Protecting the Future: Stories of Sustainability from RMIT University

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Author: Tricia Caswell | Sarah Holdsworth

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0ROTECTINGTHE&UTURE 3TORIESOF3USTAINABILITYFROM2-)45NIVERSITY

3ARAH(OLDSWORTHAND4RICIA#ASWELL%DITORS

© RMIT University 2004 All rights reserved. Except under the conditions described in the Australian Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, duplicating or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Contact Landlinks Press for all permission requests. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Protecting the future: stories of sustainability from RMIT University. Bibliography. ISBN 0 643 09065 7 (paperback). ISBN 0 643 09215 3 (netLibrary eBook). 1. Sustainable development – Victoria. 2. Economic development – Environmental aspects – Victoria. I. Caswell, Tricia. II. Holdsworth, Sarah. III. Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. 338.9945 Published by and available from CSIRO Publishing 150 Oxford Street (PO Box 1139) Collingwood VIC 3066 Australia Telephone: Local call: Fax: Email: Web site:

+61 3 9662 7666 1300 788 000 (Australia only) +61 3 9662 7555 [email protected] www.publish.csiro.au

Front cover Footprints, Tuross Heads, NSW, by Adele Flood

Set in 10.5/13 Adobe Minion Cover design by Jo Waite Design Typeset by Desktop Concepts Pty Ltd Printed in Australia by Ligare Printed on recycled paper, from sustainable forests

Contents

Introduction Sarah Holdsworth and Tricia Caswell 1

Learning about sustainability in the field: ‘Farming the Future’ Amaya Alvarez and Judy Rogers

2

Queen Victoria Market – communicating sustainable design solutions about rubbish! Edmund Horan

vii 1

15

3

Shifting the ground – sustainable engineering at RMIT Roger Hadgraft, Peter Muir, Margaret Jollands, Jenni Goricanec, Allison Brown and Andrea Bunting

31

4

Home among the gum trees: RMIT Hamilton Kaye Scholfield

53

5

Melbourne Youth Learning Opportunities project – sustainability story Glenn Bond and Trish van Lint

65

6

Solving salinity with the power of the sun John Andrews

77

7

Supermodern Gorgeous! Anthea van Kopplen

91

8

Memory and an artist’s view Adele Flood

110

9

Mercury stole my fire Anitra Nelson

129

10 Facilitating sustainable building: turning observation to practice Dominique Hes

137

11 Rats in the labyrinth: a sustainability story from Vietnam David Wilmoth

159

v

Contents

12 Sustaining Ormond’s vision of RMIT Robyn Oswald-Jacobs

177

13 Rubbish, students, passion and the greening of RMIT Donna Noonan

193

vi

Introduction Sarah Holdsworth and Tricia Caswell

Transformation of the atmosphere, hydrosphere and cultural landscape since the industrial revolution has resulted in the emerging global recognition and pursuit of sustainable development. Global sustainability is one of the fastest-growing concerns around the world. Demands for greater accountability and transparency are increasing daily from government, corporations and civil society. Globalisation and revolutions in communication and information have driven the emergence of global networks and the quest for global knowledge. Greater environmental and social awareness is pressing leaders, citizens and communities alike to view the future in very different ways. Organisations of all kinds are increasingly aware that their future may well depend on their ability to create solutions to economic, environmental, social and cultural as well as governance issues. Over the past 50 years societies have begun to recognise that they are not isolated from the environment; the relationships are interrelated and complex. This reinforces the idea that humans and the environment are interdependant and that human domination does not ensure social and industrial advancement. The ideals of sustainability and sustainable development pose many challenges for today’s society, including the clarification of language, meaning, authority and legitimacy. The terms themselves are contested – ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ mean different things to different people – but economic, environmental, social, cultural and governance dimensions emerge from their definitions and provide pathways to begin to understand the key emerging, leading-edge ideas, practices, dynamics and trends. Sustainability and sustainable development are dynamic concepts that will continue to evolve and grow as we begin to appreciate the complex and interrelated nature of the challenges they pose. The social and environmental consequences of traditional development programs are being questioned. This has resulted in a fundamental shift in vii

Introduction

global politics. Ideas of development and economic growth that enhance social and environmental well-being have emerged from rigorous debate and discussion within the international community. Under the auspices of the United Nations, international political frameworks have evolved which actively promote the development of the sustainability agenda and its implementation globally.1 In 1972 the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm, Sweden. The international community met to consider the global environment, the effects of industralisation, and development needs. The conference exposed the beginnings of a rift between the developed and the developing world’s exploitation of natural resources in a way that not only degraded the environment but also perpetuated the unequal distribution of wealth. In 1983 the United Nations created the World Commission on Environment and Development as an independent body and appointed Dr Gro Brundtland as head. In the Commission’s report, Our Common Future2 we find the seminal definition of sustainable development, as development ‘that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. The report demonstrated the fundamental links between environmental, economic and cultural concerns, and called for the reordering of global priorities. Economic, social and cultural and environmental dimensions are interconnected, with intragenerational and intergenerational consequences. The concept of sustainability includes social reform. It acknowledges the need for a reorientation of the international community towards the balancing of economic viability with ecological health and human well-being. The 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, or ‘Earth Summit’, explored how the planet’s environmental problems are linked to economies and to social justice issues. Some historic achievements at the conference included the development of the Rio Declaration, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Framework Convention on Climate Change and a plan for achieving Sustainable Development, Agenda 21. These initiatives publicly acknowledged that sustainable development was advancing as the central principle for planning and action for the future, recognising the primary place of the environment, the planet and its ecosystems.3 Ten years later, the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in 2002 reaffirmed many of the decisions and texts adopted at viii

Introduction

Rio. It reconfirmed an expanded global commitment to sustainable development. It also heralded the inclusion of many diverse sectors of society like business, industry and social justice groups not active in past earth Summits.4 Universities and their role in sustainability

Universities can play an important role in working towards a sustainable future by educating present and future generations about the relevance of sustainability issues to their particular disciplines and potential careers. Immense potential exists for the education sector to align itself in all aspects of its operations – infrastructure management as well as its core business of teaching, learning and research – with a vision of global sustainability. Universities have the opportunity to teach future professionals to engage in activities that sustain rather than degrade the environment, enhancing our communities and overall well-being, living within the limits of natural systems. Universities play a crucial role in creating and disseminating knowledge, skills and values that can influence policies and practices in government, companies and NGOs, shaping the society in which we live.5 Universities are places with unusual and diverse relationships with and among students, staff, business, government and community organisations at both local and international levels; universities are thus well positioned to comment on, question and challenge ideas, to develop new ideas and to encourage innovations in relation to an emerging field of knowledge. Working within the pursuit of a sustainability vision means critical engagement with the concept, tracking how it could be implemented and measured. Universities comprise their own unique communities, founded on traditions of scholarship and research. However, they also operate within a broader societal context and have the potential to contribute to the social dynamism, economic security and environmental sustainability of the communities with which they interact. But universities are institutions bound by tradition founded in disciplines mostly hundreds of years old. Their reputations and those of their scholars depend on disciplines with longstanding boundaries and credentials. These traditional disciplines, together with outdated inflexible structures and systems, contribute to the lack of university engagement with issues concerning sustainability, which are complex and cross over traditional boundaries. Consequently, much of the leading scholarship around sustainability has been ix

Introduction

developed outside universities in purpose-built institutions and organisations that have the flexibility to adapt to multi-disciplinary considerations and responses to sustainability. In order to move beyond traditional academic paradigms and disciplines we need a greater emphasis on collaboration and cooperation. We need thinking that is systemic and multidisciplinary. This is no threat to the existing disciplines – we need their history and depth – but we must also work across and sometimes outside and around them. Sustainability challenges require multidisciplinary responses, but collaborations of this nature are not the norm in universities. Cross-disciplinary approaches require a deep cultural shift. Whilst this is difficult to achieve it could lead to profound institutional change. Universities can and do achieve much more than their traditional scholarship. All parts of the university system are critical to achieving change. Universities are large physical institutions with many buildings and services to run. Their architecture and the way they use resources have many impacts across all dimensions of sustainability. There are trends for more and more universities to use sustainability principles and practices in all their physical operations. One of the ways to capture people’s understanding, commitment and action in their professional and personal lives is through storytelling. Storytelling is an ancient and traditional way of passing on all sorts of complex, multifaceted information and ideas – information and ideas that are not easily captured, categorised or shared by formal methods of storing and are not referenced. There are many different styles of stories. In this book, we present stories that share the knowledge and experiences of RMIT staff; stories that communicate the issues, ideas and progress that we face in the development and application of sustainability in RMIT and elsewhere. The authors of these stories reflect on sustainability, sometimes professionally, sometimes personally, sometimes both, in their own individual voices. These stories help us to explore and define how we might collaborate – work together – to make a difference inside RMIT no matter what our formal role might be. We hope others can learn from our experiences, and that our stories can inspire and edify. As Anthony deMello suggests in one of his one-minute meditations, ‘… the deepest truth is found by means of a simple story’.6 x

Introduction

This collection of stories from RMIT University describes ways in which academic and operational staff have examined their working and personal lives and reflected on their contribution to a sustainable world. We hope the stories provide insights into how we can individually and collectively translate knowledge into action in pursuit of sustainability. Stories on teaching and learning explore: • •

•

•

•

how to teach students about issues of sustainability in regional Victoria, Australia how teaching engineering students about sustainability concepts affected their understanding and led to a shift from traditional teaching methods to a more innovative and interactive approach what changes would be needed in engineering curriculum to incorporate sustainability and how such change might impact on programs and graduate capabilities across the faculty how RMIT Hamilton, an educational, research and cultural centre, was established to provide the south-west of Victoria with a sustainable teaching and learning model, to conduct regional research, and to include international and urban students as part of its community engagement how an innovative education project was designed to engage disconnected and marginalised homeless youth who frequent the Melbourne CBD.

In relation to research and innovation we have present: • a story about a partnership between RMIT, an engineering firm and a salt producer in north-east Victoria demonstrating and potentially commercialising a novel system using solar ponds to generate heat and produce commercial quantities of salt, thus reducing salinity in local soil • the personal and professional experiences of an RMIT fashion designer and lecturer that have led to the exploration and development of a sustainable design and teaching methodology • thoughts on how artists can make explicit and provide us with a means to understand significant contemporary issues like sustainability. Visual arts and creative writing provide links across the global community. Ways, means and objects related to sustainability xi

Introduction

•

•

were showcased in the RMIT global sustainability exposition ‘The Piece and the Practice’7 a story describing how unsustainable practices and ecological crises can only be understood if an interdisciplinary community-centred approach is adopted reflections on the quest to understand ideas and translate them into practice in the teaching of sustainable building design, using the reallife case of a civic centre as a focus.

Stories in the operations and infrastructure area describe: • the development of the RMIT Vietnam campus in Ho Chi Minh City as a potentially sustainable facility providing environmental, economic, educational and social benefits to the people of the region • issues faced by RMIT Property Services Groups responsible for aging infrastructure at a time when Environmentally sustainable design are being promoted, illustrated by a building renovation on RMIT’s city campus • a story about how campus-greening initiatives are gaining momentum in universities worldwide, and how student enthusiasm for rubbish, recycling and problem solving has helped to drive environmental change at RMIT since the 1990s. EF Schumacher, the celebrated author of Small is beautiful and founder of the Intermediate Technology Development Group, posed a challenge for educators when he wrote: ‘Education which fails to clarify our central convictions is mere training or indulgence. For it is our central convictions that are in disorder, and, as long as the present anti-metaphysical temper persists, the disorder will grow worse. Education, far from ranking as [our] greatest resource, will then be an agent of destruction.’4 In working on and teaching about sustainability, the contributors to this book of stories have risen to Schumacher’s challenge. References and further reading Brundtland report, see World Commission on Environment and Development. de Mello A, ‘One minute meditations’, Spiritwalk, no date, viewed 21 May 2004, . Global Sustainability Institute, RMIT University, . Schumacher EF, Small is beautiful – a study of economics as if people mattered, Harper, New York, 1973. xii

Introduction

World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, Our common future (the Brundtland report), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987.

Notes to the Introduction 1

Kelly, T, ‘Building a sustainable learning community at the University of New Hampshire’, The Declaration 6(2), 2003: 18–25.

2

World Commission on Environment and Development, Our common future (the Brundtland report), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987.

3

For more information on the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development see . The World Conferences: Developing priorities for the 21st century – briefing papers home page.

4

For more information on the 2002 UN World Summit on Sustainable Development see the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division for Sustainable Development website .

5

Cortese, A, ‘The critical role of higher education in creating a sustainable future’, Planning for Higher Education, March–May 2003: 15–22.

6

Excerpts from de Mello’s meditations and other writings are available on the Spiritwalk website at (viewed 21 May 2004).

7

‘The Piece and the Practice’ was held on 16–22 October 2002. To find out more about this and about the ‘triple bottom line plus one’ approach, visit RMIT’s Global Sustainability Institute website at .

8

EF Schumacher, Small is beautiful – a study of economics as if people mattered, Harper, New York, 1973, p. 94.

xiii


1 Learning about sustainability in the field: ‘Farming the Future’

Photo: Jessica Benjamin

Amaya Alvarez and Judy Rogers

Protecting the Future

Over a long weekend 45 students from across RMIT University in Melbourne leave the city for a four-day field trip into rural Victoria.

2

Learning About Sustainability in the Field: ‘Farming the Future’

Developing and teaching an RMIT University elective course, ‘Farming the Future’, about sustainability in rural Victoria, we found ourselves shifting from an investigative approach using practical, on-the-ground examples of implementation to an interpretative approach exploring the multiple ways in which sustainability is contested and understood. Developing an interpretative approach to ‘Farming the Future’

Farming the Future is an elective course taught at RMIT University. Students need to complete two of these electives as part of their undergraduate degree. The aim of the electives program is to provide students with opportunities to customise their degree to reflect their own needs and interests. Framed by the concept of sustainability, this elective was designed as a way of engaging students in ‘real’ socio-environmental problems. Farming the Future, as the name suggests, is intended to give students insights into issues facing and challenging the future of farming and land management in rural Australia. The specific objectives of the course are to develop: • •

•

• • •

an awareness of the complexity of the term ‘sustainability’ an awareness of some of the complexities involved in land management strategies at micro (farm implementation) and macro (legislation and funding) levels an ability to critically evaluate differences in land management practices – e.g. native animal reintroduction and habitat preservation versus herbicide use for primary production – by identifying the values of diverse interest groups an ability to assess the viability of integrating habitat rehabilitation with primary production an understanding of how and why land use dictates infrastructure change within a community an understanding of the idea of ‘degradation’ and how it relates to production.

Over a long weekend 45 students from across RMIT University in Melbourne leave the city for a four-day field trip into rural Victoria. The initial focus of these trips was to apply definitions and concepts of sustainability to real world problems and issues: the students would explore whatever environmental or social issue – such as salinity, land degradation, water management or rural decline – seemed the most pertinent for people on the 3


land. Within the investigative approach we had adopted at the outset, the role of the teacher is to provide information and assist in structuring the investigation of real world problems. Consequently, we provided students with a definition of sustainability and identified ‘real world’ field examples for them to investigate, to find out how sustainability, as we had already defined it, was being implemented in a particular community or region. Initially, then, we tried to frame the experience as an investigation of ‘what was going on out there’. What kept emerging, however, were anecdotes, arguments and narratives – i.e. interpretations. These made it increasingly clear that, at the local level, what is considered by some in the community to be ‘sustainable’ is often seen by others to be the opposite. This shift to an interpretative approach occurred over a number of field trips. (The field trips have been running for over five years now and there have been 15 trips in that time.) It happened partly in response to the way in which students reacted to the messiness of the issue on the ground. Many felt ill equipped to investigate what could not be pinned down to one definition or a straightforward explanation – ‘Here is sustainable farming’ – and partly through the interrogation of our own teaching, finding ourselves unable to provide the background or context to explain their responses. Initially we started to reframe the questions we were asking them to explore, from ‘In what ways are these sites sustainable?’ or ‘How are farmers responding to sustainability issues?’ to ‘How is sustainability understood here?’ and the more difficult ‘Sustainability of what and for whom?’ We now begin from the position that sustainability is not self-evident and are explicit about this. What we are exploring are multiple interpretations of sustainability, and that in such an approach sustainability is best understood as a discourse. (See box opposite.) In order to explore a range of interpretations, we now introduce students to a local issue through conversations with community members. Such issues could range from water and water management or native vegetation retention or conservation farming, for example, to the relationship between globalisation and the viability of communities and their industries. Within this approach the emphasis is less on investigating sustainability than on interpreting the various ways in which sustainability is captured, understood and disputed through the experience of people on the ground. Here the role of the teacher is to provide the opportunity for students to listen to, identify and engage with diverse points of view. The teacher thus develops with students 4


Approaches to sustainability

The most commonly used definition of sustainability and sustainable development is ‘development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.1 Because this definition is so broad and ambiguous it can be interpreted in a whole range of ways in practice. Much of the work on sustainability can be characterised by three key approaches. The first is concerned with definitions of sustainability – where they have emerged from; what they attempt to achieve; and to a lesser extent, how they apply to the lived world. The second approach is more concerned with ‘getting on with it’ than with endless discussions over meanings and definitions, and argues the need to focus on the task of implementation: this is the world of checklists, indicators and ecological footprints. The third approach characterises sustainability as a discourse – a way of defining and hence controlling the agenda for change and development across the globe. These three approaches lead to different understandings of sustainability. 1


their capacity to interpret; to critically reflect on how such conversations have transformed their understandings of sustainability and of community; and, most importantly, to be unafraid of the process of interpretation. In the interpretative approach, sustainability is not a self-evident concept. Rather than investigating (pre-defined) sustainability as it is applied on the ground, this approach acknowledges that interpretations of sustainability emerge out of a particular context. The disorder and complexity implicit in the interpretative approach becomes explicit when we consider the example of the introduction of the blue gum industry into the southern Grampians region. Finding out whether blue gum plantations constitute a sustainable land practice

Blue gums were introduced into the southern Grampians region of the State of Victoria to provide pulp for Japanese markets through the port at 5


Portland in the late 1990s. The introduction of the new industry into the region was heralded as a sustainable new land practice by industry, government and many in the environmental movement. Timbercorp’s stand

Timbercorp1, one of the largest investors in blue gums in the region, was keen to represent itself as environmentally responsible and the industry as a sustainable one that would provide socio-economic benefits for the community. Their key evidence was that they planted on existing farmland, offered attractive prices for land and brought in new jobs. Furthermore, the industry argued, blue gums were well suited to the rainfall and soil types of the region and contributed to the diversification of land use. Then there were the broader benefits to their investors that included both initial and ongoing tax incentives and the possibility of carbon credits. At the same time, Timbercorp acknowledged that expanding the industry might affect the local community, and made a commitment to manage the changes sensitively through allowing ‘community participation’, being ‘a good neighbour’ and providing ‘longer-term benefits’ to the regional economy.2 Timbercorp represents itself as a responsible corporation with an eye on both its environmental responsibilities and its role in the community.3 Conservationists’ views

But for many rural conservationists the move away from ‘traditional’ farming practices such as wool production to blue gums has simply meant the replacement of one monoculture for another, adding nothing to their efforts to preserve and enhance biological diversity. Other rural conservationists spoke about blue gums as a fire hazard or as using too much surface water, and pointed to large-scale plantings which are insensitive to the topography of the land. Such criticisms contrast with Low and Gleeson’s claims that ‘[p]lantations of eucalypts are arguably better for the land than the European-style agriculture that the plantations replace’ and consequently will probably ‘improve’ the environment.4 Low and Gleeson focus on what is best for the forest: the question of timber and how best to produce it. Their concern is with the degradation of old growth forests, not the consequences of creating new ones. For the conservationists, by contrast, the critical point is how to assess what is better for the land: their assessments of the blue gum industry incorporate the myriad of layers of the landscape – 6


Figure 1.

A Timbercorp eucalypt plantation. Photo: Jessica Benjamin.

soil, waterways, topography, vegetation and even the look of it: the landscape’s aesthetic. Other community members’ concerns

Other community members, particularly those living in proximity to blue gum plantations, expressed concern about the closing in of an open landscape, about landscape change. The arrival of the blue gums had unsettled them and challenged their sense of not only how the land should be used but also what it should look like. As the story continued to unfold it became evident that the concerns being expressed were not just about the look of the place. What was being challenged by the arrival of the industry was the sustainability of the farmer. Plantations require a different kind of worker: not a farm- or householdbased family business but itinerant off-site workers to operate machines, spray herbicides and plant seedlings. They need lots of workers with a particular skill at particular times but not on site, not in place. Plantations – if managed well – can be owned by someone somewhere else, by large corporations that employ a diverse and often transient workforce. This changes 7


not only the landscape but also the structure and arrangement of the community. Fears about depopulation emerged as farmers sold up with the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of getting good money for their land. Given that the average age of a farmer in Australia is about 51, many were seeing retirement and the money they could have to safeguard their old age and their children’s on-going education. This shifting of people was destabilising. It challenged the understanding of the way the community had been for a long time. Cheers and Luloff argue that such shifts are occurring anyway as the younger generation’s attitudes to the farm, their education and the life they envisage for themselves (and, often, the life their parents envisage for them) are changing.5 Yet the community’s response was based on something else as well. When speaking of sustainability many people in the community wanted things to stay the same, or for things to remain unchanged. Even when change was essential for a community to be viable, and even when the community’s social, work and educational aspirations created the conditions for change, people didn’t want it. Here sustainability was a form of nostalgia, and a powerful one. In such a context any change could be viewed with hostility regardless of what it might deliver. In response to these concerns, blue gums arriving in the district could be read as a story of a large corporation arriving and threatening the sustainability of a local community. However, it didn’t take long for the students to have this story challenged: the story of industrial takeover was constantly destabilised by other stories. For other people in the community – many of them farmers with young children – the introduction of blue gums added much needed impetus to small struggling towns. While ‘old’ families capitalising on the sudden rise in value of their land may have moved away, many new families arrived to work in the industry. Their arrival had flow-on effects: the local school increased enrolments, the local store and pub generated more business and empty houses in the townships began being occupied again. The nursery manager’s view

In town a nursery was set up with the latest high tech equipment to produce blue gum seedlings as efficiently and as fast as possible. When challenged by students about his involvement with an industry that students felt was ‘a bad thing’, the manager responded candidly. He wasn’t any more convinced than 8


the next person that blue gums were sustainable or that they were good for the land, but he pointed out that if he wasn’t producing the seedlings they would be shipped over from Western Australia where blue gums were already well established. He couldn’t stop the industry. At least this way, he reasoned, he was creating local jobs. His business employed five locals who had children and mortgages and a stake in the local economy. When asked about the sustainability of his business he stopped and smiled wryly. He reflected that there might be a good ten to fifteen years in the industry. But if and when there was a drop in demand, well at least he was set up to expand into other seedling production, and perhaps – and at this point his smile turned wicked – it might be in seedling production for revegetation work on former plantation land! The argument he was making recognised that in a regional community you had to seize what was available when it arrived and to build on that because, as he pointed out, he could never have built up a state-of-the-art nursery without corporate dollars. The bottom line for him was that his ambivalence did not prevent his involvement with the industry. Here the manager was not just rationalising and defending his choices. He was trying to get students to understand that, for him, if not for all landholders, the reality of staying afloat, of seizing a niche while it was available and of delivering local jobs seemed a reasonable and reasoned choice. Multiple stories, competing discourses

From seeing the blue gum industry initially as a case of sustainability being imposed from the outside (by big bad government, industry or global forces) on to the local community, students shifted to a position where they began to understand that the introduction of blue gums to the region was neither simply good nor bad, right nor wrong. It was just complex. What we were seeing and hearing, as the bus swept past row after row of newly planted blue gum seedlings marching in neat formation over huge areas of pastoral land, was something more than one industry supplanting another, or global forces overtaking local communities. What we were seeing was the contested nature of sustainability expressed by and through multiple stories. When we looked back on these experiences (for there was more than one field trip where blue gums were keenly argued over) we realised that our intentions of showing students examples of sustainable land practice had been challenged – and completely – by the stories on the ground. What we had found 9


was a powerful interplay among discourses – scientific, social policy, planning, global – woven through with discourses of other kinds – personal narrative, anecdote, local wisdom and a strong sense of rural identity. How could sustainability be defined in this context? Clearly no single definition would do. Following the trail of the blue gum industry exposed that the rightness or appropriateness of the industry, as well as its sustainability, was contested across and within the communities of south-western Victoria. And the questions were not just about the industry itself – whether the trees would provide an economically and environmentally sustainable and viable resource for the region – but also about what introducing widespread farm forestry did to the culture of the place. People questioned how such an industry changed social relations – destabilising certain taken-for-granted social networks and structures in the process – and what it did to the look and feel of the place – how it turned a taken-for-granted pastoral landscape into something else. From another angle, going out and discussing blue gums with a range of people also challenged students’ assumptions about ‘local’ communities – that they would be somehow homogenous and harmonious. So asking the question: ‘Is the blue gum industry sustainable?’ involved, for us and the students, much more than measuring incomes generated in the towns, growth rates, yields and so on; it was also about power and politics, discourses and language, trade-offs and compromises, opportunities and things lost. And much of this learning came from informal conversations. Rather than teaching about sustainability we became facilitators of a process in which students began to be able to recognise the messy and complex reality of sustainability on the ground and to be aware that the communities into which these ‘sustainability solutions’ were embedded were also diverse and divided. The interpretative process also highlighted the way in which relationships between community and land are interwoven in ways that are not easy to acknowledge in the community itself and are even harder to identify from the outside. Preparing students for the interpretative approach

A critical part of our role as teachers involved preparing students in a number of ways. First, we prepared them to shift from an investigative approach to an interpretative one. To do this we worked through with students how sustainability might be read, defined and understood in different ways. We discussed what they think is required in order for them to benefit 10


from going ‘out there’ to learn ‘in place’: things that have relevance and extend beyond the single learning experience. And we asked them to interrogate and reflect on their assumptions about sustainability and regional communities. Secondly, we prepared them for ‘engagement’ with the communities through which they were travelling. Here the learning involved identifying, through readings and discussion, the kinds of skills required to do interpretative work. These skills include the ability: • • •

• •

to listen carefully, assess, analyse and question to be open to the possibility that useful or important knowledge is not the preserve of experts or paid professionals to recognise that ordinary people, making sense of and attempting to negotiate change in their lives, communities and the places where they live, have insights to share that are of immense value to see a community in all its complexity and not expect a simple position or response to be held by all to understand how people can commit to a change for reasons other than the ones the policy makers or the students feel they should – to see the gray in things, not simply the black and white.

In relating how our teaching shifted we hope to have shown how the way of teaching and learning described here has relevance beyond a single issue, for the story of the blue gums is not an isolated one. The introduction of wind farms, building of new pipelines and creation of catchment management bureaucracies, the viability of rural university campuses and the survival of rural towns – small town sustainability – all contain their share of stories of hostility, hope, caution, opportunism and plain on-the-ground messiness. Stories like these require an ability to interpret and interrogate approaches to and understandings of sustainability being applied by different voices and levels of power as they articulate new formulations and responses to sustainability to further interests and to make sense of changes in the world around them. So how did students respond to this way of presenting sustainability? We conclude with some of their comments. ‘I hear a lot about sustainability at work, university, on documentaries and now on this study tour. I do not believe that my 11


definition of the word has changed a great deal during this time. The importance of it, to me, is now on a much deeper level. Being a person who has always lived in the city, I never had motivation to inform myself about land management issues, a problem in itself. I find myself now with a small burning inside asking – why don’t we do a little more to make our future sustainable?’ ‘After this weekend I’ve learnt that sustainability is a far more complex issue and is quite hard to define. Key concepts can be pinpointed from observations and the thoughts of various speakers. It seems as though there is one cornerstone. That is balance.’ ‘I have always known the cut and dry definition of sustainability, but never had the chance to dissect it and understand what it really means.’ ‘…sustainability is quite simple, but coordinating people and politics and communities in order to be sustainably productive is where it gets difficult. Power, responsibility, communication, cooperation all play a huge part …’ ‘Sustainability is a highly complex topic, something that I only realised over the course of the weekend. Though it is complex it is something that we all need to understand and embrace.’ References and further reading Bird R, ‘A short history of the western district of Victoria: landscapes, exploration, settlement, flora, fauna and land degradation,’ unpublished notes for RMIT field trip, 2000. Cheers B and Luloff AE, ‘Rural community development’ in S Lockie and L Bourke (eds), Rurality bites: the social and environmental transformation of rural Australia, Pluto Press, Sydney, 2001, pp. 129–42. Hedditch K, Land and power: a settlement history of the Glenelg Shire to 1890, Katrina Hedditch, Geelong, Vic., 1996. Low N and Gleeson B, Justice, society and nature: an exploration of political ecology, Routledge, New York, 1998, p. 13. Timbercorp, no date, viewed 21 May 2004, .

