not a shortcut

While visual representation plays a role in engaging with Country, Hampson is clear that designing with Country isn’t about decorative overlays.

“Our approach is that when we design, in our process, we don’t design cultural overlays,” he says. “We design the space, the platform, the opportunity to develop that with the community, where that’s appropriate. Instead of asking, ‘What should this place be called?’ the discussion is, ‘What’s the opportunity that language within this project can contribute?’”

Art, he adds, is just one of many communication tools in a culture that traditionally transmits knowledge through oral storytelling, dance and ceremony. “Art is a communication tool,” Hampson says. “[Art] has a role in communicating, but also in holding place. It also helps us be better at engaging with the ecology and so forth. So there are lots of different opportunities around sharing knowledge through art, but also the practice of art, and how that actually empowers Aboriginal communities to see themselves in the space as well, and that makes them comfortable.”

In addition, the meaningful incorporation of art as a multi-modal form of communication and expression enables precious cultural intellectual property (IP) to be safeguarded and shared on First Nations people’s own terms. “The process is led by that person or the community who’s sharing it,” Hampson says. “Then they can actually see what the design is trying to do and appropriately say, ‘This is what’s going to be done’.”

For the oldest living culture in the world, safeguarding the integrity of their cultural IP presents a simultaneous challenge and opportunity. “Intellectual property is something that, because of the process of how knowledge is transferred through generations, [it] has to be shared,” Hampson explains. “It’s not an individual’s intellectual property, it is essentially the property of the community.” 

The need and desire to transfer knowledge through generations – and now too across cultural borders – places organisations like Yerrabingin into the privileged dual role of interpreter and interlocutor, which Hampson is personally and professionally invigorated by. “Creating places that allow people to participate in a cultural exchange, and that may be anything [from] tasting something, cooking something together, drinking something together, or walking and having a conversation about the different view of what that landscape that they’re in means, is something that I’m really interested in.”

Designing with Country as best practice

So where does the future of designing with Country reside? And, more importantly, how do we navigate our way towards this future? Hampson believes the future lies in making designing with Country standard practice across all design disciplines and beyond. 

Rather than architects or landscape designers leading projects in isolation, multi-disciplinary teams – including specialists in designing with Country – should shape projects from the start. “What better way to frame design than in Country?” he says.

For his final words of wisdom, Hampson offers up an invitation to understand that designing with Country is a reciprocal process. “Ask yourself, what is your strength and the unique contribution that your project can bring to Traditional Custodians and place? What can place give to you?” he says. 

Photography supplied and credited as noted.

For another designers thoughts on embedding Country into design, read Jessica Agoston Cleary’s feature article for inside magazine, republished on Australian Design Review: ‘Jefa Greenaway on the politics and poetry of collaborative architectural design.’