Using the example of the entrance to Flinders Street Station – and the iconic steps and clocks that serves as a popular gathering point – this paper discusses how the development of an informal cultural practice embedded within the Melbourne imaginary is also challenged by...

2016 marks the 30th anniversary of Richard Lowenstein’s acclaimed Dogs in Space, a fictionalized cinematic memoir of nominal bohemians in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond. Set 6-8 years before the film’s release, Lowenstein utilised genuine participants in the events/milieu depicted, as well as key locations...

Nineteenth-century shopping arcades are woven into Melbourne’s urban fabric. Images of the Block and Royal Arcades adorn social media and other websites and during the day, they are thronged by both locals and tourists. On the ground level, boutique stores and eateries display their goods...

At first glance, the Brutalist Sirius apartment building (1975-80), surrounded by the intensive development of Sydney’s CBD, gives little indication of the layers of change that lay beneath it, nor the battles fought to protect it. The Housing Commission building, perched above Sydney Cove in...

The design-research Cremorne2025 investigated, though multiple iterations, the densification of an exemplary and historically crucial industrial suburb of Melbourne. It challenges consequences of urban sprawl, highlighting potentials of inner-city industrial sites for urban renewal and new activity. Careful intensification of urban heritage was acknowledged as...

This paper examines the development of Notre Dame University in Fremantle Western Australia, in light of Sharon Haar’s work on the regeneration of the city of Chicago through its various university campuses. A nineteenth century port city and now heritage precinct, the West End of...

The Heritage Council of NSW, in partnership with the NSW Government Architect, have developed this Draft Design Guide for Heritage that is intended to make it easier to manage heritage design works.

Iconic heritage buildings play an important role in attracting visitors to tourism destinations with a number of Australia’s visitor precincts home to heritage assets such as The Rocks in Sydney, Salamanca Wharf in Hobart and the Old Treasury Building in Melbourne. While heritage assets can...

Presented by Australia ICOMOS in association with the Sydney Opera House and the Heritage Council of NSW, the Jim Kerr Address held on the International Day for Monuments and Sites pays respect to Jim's legacy by perpetuating open inquiry into the understanding of place and...

In this Shelter Brief, Prof Morris, presents the experiences of a sample of Millers Point residents involved in the recent forced removal of public tenants. The research arose out of discussions with the Millers Point Community Working Party. Shelter agreed to publish it so that...

The ways that the past impacts the Australian city in the present, sparking the historical consciousness of its residents and rulers alike, has its own social history. No doubt this history is tied to nineteenth-century Britain, the National Trusts and other voluntary organisations, and the...

In 1991 Davison and McConville described the 'heritage business' as being "subject to constant tension between the demands for bureaucratic consistency and impersonal expertise on one hand and for popular participation and local autonomy on the other" (p. 11). The decisions and debate over the...

During the second half of the nineteenth century, entrepreneurs eagerly built numerous European-style shopping arcades in Australia’s cities and regional centres. Popular throughout the world, they were ostensibly elegant shopping spaces for a genteel middle-class clientele. Such was the enthusiasm for them in Australia that...

The study examines how place meanings have been recontested, recontextualised and renewed through the Cook Islands’ coral churches continued use. The study supports earlier scholarship and local perspectives suggesting that churches were conceptualised and constructed as the island’s “new marae,” their presence physically restating tribal...

The purpose of this brief is to unpack ‘heritage’ and its implications for social housing asset management and, by extension, for social housing tenants.

Conservation of cultural built heritage in society has become vexed with political, financial and planning difficulties. The listed stock is in gross need of information, funding and policy direction. Opportunities to capture value, to maximise conservation incentives and generally to encourage owners to maintain their...

This paper addresses the theme of ‘City Structure’ by describing the visible changes in streetscapes that have directly resulted from the implementation of heritage planning policies in inner Melbourne.

This paper explores the effectiveness of current policy settings for economic assistance with special reference to the local government level in NSW.

After outlining the issues to be explored and the types of data that can shed light on them, this paper provides a brief history of the major memorials erected in Canberra up until 2002, and the rationales that shaped them. The main focus of the...

This paper outlines present threats to privately-held heritage resources in the absence of significant financial support from the state. It canvasses alternative policies for providing heritage support within local planning frameworks.

Using the example of the Western Australian Government Railway Workshops at Midland, now a State heritage icon, this paper argues that there is significant social and historical value in retaining and reusing industrial sites, appropriately and sensitively interpreting their past.

Questioning the conservation of the City of Sydney’s past is the focus of the paper, with reference to the protection of The Rocks historic area.