12


Notes to Chapter 1 1

The company’s activities are described on Timbercorp’s home page: Timbercorp Limited is Australia’s leading agribusiness investment manager, committed to creating investor wealth through substantial after-tax returns for sustainable export-based plantation forestry, timber and horticulture … Timbercorp currently manages more than 74,000 hectares of eucalyptus plantations, 12.5% of Australia’s total. The company also manages the largest single managed almond orchard in Australia, and has established one of the world’s largest olive groves on a single site … no date, viewed 21 May 2004, .

2

See Timbercorp, no date, viewed 21 May 2004, .

3

ibid.

4

N Low & B Gleeson, Justice, society and nature: an exploration of political ecology, Routledge, New York, 1998, p. 13.

5

B Cheers & AE Luloff, ‘Rural community development’, in S Lockie and L Bourke (eds), Rurality bites: the social and environmental transformation of rural Australia, Pluto Press, Sydney, 2001, pp. 129–42.

13


2 Queen Victoria Market – communicating sustainable design solutions about rubbish!

Photo: Adele Flood

Edmund Horan


Design is a kind of magic. It has always, somehow, had to take into account the issues of functionality and aesthetics and lots in between. Now it has an important new challenge: sustainability. An unusual project for environmental engineers was to design sustainable solutions for waste generated at the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne and then communicate them by making a series of posters. In the 21st century, engineers not only need to make the sustainable solutions; we need to be able to explain them to all kinds of people.

16

Queen Victoria Market – Communicating Sustainable Design Solutions About Rubbish!

The engineering profession generates the concepts for development projects, which include freeways, dams, airports, and water supply. It is the engineer’s responsibility to design these facilities, then construct and operate them. Society, in general, is supportive of progress and development. However, over the last couple of decades our society has begun to question unbridled development because of adverse impacts that have become visible within the environment and community. We are currently experiencing significant societal concern over the science and medical health sectors in areas such as genetic engineering and cloning because society has unanswered questions about future impacts of these technologies. To ensure that concerns and questions that the community has raised, and will continue to raise, are considered, we engineers need to take a holistic approach to development – to consider the impacts and consequences of our designs. We need to design for, and assume responsibility as a profession for managing, sustainable development. For many environmental problems, engineering technology exists today to alleviate many of the impacts. Often the implementation of technological solutions relies on changes in human behaviour, but because the need for change is not communicated clearly and appropriately, human behaviour remains the same. While engineers are problem solvers, the profession often comes under criticism for not communicating the technological solutions in an easily understandable format. Engineers mostly prefer to progress to the next problem to be solved, rather than review and reflect on the previous activity. Engineers and the engineering profession need to improve their communication methods to their colleagues, their clients and their community. The need to improve communication capabilities across the profession has recently been raised by Engineers Australia (EA). As the environmental engineering coordinator at RMIT University and an engineer for the past 30 years, I have been developing engineering students’ communication capabilities. This happens in the design subject, because engineers can – and tend to – design and construct without considering how the rest of society views their work. Most young people decide to study engineering because they want to do something for the betterment of society. Engineers need to communicate this. Engineers also need to practise sustainable engineering design, which considers all aspects of the problem being considered, and to communicate 17


this process to the wider community. Such communication can only be good for the credibility of the profession. The suite of courses in environmental engineering design provides a common thread through all four years of the program. They present an introduction to the design process and allow students from their first year to practise engineering design solutions. These courses are based on students undertaking problem-solving activities around real world problems. It is apt for students within the engineering degree to reflect on the design process and what designing for sustainability means for them, and also on what the environmental and community impacts might be. Students enjoy these experiences and the project work sets a backdrop for them to learn traditional engineering practices. What design means for engineers

Design can be viewed in the broad sense as a problem-solving exercise. A problem exists, or a need arises, and an engineering solution is required. This need results in the engineer applying a range of skills such as research, option generation, public consultation, communication with colleagues, technical application and decision making. From a more technical viewpoint, there are two fundamentals of the design spectrum: • •

aesthetic design: e.g. arrangements of shape and colour in the form of a painting on a canvas. problem solving/functional design: e.g. a functional engineering design to solve a problem.

These two fundamentals merge towards the functional in, for example, architecture, where the very functional structure such as a building may have an envelope which demonstrates an exterior aesthetic, and the internal form is influenced by interior design. An example of the aesthetic end of the design spectrum is the fashion industry, where the activity of designing haute couture for men and women often tends towards the more aesthetic, rather than the problem-solving, aspect of clothing: the main function of which is to protect or keep the human body warm. Another example of the aesthetic–functional aspects of design can be demonstrated in the transport arena, where the problem-solving issue of linking two areas by a road can be viewed as a very pedestrian form of 18


design. Yet if we consider the recent City Link toll way project in Melbourne, we see examples of highly technical functional engineering design and aesthetic design. Part of the approximately $2 billion project terminates at the north of the city. At this location about 30 red needles, each a metre square, rise about 30 metres into the air. These needles do not perform any transport function, yet they have been designed as a component of the toll way and their aesthetic sculptural form has become a symbol for the whole project. Communication and sustainable solutions

If we have sustainable design solutions to help remediate and resolve many of the environmental problems, why aren’t we using them? One possible answer is that the lack of action reflects a lack of public awareness. Community awareness and the resulting activity and action shape the political imperative; political decisions become policy, legislation and regulation which are then translated into action at the functional or problem-solving level. As the community becomes aware of an issue, say for example salination or algal blooms, the community expresses concern through letters, talk-back radio, protests etc. This concern can become a political issue. Governments then react and seek professionals such as engineers to solve the problems, i.e. to design solutions. This response at the problem-solving level then translates into government policy and eventually into functional action where the problem exists. In the case of algal blooms, it may be physical construction such as measures to divert, collect and treat effluent from agricultural areas to remove them from the waterways. A recent example of raising community awareness can be seen in the positive responses at the local level in Melbourne relating to the care and conservation of our water resources. A combination of community concern and political innovation saw the placing of restrictions on water use. Financial incentives were also provided for householders to install water-conserving appliances and rainwater storage tanks. Television advertising and promotional material in printed form were produced. Industry followed, with new water-saving products being developed for the market. All these factors, combined with a presence in the news media and segments on talk-back radio, contributed to further increase community awareness and peer group pressure. If we look back a couple of years, water conservation was not a major issue for the Melbourne community. Now, with community awareness raised, 19


because of perceived crises we are engineering progress towards sustainable solutions for our water resources. Learning about communication and design: the environmental engineering design course

The environmental engineer has a role to play in all aspects of sustainability. In response to a particular problem, sustainable engineering design needs to take a holistic approach. Earlier attempts at environmental problem-solving by cleaning up the mess at the end, or end-of-pipe solutions, are not sustainable. They treat the symptom and do not attend to the core problem. For example, let us consider a factory process producing a hazardous waste as a by-product of the production process. We expend significant resources collecting the waste material, separating the hazardous component, transporting it to a special hazardous waste treatment facility and then transporting the treated or partially neutralised material to a hazardous waste disposal facility. The waste then lies in this containment facility and we hope that its effects are limited to that site. What needs to occur is a holistic approach, which considers the product itself and what its function is. How can the same function be achieved by producing a different product, which does not have the same toxic waste byproduct? Alternatively, how can the original product be produced with a different or modified process that does not produce the hazardous by-product? Students learning about sustainable solutions represents one aspect of classes. However, students need also to gain an appreciation of their possible communication role through lessons and activities. The project within this design subject for the course in first year focuses on an environmental issue at the Queen Victoria Market (QVM). This exercise uses a sustainable design project as a problem-solving activity for students to learn about sustainability and to practise communication skills. The QVM is the largest retail food and produce market in Melbourne, with outlets selling a great diversity of products. A significant amount of waste is generated by market activities; in particular, organic waste from the fruit and vegetable stalls. The students have to develop a system to collect the waste and transport it to a facility where a composting treatment is designed to process it into soil products. The aim of the project is to develop a waste collection, handling, recycling and processing system for the QVM concentrating on the prominent waste stream – food organics – and also to communicate the solutions to the community. 20


Figure 1.

Produce waste at Queen Victoria market. Photo: Adele Flood.

Communication skills are developed through group activities, report writing and oral presentations, but the project involves the students taking communication one step futher: they have to directly relate their sustainability solution to the community. Components of the communication strategy include the use of visual media such as a poster display for exhibition in public places. Students from senior years of the program are also involved and act as mentors to the first-year students. Students contributing in a local context Students learning in a context which is relevant to industry is an important underlying philosophy of the environmental engineering program at RMIT University. Part of our continual improvement program is to redevelop educational programs for continued relevance to industry and the community. The project at QVM provides an industrial and community backdrop to which students are continually referred. The waste management issue at QVM is important for various industry sectors and organisations including:

•

the City of Melbourne which has a responsibility for sustainable economic development of the city’s assets 21


• • •

the traders who are running their businesses at the market the waste management contractors who are cleaning the market and aiming to run a profitable business the customers who see the manner in which waste can be strewn around the lane-ways of the market.

To provide an educational context to the problem to be solved the students are exposed to many different situations. These situations extend their experiences beyond the traditional teaching classroom through: • • • •

inspection of sites for problem review and identification inspection of a waste management facility for engineering process evaluation sessions by consultants and experts in related areas sessions taken by senior students who demonstrate a leadership role.

The opportunity arose for students to be involved in an exposition of student and educational projects to demonstrate initiatives, and the practice of teaching and learning, with a focus on sustainability. ‘The Piece and the Practice’1 brought to public attention the informed contributions we as educators are making to increase student awareness of vital issues of global sustainability. The exposition provided a chance to allow my students to create a poster display for the Melbourne Central shopping plaza exhibition. Consequently, the requirement to develop a poster for public display was included as part of the project brief for the QVM design project. By producing the posters, students would reflect on the problem and their solutions. It would be one thing to derive the solution. However, students would also need to convey their sustainable solutions in a simple graphic expression, thus learning how to communicate about their solutions. Communicating engineering technology visually

Engineers generally confine themselves to producing functional technical design. However, this project included communicating sustainable solutions to the public because community awareness and support are crucial to successful implementation. Humans are very visual beings. Advertisers respond to this visual receptiveness by creating awareness about products and services through visual media such as billboards and television commercials – so the poster was chosen as a useful medium of communication for engineers to raise community awareness of sustainability. 22


In designing a poster it is critical to be able to convey the message, usually pictorially, in a simple and readily understandable way. To ensure students were aware of some concepts about visual representation and visual impact, a member of the Department of Fashion and Textiles ran a session on visual communication. The presentations included examples of her students’ work in developing designs from a basic concept through to the final design representation for the finished garment, current trends in graphic communication, visual shapes, contemporary fonts etc. This segment was far from the normal type of learning exercise for engineering students. Leadership roles by senior students

The students in the first year of the program have little or no exposure to computer graphics packages. As designing a poster was a component of the project a lead role was taken by a senior student who presented hints on working with graphics packages, and the different types of colour, fonts etc. that work well. She made a presentation to the class outlining basic aspects that would provide some consistency of format for all the posters. Students were directed to the relevant software packages. Students put together photos, graphic images and text in a draft form showing how they wanted their poster to appear. The senior student assisted by fine-tuning the draft poster into a polished design fit for public display. Another final year student also gave a presentation to the class. She has work experience in undertaking waste audits and introducing waste sorting and recycling systems to the University. Her final year design project was also in the waste management field. Communicating a sustainable solution

There were seven student groups; each was to produce a poster. Every poster was to depict a different component in the sustainable solution. An eighth poster was prepared by the class manager to describe the educational aspects of the student exercise. Students took a general class discussion period to analyse the overall sustainability issue at the QVM; they defined the problem, the solution and the process and set these out in seven different components: •

market activities 23


• • • • • •

waste generation problems with traditional waste disposal waste separation possibilities waste collection and transport composting process sustainability benefits of composting.

Students were posed the questions: What is the issue? Why does it exist? Futher class sessions and student research developed these basic components. The main aspects of each component are set out below under the relevant poster headings. Poster 1: Market activities

The waste problem at QVM results essentially from urbanisation. As human settlements have developed from hunter-gatherer societies, so has the need to farm and distribute fresh produce to those settlements. The produce market has developed from this logistical necessity. Produce markets exist in many forms today, from roadside fruit or vegetable stalls to mega-supermarkets in extensive and elaborate shopping centres spread over many hectares. Traditional produce markets such as the QVM are busy with activities. The fresh produce on display and lively interchange between stallholders and customers are often attractions in themselves, which bring people to shop there. Poster 2: Waste generation

Stallholders are also continually preparing and trimming produce for sale. Amidst this preparation and selling, they have little time and space other than to throw off-cuts, unsaleable produce and packaging material into a small access lane between the rows of stalls or into dump bins. Poster 3: Traditional waste disposal

Landfills impact on the environment. They generate methane, leachate, odour, wind-blown litter and vermin. They also consume potential resources in the form of wastes. In addition to these waste disposal issues, some of the waste organic material at markets often ends up being hosed into drainage pits, resulting in the eventual disposal of nutrients into waterways. 24


Figure 2. ‘Market Activites’. Poster by RMIT students James Morgan, John Trethewie and Amuthan Rajendran. © James Morgan, Najah Onn and RMIT University. 25


The energy and resources expended in the collection, transfer and disposal of organic waste material from markets is another issue for efficiency and sustainability. Poster 4: Waste separation and sorting

A fundamental issue with processing organic material is the quality of the end product: soil or potting mix. This must be free from contamination or unsightly material such as pieces of plastic, glass and metal. Consequently, organic material for composting must be carefully separated from other waste materials. There are two crucial requirements for proper separation: first, stallholders need a suitable receptacle to receive the organic material; second, stallholders have to separate the waste. Students’ solutions for separation and collection include the standard 240 L wheelie bin, which is suitable for regular collection by a refuse collection vehicle, and the larger 1m3 four-wheeled dumpster. Educating the stallholders and motivating them to ‘do the right thing’ was also a consideration in producing the posters. Poster 5: Waste collection and disposal

The off-cuts, unsaleable produce and packaging material are collected manually and by large street sweeper/suction machines. This waste and other material which has made its way into bins around the site is then transferred to a large garbage compaction vehicle. This vehicle then transports the waste, either large distances directly to a landfill in an urban fringe or semirural location, or to an urban transfer station where it is subsequently transferred to a large truck and trailer vehicle for transport and disposal to a distant landfill. In the case where the material is to be composted, the organic waste can be collected in traditional waste collection receptacles and then transported directly to the composting facility. Poster 6 The composting process

The composting process is the natural one of decomposition and relies on several different factors: • 26

size reduction: grinding and shredding the material to form smaller particles, making it easier for microbiological action to occur


Figure 3. ‘End Product and Uses’. Poster by RMIT students Edward Hayden, Annabel Sandery and Ritsuko Maeda. © Najah Onn. 27


• • • • •

mixing: combining with other organic material if necessary, to achieve the correct carbon/nitrogen ratio for optimum processing aeration: turning the material regularly or aerating it to provide oxygen moisture content of the material: maintaining the correct moisture level temperature monitoring: to check that processes are occurring correctly screening: to remove any large or foreign matter.

If these components of the composting process are monitored and maintained over several weeks, an excellent soil amendment product can be produced. Poster 7: Sustainability benefits of composting

Composting has numerous beneficial aspects that contribute to sustainability. These include: • • • • • • •

making use of a natural microbiological process to decompose waste material converting a waste product into a valuable resource providing an opportunity for natural organic material to be returned to the soil as an amendment in place of artificial fertilisers acting as a disease suppressant for plants improving plant growth enhancing the quality of soil to which it is added. diverting organic material from landfill, hence reducing the negative impacts that this material can have on the environment.

The poster collection The posters were displayed initially at the Melbourne Central shopping plaza in RMIT’s global sustainability exposition ‘The Piece and the Practice’. Students were able to stand with the collection and discuss relevant points with the public during the exposition. When students were not minding the display, passers-by could still view the work and go through the various aspects of the sustainable design. The posters are now permanently housed within the school and are displayed at University Open Days as examples of student project work. They 28


are also used to demonstrate an example of sustainable design to current students. Industry support

To have the posters printed and laminated in a form for public presentation is an expensive exercise. It was through the sponsorship of two external organisations, the Waste Management Association of Australia and Nolan ITU, that the posters could be professionally printed. The WMAA is the peak national body representing the waste management industry and one of its aims is to promote sustainable forms of waste management and resource utilisation. Nolan ITU is an environmental engineering consultancy operating principally in Victoria and New South Wales. One of its major fields of consultancy is in waste management. The firm also employs graduate environmental engineers. The sponsorship of both organisations was mentioned on each poster and their logos were displayed. The sponsorship and involvement of the association and the consultancy company gave the students an added sense of purpose to their work. Summary Environmental engineers put sustainability into practice by solving environmental problems. This project uses an example of sustainable design in combination with various communication techniques to demonstrate sustainability in practice and raise community awareness about sustainable design solutions. The students enjoyed the exercise. The skills they demonstrated in producing the posters made them positive about their ability to communicate. The Queen Victoria Market project remains an integral component of the sustainable waste management module in the first-year environmental engineering design course, and feedback often refers to it as the module that the students appreciate the most during the semester. Notes to Chapter 2 1

‘The Piece and the Practice’ was an exposition of global sustainability at RMIT held on 16–22 October 2002. To find out more about this and about the ‘triple bottom line plus one’ approach, visit RMIT’s Global Sustainability Institute website at .

29


3 Shifting the ground – sustainable engineering at RMIT

Photo: Adele Flood

Roger Hadgraft, Peter Muir, Margaret Jollands, Jenni Goricanec, Allison Brown, Andrea Bunting


Young engineers might have to negotiate with governments in Africa, partner with NGOs in Australia, design for zero emissions in Europe, do a life cycle analysis of the impacts of new infrastructure for power sources and manage the team to make it happen. Engineering has been a critical player in the Industrial Revolution and has always been a central part of teaching, learning and research at RMIT. In the 20th century, engineering had to look at its role anew. Sustainability – environmental, social and cultural, and economic – provides a conceptual key to examining how engineering might change. RMIT Engineering is up for the challenge. This story tells you where we are up to – facing the challenge of sustainability in the 21st century.

32

Shifting the Ground – Sustainable Engineering at RMIT

Introduction

RMIT University provides professional, vocational education and training and outcome-related research that addresses real issues. Consistent with this vision, the university’s teaching and learning strategy promotes community engagement, recognises the need to prepare students for careers in an unknown future, and is driving the transformation of all degree programs from a traditional content-based curriculum to curricula based on the development of graduate capabilities. 1 The Faculty of Engineering was among the first to embark on program renewal. Part of the reason was that the accreditation of programs became based on capabilities rather than on content; Engineers Australia (the Institution of Engineers, Australia) has recognised sustainability as a key attribute since 1999. RMIT also recognised that our graduates will face unforeseeable challenges, in a turbulent environment – subject to policy changes by government, interconnectedness between organisations, high levels of competition and information overload – and that our industry partners expect graduate employees to be able to act effectively in this dynamic environment. Working with industry partners to gain a contextualised perspective of engineering for the 21st century, we found the traditional view of the engineer as technical problem solver with economic, social and environmental awareness was challenged in favour of a clear focus on sustainability, highlighting the need for trans-disciplinary2 approaches. Thus, sustainable engineering is now at the centre of our efforts, and is reflected in innovative projects and approaches hosted in the faculty and with partners. A key teaching strategy to achieve this new, broader focus is the development of understanding of the sustainability agenda and its principles, which can be applied and tested in project-based and problem-based learning. Our approach is based on the premise that students grappling with whole problems will come to understand the complexity of the challenges facing engineering and will see the need for a systems approach. In this chapter we review some of our experiments in sustainable engineering research and discuss how these ideas are being embedded in the undergraduate and postgraduate curriculum. These newer developments rest on work over the last decade and a half at RMIT University in environmental awareness and sustainability. 33


The sustainable engineering agenda

The accreditation manual of Engineers Australia lists 10 attributes graduates should have. Sustainable development and design are featured among them in the following terms: •

• •

understanding of the social, cultural, global and environmental responsibilities of the professional engineer, and the need for sustainable development; understanding of the principles of sustainable design and development; understanding of professional and ethical responsibilities and commitment to them …3

In industry forums we found a more profound focus on sustainability as a core requirement. We also derived from the consultation further generic capabilities related to sustainability: •

• •

a focus on adaptive planning (i.e. a qualitatively different approach to planning); including scenario planning – to define the range of possible futures which have to be planned for an understanding of, and a focus on, ‘whole systems’, trying to adapt with their environment positioning strategies (e.g. designing to purpose/solution, not product).

This chapter reflects on aspects of the program renewal process and includes stories from the engineering schools – Civil and Chemical; Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing; and Electrical and Computer – both within their programs, undergraduate and postgraduate, and also extending outside engineering in a cross-university Masters program. Introducing capability-based curriculum

The capability approach is both future focussed and action oriented: it is based on what a graduate will be required to do. A traditional approach is based on the identification of teaching inputs: a concern for the ‘right’ lecturers and textbooks. By contrast, the capability approach is based on the identification of performative outputs: a concern for understanding the situations and contexts that an engineer will be required to take effective action in, after graduating. 34


The capability approach is fundamentally holistic in intention. It places priority on the integration of knowledge, action and learning across personal, professional, community and academic domains. In treating the graduate as a ‘whole’ person, the capability approach typically extends the scope of the curriculum. Where the traditional curriculum might be expected to focus largely on the transmission of theoretical/technical knowledge within narrow specialisations, the significantly broader capability curriculum encompasses a student’s capacity to reflect upon their actions (performance) and use theoretical frameworks and models of practice to make context-sensitive judgments. The shift in approach raises two distinct, but interdependent, questions for designers of an engineering degree. What situations are graduates likely to confront across multiple domains, and what constitutes effective action in these domains? To answer, we must first understand the direction and dynamics of the environment that engineering graduates are likely to encounter as professionals and citizens, now and into the future. Only then is it possible to identify what capabilities graduates will need, to actively and productively fulfil their responsibilities as engineers and citizens. A socio-ecological approach4 was used as the theoretical framework on which the viability and sustainability of engineering programs at RMIT were assessed. The theory provides a set of concepts and methods on which the identification of a necessary and sufficient set of capabilities can proceed. 5 The community engagement process

This section describes the first stage of a process where stakeholders – staff, employers, graduates and students – participate in identifying desirable capabilities of graduates. The process is based on the socio-ecological systems theory that planners – in this case curriculum designers – confront ‘turbulent’ or highly complex and dynamic environments, and that to produce a viable and sustainable program in this environment requires an ‘Active Adaptive’ approach to learning and planning. The principles of this approach, developed by Emery and Trist, are that it is participative, values based, coordinated, integrated, and ongoing. 6 The faculty team working on program renewal first began meeting around April 2002. It was made up of the Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning) and the Directors of Teaching and Learning in each of the three 35


engineering schools – Civil and Chemical; Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing; and Electrical and Computer. A qualitative methodology employing the focus group technique was adopted to find out from people within an industry how they thought we could produce engineering graduates better equipped for their future within that industry. Several industry forums were organised. These included members of existing committees, senior industry figures and several recent graduates. The purpose of the consultations was to engage as many stakeholder groups in the industry as possible and identify the whole range of their views – but not to elaborate or evaluate particular points, for the focus was on breadth, not depth. All points of view were recorded on butchers paper or electronic whiteboard as lists or mind maps. Staff were invited to attend the sessions. They were asked to probe responses but not to judge or impose their own interpretations on the views and perceptions of external participants. To help participants to think more clearly about the capabilities required of graduates in their business, each meeting aimed to address some key questions: • • • •

•

What emerging trends in the environment will have an increasing impact on your organisation? What attributes will organisations, yours included, require if they are to survive and thrive in this environment? How are you, and your organisation, currently dealing/coping with the pressures to survive and thrive in this environment? In light of your answers to those questions, what capabilities will employees – specifically, graduate (chemical, natural resources or civil) engineers – require if they are to effectively contribute to their work organisations and communities into the 21st century? What can or should be done to ensure that engineers from RMIT are better prepared to meet the demands in their lives as professionals and citizens?

As a result of the consultation process we developed our own list of attributes or graduate capability outcomes, more comprehensive than the list in the Engineers Australia accreditation manual, with explicit reference to the environment that engineering graduates in a specific industry will face. 36


Chemical Engineering

The first industry group meeting was with a group of chemical engineers representing several industry segments. While there is some optimism among this group, the trends are mixed. Under the all-pervading influence of neo-liberal economic policies, chemical engineers work in a highly competitive environment, beset by demands for increasing quality and regulations within a globalised marketplace. However, globalisation also brings higher social and community expectations for global citizenship and, concomitantly, a philosophy of sustainability. Broadly, chemical engineers face great and increasing uncertainty, with constant and complex change at a global level requiring a focus on adaptive planning, which implies a qualitatively different approach. This involves keeping abreast of the external world through monitoring the environment and through intelligent knowledge management, and scenario planning to define the range of possible futures that have to be anticipated. This, in turn, requires an understanding of, and a focus on, ‘whole systems’, trying to adapt to and with their environment. This in turn places a premium on: • • •

positioning strategies, such as designing to purpose or solution, not product management of global–local tensions, such as diversity; multicultural staff, allies and customers; and external relationships thinking outside the box – developing skills in ‘collaboration and creativity’.

Also, the high rate of change and waves of uncertainty sweeping Australia and its competitors make the relative position of manufacturing in Australia more problematic, and make it harder to come to grips with the balance between mature and emerging markets. At a more specific level, the capacity to meet demands in these areas was seen as important: • • • • •

cost management Information Technology/Information Systems and intellectual property sustainable development outsourcing and casualisation of the workforce teams and alliances 37


•

•

making quality and customer focus ‘real’: currently quality is seen as reactive and compliance driven, rather than proactive and strategic. Quality should be justified on the basis of adding value, and Quality Assurance does not necessarily produce customer focus achieving distinctive competence – very difficult in such a dynamic environment.

Generic capabilities are becoming more important than specialist capabilities as an expression of what it means to practise as an engineer. Engineers need to see themselves first as engineers and then as chemical engineers. From the data, it appears that a limited range of initiatives have already emerged in response to these demands: •

•

• • •

attempts to develop more sophisticated approaches to environmental scanning and monitoring where acceptance of change and capacity to anticipate the issues and problems becomes critical limited attempts to addressing problems from a ‘whole system’ perspective: a focus on, e.g., understanding and managing intra- and inter-organisational relationships (such as interdisciplinary boundaries or organisation–supplier boundaries), rather than on how whole systems can sustainably adapt within a highly dynamic, unpredictable, ‘winner-takes-all’ global environment systematic attempts at managing diversity – cultural or educational thinking about the management of global–local tensions thinking about the management of external relationships.

Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering

During 2002, John Andrews of the Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing school undertook a three-month project to investigate options in consultation with key stakeholders, and began to assemble relevant information and other resources for incorporating global sustainability matters into RMIT University’s undergraduate engineering degree programs. The report7 noted that •

38

there is increasing interest in sustainability within governments in Australia


•

•

more and more corporations are adopting sustainability as a key objective of governance, as well as practicing triple bottom line accounting – social, environmental and financial – practices in reporting to their boards, shareholders and the general public RMIT itself has ‘a strong and public commitment to global sustainability and measures its performance through social, financial, environmental and governance indicators’ (RMIT, 2002). RMIT signed the Tailloires Declaration in 1995 in which universities commit themselves to engaging in a range of activities to promote sustainable development and global sustainability and has created Global Sustainability @ RMIT to lead and coordinate these activities.8

The key recommendation of this research and consultation, supported by specific recommendations on ‘how to’, was to make sustainable engineering a central theme in all RMIT undergraduate engineering programs. Electrical and Computer Engineering

The challenge the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering recognised was to renew and revitalise programs in each of its streams – electrical, electronic, communications and software and networks – given the pressure on staff of high workloads, the pressure on resources, and the changing nature of students’ needs. Renewed programs would be: • • • •

responsive to industry educationally up-to-date focussed on the development of graduate capabilities responsive to student stakeholders.

As a first step the school began to research the needs of stakeholders, both industry and student, during 2002. Forums of staff and industry were organised, to gather information about trends in the environment and in the respective industry that imply changing requirements of these programs from an employers’ perspective. The electrical industry forum reflected the increasing requirement for an understanding of sustainability as government requirements of the industry change. One example is the regulation of the energy industry to achieve the 39


mandatory requirement of all energy suppliers to provide a proportion of energy using renewable energy sources by 2010. Sustainability was further reflected in the increasing need to consider different stakeholders’ needs and values when developing intrusive infrastructure such as power stations and wind farms, and the need to take into account the social and environmental, as well as financial/economic, consequences of innovation – the triple bottom line. The communications and software and networks forums were less specific about the sustainability agenda, but they were equally pointed about the need for flexibility and adaptability of graduates to the changing needs of employers and industry. Consistent themes across the forums were also the changing role of the engineer; the ability to learn how to learn in the face of change and huge amounts of information; the ability to work both locally and globally; and the ability to work across disciplines and in groups. These are all consistent with sustainable practices both now and in the future. Student views were gathered via a two-step process: a number of focus groups were used to develop themes of interest to the students; then a survey based on these themes was conducted. Themes identified were: • • • •

• • • • •

40

that there is increasing complexity and a more complicated world that there is increasing need for adaptation that the technology is increasingly fast-moving and is becoming smaller and more expensive, more quickly that engineering is increasingly results oriented – short-term focussed, more business-minded, cost-focussed, etc, with an increasing need to see the big picture but still know what to do that in engineering there is not much time to make the connections, but there is a need to be proactive, to work for yourself that there is less industry involvement in the professional development of engineers that increasingly engineers need to have qualifications and/or experience beyond the graduate level to get the job that experience continues to be valued and is increasingly sought by industry (and that job ads ask for experience) that increasingly industry wants ‘big picture’ people to cope in this dynamic world


• • •

that engineers are becoming managers, either as project managers or as traditional managers that the trend is for engineers to start at the bottom and become managers and that there is a need for adaptation to changing roles that the degree ‘is only a piece of paper’ and that it doesn’t show your capability.

These themes point to the students’ felt need for capabilities beyond the traditional technical, as well to the sustainability agenda in respect of engineering and engineering education within the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The survey results confirmed these conclusions. During 2003 and beyond, the school continues to • • • • • • • • • •

research stakeholder needs (industry, staff, student, other RMIT portfolios, accreditation bodies, industry associations etc.) identify the overall program goals and graduate capabilities work as a team to critically review all our classes develop appropriate learning objectives related to program goals develop conceptual streams of courses related to industry trends remove redundant material ensure not too much content is crammed into courses develop support materials/activities for students with particular needs identify professional development needs for teaching staff undertake professional development in educational methods and research

– and thereby ensure that the programs of the School are sustainable and that the graduates of these programs develop sustainable practices. Experiments in sustainable engineering Environmental engineering

The environmental engineering degree was first introduced at RMIT in 1991 after thorough industry consultation in 1989–90. It was one of the first such programs in Australia. The program has been built on the strengths of the civil engineering and geological engineering disciplines within which it was developed. Areas of strength include land contamination and remediation, 41


mine rehabilitation, catchment management, groundwater management, waste management, composting, and transport impacts. More recently, the amalgamation with the chemical engineering discipline to form a new School of Civil and Chemical Engineering has strengthened cooperation in the area of pollution control, cleaner production, and water and wastewater treatment, including the design and evaluation of wetlands. Mechanical engineering

The Energy Conservation and Renewable Energy (Energy CARE) group within the mechanical and automotive engineering discipline have developed several courses and modules relating to sustainable energy and other environmental issues. Two courses on renewable energy are now offered as engineering electives to students in the final year of the mechanical engineering course. One of these courses, Remote Area Power Supply, has been offered since the late 1980s. This course deals with the design of stand-alone, small-scale power generation systems incorporating photovoltaics, wind turbines, diesel generators and battery systems. The second course, Renewable Energy Systems, was developed in 2001. This course is also offered as a general elective to all students across the university, and in RMIT’s engineering program in Singapore. Because of the high level of demand, the course is offered twice a year. Renewable Energy Systems focuses on large-scale, grid-connected solar and wind power systems, solar water heating, and solar radiation geometry and shading. Students also study the social, environmental and economic aspects of renewable energy systems. For example, they undertake a case study on planning controversies over wind farm siting. They also investigate the development of the renewable energy industry in Australia. Academics from the Energy CARE group have also developed two modules on sustainability, which are taught in the professional experience program in the first and third years of the mechanical engineering program. In the first year, students study sustainability principles and practice. A major part of this module is the study of topical and controversial issues in sustainability. Students are formed into groups and required to debate an issue in class. In the third year, students are introduced to triple bottom line (economic, social and environmental) assessment, and required to apply this to a case study of their choice. These modules have proved valuable in raising 42


students’ understanding of sustainability principles and assessment techniques and their application in a range of areas. Civil and infrastructure engineering

In 2003, a new program in civil and infrastructure engineering was created that explicitly addresses the shift in Western economies from designing new infrastructure (buildings, roads, water supply, wastewater treatment, etc) to the maintenance and refurbishment of existing infrastructure. Costing must be done over the whole life cycle and graduates must be skilled throughout the facility life cycle of planning, design, construction, operations, maintenance, refurbishment, repurposing and demolition. Thus, the systems approach of sustainability and the triple bottom line are a natural fit to this whole of life cycle view of civil infrastructure. The new program uses project-based learning to introduce students to the complexity of civil infrastructure problems. This happens as early as semester one of first year. At this stage, students are encouraged to grasp the breadth of the discipline and begin to identify their own future role in it. In semester two of first year, students study environmental principles for sustainable design and perform a small design task where they must put these principles into action. In year two, students focus on economic principles and project evaluation. In year three, they design an eco-home, applying the full range of sustainability principles and the triple bottom line. In year four, they tackle an infrastructure project (rather than just a design project) as well as an investigation project, which might also explore sustainability issues. Electives in infrastructure issues are also available. Thus, sustainability and the triple bottom line have become the decisionmaking framework for projects within the new civil and infrastructure program. Traditionally, students have used only technical and economic criteria for decision making. Chemical engineering

As mentioned earlier, Engineers Australia has refined its required graduate capabilities for all accredited engineering programs to include appreciation of global sustainability issues. In Britain, the Institution of Chemical Engineers has made similar refinements to its requirements for curriculum content.9 In response to these changes, staff teaching chemical engineering at 43


RMIT collaborated with staff at RMIT’s Global Sustainability Institute to develop new curriculum content. Two examples of developments follow. The first development was introduced into the first year of the chemical engineering program. The concept and practice of sustainable development was introduced in a course called Professional Engineering. This course aims to introduce the students to professional engineering practices by developing skills that complement technical knowledge, such as computing, giving presentations, writing reports, working in teams, and engaging in research and reflection. The course also aims to develop the students’ ideas about the roles and responsibilities of a chemical engineer in industry and society, including occupational health and safety and global sustainability. A lecture was given on global sustainability, including its history, definitions, the triple bottom line and outcomes of the Earth Summit in Johannesburg, 2002. A case study of a development agency’s work in Cambodia was also reviewed. Students were asked to work in pairs on an assignment on sustainable development that linked to a previous field trip to Carlton United’s brewery in Abbotsford, Melbourne. They were asked to use the triple bottom line approach to compare siting a brewery in a large metropolis such as Melbourne with siting it in a remote region of north-west Australia. The aim of the assignment was for the student to develop a concept of sustainable development and apply it to the building of a chemical plant such as a brewery, and also to develop skills in research and report writing. The object of working in pairs was to promote teamwork and encourage the students to discuss and develop their viewpoints together. The outcomes were positive for both the lecturer and the students. Feedback from the students at the end of the semester indicated that they found this assignment useful. The lecturer was also pleased with the quality of work submitted. The average mark for the assignment was distinction (75%). The majority of reports contained thoughtful and detailed analyses of the issues from an economic, environmental and social point of view, indicating that the students had engaged with the set task, undertaken wide research and developed interesting viewpoints and ideas. The second development was introduced into the fourth-year Design Project within the chemical engineering program. The design project seeks to synthesise all students’ learning from previous courses in the whole program and involves the application of a wide range of knowledge and skills. These include chemical engineering fundamentals, data gathering, 44


project management, safety considerations, environmental considerations, economic evaluation, leadership and membership of teams, report writing and project presentation. Students work in groups of five or six to design a plant for a given process. The Institution of Chemical Engineers issued detailed guidelines about how to introduce the concept of sustainable development in the design project10 and it was agreed to implement these in the current class. A further development, designed in collaboration with RMIT’s Global Sustainability Institute, was to recognise the contribution of other disciplines to evaluation of the triple bottom line for a new chemical engineering plant; this was introduced into one group only, as a test case. Students from the RMIT environmental science program were asked to volunteer to join one of the design project groups and to help the group to develop a sound environmental evaluation of their particular project. The experiment was a success. Although it was difficult to match the assessment needs/timelines of the two different student cohorts, the group benefited from their diversity of backgrounds and were able to investigate parts of their project in more depth than other groups. An emerging concept – Master of Sustainable Practice

RMIT University recognises that: •

• • •

less-recent engineering graduates and graduates of other disciplines will not necessarily have developed the types of attributes articulated by Engineers Australia or the additional capabilities developed from our own consultations, and undergraduate programs may not have taken a ‘whole person’ approach the environment in general, and for organisations in particular, is highly complex, dynamic and ‘turbulent’ professionals work in this turbulent environment and face the types of trends identified in the industry meetings organisations need all their professional staff to have an understanding of sustainability and a sustainable practice capability, to have a ‘whole’ system perspective, and to work together across the disciplines.

Consequently, the university is exploring the development of a postgraduate qualification for professionals, the Master of Sustainable Practice. 45


This program, as envisaged, will draw on the resources of the whole university and is consistent with RMIT’s strategy of dissolving the boundaries – internally and externally. We will use the active adaptive planning approach to further articulate the concept, as well as to design the program, with the range of relevant stakeholders (both external and internal). The Master of Sustainable Practice has the potential to be designed from scratch rather than by modifying an existing program. There is also the opportunity to develop user-centred teaching and learning practices and to transfer these into undergraduate programs. The attributes of ‘ecological learning’ compared to traditional practice are shown are shown in the following table, which extracts some key concepts from Emery’s Summary Table.11 Traditional teaching

Ecological learning

The approach Transmission of existing knowledge

Discovery of universal in the particular

Teacher–student; competition of students

Co-learners; co-operation of learners

Lecture theatre

Community settings

Textbooks; standardised laboratory experiments

Reality-centered projects

Paying attention; rote practice; memorising

Discriminating; differentiating; creating

Pedagogy – the ‘mirror’

Discovery – ‘the lamp’

The experience Work: serious drudgery

Active leisure: ‘exciting, frustrating’

Dependency; fight/flight

Pairing

Conformity; bullying; divorce of means and ends; cheating; self-centredness; hatred of learning (and swots)

Tolerance of individuality; depth and integration; homonomy12; learning as living

Research: Energy CARE

Research related to the environment has been a feature of RMIT for more than a decade. The Energy Conservation and Renewable Energy (Energy CARE) group in the mechanical engineering discipline comprises four academic staff. The group has been involved in a range of technical research projects. 46


Some of these projects involved productive use of low-grade heat, which would normally be wasted. One recent project, which received significant funding from the Australian Greenhouse Office, was the development of a solar pond in conjunction with industry partners. A 3000 square metre pond was constructed in northern Victoria to provide low-grade heat for use in salt production. The solar pond is also part of a salinity mitigation scheme – soil salinity is a major environmental problem in inland Australia. Another area of research is in heat pipe studies. Heat pipes are sealed tubes containing a small quantity of working fluid. When the pipe is heated at one end the fluid evaporates, enabling rapid heat transfer to the other end. Because of their high effective thermal conductivity, heat pipes are particularly useful in heat transfer applications over long distances or where temperature differences are small. The Energy CARE group has used the heat pipes in a number of industrial projects involving the recovery of low-grade waste heat. The group is also involved in research in engineering management. One current project involves addressing institutional barriers to the uptake of wind power, and the creation and management of niches for wind power. The Energy CARE group has also constructed a renewable energy park to demonstrate a range of renewable energy technologies. These include a small-scale solar pond, a small wind turbine, grid-connected and standalone photovoltaic systems, a micro-hydro demonstration unit and solar hot water systems. Conclusions

RMIT Engineering is redesigning all its degree programs around graduate capabilities (outcomes) rather than content. These capabilities are based on those developed by Engineers Australia and are similar to those developed by the Baltimore-based Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. (ABET) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and other bodies.13 A central component of these lists of capabilities or outcomes is sustainability. However, it is traditionally a small component listed after ‘fundamentals of science’ and ‘technical competence’. It is fair to say that many, if not most, engineering programs are still trapped in the ‘teach the fundamentals’ model, relying on physical sciences and mathematics as these fundamentals. 47


Accepting sustainability and the triple bottom line as central to engineering decision making, surely the fundamentals must now also include biology, ecology, psychology, sociology, economics, finance, etc? It will be necessary to drag our engineering programs out of their nineteenth-century patterns based on linear, deterministic technical systems. Chaotic, socioecological systems are with us for the foreseeable future. We must prepare our graduates for the challenge. To make this clearer, we would reorganise and rewrite Engineers Australia’s accreditation guidelines to say graduates from an accredited program should have the following attributes: •

•

•

• • •

understanding of the social, cultural, global and environmental responsibilities of the professional engineer, and the need for sustainable development ability to undertake problem identification, formulation and decision making using a systems approach that weighs up the technical, economic, environmental and social consequences ability to function effectively as an individual and in multidisciplinary and multi-cultural teams, with the capacity to be a leader or manager as well as an effective team member ability to communicate effectively, not only with engineers but also with the community at large ability to apply knowledge of basic science and engineering fundamentals in at least one engineering discipline ability to learn independently throughout their careers, with a focus on personal and professional development.

This is a new style of engineer for the twenty-first century. RMIT has begun to adapt its programs through its program renewal project. Sustainability is a central part of the new Civil and Infrastructure program and it will be adopted across all the new engineering programs. New graduates will shape engineering with a new outlook focussed beyond the technical equations of their forefathers (for they were, sadly, mostly men). We have an opportunity to truly implement a change of culture as requested by Engineers Australia’s 1996 review of engineering education.14 References and further reading ABET – see Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. 48


Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc., ‘ABET Accreditation policies and procedures’, ABET, Baltimore, MD, 2003, viewed 8 Dec 2003, . American Society of Civil Engineers, Draft report on 21st century body of knowledge, ASCE, 2003, viewed 8 Dec 2003, . ASCE – see American Society of Civil Engineers Barnett R, ‘Supercomplexity and the curriculum’, Studies in Higher Education, 25(3), 2000: 255–65. Bell D, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, Heinemann, New York, 1973. Bowden J & Marton F, The University of Learning: beyond quality and competence in higher education, Kogan Page, London, 1998. Emery FE & Trist E, ‘The causal texture of organisation environments’, Human Relations, 18, 1965: 21–32. Emery FE & Trist EL, Toward a social ecology, Plenum, London, 1973. Engineers Australia – see Institution of Engineers, Australia Faculty of Engineering, ‘Renewal of the Bachelor of Engineering 2002–2004 project plan’, internal document, RMIT, Melbourne, 2002. Hadgraft R & Muir P, ‘Defining graduate capabilities for chemical engineers at RMIT’, paper prepared for Australasian Association for Engineering Education Annual Conference, Melbourne, 29 Sep–1 Oct 2003. IchemE – see Institution of Chemical Engineers IEAust – see Institution of Engineers, Australia Institution of Engineers, Australia, Changing the culture: a review of engineering education in Australia, Institution of Engineers, Canberra, 1996. ——— Accreditation manual, IEAust, Canberra, 2002, accessed 7 April 2003, . Institution of Chemical Engineers, London, IChemE Accreditation guidelines, 2002. Lines R, ‘The university framework for a capability driven curriculum’, paper adopted by the Teaching and Learning Strategy Committee, RMIT, Melbourne, 2001. RMIT University, Building a sustainable RMIT: strategic plan and direction to 2006, RMIT, Melbourne, 2002. RMIT University, Teaching and learning strategy 2000–2002: quality learning tailored for students and clients, for employment, leadership and career-long learning, 2000, viewed 14 April 2003, . Schon DA, Beyond the stable state, Temple Smith, London, 1971. Sommerhoff G, ‘The abstract characteristics of living systems’, in FE Emery (ed.), Systems thinking, vol. I, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1969, pp. 147–202. –––— ‘Hierarchies of goals and subgoals’, in FE Emery (ed.), Systems thinking, vol. II, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1981, pp. 269–276. Stephenson J & Yorke M (eds), Capability and quality in higher education, Kogan Page, London, 1998. Toffler A, Future shock, Pan, London, 1970. 49


Trist ER, Emery FE & Murray H (eds), The social engagement of social science: a Tavistock anthology, vol. III – The socio-ecological perspective, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1997. Vickers G, Freedom in a rocking boat, Basic Books, New York, 1970.

Acknowledgements

This paper is the result of many meetings within the Faculty of Engineering, as well as several industry forum meetings. The inputs of Associate Professors John Ball and Peter Hoffmann and the many industry representatives are gratefully acknowledged. Notes to Chapter 3 1

‘Students are being prepared for careers in an unknown future that will depend on their capability to deal effectively with new situations. This requires students and staff to focus on “how” learning occurs as well as “what” is learnt’ — RMIT University, Teaching and Learning Strategy 2000–2002: Quality learning tailored for students and clients, for employment, leadership and career-long learning, 2000, viewed 14 April 2003, . See also J Bowden & F Marton, The university of learning: beyond quality and competence in higher education, Kogan Page, London, 1998.

2

‘Transdisciplinarity dissolves the boundaries between disciplines and creates a hybrid which is different from each constituent part’ — M Somerville & D Rapport (eds), Transdisciplinarity: recreating integrated knowledge, EOLSS Publishers Co, Oxford, 2000, p xiv.

3

The complete list of attributes is as follows: • • • • • •

• • • •

ability to apply knowledge of basic science and engineering fundamentals; in-depth technical competence in at least one engineering discipline; ability to undertake problem identification, formulation and solution; ability to utilise a systems approach to design and operational performance; ability to communicate effectively, not only with engineers but also with the community at large; ability to function effectively as an individual and in multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural teams, with the capacity to be a leader or manager as well as an effective team member; understanding of the social, cultural, global and environmental responsibilities of the professional engineer, and the need for sustainable development; understanding of the principles of sustainable design and development; understanding of professional and ethical responsibilities and commitment to them; and expectation of the need to undertake lifelong learning, and capacity to do so.

— Institution of Engineers, Australia, Accreditation manual, Canberra, 2002, accessed 7 April 2003, . 50


4

ER Trist, FE Emery & H Murray (eds), The social engagement of social science: a Tavistock anthology, vol. III, The socio-ecological perspective, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1997.

5

This is discussed in more detail in R Hadgraft & P Muir, ‘Defining graduate capabilities for chemical engineers at RMIT’, paper prepared for Australasian Association for Engineering Education Annual Conference, Melbourne, 29 Sep–1 Oct 2003.

6

FE Emery & EL Trist, Toward a social ecology, Plenum, London, 1973.

7

J Andrews, Toward Sustainable Engineering at RMIT, RMIT, 2002.

8

RMIT, Building a sustainable RMIT: strategic plan and direction to 2006, RMIT, Melbourne, 2002; the Tailloires (pronounced Tal-whar) Declaration was ‘[c]omposed in 1990 at an international conference in Talloires, France’ and ‘is the first official statement made by university administrators of a commitment to environmental sustainability in higher education. The Talloires Declaration (TD) is a ten-point action plan for incorporating sustainability and environmental literacy in teaching, research, operations and outreach at colleges and universities. It has been signed by over 300 university presidents and chancellors in over 40 countries’ — . That web page links to the text of the TD.

9

Institution of Chemical Engineers, London, IChemE Accreditation guidelines, 2002.

10 Institution of Chemical Engineers, London, The Sustainability Metrics, 2003, available as: http://www.icheme.org/sustainability/metrics.pdf (accessed 7 July 2004). 11 F Emery, ‘Educational paradigms: an epistemological revolution’, Participative design for participative democracy, Australian National University Centre for Continuing Education, Canberra, 1993, p. 83. 12 In humanistic psychology, homonomy refers to the experience of being part of a larger whole, the sense of belonging or the integration of self with others and with the environment: see . 13 Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc., ABET Accreditation policies and procedures, 2003, viewed 8 Dec 2003, ; American Society of Civil Engineers, Draft report on 21st century body of knowledge, 2003, viewed 8 Dec 2003, . 14 See Institution of Engineers, Australia, Changing the culture: a review of engineering education in Australia, Institution of Engineers, Canberra, 1996.

51


4 Home among the gum trees: RMIT Hamilton

Photo: Southern Grampians Development and Tourism Unit

Kaye Scholfield


This story is about how revolutions in the wool industry helped develop a different sort of regional campus. When the wool industry in the Western District of Victoria was under threat in the 1990s, the locals became creative, inviting RMIT’s international students to experience life in rural Australia. The community saw the need to change. They began to understand some of the issues of sustainability. Were their land use practices environmentally sustainable? Were their lifestyles, businesses and country sustainable? Out of many discussions came the RMIT Hamilton campus – and these questions: what should it be that would be sustainable, and what kind of model might it provide for other places in rural Australia or rural anywhere?

54

Home Among the Gum Trees: RMIT Hamilton

In Good news for a change: hope for a troubled planet, Suzuki and Dressel say: One of the first things we discovered was that groups offering good news tend to mirror the fact that natural systems … change every few miles or so on this planet. Groups working on sustainability therefore seldom conform to constructs like nation-states or global marketing groups. They are always locally based or working in close contact with local people. Our research showed again and again that the people in the best position to know what will really work over the long term in a given area – and also the only ones who have a long term self-interest in making sure the area remains healthy – are locals committed to that area, people who have no plans to move away… But we also discovered that as soon as people make that local commitment – they aren’t going anywhere, and they want to stay and leave something for their families – they begin coming up with strategies for sustainability pretty quickly.1 These sentiments sum up the motivations of a group of farmers in southwestern Victoria who, in 1993, sought ways to address the impact of global change. As part of a wool-growing community, they suffered from the crisis in the wool industry in which incomes were slashed up to 65% virtually overnight. The subsequent uncertainty had a direct social and economic impact on this close-knit rural community. How RMIT came to be involved with the local community

The community of Woodhouse/Nareeb lies in western Victoria on the eastern boundary of the Southern Grampians shire, about one hour’s drive from the coast. It is part of the volcanic plains, well known for its productive grazing capacity. Woodhouse/Nareeb was a soldier settlement area settled by returned servicemen and their families after World War 2. It is an outward looking community in many respects. The soldier settlers had come to the area from many backgrounds and experiences. They were twentieth-century pioneers, beginning with almost no amenities or equipment when they first settled there in the late 1940s. Their first homes were garages and they worked together to fence, and clear the area of rabbits, before they could begin farming. It was this common bond, developed over two generations, 55


which enabled the community to mobilise – to become agents of change, rather than its victims. In 1993, wool prices had hit their lowest point in 50 years. The community felt powerless to act. How could they help themselves? Responsibility for wool marketing is usually the province of the industry bureaucrats. Political decisions such as the withdrawal of the wool floor price are obviously made in Canberra, and global economic fluctuations are beyond anyone’s control. Some of the farmers formed the Woodhouse Woolgrowers group and undertook a number of activities to tackle the crisis: political action, information sessions and local functions to keep the community spirit alive. The group contacted the Melbourne College of Textiles (which later became part of RMIT University) and offered to host the college’s international textiles students. This action was to have far-reaching and unexpected consequences. The idea was that by forming a relationship with the college and its international students, long-term awareness of wool as a textile of value could be developed. Any wool promotion to international students was a long shot, but the returns turned out to be rich – though not in financial terms. International students spent weekends on local farms, learning about the area and experiencing Australian farming life, and family life, first hand. Visits by the international students engendered a new pride and direction. Whilst community members appreciated the value of tertiary education and research, they had felt isolated from it. Most families ‘lost’ their children to education in larger centres – a trend that continues. District farmers, who in the main are willing, even eager, to embrace new knowledge, felt it was being developed in isolation from the level of practical application. So, the idea of a link with a tertiary institution had much appeal. The connection with RMIT happened because one of the students who joined that first visit was an RMIT student. She relayed her enthusiasm back to RMIT’s international student advisor, who was keen. Further contact was initiated, and the relationship that then developed between RMIT and the community was the beginning of the RICE program. RMIT intercultural student exchange

The RMIT intercultural student exchange (RICE program) was launched as a partnership between community and university in 1996. Visits by students, from over 55 countries to Woodhouse/Nareeb and surrounding communities, built goodwill and new understandings. Concerts, barbecues and talks around the kitchen table were all part of it for families and students alike. 56


From 1996 to 2000 a huge range of activities took place, which helped to consolidate networks between the region and sections of the university. Other RMIT links in the area strengthened the relationship. Projects came to include research, youth activities, international students in local schools, and landscape projects. These involved a complex network of local schools, community members, organisations, and staff and students from RMIT. One of the benefits of the university’s interest in the community was that ‘ordinary’ people committed to their region, as Suzuki and Dressel point out, were able to voice their aspirations and their knowledge of their area. The benefits of a partnership are mutual. However, a challenge for the partners’ proponents at that stage of the relationship was to try to consolidate the partnership at the ‘centre’ of both the local community and the university, and so guarantee its durability. RMIT Hamilton takes shape

Joint consultation among Southern Grampians shire (of which the small city of Hamilton is the municipal centre), community organisations and RMIT continued from 1996 to 1999. As discussions progressed, so did planning for the future. The shape of what is now RMIT Hamilton emerged. In 1999 the decision was made to develop a full Bachelor of Nursing degree there – very exciting news for a town that had been particularly proud of its hospital nurse training before the transition to university-based nursing education. A significant donation made by local benefactors enabled the development of a learning site at Hamilton. Together with a substantial funding allocation from the State Government, some funding from the Commonwealth Government and local shire support, the future for a university presence in Hamilton became possible. This university presence was to pilot new learning technology, foster regional and rural research, expand educational opportunities for young people and potentially become an international student centre. It was a very exciting prospect. RMIT Hamilton, however, has moved a long way since then. Questions of sustainability

What does the idea of sustainability mean in relation to a story like this? Does it mean a sustainable university–community partnership? Does it mean the sustainability of RMIT Hamilton? Given the international links that marked the beginnings of RMIT Hamilton, what place does the question of global 57


sustainability have? Or perhaps it simply means the sustainability of a region? RMIT Hamilton is concerned about the sustainability of rural communities. It has developed its philosophies and responses in parallel with similar developments at RMIT in Melbourne, particularly the Global Sustainability Institute. If we think of sustainability as a regional issue, then there are also many ways of looking at that. Does it mean the environmental sustainability of the region, and what the implications of environmental sustainability are for local industries? If so, then changing land practices will impact on land use. If the industry base changed, then so would the existing social structure. Does it mean social sustainability? Of course socially the region has already changed from pre-white history until today. Regions have long suffered from a rural-to-urban population drift. In most rural communities, the outlook is a diminishing and ageing population. External links such as the Internet, contact with young people who move to urban centres, reliance on the global economy for the sale of regional commodities and provision of services such as call centres and increasing international tourism all guarantee an interest in global sustainability. The slow march of soil and water salinity, and changes in land use, inexorably tie environmental sustainability into the mix. In a changing policy environment, how does a hybridised version of a university exist, let alone become sustainable? I use the word ‘hybridised’ because RMIT Hamilton is a combination of goals, roles, activities and relationships. It does not fit with the usual definition of a ‘university campus’. These and other questions of sustainability are the concerns of those who are working to develop RMIT Hamilton today. Staff at RMIT agree with Suzuki and Dressel: it is committed long-standing locals who know and value the potential of their place and will work with the land to make it sustainable. Activities underway at RMIT Hamilton reflect the diverse nature of any small rural community, and how education can take place in many ways. Rural communities have limited local access to post-secondary learning opportunities, particularly higher education and research, so it is not simply a matter of inserting a campus into the community and having it instantly staffed and pupilled. It has taken time for the community to understand what the limitations and opportunities are, and how the university will ‘work’. In a shire with a population of about 17 000 people, there were possibly 17 000 different understandings of what RMIT Hamilton would be. 58


University and community – working together

A combination of relevant programs and a long community engagement process are clarifying the ‘vision’ of the university–community partnership. For local RMIT staff, the dual roles as community members and university staff are challenging as they seek to balance conflicting expectations with university and policy realities. It is becoming apparent that a rural–urban partnership can produce exciting opportunities for all concerned At RMIT Hamilton, the strategic planning process undertaken in 2003 has clarified priorities and is cementing the community role in the university. Community involvement is embedded as a value at RMIT Hamilton. Not only will the university remain relevant to the community, but the community also recognises a responsibility to work with the university. This is important for many reasons. It relates back again to what Suzuki and Dressel are saying – that communities have a stake in their own future. They understand best their own environment and their own community. The university contributes its objectivity and expertise as an external but very involved partner. In terms of sustainability, the relationship is dynamic – lively. It is still fledgling special. RMIT Hamilton was not intended to be an ordinary campus. Instead, it aims to respond to community needs and aspirations – where it has the capacity to do so – and it brings the outside world into a rural environment. In order to fulfil this role, RMIT Hamilton is a flexible education environment, not confined to its own boundaries. Although staff work as a team, each area of activity is accountable to different portfolios. Flexibly delivered courseware is provided, staff are flexible in their work roles, and the rooms and facilities are multi-purpose. Technology is crucial and needs to be responsive, efficient and up to date. Staff need to understand it, to promote its use, but at the same time they need to be able to offer the face-to-face learning. Infrastructure needs to be upgraded and maintained, and readily supported by accessible and reliable technological skills. Supplies of qualified staff, and reliable infrastructure, are not guaranteed in a rural environment. Management of RMIT Hamilton presents other interesting challenges. Students have the option of 24/7 (24 hours, seven days a week) access to the university. In developing an efficient, flexible, yet accessible learning centre, a security system was installed which is operated from RMIT in Melbourne, as is the heating and cooling. Student services and the library are accessible by telephone or Internet. Finding the best mix of services to students 59


without compromising either the financial viability or the quality of education and support is not always easy. Three years after the commencement of programs, however, protocols and systems are well in place and constantly reviewed. How RMIT Hamilton sits with the ‘triple bottom line plus one’ accountabilities adopted by RMIT University2 is being examined. The range of programs includes postgraduate, undergraduate, certificate and diploma levels, short courses, conferences and seminars. Research is also a strong area of activity at RMIT Hamilton. Operating in rural areas means that numbers attending sessions are quite low. Reasons are many and include smaller populations, single owner–operators and owner–managers of businesses and organisations, the age of the workforce, and the lack of a perceived career path. For programs to ‘break even’ financially is a significant challenge. A couple of dozen people attending a course might, as a proportion of population, equate to a couple of thousand people in Melbourne. Yet the absolute costs of delivery are just as high, if not higher, in a rural area, meaning that the delivery cost per rural student is far higher. How can equity of access to professional development for rural people be achieved if course delivery has to always break even or, more ambitious still, turn a profit? This question is of critical importance to the ongoing sustainability of RMIT Hamilton and has implications for regional sustainability. The Bachelor of Nursing program at RMIT Hamilton is a full undergraduate program. By the end of 2003, three classes have graduated, with most finding positions at local hospitals helping to stem the local shortage of rural nurses. The nursing program is the same as that offered at RMIT’s campus in Sale as well as at RMIT’s Melbourne campus at Bundoora. Two staff are located at Hamilton to support the students, who learn by mixed mode including online, practicals, placements and video-conferencing interaction. The Hamilton nursing staff work as a team with the RMIT nursing staff located in Melbourne and Sale to deliver the program in a collegial and supportive academic environment. It is anticipated that experience gained by staff in the Bachelor of Nursing will be very useful to other programs looking to deliver through Hamilton – or any other rural centre. The community identified access to quality and affordable professional development programs as a particular concern: professional development was too expensive, too far away or not relevant. To fill this gap RMIT Hamilton established a Professional Development Centre in 2003. The centre has 60


undertaken a wide range of programs, from education to allied health to public relations and business. RMIT as a working model

Any snapshot of RMIT Hamilton reveals a small staff engaged in a staggering variety of activities, which includes research; assisting in setting up links for conservation surveys; bringing in retired municipal councillors to work with planning students; developing partnerships within the community; and establishing short courses such as art programs. All this is about building social capital. Its relevance is on several levels. First, it is a way of expanding and enhancing awareness of lifelong learning and educational involvement in the general community. Second, it maximises the available resources in the community through collaboration rather than isolated silos. Third, the community has much to teach future graduates. Fourth, there are opportunities for applied learning. RMIT regards applied learning as important, and in a community–university partnership this is achievable. From a community point of view, it reduces stereotypes of universities operating in an ivory tower environment removed from the realities of everyday life. Both the university and the community have considerable resources to bring into play, as the following examples illustrate. Young professionals network

Community concern at the difficulty of attracting and retaining suitably qualified staff to work in regional organisations resulted in a network of local employers and RMIT staff, the Southern Grampians Graduate Network. A community member was appointed as chair. Research revealed social isolation was the biggest reason why young graduates are reluctant to move to country areas, and why they frequently leave after only a short time. In response, the Young Professionals Network developed. This is an email network facilitated at RMIT Hamilton but overseen by a committee of these local young professionals. An astonishing array of professions is represented, which now provides numerous opportunities for interaction, reducing social and professional isolation. Solar car project

The Solar Car Project grew out of local enthusiasm for the Aurora 99 solar car, winner of the 1999 World Solar Challenge, which was brought to 61


Hamilton for the local ‘Show Us Your Toys’ expo. A local enthusiast joined the Aurora team, assisting with new developments and participating in subsequent races in Australia, Japan and Europe. A wide range of ages and professional groups, including secondary school students, skilled trades people, farmers and retired engineers, are in the local team. Local businesses have become sponsors. Following the car’s rehabilitation, the local team represented Southern Grampians in the 2003 Darwin to Adelaide World Solar Challenge. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the Southern Aurora Solar Car team at Hamilton is that it is directed and supported by the community. Master of Education

The Master of Education by project has been another exciting initiative. Students participating in the program from Warrnambool and Hamilton represent an array of organisations from health to education, libraries to agriculture. As the students work in clusters with peer support, this program has provided much professional and personal enrichment. The program uses action research methodology, which in turn is introduced into the workplace, resulting in improved outcomes on a number of levels, particularly the upskilling of community practitioners. The flexibility of the program is particularly suitable for busy, mature-age students. Centre for Rural and Regional Development

Recognising the particular challenges, opportunities, strengths and obstacles in a rural environment, RMIT established its Centre for Rural and Regional Development (CRRD), with Associate Professor John Martin as Director based in Hamilton. There is no comparable research centre in Hamilton: the Pastoral Veterinary Institute focusses on agriculture, whereas the CRRD has a broader focus on social and economic issues. Combining impartial researchers with empathic locals who have an affinity for place yields the potential for applied, relevant, research. Having local collaborators involved as partners in research ensures that deep learning will stay in the community. Rural and regional issues – whether local, national or international – now have a prominence at RMIT in Melbourne. CRRD’s regional and rural focus and its international research responsibility give validity to notions of pathways from local to global sustainability. Clearly the regional, national and international links are of critical importance to RMIT as a 62


university producing relevant teaching and learning and research in a global environment. Why does any of this matter – and particularly, why is it relevant to sustainability? Partnerships in sustainability

One of the features of RMIT Hamilton staff is their connection to their rural community. Again echoing Suzuki and Dressel, they are committed to their area. This provides the potential for RMIT’s regional commitment to move well beyond an urban university’s token rural presence and connection. RMIT’s social obligation – and indeed reputation – is strong. When far fewer people in rural than urban areas can access high quality education activities; when few rural practitioners can access relevant research; when graduate numbers choosing a rural practice are low; and when the teaching agenda is firmly urban driven and thus arguably closely interwoven with urban values and experience – then it is apparent why this partnership between a rural community and an urban university is important. There are examples elsewhere in the world of university–community partnerships. Many universities in Europe and the USA are in regional settings. The interesting aspect of the RMIT partnership is its capacity to bridge urban–rural gaps, and, further, to link with the university’s international community. It is this dialogue that holds potential for exploration of real, interconnected sustainability issues. Improved awareness and understanding will result in improved application of sustainability practices. If the people who have to implement such practices have a role in determining both cause and solution then surely we can hope for better results. When well over half of the world’s poor live in rural areas, and most of the world’s natural resources are located in rural areas, it becomes clearer that global sustainability is inextricably bound up with regional and rural issues. Of course there is a world of difference between the rural communities of south-western Victoria and those of other countries, particularly developing countries. But there are many consistent principles that applied learning, research and engagement in a rural community can teach us, including maintaining a high-profile agenda at the university. Indeed, it is a positive step towards global sustainability that a large university committed to innovation and to making a difference has undertaken. 63


References Global Sustainability Institute, RMIT, web site . Suzuki D & Dressel H, Good news for a change: hope for a troubled planet, Allen & Unwin, NSW, 2002, p. 4.


D Suzuki & H Dressel, Good news for a change: hope for a troubled planet, Allen & Unwin, NSW, 2002.

2

To learn about the ‘triple bottom line plus one’ approach and RMIT’s commitment to global sustainability visit RMIT’s Global Sustainability Institute web site at .

64

5 Melbourne Youth Learning Opportunities project – sustainability story

Photo: Adele Flood

Glenn Bond and Trish van Lint


There are young people in inner-city Melbourne who are out of school, out of work, and homeless. It can be more than dangerous. The city is particularly popular with young people at a loose end because there are places to go to meet; there are movies, shops, clubs and drugs – lots of action. RMIT is part of that place and culture so perhaps it could help! For our societies to be functional we need ways of sustaining our young people, to develop their interests and skills to be productive engaged citizens/societal helpers. This is part of the social and cultural dimension of the sustainability agenda, and part of RMIT’s responsibilities. The Melbourne Youth Learning Opportunities Project was developed at RMIT and engaged many of these young people. But it struggles to be more than a pilot, and it too needs to be supported to be sustainable.

66

Melbourne Youth Learning Opportunities Project – Sustainability Story

Towards the end of 2000, RMIT was confronted with the negative effects of an escalating problem of illicit drug use in Melbourne’s central business district. We were not alone. The impact on the institution was twofold. Staff found people shooting up in the alleyways, nooks and crannies of the city campus – and had to call an ambulance for an OD victim on too many occasions – or found themselves on the receiving end of the crime that usually accompanies a problem of this dimension. Either way it was a negative experience for many people, and one that they faced frequently in the workplace and as habitués of the CBD. It excited concern and compassion among many in the RMIT community. Individuals began to explore various positive responses that might be appropriate for RMIT as an institution and for themselves as people, as citizens. RMIT through its Community and Regional Partnerships group had the structure to address the concerns of staff, and the director convened meetings. Very quickly these expanded to involve members of the wider CBD community. A basic tenet of the Community and Regional Partnerships ethos is to work with the community – and the City of Melbourne was identified as a significant partner. The Vice Chancellor allocated $30 000, and the scope document for the ‘Disaffected Young People in Melbourne’s Central Business District’ project was drawn up. It articulated a vision that has remained the key to MYLO: ‘To develop and implement a strategy for access to learning for Melbourne’s marginalised young people. It is anticipated that this will include an emphasis on technology-related facilities and in contexts beyond the normal physical facilities of the university.’1 Community consultation through 2001 and 2002 identified additional partners – the Salvation Army and Melbourne City Mission’s Frontyard Youth Services and the Department of Education and Training. These consultations culminated in a search conference for interested persons from RMIT and the CBD community. More than 50 people participated. A reference group made up of RMIT personnel and community partners was formed, as was a project team. The project was officially named Melbourne Youth Learning Opportunities (MYLO). Consideration of the following case studies of three young people who participated in the recent 12-month MYLO pilot – names have been changed to protect anonymity – gives some insight into the lives of the young people who connect with MYLO and how it changes their lives. 67


Peter

Peter had just turned 20. Family breakdown had led to homelessness, and he was residing in a short-term youth refuge. Obviously bright and apparently very capable, Peter was unsettled and restless. Participation in the group unearthed dramatic change in his confidence and communication skills. Within a very short time Peter was among the most active participants in the group. A generous contributor of time and energy, he was central to the success of their project. He developed a new sense of optimism. With extensive one-to-one support pathways, barriers were overcome and a manageable plan of re-entering formal education was formulated. With the assistance of a Job Placement Employment and Training (JPET) service and the MYLO worker, Peter secured enrolment in a community services certificate course. He has since blossomed in his course and field placements and recently secured casual work! He is proud and appreciative of his work and success as a member of MYLO. Paul

Paul was 17 and highly transient with very complex needs. Paul did not successfully make the step into pathways planning, nor has he found a formal education opportunity that suits him. He was, however, successfully engaged in a calm, respectful group environment where he has demonstrated extraordinary progress in his communication and self-confidence. As he was a detached and often unhappy young man, involving Paul in any learning opportunity presented a challenge. In the MYLO environment, however, he became willing to listen to others, wait his turn and contribute an opinion without fear of criticism. He also attempted to consider personal development pathways that might help him progress to independence. Whilst not as tangible as other outcomes for MYLO clients, the success of the MYLO model as an intervention in Paul’s life is still valuable. He is proud of his participation and is stronger as a result. Mary

Mary was 17 years old when she first arrived. Complex circumstances had led her to homelessness, and she had only just 68


secured housing support through a youth housing program. Having been frustrated by secondary school, she had dropped out midsemester. Although shy and obviously frustrated by her circumstances, she found MYLO welcoming and supportive. She found the opportunity to meet new friends in a safe environment a real benefit. Mary participated in the group project and took up the opportunity for one-to-one pathways support. She was quickly able to express her learning needs. She wanted to complete her VCE in an adult environment where her lifestyle and relative maturity would be advantages rather than disadvantages. After much support and advocacy, securing financial assistance and attending enrolment interviews, Mary was able to convince an adult education provider that she was bright enough and responsible enough to secure an adult place in spite of her age. She is now well on the way to successfully completing her VCE studies. From an early stage the MYLO team was committed to working with homeless young people. It recognised that being homeless makes it difficult for young people to connect with formal educational institutions, especially secondary schools. We also suspected that the emphasis had to be on learning – informal learning – rather than education or training. To engage these young people there had to be real empowerment, ownership, and no fear of failure. It would be impossible to deliver this in a formal education or training regime, however benign. This suspicion was borne out by the responses from young people in the city. This was the focus of the research: to engage with young people in the CBD and to find out from them what they would like to see in a learning environment. Some basic human needs were identified – warmth, food and safety – as well as negotiated rules, curriculum and timing. The afternoon was preferable to the morning and mid-week was better than Monday or Friday. Given that the lives of MYLO’s young people are often complicated and difficult, it was suggested that there should be no penalties for missing sessions. Flexibility and choice about how individuals might contribute was equally important, as was the ability to change goals as the group or individuals decided. Regular breaks would also be necessary. Most important of all was the ownership of the group and the learning sessions by the participants themselves, not by the workers or by RMIT. 69


The consultation results also gave very strong advice about what MYLO needed to avoid if it were to succeed. Care should be taken to distance the MYLO learning model from the secondary school style, including not having a physical space that resembled a classroom, not having formal assessment processes and not having the teacher–student relationships common to the school system. Preferences for topics and learning styles were explored. Participants preferred a combination of styles and topics that could change over time or work at the same time as each other. One young person might be interested in personal development through drama, and the MYLO worker would seek an opportunity for this activity. Others were very enthusiastic about moving straight into a group project. Still others were very keen on exploring the Internet and the potential that email communication opened up for them. A parallel consultation was undertaken with the agencies and individuals already working with young people in the CBD. This consultation largely bore out our conclusions. Partnerships were formed at this time with various youth services and with JPET programs in Fitzroy and Collingwood, which were critical to MYLO. At the same time a conversation between the Department of Education and the Melbourne City Council led to an approach to RMIT to conduct a pathways program for out of school young people in the CBD. Participation in this project was carefully considered by the reference group and project team, as we did not want to compromise the direction that participants had over the program. It was decided that individualised pathways planning could be incorporated into the MYLO model on a voluntary basis: It could become one of the learning streams. The MYLO model

The MYLO platform forms the primary learning opportunity for young people. Based on a ‘peer learning’ approach, it includes a regular meeting of young people determining their own learning needs and being supported by guest presenters, group activities and rewards for ongoing participation. It is in this environment that the elements of appropriate practice that the consultation highlighted are delivered. At the weekly meeting the rules for the conduct of the group are negotiated and group projects are decided. Activities that arise from the project are usually scheduled during this meeting time. Individual contact with MYLO workers occurs outside this time. Consistent ongoing contact between 70


Information Technology

Pathways Planning

MYLO PLATFORM · · · · · · · Personal Development

Figure 1.

weekly peer group meetings appropriate venue incentives & rewards self-determination flexible attendance personal learning group learning project Email and Web Support

The MYLO model

workers and participants, for the purpose of pathways planning and support and development of individualised learning plans, has been a feature of MYLO in operation. Specific learning needs of individuals, identified within the context of basic learning plans developed in negotiation with the MYLO worker, may then be met outside the regular MYLO group, by organised referrals to specific task groups. Examples are literacy or specific IT capability development. The MYLO model has been implemented twice since 2000. Resources allocated to the original project by RMIT allowed for a 16-week trial. This was critical. Subsequently, funding was sought and obtained from the RE Ross Trust for a pilot over a 12-month period. MYLO has operated at two CBD locations – at the Salvation Army’s Urban Heart Centre in Bourke Street, and recently at Frontyard Youth Services in King Street. The MYLO trial

The voices and stories of the young participants have always provided the most powerful testimonials for MYLO. On personal goals: ‘Getting into work and getting back into school were my biggest achievements. I didn’t know where to start’ 71


‘Getting my article in the magazine and making new friends’ On what was good: ‘Meeting people. Making new friends’ ‘Getting to know people. Being able to see past the ‘toughness’ of some of them’ ‘The chance to have something constructive to do. It’s what everybody is looking for … something that interests them’ ‘Getting my work to an audience, I guess, but also the personal opportunities MYLO presented’ On the atmosphere: ‘I am quiet person and was a bit nervous, but the way the group was run was good. There was respect and this made all the difference. It wouldn’t have worked other wise’ MYLO’s popularity surprised everyone involved during the trial. Over 40 young people participated, with an average of nine participants at each weekly session. Eighty per cent, of those who came once, came twice or more; more than half participated in the email support group; and almost half played a role in the group project. The platform sessions worked as the first point of engagement and many young people were then supported with pathways planning. Outcomes for many of these participants included enrolment in further education, finding work, returning to school and undertaking creative arts and/or personal development programs. The identifiable gap left by its closure contributed to the determination of the project team to secure funding for a 12-month pilot. The trial had provided us with a clear, careful, documented process. We were able to draw up a realistic budget and make optimistic predictions about what could be achieved. Some three months after the initial trial the RE Ross Trust agreed that the MYLO model was worthy of more time and committed funds for a 12-month pilot of the program. 72


The Ross Trust pilot

Based on learnings from the trial, a few changes were necessary. Weekly sessions remained the basis in 2003. The participants chose group projects and activities, and support was provided outside these sessions for personal learning and development. The email support group remained. The other learning streams were absorbed into the pathways-planning role played by the two MYLO workers. MYLO continued where it had left off, proving popular and accessible to homeless and other unemployed young people who had not accessed learning programs. Over 100 disadvantaged young people participated in the 40 weekly sessions during the pilot. A major group project once again provided focus for the platform sessions. In this instance a website was designed by and for young people. As in the trial, approximately 80% of those who came once were seen to come back again and over 60% of participants took part in the email support group. Approximately 40% took the substantial step into pathways planning with the MYLO workers. Personal learning outcomes were many and varied, and included enrolment in formal education, work opportunities and a range of similarly productive results. A number of conclusions may be drawn from the success of the MYLO pilot. First, providing appropriately designed group sessions leads to clear improvements in self-esteem, confidence and a sense of community for the highly disadvantaged young people MYLO meets. Second, the way in which MYLO operates, specifically group ownership and separation from formal education, consistently reaches and engages those young people most excluded from mainstream learning opportunities. Third, and perhaps most important, the MYLO model effectively provides a step into pathways support for young people who are in crisis and who have had negative experiences of education. MYLO members’ living arrangements

It is of great interest to the MYLO program to understand the living circumstances of young people when they first make contact. Such a study offers insight into the program’s effectiveness at reaching the target group. As can be seen from the following table of 100 participants, a total of 71 were homeless, living in emergency accommodation, sleeping rough, squatting, in unstable housing or staying temporarily (‘surfing’) with relatives or friends. A further 16 were living in either transitional housing or 73


supported housing – programs to which access is generally granted on the grounds of homelessness. Only 11 of the 100 young people suggested they enjoyed secure housing conditions. Two young people declined to provide details of their living arrangements. Living arrangements

No. of participants

Emergency accommodation (refuges and hostels)

43

Sleeping rough/squatting e.g. no formal shelter

7

Relatives or friends e.g. staying temporarily (surfing)

14

Transitional housing or youth housing program

16

Unstable housing e.g. at risk of homelessness

7

Office of housing e.g. permanent lease in public housing

1

Stable housing e.g. accommodation regarded as stable

10

The future for MYLO

The project team, the reference group and community partners strongly believe that MYLO should and could have a place in the inner Melbourne community. It is our hope that the strong evidence base created by the documented results increases the likelihood of this occurring. MYLO does not duplicate any existing education and training services; rather, through the pathways-planning and personal development support it offers, it acts as a conduit into those services at providers such as the CAE and TAFE colleges. The partnerships with people and organisations described earlier in this story have been integral to the success of MYLO. They have provided a youth-friendly venue for the MYLO sessions, access to technology, and resources which have enabled many individuals to move into formal education and training. The contribution of different perspectives has made the reference group a dynamic tool of the program. Applying lessons learnt through the experience of the trial and the pilot has been a feature of MYLO in practice. The program has been fine-tuned when necessary, to maximise the return from available resources. It is important to document success, and equally so to demonstrate self-reflection and development. This has been facilitated by the action research principles under which MYLO is managed, which call for constant review and

74


analysis at all levels of project activity, and the active role the reference group has played in supporting this approach. The project team are continuing to work to secure a long-term, permanent, future for MYLO. We would also settle for an alternative funding source and a short-term future, because it would have a positive impact on the lives of the many young people with whom it would connect. The process of securing a future is a gradual one. MYLO has taken many small steps on the journey that began with a confronting issue, an idea and a small conference over three years ago. MYLO can demonstrate affordability and ‘value for money’. This is linked to the partnerships that have supported the delivery of the MYLO model during the trial and the pilot; tasks have been shared and the duplication of services and facilities avoided. In the context of this discussion is it worth reflecting on the right of all young people to access public spending on education, and the related question around the value of informal learning as a re-engagement strategy for young people with particular barriers and needs? Note to Chapter 5 1

This is quoted from the vision statement contained in the project scope document, p. 1 (unpublished).

75


6 Solving salinity with the power of the sun

Photo: RMIT University

John Andrews


In the middle of northern Victoria near Pyramid Hill there is a solar pond with rings on the surface. As you go deeper it gets warmer. Its heat is used for making locally produced salt into a commercial product. The experiment is a collaboration between RMIT’s Energy Conservation and Renewable Energy (Energy CARE) group with Pyramid Salt and Geo-Eng (now part of GHD) with support from the Commonwealth Government. It works using salinised land and solar. Now the challenge is: can it be fully commercialised?

78

Solving Salinity with the Power of the Sun

Scenes of skeletal trees and glistening salt pans in the middle of formerly green paddocks are all too familiar in rural Australia. Rising salinity levels are resulting in lost agricultural production with a value of more than A$130 million annually as dryland salinity is ruining 2.5 million hectares of land. Groundwater levels are still rising over large areas, and the area of land affected by salt continues to increase.1 Meanwhile rural industries and towns rely on electricity, gas and oil obtained from non-renewable fossil fuels located far away. Electricity used in northern Victoria is produced from brown coal at power stations in the Latrobe Valley, some 500 km distant. These power stations have relatively high emissions of greenhouse gases per unit of electrical energy generated, and some 10–15% of the energy produced at the power station is lost in transmission en route to regions like this one. Over 10 years ago, Professor Aliakbar Akbarzadeh of RMIT University realised that the use of ‘solar ponds’ in salinity-affected areas could help tackle both problems – salinity and unsustainable energy supply to rural areas – in a truly sustainable manner. The Energy Conservation and Renewable Energy (Energy CARE) group in RMIT University’s School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing is an internationally recognised centre of excellence in research and development, consultancy and tertiary education in the areas of energy conservation and renewable energy technologies. The group, led by Professor Aliakbar Akbarzadeh, comprises four academics and a number of PhD and Masters students. It has specialised in solar pond, waste-heat recovery, and remote area power supply technologies. A solar pond is a body of saline water several metres deep, set up so that salinity increases with depth. The bottom layer is concentrated brine. Layers of brine with progressively reducing salinity are introduced one by one on top of each other, a little like making a colourful multi-layered cocktail. The top layer is kept as fresh water by surface flushing. Solar radiation entering the pond is transmitted to the lower layer where it is stored as heat. A solar pond can store solar heat much more efficiently than a normal body of water of the same size because the salinity gradient prevents convection currents (Figure 1). The heat in the bottom layer, which can reach temperatures above 80°C in summer while still being around 50°C in winter, is then available on a 24-hour basis for heating and other applications year-round. 79


Pond height

5–10% salinity Daily average ambient temperature

UCZ NCZ LCZ 0

50

0

15

100 Temperature (oC) 30 Salinity (% by wt.)

Figure 1. In a solar pond, the lower convective zone (LCZ) contains concentrated brine. Salinity decreases progressively with height through the non-convective zone (NCZ). The upper convective zone (UCZ) is flushed with low-salinity water. Convection in the central zone is suppressed so that solar heat is stored in the bottom zone of the pond.

Solar ponds are actually a natural phenomenon, though not very commonly occurring. As we know when bathing in the sea, the temperature of shallow water is very much the same at the surface and the bottom; in deeper water, temperature falls with depth, the very opposite to the case in a solar pond. In fact, a number of special conditions have to be met for a natural solar pond to be formed. A freshwater stream flowing onto the surface of a body of water may be made saline by contact with dissolved salts from rocks or soil. The first scientific account of the solar pond principle was given at the end of the nineteenth century. It was part of an explanation of the unexpected increase in temperature with depth observed in several natural salt lakes in Transylvania, a region of Romania.2 Since then natural solar ponds, or ‘heliothermal lakes’, have been identified in many locations, including Venezuela and even Antarctica. Kalecsinsky was the first to suggest, in 1902, that the heat from artificial solar ponds could be harnessed as an inexpensive energy source whether or not the sun was shining, in winter or in summer.3 It was not until the late 1950s that a group of Israeli scientists began to study and build artificial solar ponds, with the construction near Bet Ha Arava in the northern part of the Dead Sea of the largest solar ponds ever 80


Figure 2. Bet Ha Arava 5 MWe solar pond power station, in the Dead Sea in Israel, overlooking the pond windbreaker. Photo courtesy of Ormat, Israel.

constructed.4 The two solar ponds in this installation – one of them 50 000 m2 in area and the other 200 000 m2, a total of 250 000 m2 – were used for thermal energy input to a 5 MWe electrical power station in the mid-1980s (Figure 2).5 Solar pond development in Australia commenced in 1964 and commenced in the US in 1973, with numerous research groups working on the science, modelling performance, and monitoring the parameters of experimental solar ponds.6 RMIT Bundoora ponds

The RMIT University solar pond program was initiated by Professor Akbarzadeh in 1986, with studies being conducted using small ponds in aboveground swimming pools. In 2000 a 50 m2 pond was constructed at the Bundoora East campus of RMIT. It was circular with a diameter of 8 m and depth of 2.5 m (Figure 3). It was partly above ground, equipped with an observation window to observe water clarity. The salt gradient was maintained by feeding salt (NaCl) through a cylindrical charger to the bottom layer at a height of 80 cm from the pond floor. Continuous surface washing maintained the salinity of the top convective layer at a low level. Floating rings were developed to limit surface wave action due to wind, and hence reduce the thickness of the upper convective zone. 81


Figure 3. RMIT’s experimental 50 m2 solar pond at its Bundoora East campus, Melbourne. The west-facing window facilitates the visual observation of pond phenomena including water clarity at different depths. The floating rings and salt charger are clearly shown.

A novel element in this pond has been to maintain clarity using brine shrimps. The shrimps swim in the pond feeding on algal populations and detritus, which are the main sources of turbidity. It is essential to keep the solution in the pond clear so that as much as possible of the solar radiation falling on its surface reaches the bottom layer of the pond. Conventionally, acidic chemicals have been used to prevent algal growth. There have been problems in keeping up the required population of shrimps: this biological control method promises to be a much cheaper and less labour-intensive method. In early 2000, the program received an enormous boost when the university formed a partnership with two private Australian companies, Pyramid Salt Pty Ltd, a commercial salt producer for domestic, agricultural and industrial markets, and Geo-Eng Australia Pty Ltd, an environmental engineering consulting firm. The ‘Solar Pond Project’ was to demonstrate and commercialise solar pond systems for heating, electricity generation and 82


combined heat and power. Stage 1 of the project was to focus on solar ponds for industrial process heating, in particular the drying process required in salt production. Importantly, the project partners received a A$550 000 grant over two years (February 2000 to January 2002) from the Australian Greenhouse Office’s Renewable Energy Commercialisation Program to carry out this first stage of the project. The partners themselves agreed to contribute at least an amount equal to the grant, so that the combined project was worth over $1.1 million. The goal was to make solar pond technology available in Australia and overseas as an economically attractive alternative for industrial process heating and other heating applications in regional areas remote from the natural gas distribution system. A central activity was the design and construction of a demonstration solar pond supplying process heat for commercial salt production at Pyramid Salt’s site in Pyramid Hill, northern Victoria. Pyramid Salt is an established commercial producer of salt from saline groundwater (3% salinity). The water is pumped to the surface and evaporated as part of a salinity mitigation scheme. The preparation of brines of various concentrations was carried out in Pyramid Salt’s existing evaporation ponds. To maintain the salinity profile, concentrated brine is periodically added to the lower layer of the pond. Thus the solar pond is itself using some of the salt that was originally in the groundwater that has been pumped to the surface. The solar pond was incorporated as the first pond in a sequence that progressively concentrates the saline water pumped from underground. This saline water is first used for surface flushing of the solar pond, increasing its salinity, before it passes into the first of the sequence of evaporation ponds (Figure 4). The demonstration solar pond, which is able to produce usable heat energy, has been integrated into the overall salinity mitigation process. The demonstration solar pond at Pyramid Salt’s works at Pyramid Hill in northern Victoria has now been constructed and is operating successfully (Figure 5). Its performance is being continuously monitored. The demonstration facility was officially opened by The Hon. Dr Sharman Stone, MP, Parliamentary Secretary to the Federal Minister for Environment and Heritage, on Tuesday 14 August 2001. Gwen Andrews, Chief Executive, Australian Greenhouse Office, also spoke at the opening (Figure 6). 83


Pump 3–5% salinity 5m3m2/yr

Gravity 5–10% salinity

Gravity 15–20% salinity

Accumulated crystalline salt for removal

Evaporation ponds

SGSP

Pump

Return 0.2m3/m2/yr saturated brine 25–26%

Groundwater

Figure 4. Incorporating a salinity-gradient solar pond (SGSP) into a salinity mitigation scheme involving pumping of groundwater to the surface and evaporation in a series of ponds to produce usable crystalline salt, as done by Pyramid Salt at its Pyramid Hill plant in northern Victoria.

Figure 5.

84

The 3000 m2 demonstration solar pond constructed at Pyramid Hill.


Figure 6. The Hon. Dr Sharman Stone, MP, turns on the heating system at the opening of the Pyramid Hill solar pond in August 2001. Main group (from left to right): Sharman Stone, Peter Wood (Managing Director, Geo-Eng Australia), Professor Aliakbar Akbarzadeh (RMIT Energy CARE Group), Gwen Andrews (Chief Executive, Australian Greenhouse Office), Dr Fouad Abo (Technical Director, Geo-Eng), John Ross (front, Director, Pyramid Salt), Dr John Andrews (Manager, Solar Pond Project).

The demonstration solar pond has a surface area of around 3000 m2 and is just over 2 m deep. It is lined with Nylex Millennium liner and is insulated beneath the liner to reduce heat loss to the ground. The design of the pond was undertaken by RMIT University, in close collaboration with Geo-Eng and using its civil and environmental engineering expertise. A grid of plastic rings floating on the surface of the pond is used to suppress wave action that could cause mixing and disturb the salinity gradient, as trialled at Bundoora (Figure 4). Water clarity is maintained using brine shrimps that feed on the algae, as also trialled at RMIT’s experimental solar pond at Bundoora. The system supplies hot air for use in the final crystallisation phase in the commercial production of high-purity ‘flake salt’. Heat is extracted by circulating fresh water through a heat exchanger located in the hot bottom layer, and then passing this heated water through a second heat exchanger 200 m 85


SUNLIGHT Cold air Hot water

SOLAR POND

HEAT EXCHANGER

Hot air for commercial salt production Figure 7. Schematic of a solar pond supplying heat for salt production, as at the Pyramid Hill solar pond.

away to deliver heat to the application (Figure 7). The heat extraction, transfer and delivery system was designed using a computer model developed by the RMIT Energy CARE group. Pyramid Salt installed the required ducting and heat exchanger in its salt production facility. Heat supplied by the solar pond substitutes for electricity. The electricity demand in the salt production process is thus reduced, with consequent financial savings and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. A monitoring system has been designed and installed by Geo-Eng Australia to measure and record the following: • • • • •

temperature at various depths in and beneath the pond heat flux under the pond groundwater pressure under and adjacent to the pond area meteorological parameters such as dry bulb temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, solar radiation and rainfall instantaneous thermal power and cumulative energy delivered to the application.

The operation commenced in early 2001 when the first layers of saline solution were added, and the system started to deliver process heat in June 2001. The maximum rate of heat delivery to the application achieved so far is 50 kW in mid-December 2001. It is confidently expected that the design output of 60 kW (annual average) will be attained as the pond heats up 86


over the next few years and its operational and management procedure is optimised.7 The economic analysis conducted to date indicates a commercial onehectare solar pond heating system at an appropriate location is likely to be economically competitive over 10 years compared to LPG or electricity from coal-fired power stations in Australia. The unit cost of heat delivered by such a system is estimated to be about A$23/GJ, under half that typical for electric heating, and just below that for LPG at A$24/GJ.8 No natural gas is available at the Pyramid Hill site. The corresponding simple payback periods for the solar pond heating system are just over three years against electricity and just over seven years against LPG. Further cost reductions for heat supplied by solar ponds are expected as commercialisation proceeds. The prices of electricity, LPG or other fuel against which a solar pond heating system competes will of course vary from location to location, and will almost certainly increase over time, while the costs of solar ponds should fall as commercialisation proceeds. The costs of constructing a solar pond heating system will also vary from site to site due to factors such as differences in terrain, soil type, the availability of brine/salt, the cost of flushing water from bores, and the distance between pond and heating application. Insolation – the amount of solar radiation received at a particular site – will also vary. Therefore it will generally be necessary to conduct a site-secific economic evaluation of solar pond heating systems to make a realistic appraisal of economic viability. The 0.3 hectare demonstration solar pond heating system at Pyramid Hill will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation by almost 900 tonnes per year, and almost 18 000 tonnes over a 20-year lifetime. A one-hectare pond will reduce emissions by some 3760 tonnes/year. On a projection that over a five-year period from 2003 the annual rate of installation of solar pond heating systems rises linearly to 0.1 km2/y in 2008, the annual greenhouse gas savings in 2008 would be around 87 000 tonnes per year, and the cumulative savings over the five-year period would be some 0.2 Mtonnes. Work is continuing on the evaluation of the market potential and hence the greenhouse gas reduction potential of solar pond heating systems in Australia. Pyramid Salt Pty Ltd, and MPW Development Pty Ltd (which took over Geo-Eng’s solar pond interests following Geo-Eng’s amalgamation with GHD Consulting Services in 2002), in conjunction with RMIT University, 87


are now in a position to offer a range of solar pond technologies and systems, and associated services, to prospective clients on a commercial basis. Future plans for stage 2 of the Solar Pond Project are to extend the commercialisation of solar pond technologies from process heating applications to electricity generation and the provision of combined heat and power for rural industries such as mining, dairy products, vegetable products, and fruit and grain drying, as well as salt production and salinity mitigation. In addition, solar ponds can be used in multi-stage flash desalination systems, to recover fresh water from salty brines – the ultimate in cleaning up the problem left by the unsustainable agricultural practices of the past, and all achieved by the sustainable power of the sun. References Andrews J & Akbarzadeh A, Solar Pond Project: Stage 1 – Solar Ponds for Industrial Process Heating, end-of-project report for project funded under Renewable Energy Commercialisation Program, Australian Greenhouse Office, RMIT, Melbourne, 2002. Assaf G, ‘The Dead Sea: a scheme for a solar lake’, Solar Energy, 18, 1976: 253. Assaf G, ‘Segregated solar pond’, US Patent No. 4 475 535, Oct. 9 1984. Golding P, ‘Meromictic water reservoir solar collectors’, Proceedings of the International Solar Energy Society, Perth, Australia, 1981. Kalecsinsky A, ‘Ueber die ungarischen warmen und heissen Kochsalzseen als natürliche Wärmeaccumulatoren, sowie über die Herstellung von warmen Salzseen und Wärmeaccumulatoren’ Ann. Physik IV, 7, 1902:408. National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality, Australia’s salinity problem (factsheet), 2001, Frequently asked questions (factsheet), 2001, and National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality (brochure downloadable as PDF or Word file), 2001, viewed 31 May 2004, . Rabl A & Nielsen CE, ‘Solar ponds for space heating’, Solar Energy, 17, 1975:1. Tabor H, ‘Solar ponds’, Solar Energy, 27, 1981:181. Ziegler G, ‘An den Herausgeber des Prometheus: absonderliche Temperaturehaltnisse in einem Solbenhalter,’ Prometheus, 9, 1898:79 and discussion 9, 325.


88

National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality, Australia’s salinity problem, factsheet, 2001, Frequently asked questions, factsheet, 2001, and National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality, brochure, 2001, National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality, Commonwealth of Australia, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry & Department of the Environment and Heritage, viewed 31 May 2004, .


2

G Ziegler, ‘An den Herausgeber des Prometheus: Absonderliche Temperaturehaltrisse in einem Solbenhalter’, Prometheus, 9, 1898:79 and discussion 9, 325.

3

A Kalecsinsky, ‘Ueber die ungarischen warmen und heissen Kochsalzseen als natürliche Wärmeaccumulatoren, sowie über die Herstellung von warmen Salzseen und Wärmeaccumulatoren’, Ann. Physik IV, 7, 1902:408

4

H Tabor, Solar ponds, Solar Energy, 27, 1981:181.

5

G Assaf, ‘The Dead Sea: a scheme for a solar lake’, Solar Energy, 18, 1976: 253, and G Assaf, ‘Segregated solar pond’, US Patent No. 4 475 535, Oct. 9 1984.

6

P Golding, ‘Meromictic water reservoir solar collectors’, Proceedings of the International Solar Energy Society, Perth, Australia, 1981; A Rabl & CE Nielsen, ‘Solar ponds for space heating’, Solar Energy, 17, 1975:1.

7

J Andrews & A Akbarzadeh, Solar Pond Project: Stage 1 – Solar Ponds for Industrial Process Heating, end-of-project report for project funded under Renewable Energy Commercialisation Program, Australian Greenhouse Office, RMIT, Melbourne, 2002.

8

ibid.

89


7 ‘Supermodern gorgeous!’ Anthea van Kopplen

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Fashion is with us every day in what we wear – what we love, hate, or aspire to wear. It’s almost impossible not to be ‘fashionable’ in the 21st century. But we give little thought to the genesis of our shoes, our handbags, and our designer jeans. What are they made of? Were they made by young girls in dingy factories in poor places, in country Victoria or in trendy inner-city suburbs? Are the dyes poisoning the waterways? Were they made from carbon, contributing to the greenhouse effect? How did they get to each of us? What sort of transport did they use and how far? And where will they go when we are sick and tired of them – to charities, or to landfill? The whole supply chain in the fashion states needs to be sustainable and workable. Is it affordable? Is it beautiful? Does it make us feel better? Does it inspire us?

92

‘Supermodern Gorgeous!’

‘… when it comes to the “dribble-down effect” of designs there’s a fine line between being inspired and being a thieving bastard.’’1 . Fashion is a powerful tool in shaping society: the way we present ourselves, the cars we drive and our attitudes towards others are all subject to fashion.2 Recently the condition of our planet became fashionable. Words like ‘green’, ‘environment’ and ‘sustainability’ are used by designers in all disciplines, in and out of context, and in the fashion industry by designers who lack the desire to find the true meanings. Yet, if the goal of sustainability is adopted by the right people, it can have enormous and long lasting knockon effects. Look at the humble Volley sports shoe, designed and redesigned until a sports shoe became a multimillion-dollar street wear industry. Contemporary fashion design has social vigour. For this reason, and others less subtle (such as the ozone hole), sustainable design from fibre to consumer and back again must be implicit in the manifesto of all stakeholders in the fashion design process for our children and our children’s children. A sustainable fashion industry – is it possible? Hay and hell and Siberia

Growing up on a property in far south-western New South Wales, I learned the value of life – a tough lesson. The Hay district is famous for its rolling red dust storms, blowflies, drought, electrical storms, flood, boiling days, freezing nights, bushfires and brown snakes. Banjo Paterson’s poem, ‘Hay and hell and Booligal’, describes life in this part of the country – with the emphasis on hell.3 My family breed kelpies (working dogs), Australian merinos (sheep) and show horses. Whenever a lamb or newborn puppy died, it was not placed under a rose bush in remembrance; instead, it was tossed into a burning 44 gallon drum along with the rest of the rubbish. Working dogs that did not do as they were told when they were supposed to be rounding up sheep were said to be ‘not worth the cost of a bullet’. My sister and I worked every day, three to five hours a day, looking after the animals. She loved it. I didn’t. I preferred dressing up Barbie, Skipper and Ken. On hot days (over 40°C) my mother and sister sat at the sewing machine and made pint-size outfits for Barbie, many of them inspired by the Dior ‘New Look’: black Capri pants; tiny, wasp-waisted, to-the-knee tailored 93


woollen suits; and strapless, bell skirted, pink, multilayered diaphanous ball gowns – fabulous! In the 1980s – a decade known for its investment bankers, opulence, excess, and enormous shoulder pads – music and fashion flourished unchecked. Dead or Alive, Martin Grant, Miyake, ABC, Stuart Membery, Saba, Succi, Yohji Yamamoto, Vivienne Westwood, Boy George and Cindy Lauper heavily influenced the trendiest hairstyles, clothing, jewellery, makeup and shoes. At boarding school in Geelong the basic colours were black, black and black. In Hay, Laura Ashley’s drop-waisted Liberty print smocks were de rigueur. Armidale, a rural town in far northern New South Wales, was where I completed my first degree, a Bachelor of Economics. The population doubled when semester began. With a strong drama department on campus, Gothic rock punks stood tall next to chambray shirts, RM Williams boots and moleskins. At 18 I was designing and making-to-measure for both women and men – local brides, gentry and B’n’S (Bachelors and Spinsters ball) party animals. As part of the undergraduate experience I became a member of an international student group called AIESEC4, participating in their international work experience program. On 21 August 1991 Aeroflot landed me at my chosen destination – Sheremetyevo international airport, Moscow. It had only been a week since Boris Yeltsin ousted President Gorbachev in Red Square. There were bloodstains on the underpass and flowered tributes on the wall where three Russian soldiers were shot dead. Queues for bread were two blocks long – each block typically half a kilometre in length. Three months later the queues were just as long, but with a more fashionable backdrop. L’Oréal, Dior and Yves Saint Laurent adorned walkways and buildings. GUM (pronounced ‘goom’), the only department store of its kind in Moscow, boasted huge billboards advertising Mars Bars and Estée Lauder. Glamorous images were placed carefully next to stalls featuring the sale of only one item: an ancient Vogue, a lipstick or a single pair of shoes (which were definitely not Manolo Blahnik). Unless they had American dollars the locals still relied on deliveries provided by the government. Everything, from farms to housing to children’s bikes, belonged to the state. No one knew where or when to expect a delivery despite a complex underground telegraph. Amazingly, on any day hundreds of people would be waiting outside an empty building after a tip-off that this 94


was where the next shipment of sugar (white gold), coffee (black gold), fabric or furniture would be available. It was rarely known what exactly would be delivered. People able to buy goods would buy big then swap for other things they needed. Complex trade networks reached across country and state borders. It was the dying throes of the Soviet communist system. The Russian mafia were heavily promoting the black market trade. Men in black leather coats, with their collars turned up and dark shades, openly extorted money from men and women in the streets. On their arms or hovering in the background were Russian prostitutes, cheeks rosy red like Russian dolls, wearing brightly coloured miniskirts and stiletto heels. The scenes were like something out of a bad Hollywood movie. One day I met a woman from Siberia. She told me an unbelievable story about flying to Moscow from Siberia to buy potatoes. She was just about to fly on to give them to her cousins in Tallin and Riga, in the Baltic republics, and invited me to join her. I went. Mama Luba was a big, generous, enterprising woman without a word of English. I trusted she knew what she was doing. I trusted I knew what I was doing and followed her to her home in Tomsk, Siberia. Tomsk is the heart of the taiga. The taiga is semi-permafrost forest, between tundra and steppe, that stretches across the top of Asia, Canada and Europe near the Arctic Circle including Siberia. It is the largest coniferous forest in the world – or at least, it was: at the time much of the forest in Siberia was being logged and sold to Japanese industry for one or two roubles a square metre. Many of the loggers lived in a town north of Tomsk whose name translates to ‘Friends of the Trees’. They looked like Grim Reapers, malnourished and bitter. An American friend and I travelled there during the winter. Temperatures were –35°C. Along the roadsides the snow stood menacingly 4m tall. Logging trucks thundered carelessly past. The sun came up to an angle of 45° before it sank down into the horizon again – only five hours of daylight per day. This was a hard way of life. The emotions we experienced were varied. We were horrified to see the shameless raping of this natural wonder. But in the end we felt awe and wonder at their way of life, more than anger at the levels of destruction. We knew these people logged to live. They had no thought of the consequences of their actions beyond survival.5 95


Figure 1.

‘Friends of the Trees’, north of Tomsk, Siberia.

During the flight back to London my thoughts were preoccupied with what I had just seen. It prompted a question: how can I justify the desire to live and work in the seemingly frivolous and irresponsible world of fashion? While in London I bought and read two second-hand books. One was Small is Beautiful, by EF Schumacher, and the other The Affluent Society, by John Kenneth Galbraith. Not until I began my postgraduate study of alternative approaches to design and manufacturing in the fashion industry did I realise the impact these texts and experiences had on my thinking. After London, I took the mandatory train trip through Europe popular at the time. Nine months in Florence at the Accademia Italiana Fashion Design school taught me the art and technique of patternmaking, drawing and design. Finally, on the way home a visit to family friends in South Africa introduced me to the reality of apartheid. Sustainability and the design process in fashion

My first serious attempt at a fashion career started at RMIT in 1994. I completed the BA(Fashion) degree with distinction, moving straight into a parttime Masters degree while working for a popular fetish wear label, Lucrezia & 96


Figure 2. ‘J2’ is one garment that forms a collection of garments through multifunction – the garment has over eight purposes. The garment was developed in 2001 as part of my Master of Arts degree exploring sustainable fashion design.

De Sade, as a designer and patternmaker. Later I was awarded a faculty stipend to complete my Master of Arts full time. I also gave birth to my first son. During this time I discovered Victor Papanek, an industrial designer and pioneer of the environmental design movement in the 1970s. His ecological parameters transferred into a fashion context addressed many of the environmental design issues I had been grappling with since the mid-1980s. Papanek had opened a wonderland of design potentials. Later, I realised that to the general public these design potentials translated into Jesus-sandalled, hemp-wearing hippy nonsense. Regardless, I believed in the real-life relevance of this parameter-guided design process; I applied it to my Master’s work and developed a number of multifunctional fashion products. The pieces were displayed during Melbourne Fashion Week 2001 and generated a lot of interest in the thinking behind the designs. Many of the comments were encouraging and supportive. One comment, ‘You are four years ahead of your time’, had a prophetic ring. It was three years before it was recognised that I had something to contribute to design discourse at RMIT, and that sustainable design in fashion 97


was not about saving whales, vegetable dyes and organic cotton. I ended up instructing students on how to become fashion designers with a conscience, not Greenpeace activists. By the third presentation of the course students were asking for the subject content to be a compulsory portion of the fashion curriculum. It’s sometimes suggested – by a student or by the average 30+ hardworking Australian – that the only way to be sustainable in a fashion context would be to sleep in an Indian tepee and wear bearskins.6 This is not an uncommon response, but we do not have to resort to such measures. Contemporary sustainable design isn’t about reverting to or advocating a medieval austerity or a return to a more primitive life experience; it’s about designing a world full of beauty that enhances our contemporary experience of life. This is to be achieved by making responsible design decisions through the use of environmental, social and economic parameters. Put simply, every design decision has a consequence, and it is our responsibility as designers to act positively in the face of a design challenge, especially one that has a negative impact on our world. A few examples of such challenges are the use of bleach to make fabrics look distressed, the prolifigacy of product turnover (Spanish label Zara has a collection every two weeks), and the amount of material waste after an order of garments has been cut. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 1999 an estimated 75% of Australians were concerned with at least one specific environmental problem, compared with 68% in 1996 and 71% in1998. Information on the environment influenced the behaviour or actions of 64%. The results did not indicate the kinds of behavioral changes Australians made, but did reveal that people are aware and willing to act when faced with environmental concerns. So, as lovers and makers of fashion, what can we do? Sustainable design means making responsible design decisions that simultaneously satisfy the three E’s – ethical/social, ecological and economic parameters. Ethical or social parameters could apply, for example, to the use of cultural images as design inspiration for seasonal collections. Many fashion designers in the 1980s, including Rifat Ozbek and Jean Paul Gaultier, reinterpreted ethnic designs as inspiration for their collections. Examples are the North American Indian, in Ozbek’s autumn collection in 1989, and Jean Paul Gaultier’s collection of Hasidic (Orthodox Jewish) religious costume98


inspired winter collection in 1993. The ethical dilemma is in the popularisation of culturally significant forms of adornment. An example of an ecological issue is how the commercial production of fashion products affects our natural environment, for example, the pollution of underground water systems and rivers with chemical waste from the processing of fibres and fabrics, as in the distressed denim look popular since the 1980s. An example of the commercial exploitation of ‘environmental issues as design inspiration’ in the 1980s was Esprit’s promise to make 20% of their product output environmentally friendly. Environmental design, popular at the time, was thus promoted as a trend, rather than as a design imperative with positive long-term consequences for sustainability. Economic parameters determine the fashion product’s market viability from a business and purchaser point of view. The conundrum is whether a product can still be considered a ‘sustainable’ product when it satisfies ethical and ecological criteria but is expensive to produce and/or too expensive for the average person to purchase. Perhaps the answer is that a fashion product is an economically sustainable design if it creates the opportunity to exchange ideas and has the potential to create wealth.. The low impact design approach (LIDA) in the LIDA product cycle offers a way of thinking and an organising framework in which we can start answering the questions that challenge stakeholders in the value chain from the producers of raw materials to designers of garments to consumers and back again. The designer has the power to adapt a design at any time in the planning and development stages of the design process. The designer controls 75% of the final design output.7 But why pursue sustainable outcomes at all? For future generations

Designers are driven by the need to create beautiful objects, systems or services. They are in search of ‘good’ design and best practice. Designers are typically only as good as their last design. It is already a highly competitive industry. The challenge of the ethical/social, ecological and environmental sustainability parameters makes the development of good design even more difficult. Why make it harder for ourselves? One afternoon I was watching the Australian children’s TV program, Play School, with my two sons. Deborah Mailman, the host of the show, told 99


Figure 3. The LIDA product cycle, an alternative to the linear fashion design process, was developed by the author as part of a Master of Arts by project degree completed in 2001.

the story of a six-year-old boy whose grandfather had made him a beautiful tailored jacket from the finest cloth available. The boy loved the jacket and ran home to show his mother. She was so pleased; her son looked very handsome in it. He wore it every day. As he grew, the jacket became smaller and smaller. One day his mother, impatient at his ragged appearance, asked him to throw the jacket out. He ran to his grandfather, begging him to do something. The boy did not want to throw the jacket out. His grandfather turned the jacket around and around, cut off the sleeves and the collar, and mended the edges. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘show your mother your new vest.’ The boy ran home to show his mother. He wore the vest every day. It became smaller and smaller, and more worn. One day, his mother couldn’t bear it any longer: ‘Throw that vest out!’ she told her son. He ran to his grandfather again and told him he didn’t want to throw his vest out. The grandfather turned the vest around and around, snipped and sewed it, and made it into a handkerchief. The boy ran home to show his mother. 100


The boy used the handkerchief every day until finally his mother said, ‘This old rag is smelly and rotten; please, please throw it out.’ The boy, now a young man, ran to his grandfather. His grandfather turned the handkerchief around and around, snipped and sewed again, and made the handkerchief into a button, saying ‘You can use this button to hold up your trousers.’ The young man ran home to show his mother. It came time for the young man to marry. He was about to fasten his trousers when he realised his button had gone! He looked everywhere and asked everyone whether they had seen his button. ‘No,’ they all replied. He ran to his grandfather. By now, the young man was weeping. The button meant a lot to him. His grandfather asked him to stop weeping. So, the young man dried his tears. His grandfather told him not to be sad because now he had a wonderful story. This was the story of a little boy whose grandfather made him a beautiful tailored jacket when he was just six years old. As the boy grew and changed into a man the jacket changed too, transforming into a vest, then a handkerchief, then a button. Finally, when the button was lost, the jacket became a tale to tell his children as he tucked them into bed at night.8 It was this tale that made me realise the main reason for any fashionable activity is for my children. It is for their happiness9 and for our future. The fashions of our contemporary society have us identifying ourselves more and more through material objects. The cars we drive, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the houses we live in and the places we go are all part of the same quest for identity and acceptance. Saturated by information and imagery, much of which is misinformed treacherous and confusing, people are blinded out of making the best decisions. Fashion is often placed at the top of the list of reasons for the misinformation and confusion. Modern fashions being the product of the hype and subterfuge surrounding popular culture, the material object itself satisfying only superficial needs.10 Engagement

In the pursuit of sustainable fashion design outcomes I immersed myself in the design process. I was inspired by a book of essays edited by Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin, Discovering design.11 Within this book I discovered social issues as one of the most liberating approaches to the development of a sustainable design outcome. Finding Lucy Orta’s Refuge Wear12 authenticated this discovery. Lucy addresses issues of cultural links and 101


community through her 1984 Refuge Wear range of garments. Arguably, Lucy Orta’s designs and Naomi Klein’s book No logo have brought social issues with reference to fashion onto the agenda. Lucy Orta’s works and a jacket design by Kosuke Tsumura called ‘Final Home’ remain significant examples and inspiration for future sustainable design outcomes.13 I cannot concede that they are sustainable designs, however; I prefer to refer to them as design interventions. Unfortunately neither work addresses the full set of parameters. The social issues raised by Lucy Orta and expressed in garment form provided a valuable springboard for further thought. Albert Borgmann, in his contribution to Buchanan & Margolin’s book, has a certain fascination with ‘engagement’ and its significance to the design process.14 He defines engagement as ‘a term to specify the symmetry that links humanity and reality’.15 I interpret this to mean that people have certain capacities of sense and sensibility that are challenged by issues surrounding responsible design whether a created object is being created naturally or artificially. Further, the beauty and relevance of a created object are judged by the consequences or impacts of their creation and their future capacities and potentials. It is not that a sustainably designed natural object is more engaging or responsible than a sustainably designed artificial object. It is the object’s capacity for symmetry between humanity and reality which relies on its capacity to be sustainable. The greater the level of engagement the more sustainable the object is. Further, the beauty of these objects is judged by the consequences or impacts of their creation. The greater the positive affect from environmental, social and economic perspectives the more beautiful the object. Finally, the relevance of these objects to humanity is defined by their potential: their cultural potential. The greater the relevance of an object in its time, as well as in the future, referring to its relevance as a popular cultural artifact, the more sustainable and the more engaging that object is. Only time can tell. The greater the ability for the design to function well in its capacity as a fashion object within its present context, and then to carry on into the future through the process of multiple uses, the more sustainable the product. This is the recovery process of developing depth to design – the cyclical approach to design. This kind of design is provocative and desirable at a deeper level, its intrinsic beauty, function and form shaping our material culture. Albert Borgman captures this experience of design when he says, 102


‘If we are concerned to revive engagement, we must try to recover the depth of design, that is, the kind of design that once more fuses engineering and aesthetic and provides a material setting that provokes and rewards engagement.’16 ‘Supermodern Gorgeous!’

‘Supermodern Gorgeous!’ is a work in progress, a body of ongoing practice. It is an exhibition and a way of thinking into the future where everyone has finally agreed that we would like to live on this planet and not another. Mars, though a very exciting orange colour, is not all that interesting. The rationale for ‘Supermodern Gorgeous!’ is that we can recapture depth of design through engagement. It is the fusing of the engineered and the aesthetic, the functional and the alluring, the required and the desirable, the needed and the wanted. Sustainable design by reputation means design that is functional. It is the aesthetic, beauty, that sustainable design struggles to achieve. In The total beauty of sustainable products, Edwin Datschefski provides an excellent cross-section of sustainably designed products that are claimed to be beautiful.17 A way of refreshing this view is through the use of language.18 Albert Borgmann’s use of three terms might help us here. The first is ‘engagement’. The second is ‘engineered design’, which Borgmann defines as the creation of commodities which disburden us. He says engineered design is achieved through the use of technique, meaning a skilled approach to construction and manufacturing. The third is ‘aesthetics’: the philosophy or science behind creating beauty. Borgmann claims that in the past it has been used to smooth the surfaces and stylise products in a superficial way – superficial, because the look or aesthetic was not reflecting a technique or command of engineered excellence. Instead it was covering any deficiencies, like a cover on an ironing board. Aesthetic design became superficial because it became divorced from its role as a powerful shaper of material culture. Contemporary sustainable design recognises the power of the aesthetic attributes of a design. Arguably, aesthetics can be even more significant than engineered attributes in terms of engagement because of the historical misconceptions associated with ‘the look’ of sustainable designs. That is, as Borgmann states, ‘Designers are professionals in that they have been entrusted by society with a valued good and are hence accountable not only to the 103


immediate desires of society but also for the well being of the good that is in their care.’19 The ‘Supermodern Gorgeous!’20 design brief presented an opportunity for designers to address sustainable design issues with a fashion outcome. These designers were challenged to seek ways of designing engaging fashion. The outcome was a collection of design interventions that have lured viewers to stop, think and reconsider the consequences of fashion. Finally…

By addressing issues of sustainable design in fashion it is possible to see how contemporary society must change in order to achieve sustainable lifestyles now so that we have a future. Our behaviour must change for, as Chris Ryan states, ‘… even when designers follow sustainable design parameters, sustainable production and products cannot exist without sustainable consumption. This means a relocation of value, a reframing of desire and a new project for design and business.’21 Sustainable design is discipline- and case-specific. As such, it is difficult for the general public to understand. Rattling off the definition from the 1990 Rio Summit22 does not inform anyone. ‘Supermodern Gorgeous!’ – the exhibition and the story – attempts to provide examples of what sustainable design means to the fashion industry. It is questioning contemporary fashion design processes and providing a space, in the form of the LIDA model, to explore alternatives. The exhibits found in the exhibition are part of the ongoing conversation between lovers, designers and makers of fashion. ‘Supermodern Gorgeous!’ is a growing body of work where one of the objectives is to assist the audience in the adoption of sustainable behaviour within a fashion context. The exhibition and this story hope to explain the fashion designer’s role in a sustainable society while aiming to provide a starting point for discussion among industry professionals, admirers and consumers of fashion. Bibliography Bateson G, Mind and nature: a necessary unity, Hampton Press Inc, USA, 1979. 104


Baudot F, Fashion – the twentieth century, Universe Publishing, New York, 1999. Baudrillard J, The consumer society: myths and structures, Sage Publications, London, 1998. Beck U & Beck-Gernsheim E, Individualisation – institutionalised individualism and its social and political consequences, Sage Publications, London, 2002. Beck U, What is globalisation? Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge, USA, 2000. Beck U, The brave new world of work, Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge, USA, 2000. Beck U, Ecological politics in an age of risk, Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge, USA, 1995. Borgmann A, ‘The depth of design’, in Buchanan R & Margolin V (eds), Discovering design: explorations in design studies, University of Chicago Press, 1995. Buchanan R and Margolin V (eds), Discovering design: explorations in design studies, University of Chicago Press, 1995. Buttolph A, ‘Generation terrorists’, i-D Magazine, The Romance Issue, Sept. 1994:96–98. Datschefski E, The total beauty of sustainable products, Rotovision SA, Hove, East Sussex, England, 2001. Finkelstein J, The fashioned self, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, 1991. Fry T, Remakings: Ecology, design, philosophy, Envirobook, Sydney, 2000. Galbraith JK, The affluent society, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, England, 1984. Greenhalgh P, Modernism in design, Reaktion Books Ltd, London, 1990. Greenwood D, Action research – from practice to writing in an international action research development programme, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1999. Hamilton C, Growth fetish, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2003. Hawken P, The next economy, Angus and Robertson, London, 1983. Hawken P, The ecology of commerce – a declaration of sustainability, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1993. Iberling H, Supermodernism – architecture in the age of globalisation, Nai Publishers, Rotterdam, 1998. Keiser S & Garner M, Beyond Design. Fairchild Publications, New York, New York, 2003. Kohn J, Gowdy J, Hinterburger F & van der Straaten J, Sustainability in question: the search for a conceptual framework, Edward Elgar Publishing, UK, 1999. Larson J, The philosophy of design for disassembly, 1998, viewed 2 June 2004, . Lasch C, The minimal self, General Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada, 1984. Makinen H, ‘Analysis of problems in the protection of fire-fighters by personal protective equipment and clothing – development of a new turnout suit’, PhD thesis, Tampere University of Technology, Helsinki, Finland, 1991. McDermott C, Essential design, Bloomsbury, London, 1992. OECD – see Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, The future of the global economy – towards a long boom, OECD, France, 1999. Polhemus T, Style surfing: what to wear in the third millennium, Thames and Hudson, London, 1996. Sproles GB & Burns LD, Changing appearances – understanding dress in contemporary society, Fairchild Publications, New York, 1994. 105


Steele V, Fetish: fashion, sex and power, Oxford University Press, New York, 1996. Thompson P & Warhurst C, Workplaces of the future, Macmillan Press, London, 1998. Watkins SM, Clothing – the portable environment, Iowa State University Press, USA, 1984. Whitely N, Design for society, Reaktion Books, Washington, 1993. Ulrich KT & Eppinger SD, Product design and development, 3rd edition, McGraw-Hill/ Irwin, New York, 2004.

Acknowledgement

Supermodern Gorgeous! is supported by an EDF (Exhibition Development Fund) as part of NETS Victoria (National Exhibition Touring Support, Victoria). Notes to Chapter 7 1

A Buttolph, ‘Generation terrorists’, i-D Magazine, The Romance Issue, Sept. 1994, p. 97.

2 See GB Sproles & LD Burns, Changing appearances – understanding dress in contemporary society, Fairchild Publications, New York, 1994. 3

A version of Paterson’s poem, as published in the Bulletin, 25 April 1986, can be viewed at http://www.uq.edu.au/~mlwham/banjo/hay_and_hell_and_booligal.html

4

AIESEC is the world’s largest student organisation. This global network of 50 000 members spans more than 83 countries and territories in over 800 universities worldwide.

5

When I reported what I had seen to Friends of the Earth in London, they replied that they knew of the clear felling but could do nothing about it.

6

See C McDermott, Essential design, Bloomsbury, London, 1992; C Lasch, The minimal self, General Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada, 1984.

7

See J Larson, The philosophy of design for disassembly, 1998, viewed 2 June 2004, .

8

Unfortunately, I have been unable to find out who wrote the story spoken and playacted by Mailman. I am sorry not to be able to acknowledge the author. The story sums up the thinking behind sustainable design: it is a perfect example of the process of design with multiple outcomes.

9

See C Hamilton, Growth fetish, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2003, p. 46.

10 ibid, pp. 33–43. 11 R Buchanan & V Margolin (eds), Discovering design: explorations in design studies, University of Chicago Press, 1995. 12 See Lucy Orta’s work at . 106


13 As Lucy is an artist, I consider many of her works to be art not fashion. In the contemporary commercial fashion industry, to use her works as examples of sustainable fashion is to invite increased scepticism. 14 A Borgmann, ‘The depth of design’, in Buchanan & Margolin, Discovering design, p. 13. 15 ibid p. 15. 16 ibid p. 16. 17 E Datschefski, The total beauty of sustainable products, Rotovision SA, Hove, East Sussex, England, 2001. 18 Dr Tony Fry is well known for his belief that the reason we are unable to create a world based on sustainable principles is that we have not yet developed the language. 19 Borgman, op.cit., p. 18. 20 The Supermodern Gorgeous! Exhibition is due to travel around Victoria in 2006, then to Italy, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The exhibition first exhibited at The Atrium, Federation Square, Melbourne, in February 2003 then Craft Queensland, Brisbane, July to September 2003. 21 These comments were contained in an unpublished brief for the Ecosense studio Chris Ryan directed at RMIT for students in 2003. 22 The 1990 Rio Summit defined sustainability in the current market economy as economic development designed to meet present needs while also taking into account future costs, including costs to the environment and the depletion of natural resources.

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8 Memory and an artist’s view

Artwork: Adele Flood

Adele Flood


This chapter discusses the place memory and narrative hold as part of the whole process of an artist’s creativity. It draws upon current theory on memory and narrative research and refers to the author’s art works as the source of a discussion of the place of memory in the creation of a body of works titled ‘(Re)Focusing Landscapes’, an exhibition held in Washington DC in March 2001. The chapter describes how this personal creative journey led to the exposition ‘The Piece and the Practice’, which focused upon sustainability across diverse curriculum areas. Works of RMIT staff and students in that exposition were exhibited at Melbourne Central in November 2002.

110

Memory and an Artist’s View

If you would find yourself, look to the land you came from and to which you go. — Henry David Thoreau In the first part of this chapter I recount my ideas within the exhibition ‘(Re)Focusing Landscapes’ along with poems written by me at the time of creating the imagery. From this reflection, questions of how an artist might contribute to ideas of sustainability within a community are explored and I contextualise ideas of the artist’s role as a recorder and interpreter of the environment. Finally, I outline the conceptual underpinning of the exposition, ‘The Piece and the Practice’. Refocusing landscapes

I come to the fields and spacious palaces of memory where are the treasures of innumerable images brought into it from things of all sorts perceived by the senses. — Saint Augustine I come from a land of short stubby trees, of strange prehistoric forms that somehow were trapped on a continent far away from anywhere. I come from a place where the sea pounded against white glowing sands and a searing desert pressed hard against the fragile strip of arable land. It is a harsh, challenging landscape: a landscape where each sign of growth is something to be revered. Each spring the everlasting flowers burst forth in abundant colour from the drab grey greens and just as suddenly as they appear they vanish. They startle and then disappoint. Trees strip their bark in sharp shards of brown, exposing the new and pale growth of another year’s life. Parrots and kingfishers fly above, leaving a memory of bright colours long after they have passed. The silence of the bush is shattered by the raucous laughter of the kookaburra and small skinks, lizards and the occasional snake will slither past when you least expect it. If you are lucky enough you will hear the dull thud of the kangaroo as it passes you by. And all the time you know there will be further things to discover, such as the brilliant blue Leschenaultia flowers or the almost-hidden tiny deeppurple wild orchids and the profuse wattle, or the sharp sudden intense blue of a rock pool that holds the sky in its irregular cavity. The rocks are patterned with striations of intense colour – the rich reds of the desert are 111


Figure 1.

Western Sentinels

randomly punctuated with the gold of tumbling clumps of dried spinifex. And beneath the surface there is the wealth of minerals and the great artesian water system out of which boiling hot water gushes from springs. The Dunes Spinifex spines bend, strong winds blow straight from the Antarctic. We are alone on the beach, winter’s cold wind keeps everyone away. We wrap our coats around us and walk through the sea mist and swirling sands. Thoughts and memories are swept away as the sand swallows our footsteps leaving no trace of the time we walked upon that beach. June 2000 112


The images reflect the colour and beauty of the patterns found upon and within the landscape. Onto those patterns are placed the impositions of relatively new travellers on the land. The structures are imposed, the natural forms decay and the new life comes through in face of drought and rugged terrain. The earth yields us great wealth and in return we plunder and place upon it heavy forms. We dig up the wealth and we change the course of rivers. We embellish and decorate; we place upon the landscape our marks of ownership. We have claimed the territory and live in a state of adverse possession.1 And yet in all this there is grandeur, a sense of age and timelessness in a parched land that shimmers with tiny splashes of light and intense slivers of blue water. Andy Goldsworthy, British sculptor, writes ‘my intention is not to improve on nature but to know it – not as a spectator but as a participant’2 and as participant I too wish to know the landscape of my past and future. Australia is a large and open country; a country in which most of its population lives close to the coastline in large cities. It is a country that inspires my passions for colour and light and pattern and I move within it as a recorder of visions and as an artist who seeks to know nature and to be part of the web formed by land, history, culture and place. The ‘Refocusing Landscapes’ exhibition was the visual representation of my sense of place and space. As an artist I am part of a system in which the individual conceives his or her humanity in Western culture. Mary Anne Staniszewski goes further, to say that If we accept the fact that everything is shaped by culture, we then acknowledge that we create our reality. We therefore contribute to it and change it. This is an empowering way of living and seeing ourselves and the world.3 In this collection of works, I presented a series of images that are my vision, as participant of a landscape I reinterpret and re-invent. They are the product of my journey, real and imagined, remembered and forgotten. It is a journey that goes beyond the boundaries of space, place and time. It is a journey I undertake within the context of being the child of late settlers in a land that has seen the journeys of many. 113


Figure 2.

Adverse Possession

Earth Quilts Patterns form The earth is segmented, delineated by lines of ownership. This means containment It means fences It means loss of freedom. It means traditional owners become the dispossessed. But, even as it becomes fragmented somehow the natural beauty returns and regenerates to form a patchwork of colour and life. June 2000 114


How it began

The beginnings of this exhibition occurred in Bangkok. I wandered through the art and stationery department of a large department store mesmerised by the wondrous supply of materials available. I bought brushes and gouache paints and retreated to my hotel room with my purchases. In a Chinese grocery store, I later bought some gold and silver papers that had captured my attention and I began to play with ideas of laying down the papers and creating surfaces. I was entranced with how the light played upon the surface of the paper and I began to revel in the joy of applying paint to paper again. I had not painted for some time as I had been concentrating on textiles in recent years. In these paintings I was influenced by both memory of landscape and by the incredible richness of the embellished surfaces in the Thai temples I had visited. I had the rare opportunity of uninterrupted time and I began to create the landscapes in the collection. It became obvious that my doctoral research about the way in which we frame our lives and how we contextualise things in terms of our own histories and experiences underpinned this work. A dominant frame for each work outlines and delineates the vision. Even though we might take in huge vistas when we look at landscape I believe we break these vistas down into manageable components. We look for the small detail within the larger vision. Alberto Manguel talks of ‘reading’ images and examines the way in which we as viewer will bring to those images a temporal quality of narrative. He believes we ‘extend that which is limited by a frame to a before and after and through the craft of telling stories we lend the immutable picture an infinite and inexhaustible life’.4 In the works, I travel through a terrain of memory and experience. I revisit the landscape of my childhood and it melds with my later travels through the world and my awareness of the precarious nature of our existence in a land which was settled and colonised by those who came from a very different history and landscape. They are works that capture the vastness of landscape within the confines of clearly delineated borders or frames, just as all individuals inevitably frame and delineate what is seen and experienced from a personal perspective. As I painted and as I wrote, I wanted to represent the texture and the landscapes that I remembered from the many times I had walked on the precious earth that I called my homeland. 115


Figure 3.

White Horizon

White Horizon Shallow pools of water capture the sky and lay it in pieces on the hot golden sands. The white dunes form a sharp line that delineates earth from sky. Stones lay on the ground, rough and dry, like remnants of an ancient wall. June 2000 The artist as recorder

In February 2001 my exhibition titled (Re)Focusing Landscapes was one of the features of the bicentennial celebrations at the Australian embassy in 116


Washington DC. As part of these celebrations I was asked to present an address to invited guests. The audience comprised many nationalities and many of them were not familiar with the Australian landscape from firsthand experience. Generally the Americans delighted in the colours and the textures. Australians who attended also related to the colours and many said they felt homesick; they missed the Australian colours of the coastline, the desert and the sky. In the address I wanted to reinforce messages of the immensity of the land. At the same time I wanted to highlight the beauty, the starkness, the sharp flashes of colour and the pinpricks of light that make it such a dynamic landscape to interpret. Embedded in the talk were ideas of how artists interpret and reinterpret landscape within their works. I wanted to contextualise the role of the artist as a recorder of time and place and reveal how I chose to represent and develop ideas of my own landscape. What now follows is what I said at that address. When Wordsworth remembers wandering ‘lonely as a cloud … o’er vales and hills’ he positions himself within a geographical landscape that is encompassed within the realm of memory; he muses upon seeing ‘the golden daffodils’ as he lies pensively on his couch. It is a strong and evocative example of how a sense of place can be evoked through connections to visual memory. Jerome S Bruner suggests that we do not deal directly with nature but rather, that nature is a ‘symbolic construct, a creature of man’s powers to represent experience through powerful abstractions’.5 In this case it is the power of words that records both the visual memory and the sense of wonder Wordsworth experiences at the sight of unexpected colour and movement. It is that ‘flash upon the inward eye’ that is the action of memory. Norman K Denzin describes such events as epiphanies.6 Such experiences can be of a major nature and life changing or they can be episodes that become cumulative and take on symbolic meaning as the memory leads to introspection and the reliving of the event. While the event initially might have appeared insignificant, the symbolic meaning becomes evident in retrospect. The lasting effect and its place in Wordsworth’s reflective memory are evident when he says, I gazed and gazed but little thought, what wealth the show to me had brought. 117


Across time writers and artists have recorded their sensory experiences in place and time, connecting diverse experiences through the mediation of symbols and metaphors. Daniel L Schacter explains this as a core cognitive act of visual imagery mnemonics; the creation of an image that is linked to a mental location which takes the form of a deep elaborative encoding.7 Referring to the importance of memory in the practice of an artist, Robert Henri, the eminent American teacher and artist, tells his students that the most vital things in the look of a face or of a landscape endure only for a moment. Work should be done from memory. The memory is that vital movement; the special order has to be retained in memory.8 By recalling and recording the lived experience the artist invites the viewer to also experience through a mediated gaze an event or place or feeling. Monet explored this by painting haystacks over and over again at different times of the day and year. His many renderings of the image investigated the play of light on the surface. He also studied the play of light multiple times in fogbound London, and in doing so, he recorded for subsequent generations the passage of time; and the play of colour, light and tone in landscape. In contemporary settings artists continue to explore ideas of landscape. David Hockney records the landscape of the Grand Canyon in disjointed images captured in photographs that he then reinterprets in stark and bold colours evocative of heat and desert and rocky terrain. Hockney believes that art training ‘sharpens the visual sense and if people’s visual sense is sharp you get beautiful things around you … it makes a vast difference to a city or a country’.9 Cindy Sherman places herself in photographic portraits in situations and places we can readily recognise and identify due to their stereotypic imagery. She challenges patriarchal conventions in both the imagery and construction of those images10 and draws upon viewers’ memories of genre and time to inform their response to and understanding of her works. Artists have returned again and again to the same place to reinterpret significant places in their own or others’ pasts. They contribute in a tangible way to the recoding of events and place. Their works form an important element of our ability to remember the history, through the mediation of the artists’ own experiences that exist for them at the time of constructing the images. This memory, both individual and communal, is part of the human being’s attempt to impose an order upon the environment. Henri suggests that the artist is in fact ‘a hunter who moves through life as he finds it, not 118


passing negligently the things he loves but stopping now and then to note them down’.11 Traditionally, artists have held an important place in the recording of memory. In their works we can find a rich resource for tracing a wealth of human characteristics and attitudes to life. For example, portraiture provides the viewer with images of status, of wealth, of customs, of ornamentation. From the early cave paintings we create stories that construct meaning about food gathering rituals and journeys. In art galleries we view landscapes both familiar and exotic, and through the imaginative reinterpretation of form and place we are privy to the artist’s reconstruction of place. Only rarely are we able to enter into a dialogue with the artist. Generally, we access such information through reading diaries, watching interviews, or reading biographical constructions; all of which are entered not only through the medium but also through our own life experiences and those of the narrator. To each viewing or reading the observer will bring his or her own constructions and responses. When we read Wordsworth’s account of seeing daffodils we conjure up in our mind our experiences of daffodils even if we have never walked in England’s Lake District. However, if we have never seen daffodils, can we still create an image of the golden flowers? The writer or artist creates images that reside within a common cultural discourse; within the works there need to be points of reference from which the viewer can make connections to establish his or her own understanding. These points of reference are dependent on memory and lived experiences. The interaction between viewer and created work is the interaction between the constructed image of the artist and the constructed memory of the viewer. It is these connections that make the arts such an essential part of our culture. Experiences are not only shared because they are based upon cultural discourse. It is the shared background that makes experiences and memories ‘sharable’.12 This shared discourse in turn enables the identification of interrelated memories and establishes the ‘interrelatedness of a collectivity of culture’.13 Lucy Lippard wrote that human creativity is an integral part of the web formed by land, history, culture and place. She tells us that artists are looking around more and more to record what they see or would like to see in their own environments: they are often catalysts for social change. 14 The emerging global community will require that we become more conversant with a broader range of reference points and the World Wide Web is 119


becoming exactly that: a web of interconnected ideas and places and memories of humanity. RG Collingwood, a professor at Oxford University in the 1920s, wrote: ‘Art is the foundation, the soil, the womb and the night of the spirit. All experience issues forth from it, rests upon it. All education begins with it.’15 He also attributed an innocence and childlike quality to artists when he said that ‘art is the sleep of the soul … the infant soul knows hardly any experience but art’.16 We have inherited from the modernist period a vision of the creative person and the artist as an innocent being who responds with instinctive and intuitive enthusiasm; a response that lacks conscious thought and exists in spite of the presence of thought. It is a view that lingers today in the minds of many. Anyone who has practised any form of art making will know there is nothing further from the truth. Artistic endeavour involves intense levels of thought, constant practice, experimentation, making judgments and aesthetic choices, the manipulation and exploration of new media, and sophisticated problem-solving. Within the art works the artist can either predict or record symbolic representations that confront humanity. The memorial presence of the past takes many forms and serves many purposes; from conscious recall to unreflected re-emergence, from nostalgic longing for what is lost to polemical use of the past to reshape the present.17 Bruner suggests that there are two types of cognitive activity that are fundamental, and that while the artist experiences a centre of awareness, which is directed towards a designated outcome, there are also fringes of awareness, which involve a flow of fantasy. This flow is comprised of ‘fleeting glimpses of past occasions, of disappointments and triumphs, of pleasant and unpleasantness’.18 The collection of works, ‘(Re)Focusing Landscapes’, emerged from my collective memory of an Australian landscape. In these images I interpret and reinterpret ideas of the desert, the sky, the sea, the rocks, the sand and the elemental forces. They are explorations in colour and texture. Throughout my artistic journey I have worked within the context of my experiences, and my art works have been part of a journey of self and exploration of identity, place and space. Such attitudes and activities, that encompass acts of discovery and rediscovery where the individual seeks out such knowledge, appear to aid in the conserving of memory. This memory when made explicit is the 120


Figure 4.

Fragments

rehearsing of past facts to oneself; in artistic expression that reminiscing becomes the artist’s communication of elements of memory to the viewer. Henri tells us Every work is one man’s vision, an outside experience useful in our own constructions. The wisdom of mistakes and the past are ours to rule on and the picture painted yesterday now hanging on our wall is already of the past and is part of our heritage.19 As creative travellers, we create and invent the space and constantly reinterpret our lives. We frame the lives; we live in segments of time and place. We name events and we ground these in people or places or actions. 121


The works we create become part of our heritage and become part of our memoried lives. These are the spaces in the heart and in the mind and in the living day; as artist I move through memory and space, an adventurer in reality and in imagination. Frances Yates, reflecting upon the classical art of memory, tells us that Aristotle first identified the mental images of memory as perception of things past and that ‘memory belongs to the same part of the soul as the imagination’.20 Memory then is implicit in perception, and the very act of perceiving and recording a response is a retrospective act. A work of art is then the fashioning of an external product out of our internal impulses.21 Within an Australian context, artists have explored the subject matter and treatment of the landscape with growing understanding and respect for its unique qualities. Early works by European painters depicted the country as a strange and formidable landscape – towering mountains covered in exotic trees and dotted with bright colourful bird life. The colours of the landscape were European and the landscapes were romantic ideals of the ‘new lands’. However, the land was old and greatly untouched. The original inhabitants moved through the landscape and were part of it. They used, understood and adapted to it. They understood its presence. The colonisers changed, cleared, controlled and revisioned the landscape and brought with them new ways of existing. They painted heroic narratives of settling a strange and hostile landscape – they recorded the evolving sense of nationhood. The indigenous people painted their stories in the ephemeral sands and on rock faces; they left their imprints as part of the landscape. They were the original artists and they integrated their stories and lives into the landscape they existed both with and within. My role as artist

As artist, I seek to raise consciousness about the land, about history, and about culture. I make connections visible. I create windows to look through, I open shutters, I tear down walls, I build barriers and through all this I invite the viewer to speculate about a vast range of ideas, concepts, truths, lies, fantasies, the past and the future. I explore my ideas with excitement and intense delight and I explore notions of where I exist. I ask what space I will occupy today, I anticipate what space I might create tomorrow. Where will my mind 122


wander, what are the spaces I create in the mind’s eye and in the lives of the viewers? What do I give to the life of my viewer, what are the places where I connect and how do I speak through my images? In earlier works I painted large canvases, abstract views of landscape in which the vegetation and the imposition of fences to restore the natural vegetation featured as marks on the sands and coastal dunes. These dunes were, and remain, fragile places where the constant passage of people causes erosion and degradation and the inevitable loss of native flora and fauna. I reflected my concerns of a ‘captured landscape’ – a landscape of grasses and plants hanging on tenaciously to life in dry sandy dunes – and the fences that had been erected to protect these fragile forms were the marks that dissected the space. I was aware of these lines as interrupters within the natural environment and I wanted to represent this in my works. The exposition: ‘The Piece and the Practice’

Upon my return to Australia I presented a seminar for the Global Sustainability Institute at RMIT University. In that seminar I spoke of ways that artists can be, and are essential in, the recording of the stories of landscape. They are the eyes of a nation and they can either record what they see or they can embellish and change it to suit a purpose or need. They can alert the country through images of destruction; they can depict climate change, landscape degradation, the interaction between people and the planet. Because of the emphatic presence of the Australian landscape, Australian artists have been preoccupied with depicting its terrain: the droughts, the death, the deserts, the sea, the vast skies, the bushfires, and the floods. It is a continent of extremes, a continent of conditions too conflicting and strong to deny or ignore. This led me to consider how my art works might reflect both the ideas and the practice of sustainability. Was it enough just to paint about sustainability? My questions were about how my own practice reflected my beliefs in developing a sustainable world. Taking this further, I began to question how others practice and how they could introduce a sustainable ideology into both their teaching and their own practice. The Vice Chancellor had posed an interesting question during a discussion about the works in my exhibition. She wondered how many people in the university expressed themselves creatively outside their immediate work discipline. 123


With this in the back of my mind, I began to think of ways to cross barriers of discipline to find creative contributors from within the university community. In concert with the Director of the Global Sustainability Institute, a project was devised that was to explore ideas of how creativity can be involved in sustainable practice. Its title emerged from the discussions of that first meeting. ‘The Piece and the Practice’ was so named because emphasis was placed upon the processes undertaken to achieve the desired learning in creating the planned piece or product. The project was designed to encourage RMIT University staff and students to work collaboratively to investigate and contribute creatively and critically to global sustainability through their current practice. It was perceived that these activities would achieve outcomes in the triple bottom lines: environmental, social and economic. The activities would provide an integrated approach to both the practice and the pedagogical issues within a learning community. It was designed to develop over the whole year. Meetings were held with the participating lecturers early in semester one and their ideas were pursued and developed during the two semesters of 2002. It was to foreground a commitment to a global perspective while exploring creativity as a means to consider and redefine earth as an ecosystem. The practitioners were exemplars of education about and for sustainable practice. While enhancing the university’s position as a leader in the field theproject engaged the participants in an energetic, cross-disciplinary, practical and academic research culture that reflected the diverse capabilities of those who had chosen to become involved. The 40 exhibits came from across the university and represented many areas of creative endeavour. Projects on display ranged from sustainable clothing designs to solar-powered cars. Students from photography created images inspired by the word ‘sustainability’, others in applied science created poster representations of their research into developing compost from refuse left at Queen Victoria Market. Young children’s responses, large colourful hangings, were displayed and reflected work undertaken in their primary school programs. Because it was designed to showcase sustainable practice to a wider audience, an accessible venue was needed. Instead of limiting it to within the university’s grounds, the exposition was held in the central concourse of Melbourne Central shopping complex. Ironically, it occurred in the final 124


weeks of the shopping centre as it was in its previous form; the centre has since been undergoing rejuvenation and reconstruction. The opening event was attended by several hundred members of the public, attracting strong media attention, and the Channel Ten weather program was broadcast from there on the opening night. The exposition provided an opportunity to explore issues of sustainability in innovative research across a wide range of disciplines, and revealed how research can be realised in a variety of ways with varied outputs. It encouraged and enabled members of the RMIT community to apply knowledge and practice in ways that furthered community understanding of sustainable practice. In doing this it provided avenues for both new and existing research to develop conceptual changes through changes in practice. From my initial ideas that arose from art works I had created and reflective processes they generated, ‘The Piece and the Practice’, a large and exciting event, occurred – allowing many thousands of Melburnians to view and experience creative contributions from over 240 participants whose focus was sustainable practice leading to sustainable products. Ultimately, the project’s objectives were realised through the creative and collaborative work of energetic and dedicated teachers and learners; the two essential components that are the basis for desired changes in future practice. The conclusion and the continuation: the educator and the artist

I am an artist and I am an educator. These two occupations come together within me and each practice informs the other. I cannot educate students who are to be future teachers without bringing to their consciousness a sense of responsibility for the future. As teachers they are entrusted with the development of those whom they teach and ultimately, the well-being of the planet upon which they live. They are inextricably linked to the future, in the ways they themselves practice and the ways in which they educate our most precious commodity – the future generations who will be caretakers of this planet. In my artist role I continue to travel the planet with my eyes tuned to seeing and recording the environment. In my works I recode, I explore and create images of beauty that have an edge to them. I represent the possibilities of a landscape untouched and record the landscape that is overlaid with the markings of human intervention. It is a dynamic that affects me strongly and I want to create in my works that tension between what has been, what is, and what could be. 125


Leaf Litter We walked around the lake a soft path beneath our footsteps. Scattered leaves lay upon the earth, Twigs and bark, shed to prepare for another year of growth. Softest colours of grey, blue, gold and brown mingled and formed a pattern rich in depth and hue. We lay upon that coloured earth quilt and smelt the rich earth and the wondrous aroma of eucalyptus. Above us the gum trees swayed in the wind the leaves catching the light and turning to silver Twisting and diving to the earth a leaf fell, landing softly beside us. On that warm afternoon, as the leaf fell, we knew that we were part of life’s story and this was just one small walk along the way. Bibliography van Alphen E, ‘Symptoms of discursivity: experience, memory, and trauma’, in M Bal, J Crewe & L Spitzer (eds), Acts of memory: cultural recall in the present, University Press of New England, Hanover and London, 1999, pp. 24–38. Bal M, ‘Introduction’, in M Bal, J Crewe & L Spitzer (eds), Acts of memory: cultural recall in the present, University Press of New England, Hanover and London, 1999, vii–xvii. Bruner JS, On knowing: essays for the left hand, Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1979. Collingwood RG, Speculum mentis or the map of knowledge, Oxford University Press, London, 1970. Denzin NK, ‘Interpretive biography’, in MQ Patton (ed.), Qualitative evaluation and research methods, 2nd edn, Sage, Newbury Park, CA, 1989. 126


Goldsworthy A, Stone, Viking, Great Britain, 1994. Hockney D, David Hockney on David Hockney, Thames and Hudson, London, 1976. Henri R, The art spirit, Westview Press, Boulder, 1984. Lippard L, The lure of the local: senses of place in a multicultural society, The New Press, New York, 1997. Manguel A, Reading pictures: a history of love and hate, Bloomsbury, London, 2000. Schacter DL, Searching for memory: the brain, the mind, and the past, Harper Collins, New York, 1996. Staniszewski M, Believing is seeing: creating the culture of art, Penguin Books, New York, 1995. Yates F, The art of memory, Pimlico, London 1992.

Notes on Chapter 8 1

Adverse possession: ‘The occupation of land to which another person has title with the intention of possessing it as one’s own. …’ Oxford dictionary of law, 5th edn, ed. Elizabeth A Martin, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 17.

2

A Goldsworthy, Stone, Viking, Great Britain, 1994, p. 15.

3

MA Staniszewski, Believing is seeing: creating the culture of art, Penguin Books, New York, 1995, p. 298.

4

A Manguel, Reading pictures: a history of love and hate, Bloomsbury, London, 2000, p. 13.

5

JS Bruner, On knowing: essays for the left hand, Belknap Press, Harvard, 1979, p. 159.

6

NK Denzin, ‘Interpretive biography’, in MQ Patton (ed.), Qualitative evaluation and research methods, 2nd edn, Sage, Newbury Park, 1989.

7

DL Schacter, Searching for memory: the brain, the mind, and the past, HarperCollins, New York, 1996, p. 46.

8

R Henri, The art spirit, Westview Press, Boulder, 1984, p. 27.

9

D Hockney, David Hockney on David Hockney, Thames and Hudson, London, 1976, p. 29.

10 See Staniszewski, op. cit. 11 Henri, p. 17. 12 E van Alphen, ‘Symptoms of discursivity: experience, memory, and trauma’, in M Bal, J Crewe & L Spitzer (eds), Acts of memory: cultural recall in the present, University Press of New England, Hanover and London, 1999, p. 37. 13 ibid. 14 L Lippard, The lure of the local: senses of place in a multicultural society, The New Press, New York, 1997. 127


15 R Collingwood, Speculum mentis or the map of knowledge, Oxford University Press, 1970, p. 59. 16 ibid, p. 51. 17 See M Bal, ‘Introduction’, in M Bal, J Crewe, & L Spitzer (eds), Acts of memory: cultural recall in the present, University Press of New England, Hanover and London, 1999, vii. 18 Bruner, p. 70. 19 Henri, p. 217. 20 F Yates, The art of memory, Pimlico, 1992, p. 47. 21 See Bruner, p. 32.

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9 Mercury stole my fire Anitra Nelson


When Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was first printed in 1962, the world was alerted to the toxicity of our air, water and land as the result of human activity. That book was instrumental in educating a whole generation about the unintended consequences of progress. It inspired others to explore connections between nature, natural cycles and human production. It asked hard questions about our capacity to understand and live within the bounds and systems of the planet. Anitra Nelson’s deeply personal story of allergic illness highlights the issues Rachel Carson discussed in Silent Spring. Nature, including our bodies, cannot tolerate poisoned environments. We know this today as never before. Our futures, the planet’s future, depends on our continuing to investigate, understand and take action to clean up our act. It took 20 years to discover that mercury meant death to Anitra. When she found out what was wrong with her, it changed her outlook, her lifestyle and her work forever.

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Mercury Stole My Fire

I came to RMIT University in 1998 to do postdoctoral research on the conflict between monetary and ecological values in East Gippsland forests. Over the next few years I became an advocate of eco-forestry, forest use and management that is community based and ecosystem based. Today I research in collaborative cross-faculty teams, especially with geospatial scientists, concentrating on community-based natural resource management. Currently I am working on a project funded by the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment that addresses conflicts between users of bore water in areas where groundwater is the main water source. All my work addresses the main challenge we face as a species today: ecological crises and future sustainability. A holistic perspective embraces discourses from distinctive disciplines and means researching in an interdisciplinary way. However, to understand my confidence in approaching sustainability in an interdisciplinary and community-based way, you need to know my personal story. I was born in a small rural town in Gippsland, Victoria. Heyfield owed its existence to three sawmills. My mother’s family went there after my grandfather became totally incapacitated in the Second World War. He had been a timber logger in Healesville, Victoria. My mother worked as a stenographer for the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission, where she met my father. He was a civil engineer who had just migrated here and was bonded to the commission. At that time he designed bridges in the construction of the Glenmaggie Weir. When I was a couple of years old we went to live in Wales for a few years because my father had been funded to research ways to avoid and address water pollution. My parents made me conscious that we collectively used and managed ‘nature’. They instilled in me an awe and respect for nature. My mother has always been admired for her creative gardening, and she loves walking. My father would tell us not to waste water, saying, ‘Remember, four men died for every mile of tunnelling that brought that to you.’ He would also say, ‘You cannot control nature. You can only understand how to make it work for you.’ Not surprisingly, I decided to study agricultural science. However, before I left secondary school I began to suffer from an obscure and ultimately very serious illness. This meant I never proceeded with my studies or life in the ways I had expected. The cause and experience of this illness is the real source of my commitment to research and teach in the area of sustainability. This narrative cannot be told in an academic way. However, even though it is anecdotal, it is the kind of story that proves useful for speculating and 131


hypothesising. Most importantly, this story gives all my research efforts dynamism and spine because the experience has informed my whole way of knowing and being. It is a story about the profundity of sustainability. It is a story about uncertainty, about what we know and do not know, about mortality and about the will to survive. It is an experience that offered me an appreciation of an interdisciplinary approach that goes beyond arguments and logic and has entered my psyche. I was 15 when I got glandular fever. Then I was in a serious car accident. I started to have panic attacks and stomach pains. I felt sluggish. Then surges of energy, like bolts of lightning, would rip through me. I didn’t want to eat. Then I felt like eating tons. I wanted to sleep in the day. At night I was alert. I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t concentrate. The symptoms were alarming, but medical tests revealed nothing. The doctor decided it was psychological: stress. On the outside I tried to stay calm. Inside, I felt under the control of an alien force. They put me in a psychiatric hospital. That shut me up. But none of the treatments made me feel better. I left home to live independently. The mysterious illness moved out with me. It was like being on the verge of flu – all the time. But I had to earn a living and worked at all sorts of jobs. I pretended I had no symptoms. But the people I lived with noticed that I was clumsy. My fingers and toes were often blue. I bruised easily. I slept too much. No one could help. They did not know my taste buds felt numb. They could not see my dry mouth. They did not know that I felt bodily sensations second-hand, as if covered in a rubber skin. It was as though I was experiencing life through glass. My all-absorbing secret goal was to recover my lost self. The mystery I was living was like an ancient myth. Still, I kept working and living and loving; I was lucky I had such warm friends. I identified with many social struggles because I knew repression so intimately. I protested. Then, realising that I could get no interesting work without qualifications, I got sick of being a shit-kicker and went to university. I was passionate in my studies. I tried to ignore how thin I was getting. The straw that broke the camel’s back was research in Mexico City, the most polluted city in the world. There the heavens were a grey ceiling. I could only dream of Australia’s blue skies. I returned to a diagnosis of severe and multiple chemical sensitivities and food intolerances. I spent my 30th birthday in the Environmental Unit, Bethesda Hospital, Melbourne. They 132


concluded that just to survive I would need to be completely isolated. I was ‘allergic to the 20th century’. It’s true I felt better in the country. But I still became semi-comatose when a car came within 50 metres. That’s how I learned that everything is connected with everything else. Air circulates between our lungs and we all share the same breath – birds and people and cars and trees. I wasn’t allergic to people but I was ultra-sensitive to the chemicals that came with them: perfume, cigarette smoke, even strong detergents, and deodorant. I was also allergic to natural pollens like wattle and wisteria. I couldn’t tolerate newsprint. I had a reading box.1 I reacted worst to foods. For many months I could eat only two foods – choko and rabbit. One day I ate two and a half rabbits. They said that if I lived in complete isolation my body would fight back. But after years of bizarre confinement I still got sick when exposed to everyday chemicals, and was on a very restricted diet. Even water that wasn’t double distilled made me drowsy and gave me aches in the stomach. Psychic strength kept me going. The female beggars I’d seen in Mexico were my sisters. My Welsh forefathers sang to me in the night. And the strongest force came from Aboriginal spirits. I was 18 months on one stretch of land. I never left it. It never left me. I became part of the land. The land travelled through me. I was blinkered in my quest to recover wholeness. I was scared that if I suicided I would be immortalised in my deformity. Then I lost my soul. I had thought soul was individual essence, what you’re left with when everything else is stripped away. But when an eroded immune system separated me from the rest of nature and humanity, I discovered that soul is not inside at all. Soul amounts to the connections among us as human beings and again between our species and the community of species that we refer to as the planet or earth. Isolated from everyone, I lost my soul. I felt I’d go mad if I didn’t suicide. I gave it 12 months for some twist in my fate. I told friends of my decision so they wouldn’t blame my partner. I stopped buying things like clothes that I would not need for longer than five and then four and then three months. Then, I lost a large filling from my tooth. If it hadn’t been so deep I’d have let that go too. But I couldn’t eat. The dentist wanted to put a plastic composite in. I told her I had chemical sensitivities and the plastic would 133


cause me trouble. I went home with a new amalgam filling. For the next week I was bed bound with all my symptoms writ large. But a fragment of my brain was exclaiming, ‘This is IT. THIS IS IT!’ We realised then that I’d been suffering from micro-mercurialism linked to a mouth full of amalgam fillings. Micro-mercurialism is caused by exposure to small amounts of mercury over a long period of time. As they say, ‘the rest is history’. I had all my amalgams removed. It took a couple of years to rid my organs of the effects but I made a remarkable recovery. Dentists regularly used amalgam during the 20th century but today it is illegal in some countries. During the 1990s authorities like the World Health Organization began to acknowledge that some people are sensitive to mercury and react severely to amalgam fillings. The use of amalgams is questioned, especially for the vulnerable, children and pregnant women. In fact many dentists use other materials for dental fillings as a preventative measure now. First I felt bitter that over 20 years of my life had been wasted by mercury and ignorance about its ill effects. But now I realise that the experience has taught me a lot and left me with an amazing amount of energy and optimism. Like Indigenous people I understand how deeply we are connected with nature, and the peril of our disconnection that is expressed in unsustainable practices and ecological crises. When one of my healers – an acupuncturist – asked me what had caused my illness, I did some research on mercury. Mercury isn’t just a toxic metal. Mercury is the name of the planet closest to the sun. Hermes, the Greek god of communication and theft, was called Mercury by the Romans, a messenger with winged sandals and magic cap. According to the ancient myths, Mercury was given a mission to kill Argus, the hundred-eyed watchman. Hiding his sleep-producing wand, Mercury disguised himself as a shepherd and played Argus his reed pipe, then tried to put him to sleep with stories. Even filled with torpor Argus kept a few eyelids open. Then, when Argus finally succumbed to slumber, Mercury sliced off his head! So the story goes, the light and fire of Argus and his hundred eyes ended. According to the ancient myths Mercury also put a spell on a girl. She became heavy all over and felt dull. Cold as a reptile, she could barely speak. Her soul became grey and she solidified like a stone sculpture. Mercury robbed Argus and this girl of their energy. For acupuncturists energy is life and is referred to as ‘fire’. So it is that Mercury stole my fire too! 134


The experience of multiple chemical sensitivities and food intolerances lasted for decades and spun my reasoning out of traditional logical bounds. I lost a strong cultural confidence in scientific and technological approaches. I was forced to try alternative treatments, and endured prejudice from mainstream practitioners and many people who found my symptoms literally incredible. I found black angles to myself, others and common lifestyles. In the process I developed, as second nature, sophisticated skills as an action researcher, interdisciplinary perspectives and an appreciation of the resilience of community-centred approaches. The projects I work on today benefit from those methodologies and that experience. Before the government trial of community forest management in the Wombat State Forest in Central Victoria, I did action research there recording and analysing the conflicts between the different stakeholders in forest management and use. Action researchers are engaged in, by and for community – or other clients’ – interests and concerns. Action research encourages participation by relevant parties and supports experimental, experiential and reflective practices. It is especially appropriate for issues associated with creating and monitoring sustainable practices because these often involve lifestyle choices and collective workplace organisation and practices. My experience of being ‘allergic to the twentieth century’ demonstrated the need for sympathetic and experiential professional support, and developed ease and confidence in approaching professional research in this way. Action research is learning-oriented research. Action research is collaborative and tends to be ‘interdisciplinary’. Multidisciplinary research respects disciplines, and has different professionals offering their distinctive expertise on the same area of concern or question. Interdisciplinary researchers meet to engage with one another over framing and resolving a challenge, often leading to experimental developments beyond disciplinary boundaries. A lot of sustainability research is interdisciplinary. However, a set of approaches that I work within and teach are associated with ecological economics that is defined as ‘transdisciplinary’. The most novel of approaches are transdisciplinary: they take transverse journeys almost irrespective of disciplinary knowledge, and eclectically seek a unique mix of methods to suit specific purposes. By force rather than design, this was the way that my mercury problem was addressed. It is an uncomfortable and lonely approach, but it is one that is prescribed for the more complex and unusual challenges. 135


Visualisation assists in imagining futures, making choices and determining forward action. Decades of living in the dark taught me this. I work with geospatial scientists who are expert at creating multidimensional media to support decision making for urban and rural land use and management. Our team is called Community Spatial Scenario Simulations (C-s3) and we are working on a suite of projects that apply ‘what if?’ scenarios in community forums and dedicated websites.2 If I were to summarise my experience I would say that I had ‘become mercury’. This conclusion is counter-intuitive to a scientific, objective, civilised intelligence. However, my experience suggested a series of proposals that are gaining currency, including that: • • • • • • •

Natural and social systems are integral. Adaptive management is the least risky course. Diversity in thought and action provides resilience. Diverse communities, perspectives and influences complement interdisciplinary approaches. Synchronistic impacts are rarely predictable. As we alter the world by living in it, we recreate nature. We cannot take anything for granted.

In order to create more sustainable ways of living, working and playing, it seems likely that many people will develop new thinking and living skills of the kinds that were demanded of me by what seemed at the time a unique state and circumstance. Notes on Chapter 9 1

My ‘reading box’ was specially made; a wooden tray deep enough to hold an open book with a glass top to read through and arms that turned the pages. That way I did not inhale the printing ink.

2

See our team’s website: .

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10 Sustainable building: turning observation into practice

Photo: Darebin City Coucil

Dominique Hes


Sustainability is not easy to grasp. It’s academic; it’s multidisciplinary; it’s complex. It has environmental, social and cultural, economic, and governance dimensions. Ideas about it as a concept and in practice are emerging in books, talks, the UN, and think tanks everywhere. It is not easy to explain, but we know it’s important. We know we have to learn and teach and do differently. Dominique Hes takes us on her personal and professional journey from novice to expert to do just this. She learns and teaches and advises the building industry how to do things differently. Her goal is to help make the building industry green, sustainable, and innovative. She takes us on this journey and sprinkles it with interesting methodologies and insights. Not only does she present us with a model to learn from and apply elsewhere, but she is honest and open about just how quirky, difficult, but professional such a journey can be.

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Sustainable Building: Turning Observation into Practice

Introduction

The journey which has led me to my current position as manager of the Sustainable Building Program at RMIT University began in my second year at the University of Melbourne. I was studying botany. Back then I wanted to be an eco-tourist guide – the perfect job, getting to spend most of my time outdoors educating people about our wonderful environment; and, hopefully leading them to a space where their appreciation influenced their action. Ten years later I work as a green building facilitator and consultant. I work with the whole building industry from the designers to the bricklayers. This chapter is a brief reflection on my journey, how I have translated ideas and understanding into practice and teaching. I use Ernest Boyer’s description of scholarship as a starting point. Scholarship is about ‘stepping back from one’s investigation, looking for connection, building bridges between theory and practice, and communicating one’s knowledge effectively…’.1 In my case, this means communicating not only to university students but to people in business and industry. In my job I have to help make the case for sustainability, create change and connect a broad range of disciplines using grounded theory and rigorous data while remaining in a real world context! This narrative uses the categories from novice to expert as defined by Hubert Dreyfus and his colleagues.2 The research is grounded in the work of Donald Schön on reflective practice.3 Schön’s approach is particularly relevant because, as Salafsky and colleagues might say, ‘We are mired in Schon’s (1983) “swampy lowlands” dealing with confusing “messes,” and it seems there is no compass, path, or map to help us find our way’.4 That is, sustainability in the building industry is currently confusing. There is neither a discipline nor an official profession that owns it. There is no agreed epistemological base or research method, and the problems are not only technological but also social and often dissonant. This fits well within Schön’s definition of a ‘swamp’: In the varied topography of professional practice, there is a high, hard ground where practitioners can make effective use of research-based theory and technique, and there is a swampy lowland where situations are confusing ‘messes’ incapable of technical solution. The difficulty is that the problems of the high ground, however great their technical interest, are often relatively unimportant to clients or to the 139


larger society, while in the swamp are the problems of greatest human concern.5 Practice in the area of sustainability and its integration into the building industry is in the swampy ground. The area is of great human concern. I have got muddy feet, slipped and ended up almost drowning. It is swampy because using rigorous, positivist, hard science does not give us the tools to do the job. Practices in the building industry are based on non-linear creative activities. Relationships in the industry are not easily studied using traditional scientific methods. Sustainability is not defined by one field of science but is the interaction of many, whatever definition you choose. The integration of sustainability into this industry requires keen observation and reflection, new strategies and opportunities based on the lessons learnt. Much of this journey could not be captured if a strict hypothesis-testing protocol had been employed. I wanted to explore the messy bits. This chapter is fairly informal. I illustrate lessons and experiences from journal entries, extracts from vignettes6 or papers written over the research period. The definition used in this chapter for sustainable or green buildings is Stephen Mead’s: buildings that are designed, constructed, operated, and demolished in an environmentally and energy efficient manner. Green Building concepts include energy efficiency and conservation, indoor environmental quality, resource and material efficiency, and improved long term durability.7 So what are green building innovations? Some are technological, like solar panels (Figure 1), wind generators and building management systems. Some are non-technical: using high-mass materials (like concrete) to keep the building temperature more even; using rainwater for toilet flushing (Figure 2); orienting the building to get lots of natural light; reusing secondhand materials (Figure 3), and so forth. In 1999, I started at the Centre for Design at RMIT University as a research assistant and PhD student in the field of life cycle assessment (LCA). I had a background in science and later in engineering, with its associated positivist theoretical framework. The research was aimed at the development of an 140


Figure 1. Two types of amorphous solar panel used on the Civic Centre. Used with permission – Darebin City Council.

Figure 2. 70 000 litre rainwater tank used for toilet flushing and garden irrigation. Used with permission – Darebin City Council.

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Figure 3.

Use of second-hand bricks. Used with permission – Darebin City Council.

expert system to support designers in their application of ‘green’ design. The methodology consisted of an action research cycle: working in a design office, observing the process, integrating green innovation and observing the outcome – exploring the swamp. There were to be six cycles. Figure 4 shows the five levels of Dreyfus’s expertise development8 in the left-hand column, juxtaposed with the time frame of this research and the terms I used to describe my journey before encountering Dreyfus’s work. Stage 1: Novice

Dreyfus & Dreyfus describe the ‘novice’ period when specific rules determine action and you learn tasks in a safe environment without the need for experience.9 For me this was the naïve novice stage. I had no experience of what design was or what it entailed; nor did I have any experience in qualitative research methods based in social science. This was highlighted in one of my research vignettes from 1998–99: Then as part of the compulsory requirements for the PhD I had to choose a research methods class. I had the choice of a sociology-based

142


Dreyfus and Dreyfus Novice

Reflection of own path 1999

Reflection of own path

Naïve novice 2000 Advanced beginner

Shy observer

2001

Competence

Observer tentative practitioner

Observer practitioner 2002 Participating practitioner

Proficiency

2003

Tentative practitioner facilitator

Intuitive facilitator practitioner 2004 Expert

Figure 4.

Main question being investigated What is design? What is sustainability in design? What green information is relevant in design? What green information is relevant to other agents engaged in built environment projects? How do I present this information usefully? What green information is relevant in at which stages of a built environment project? What if I don’t have the information? Where do I find the information? How do I present this information usefully? What green information is missing? Why isn’t the green information which is available being implemented? What can I do to facilitate better implementation of green initiatives in the built environment? Is my practice needed in the long term?

Diagram of reflective journey of a green building facilitator.

class which looked at the application of methodology to research or a design-based class. I figured that I could work out a method from reading books, but what I really didn’t have a clue about was design. So … I started a design research methods class … The research class was on a Tuesday afternoon, we all sat around a table and talked. Everyone introduced their topics and discussed issues from the meaning of knowledge to how this was reflected in design. I was fascinated! I wanted to know more and so I asked the question – a question which I believe will haunt me forever and will forever be the cornerstone from which people will be able to judge how far I have travelled on this journey – ‘Is there a book I can read on how to 143


design?’ The reactions around the room, though all kind, were from shock, through surprise and the kind of expression a parent has when a child asks if they can fly. No, I came to learn, there is no book on design, no book at least which is definitive or even comes close to express what [it] encompasses.10 The context-free, ‘safe’, learning situation I used was a landscape architecture short course. Here I experienced design. This was followed by the trial of the research methodology – daily journal entries describing observations11; participant reflections and other data such as drawings, documents and plans12; and vignette writing.13 This trial was implemented through the first of the six practice-based projects, with an industrial design company. The experience was intense. Many barriers to integration of green innovation into design were noted: lack of time, experience, priority, information, client interest and market recognition. As a result I began to understand the complexity of design and its power in integrating many facets into a whole. This was when I explored action research and its potential to address my research questions. Could this sociological/ethnographic tool be used in this situation? I wrote a paper, using the work of Hult and Lennung14 to structure my approach, and presented it to a conference on participatory action research. The feedback was encouraging. 15 Still there was frustration. The methodology did not seem to really fit. At this point I was interested in understanding what design was, how it worked, and specifically how I could integrate green innovation into the process. My main questions were: • •

What is design? What is sustainability in design?

Stage 2: Advanced beginner

Dreyfus & Dreyfus describe the ‘advanced beginner’ stage as when ‘the novice gains experience coping with real situations’. The advanced beginner learns to react to real situations, within specific contexts. In my own terminology, I shifted from being a shy observer to an observer/tentative practitioner, consciously starting to respond to practical needs of clients in industry by applying observation techniques and lessons learnt in the design 144


context. It resulted in my being tentative in putting green innovation into the process, and observing the impact. The shy observer stage I define as the stage of discovery and integration into my ‘knowing’, drawing from experience and observation of the design process to inform my understanding of the design context. For my green building facilitation practice this began in 2000. This was the second project in my research, a 10–12 week project with a group of architects designing a civic centre for a council in Melbourne. I was quite nervous, but very interested and keen to add value. Some excerpts from my journal and consequent vignettes illustrate this: I was nervous but intrigued how this was going to work out.16 The first 3 months were wonderful, I learnt a lot on the process, its chaotic nature and gained an immense respect for the job that architects do. At this time I joined in on site visits, many project meetings and really got to know the job. The frustrations were that the architects were often busy on other projects and there was little time to let me know what information I needed to find to be useful to them.17 By the end of the week, I must say, I was feeling decidedly lost, without input from them on the type of info they needed, and then I'd go around in circles – collecting things, writing things up but not really getting anything done.18 My journals were quite thorough at this time, summarising each week what I had done during the week – meetings, research, input and so forth. I also noted how much time people were spending with me and on the project. I revelled in the experience, though I was frustrated – I think because I came from such a different discipline. Still, I began to progress from the shy observer stage, learning lots of valuable lessons in the process. The first lesson was that I needed to develop the information the designers required in their language and paradigms. Green or sustainable initiatives are often presented in a manner that is not compatible with the design process.19 I needed to learn to look through their eyes, through their theoretical framework, not my own. The researcher had spent weeks compiling a list of products for the architects to use as a resource when they needed to choose materials in 145


the detailing phase. Proud as a peacock the researcher handed it to the project architect. It took a few seconds to register, as the architect flicked through pages of carefully collated tables, that nothing was being absorbed. This was soon clarified as the architect turned and asked ‘But what do these material look like?’20 This was an ‘aha!’ experience for me. ‘Of course you want to see what they look like, what a silly goose I am!’ At the concept design and detailed design stages when materials are selected it is important to know what things look and feel like, as well as their performance and cost. It seems so logical now. That experience opened my eyes and helped me work out how to present my own research and also, on occasion, to become the translator between those providing the technical scientific information and the design team. The following excerpt, from a vignette written in 2000, highlights my reflection on a meeting between scientists and architects … at the presentation of CSIRO’s research into the thermal dynamics of the initial building design. Sitting around the board room table – scientist on one side architect on the other – the meeting began. CSIRO presented their results, assumptions, and methodology in detail. Timepoor architect sat there restless, willing to honour their expertise but only really wanting advice on how to build the building with optimal environmental performance. Numerous times the architects asked the scientist ‘Well what should we do, are you saying we should …’ but every time a direct confirmation of a direction was avoided. … all the designers wanted was someone doing credible research to tell them ‘this is better and that is worse’, but those trained in the sciences only wanted to give facts while allowing others to make decisions.21 How did I act as translator here? I took the results which CSIRO presented – a rigorous 50-page document including all the climatic condition summaries, all the variables, results for each option over each month or the research year, references and assumptions – and summarised them to a onepage document outlining which options would achieve what savings. My biggest successes in integrating green innovation into this project occurred when I organised informal sessions on Friday afternoons with various experts in a particular field and provided refreshments: 146


% of time the average building temperature was below 18 degrees 60 59 58 57 56 55 54 53 52 51 50 Base

Figure 5.

Insulation

Thermal Mass

Double Glazing

Insulation + Thermal mass

Section of the one-page summary of the results from the CSIRO report.

… a meeting organised with an international solar panel expert which saw the entire firm discussing possibilities late into the evening (the wine and cheese could have contributed to this!)22 These experiences helped in my transition from shy observer to observer/tentative practitioner. I began to recognise that I did not need to know everything, just facilitate the knowledge transfer, and that centred on knowing how to speak the right language. The 10-week project on the civic centre grew to a six-month project. Then I left the architectural practice and started working with the client, the local council. This had a significant impact on the research methodology. It meant abandoning the six reflective ‘participatory action’ case studies for one primary research project informed by previous and concurrent research. Moving to work with the clients allowed for a different perspective. My practice now consisted of development of information for the future users of Summary of results for winter

Using background data for an extreme winter week with high wind Insulation plus thermal mass will decrease heating time by 10% Double glazing decreases amount of heating time by 7% Increasing thermal mass will decrease heating time by 7% (Report CSIRO summary 8.2.2000) 147


the building, those holding the purse strings and the community. I continued to work with the design team but now resided with the clients. This work continued for approximately 17 months, working with the council, the builders and construction managers on site, seeing green innovation being built. I began to investigate other aspects of green innovation in the built environment outside the civic centre project. It was research into life cycle assessment tools for the building industry and a literature review into research done on the economic cost–benefits of energy efficiency measures for housing. These emphasised the need for clear communication of options, developing decision-making frameworks, and tools. One of the main entries from my field notes, which illustrated my move from advanced beginner status to competence: [From the conference held at Melbourne University: ‘Sustainable architectural design – Is it real?’] from my notes I think this conference supported a lot of my own ideas – move away from problem-based mentality Sustainability is a growing field Transfer of knowledge is very important Everyone needs to be part of the solution Needs to be driven by – clients, policy, innovations etc.’23 illustrates that I was starting to develop knowledge and understanding of the integration of green innovation into the built environment. The questions driving the research were on the provision of the right information, to the right person at the right time. I had moved from asking broad questions, and just engaging with the architectural discourse, to investigating how to inform the design process with suitable information on green innovation, and interacting with all the agents involved. The questions at this stage were: • • • 148

What green information is relevant in design? What green information is relevant to other agents engaged in built environment projects? How do I present this information usefully?


Stage 3: Competence

Dreyfus & Dreyfus define the practitioner’s competence stage as when, with increasing experience, the number of features and aspects to be taken into account becomes overwhelming. To cope with this information explosion, the performer learns to adopt a hierarchical view of decision-making. By first choosing a plan, goal or perspective which organizes the situation and by then examining only the small set of features and aspects that he has learned are relevant given that plan, the performer can simplify and improve his performance … this [stage] is frustrating.24 I have broken this stage into the transition from an observer practitioner to a participator practitioner, where I moved from mainly observation and reaction to more proactive action. This transition came with conflict and frustration (illustrating Dreyfus’s point), no longer the frustration of not being taken seriously but the frustration of not being expert enough: 18th September the morning was spent talking monitoring systems for the RCC. What amazes me is how much there is involved in this project. I find it incredible, frightening and too much to really think about without being scared off. So many things to think about, to organize and facilitate and so little time to do it all – let alone all the things which are too late and which I feel are slipping [through] my fingers … I want/need more time on the project but really cannot justify it … Oh I’m just getting scared – I’ll get over it!25 Two things happened. I started relying more on mentors in the field, people I could call on to verify what I was saying and doing, and extending my network of experts. I call this the development of my Jack/(Jill?)–of-alltrades practice. This is when my practice was truly born. I began to tender for work outside the research project and was beginning to be asked to speak at green building functions. At this time I was also encouraged to make a significant contribution to the first green building course in Melbourne in June 2001. 149


It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the shift from observer to practitioner occurred. These things are never black and white, but in late 2001 to early 2002 I was being asked to speak at a series of conferences and events. My practice was no longer primarily about observing and learning but more about integration and application. Apart from the course, I was involved in several projects centred around communicating green building information and innovation in simple formats: developing a decision-making tool for the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and LCA tools, for the building industry; developing an environmental management tool for the property council; and developing checklists and guidelines for several local councils. The central questions here illustrate a slow growth in confidence and a growing understanding of the complexity of built environment practices, and highlight the continuing search for how to present appropriate ‘green’ information in a relevant format to the right agents: •

What green information is relevant in at which stages of a built environment project? • What if I don’t have the information? • Where do I find the information? How do I present this information usefully? Stage 4: Proficiency

This is what Dreyfus calls the movement from competence to proficiency: As soon as the competent performer stops reflecting on problematic situations as a detached observer, and stops looking for principles to guide his actions, the gripping, holistic experiences from the competent stage become the basis of the next advance in skill. Having experienced many emotion-laden situations, chosen plans in each, and having obtained vivid, emotional demonstrations of the adequacy or inadequacy of the plan, the performer involved in the world of the skill ‘notices’, or ‘is struck by’ a certain plan, goal or perspective. No longer is the spell of involvement broken by detached conscious planning. Since there are generally far fewer ‘ways of seeing’ than ‘ways of acting’, after understanding without conscious effort what is going on, the proficient performer will still have to think about what to do. 150


During this thinking, elements that present themselves as salient are assessed and combined by rule and maxim to produce decisions.26 I interpret this as becoming a tentative practitioner facilitator, moving from observation and reaction to proactive teaching and facilitation; actively seeing gaps in the knowledge and projects and formulating action to consciously fill these gaps. This is seen in the civic centre project in the development of monitoring regimes, a film documentary, a reflective case study, and the translation of lessons from the project into general supporting information for other practitioners. The shift is illustrated as the practice at this stage grew beyond this one project to the Green Building Research Programme at the university; to a research programme based on industry collaboration, teaching and knowledge-development strategies. With the energy and focus of these developments there was a need to reduce the time spent on the civic centre project; a scaling back of research to half a day a fortnight and attending site meetings as the building was being built. My research data changed from personal reflection in journals and vignettes to more project-specific field notes, data, plans and documentation. The questions underpinning this phase changed significantly. They now focussed on identifying gaps in knowledge and showed more specific reflection on barriers to integrating green innovation in built environment projects. No longer looking for information, I knew where to find what was there; no longer unsure of the agents, I could focus on what was actually stopping the process; no longer the naïve novice who started in 1999, I now understood the field and could look deeper. My questions now were: • •

What green information is missing? Why isn’t the green information which is available being implemented?

Stage 5: Expert

Interestingly, following the development of the research programme, I started to see the link between my approach to the sustainable building field (apart from innovation dissemination), the integrated multidisciplinary way my practice had evolved and the whole sustainability paradigm. That is that sustainability needs a new way of approaching green building issues27, a collaborative, cross-disciplinary and cooperative approach.28 151


Figure 6. The civic centre on the opening day August 2003. Used with permission – Darebin City Council.

Dreyfus & Dreyfus describe this phase as when [t]he proficient performer, immersed in the world of skilful activity, sees what needs to be done, but must decide how to do it. With enough experience with a variety of situations, all seen from the same perspective but requiring different tactical decisions, the proficient performer seems gradually to decompose this class of situations into subclasses, each of which share the same decision, single action, or tactic. This allows an immediate intuitive response to each situation.29 The key words are ‘immediate’ and ‘intuitive’. In my journey this is described as the intuitive facilitator practitioner stage, in which I now demonstrate what Schön calls knowing-in-action30 – no longer tentative and in many cases not conscious of how I practice but doing it naturally; giving time to reflection and growth, both of which I believe are crucial for facilitation and initiation. 152


The questions which are still guiding my research and which have been part of this stage are mainly around continuing to improve the practice: • • • •

How can I facilitate the integration of this sustainability information into the practice of all the agents in the field? Is my practice necessary, or is this just a phase to support all the agents? What can I do to facilitate better implementation of green initiatives in the built environment? Is my practice needed in the long term?

Relevance to sustainability practice

At this reflective stage I am starting to see how my practice, its development and lessons have a useful story. It is about: • • • • • •

development of the right information with relevant levels of complexity, rigour and acceptance knowing where to find the right information knowing what the right information is and when to apply it knowing that it requires collaboration, cooperation and commitment from everyone involved knowing who to approach and who to collaborate with knowing that it is a journey, continuing the process of learning and reflection to look for potential improvements.

The experience with the design industry opened my eyes to the importance of the integration of the multitude of disciplines to achieve a whole greater than its parts. Like sustainability it is not about one discipline. It is about the integration of social and cultural, environmental and economic issues; and technical and sociological design approaches. This led me to ask: if, from my experience, multidisciplinary creativity and knowledge development both in detail and process are vital in securing better sustainability outcomes in the built environment, should research not follow similar strategies? This process of learning, reflecting and applying what I have learnt has resulted in setting up multidisciplinary projects that are a mix of social science, engineering, and design. Each discipline has a relatively free rein within the area of its own expertise but shares goals with other disciplines working on the project. These goals include collaborative exercises (for 153


example workshops) and outcomes (papers etc.), as well as discipline-specific ones (PhD). The most exciting part, for me, is the collaborative exercise that I call ‘visioning’. This is held periodically when all disciplines working on one project present their research and we vision. We imagine the future: what projects we can dream up that move us forward, overcome barriers and conflicts, integrate current results from all disciplines and take them to a different level. I call this the sustainability helix model of research. My colleagues and I have written a paper explaining the concept of the helix approach in relation to my first such project, the EcoHome.31 The concept is taken from DNA – a double helix creating a greater whole. The helix brings three or more disciplines together, hopefully resulting in a more holistic (dare I say sustainable) approach. The concept of the helix represents the way the varied research streams have been developed as autonomous research projects, within a framework of collaboration, cross-consultation and support. In particular it emphases the way in which the ultimate impact of each stream, its potential to effect positive change in the industry, is contingent on the outcomes of the other two. In this way the three disciplines are entwined in a singular operational paradigm regarding the dynamics of the industry and its receptiveness to strategic intervention that crosses traditional disciplinary and faculty boundaries. This kind of structure reflects … a fundamental demand of sustainability research; to move beyond traditional academic silos; to move in networks that reflect the interaction between the field of study and the system in which it operates; to move against intellectual reductionism. The emerging unifying paradigm, if in fact there is one, may be the emerging and increasingly professional discourse of ecological sustainability itself.32 A second project, ‘Re-imagining the Australian suburb’, which is partway through being developed, is shown below: Summary

The Dominique of 1999, who did not comprehend what an architect did or what design represented or what green innovation was relevant within this field, has grown into the Dominique who has built a practice effectively inte154


Umbrella macro project – Re-imagining the Australian suburb

40 000 home development in Epping North (Aurora and Merder), Victoria, in collaboration with state and local government and industry partners Project 1 – Ecohome social, engineering and design research (2003) Project 2 – Biodiversity and suburban planning (2004) Project 3 – Governance and community building in suburban planning (2004) Project 4 – Water saving initiatives: environmental and economic outcomes (2004) Project 5 – Sustainable housing development guideline outcomes (2004) Project 6 – Life cycle costing and housing elements – affordability over time (2004) Website for publication of all project outcomes Online discussion forum on results Yearly mini-conference and visioning workshop: to identify gaps, to further collaboration and integration of research outcomes, and to vision potential future research areas. grating green innovation into the built environment working through the whole life cycle. Furthermore, this is a practice that proactively looks at the practice and the field, and initiates projects to fill gaps in knowledge and experience so as to more successfully implement greater sustainability. The practice has moved through Dreyfus’s steps from novice to expert. In the process a method for approaching sustainability research has been developed that highlights the importance of Boyer’s 1990 definition of scholarship. Boyer says that emphasis is, the importance of stepping back, reflecting, connection and identification with all the players in the built environment, developing real world application based on theory and research and very importantly learning to communicate in the right language for the right agent. 155


References and further reading Anderl R, Weissmantel H, Daum B and Wolf B, ‘Design for environment – a computer based cooperative method to consider the entire product life cycle’, Proceedings of the first international symposium on environmentally conscious design and inverse manufacturing, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Tokyo, Japan, February 01– 03, 1999. Bakker C, Environmental information for industrial designers, Delft University for Technology, Netherlands, 1995. Boden M, ‘Paradigm shift and building services’, The Service Industries Journal, 16(4), 1996: 491–510. Boyer EL, Scholarship reconsidered: priorities of the professoriate, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Princeton, NJ, 1990. Dreyfus H, Thinking in action: on the Internet, rev. 2nd edn, Routledge, New York, 2001. Dreyfus H & Dreyfus S, ‘From Socrates to expert systems: the limits of calculative rationality’, in C Mitcham & A Huning (eds), Philosophy and technology II: Information technology and computers in theory and practice, D Reidel Publishing Company, Boston, 1985, pp. 111–130. Dreyfus H & Dreyfus S, Mind over machine: the power of human intuition and expertise in the era of the computer, Free Press, New York, 1986. Dreyfus H & Dreyfus S, ‘What is moral maturity? A phenomenological account of the development of ethical expertise’, in D Rasmussen (ed.), Universalism vs. Communitarianism, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1990, pp. 237–64. Dreyfus H & Dreyfus S, From Socrates to expert systems: the limits and dangers of calculative rationality, University of California, Berkeley, 2004, viewed 29 June 2004, . Hes D, ‘Critical information requirements to support “green” building projects’, paper prepared for Smart and Sustainable Built Environment conference (SASBE 2003), Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, 2003. Hewitt J & Wilkinson S, ‘The impact of a dominant culture on the sustainability of the urban environment’, Paper prepared for the AUBEA [Australasian Universities Building Education Association] conference, Queenstown, New Zealand, 2002. Hult M & Lennung SA, ‘Towards a definition of action research: a note and bibliography’, Journal of Management Studies, 17, 1980: 241–50. Jick TD, ‘Mixing qualitative and quantitative methods: triangulation in action’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 24, 1979: 602–11. Mead SP, ‘Green building: current status and implications for construction education’, in ASC [Associated Schools of Construction] Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference, University of Denver, 4–7 April 2001, pp. 169–78, viewed online 5 June 2004, . Miles MB, ‘New methods for qualitative data collection and analysis: vignettes and prestructured cases’, Qualitative Studies in Education 3(1), 1990: 37–51. Rohracher H, ‘Managing the technological transition to sustainable construction of buildings: a socio-technical perspective’, Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 13(1), 2001: 137. 156


Salafsky N, Margoluis R, Redford KH & Robinson JG, ‘Improving the practice of conservation: a conceptual framework and agenda for conservation science’, Conservation Biology, 16, 2002: 1469–1479. Schön DA, The reflective practitioner, Basic Books, New York, 1983. Schön DA, Educating the reflective practitioner, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1987. Sibley J, Hes D & Martin F, ‘A triple helix approach: an inter-disciplinary approach to research into sustainability in outer-suburban housing estates’, paper prepared for the Methodologies in Housing Research Conference, Stockholm, September 2003.


EL Boyer, Scholarship reconsidered: priorities of the professoriate, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Princeton, NJ, 1990, p. 16.

2

H Dreyfus & S Dreyfus, Mind over machine: the power of human intuition and expertise in the era of the computer, Free Press, New York, 1985; H Dreyfus and S Dreyfus, ‘What is morality? A phenomenological account of the development of ethical expertise’, in D Rasmussen (ed.), Universalism vs.Communitarianism, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1990, pp. 237–64.

3

DA Schön, The reflective practitioner, Basic Books, New York, 1983 and Schön DA, Educating the reflective practitioner, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1987.

4

N Salafsky, R Margoluis, KH Redford & JG Robinson, ‘Improving the practice of conservation: a conceptual framework and agenda for conservation science’, Conservation Biology, 16, 2002: 1470.

5

Schön 1987, p. 42.

6

See MB Miles, ‘New methods for qualitative data collection and analysis: vignettes and pre-structured cases’, Qualitative Studies in Education, 3(1), 1990: 37–51.

7

SP Mead, 2001, ‘Green building: current status and implications for construction education’, in ASC Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference, University of Denver, 2001, p. 168.

8

See the work of Hubert Dreyfus and his brother, Stuart, including their 2004 publication, From Socrates to expert systems: the limits and dangers of calculative rationality, published on the website of the Philosophy Department, University of California, Berkeley, viewed 29 June 2004, .

9

Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1990.

10 Author’s vignette, ‘The journey’, 1998–99. 11 ibid. 12 See TD Jick, ‘Mixing qualitative and quantitative methods: triangulation in action’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 24, 1979:602–11. 13 See Miles 1990. 157


14 M Hult & SA Lennung, ‘Towards a definition of action research: a note and bibliography’, Journal of Management Studies, 17, 1980: 241–250. 15 Adjunct Professor Bob Dick of the University of Queensland sent me an email in 2001 saying ‘Action Research is well suited to your study, I think, and as far as I know you're breaking new and useful ground’. 16 Author’s journal entry 10 January 2000 – my first day on the project. 17 Author’s vignette, ‘The journey’, 2000. 18 Author’s journal entry 18 January 2000. 19 C Bakker, Environmental information for industrial designers, Delft University for Technology, Netherlands, 1995; R Anderl, H Weissmantel, B Daum & B Wolf, ‘Design for environment – a computer based cooperative method to consider the entire product life cycle’, Proceedings of the first international symposium on environmentally conscious design and inverse manufacturing, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Tokyo, Japan, February 01– 03, 1999. 20 Author’s vignette, ‘The journey’, 2000. 21 ibid. 22 ibid. 23 From author’s field notes, 2 October 2000. 24 Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1990, p. 241. 25 Author’s journal 18 September 2000. 26 Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1990, p. 242. 27 D Hes, ‘Critical information requirements to support “green” building projects’, paper prepared for Smart and Sustainable Built Environment conference (SASBE 2003), Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, 2003. 28 M Boden, ‘Paradigm shift and building services’, The Service Industries Journal, 16(4), 1996: 491–510; H Rohracher, ‘Managing the technological transition to sustainable construction of buildings: a socio-technical perspective’, Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 13(1), 2001: 137; J Hewitt & S Wilkinson, ‘The impact of a dominant culture on the sustainability of the urban environment’, Paper prepared for the AUBEA conference, Queenstown, New Zealand, 2002. 29 Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1990, p. 242. 30 Schön 1983. 31 J Sibley, D Hes & F Martin, ‘A triple helix approach: an inter-disciplinary approach to research into sustainability in outer-suburban housing estates’, paper prepared for the Methodologies in Housing Research Conference, Stockholm, September 2003. 32 ibid, p. 13. 158

11 Rats in the labyrinth: a sustainability story from Vietnam

Photo: David Wilmoth

David Wilmoth


Establishing a campus in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam is high risk and hard, but David Wilmoth tells the tale with relish. He explains how ideas of sustainability and the triple bottom line were used from the outset to design, develop and evaluate what and how things might be done. Environmental issues are especially important because part of the university is to be built in a fragile place and energy use and other resources are to be efficient and inexpensive. Social and cultural issues are important because RMIT aims to work with local people, be fair to communities, and be relevant to students. And of course the institution itself must be educationally and economic viable. These are core to the challenges of sustainability.

160

Rats in the Labyrinth

Origins of the new university

RMIT has for years been committed to internationalising the experience of students whether in Australia or offshore. Education and training are key to sustainable development in Vietnam, and this story is about the creation of a new university in that country. It was my job to help get the venture started, so it is my story, too. I worked closely with David Beanland, Nguyen Xuan Thu, Tricia Roesslen, Michael Mann and many others. At about the same time, in the mid-1990s, RMIT committed itself to sustainable development, adopting a strategy and signing the Talloires Declaration with other universities around the world.1 Sustainable development is defined in the Brundtland report as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.2 The RMIT strategy aims to: minimise consumption of water, energy, paper, and other natural resources; recycle and reuse goods and materials; dispose of wastes as safely and efficiently as possible; design and manage buildings to maximise natural sources of lighting and heating; promote the use of materials for maximum durability and minimum environmental impact; preserve the heritage value of building; plant indigenous species of vegetation; and develop transportation options to reduce greenhouse emissions.3 Vietnam was a priority country for RMIT because of Australia’s links – war, resettlement of refugees, aid, family connections and the many people of Vietnamese origin in Australia. We were surprised to find that more than 1100 Australian students at RMIT were born in Vietnam. Staff and students sent a container-load of books and some mini-computers, ran an international conference on higher education and training in Vietnam, made a plan for an English Language College – and even funded a new building, International Cooperation House, at the Vietnam National University, Hanoi. Funds for these activities came mainly from RMIT’s international students studying in Melbourne. The work began without a profit motive, out of a desire to help Vietnam, to learn about it, and to position RMIT for the future. Goodwill and trust developed; the Government of Vietnam asked RMIT what a modern technological university in Vietnam would look like and invited us to build a fully foreign-owed international university as a demonstration project. It was a difficult decision and it took more than a year to get the necessary approvals, but we decided to go ahead. 161


Talloires Agreement

The principles of the Talloires Declaration are to • • • • • •

•

• • •

increase awareness of environmentally sustainable development create an institutional culture of sustainability in education, research, policy formation, and information exchange educate for environmentally responsible citizenship foster environmental literacy for all through developing university faculty capability to teach environmental literacy to all students practise institutional ecology in resource conservation, recycling, waste reduction, and environmentally sound operations encourage involvement of government, foundations, and industry in supporting interdisciplinary research, education, policy formation, and information exchange in environmentally sustainable development collaborate with environmental practitioners to develop interdisciplinary approaches to curricula, research initiatives, operations, and outreach activities that support an environmentally sustainable future enhance capacity of primary and secondary schools; work with national and international organisations to promote a worldwide university effort toward a sustainable future maintain the movement in carrying out this declaration.4

Project development for sustainability

When objectives for RMIT International University Vietnam (RMIT Vietnam) were discussed, sustainable development was a key part of the mission to provide services appropriate to Vietnam’s economic and social development and its environmental sustainability. How was this to be put into practice?

We wanted to be an example of best practice in social, economic and environmental management, contributing knowledge and experience and learning from Vietnam. Programs were to cover environmental studies, environmental engineering, urban planning, architecture and infrastructure. 162


The project was to embody self-reflective learning, through: • • • • • •

thoughtful feedback students contributing to environmental and planning analysis engagement with local communities employers and research partners being active on campus environmental effects being monitored staff taking degrees while they worked.

This was not only for RMIT to ‘walk the talk’ – have practice consistent with intentions – but also to guarantee continuous improvement. Reports to the board of management and to the community were to be in accord with the triple bottom line along with good governance practices (later characterised as the ‘triple bottom line plus one’5). This meant always thinking and acting in four dimensions: environmental, social and cultural, economic and financial, and governance. Project planning: putting it in place

When the feasibility studies were done some of the best people available in Vietnam were asked to join the team as independent experts for urban planning and environmental analysis. Researchers from VESDEC (the Vietnam Environmental and Sustainable Development Centre) in Ho Chi Minh City led by Dr Le Trinh prepared the technical work on environmental assessment to meet the requirements of the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, who funded the project. Well-intentioned international development projects are sometimes poorly planned in terms of social and environmental aspects and later resented by local people, so we had to set a good example. The business plans included detailed treatments of economic, social and environmental effects. Building materials, emissions and waste, the detailed needs and aspirations of local people – these were not well known at the beginning. The Government of Vietnam issued a licence for RMIT to operate there. This needed new legislation to allow foreign universities to provide education directly to students in Vietnam, a bold move for a country governed by a communist party and proud of its independence and long traditions in education. But so many qualified talented people miss out on tertiary education that the government was prepared to take the risk. Vietnam has not been given real 163


credit for opening its education to direct foreign investment. It is still unusual. RMIT felt the full weight of this responsibility as the first international university in Vietnam, and this strengthened our commitment. Originally we were to build a new campus in Ho Chi Minh City. We leased a site and restored a French villa near downtown, complete with pool, tennis court, and an overgrown garden. Students soon filled the campus with excitement, enrolling in English language, university preparation, computer science, multimedia, and engineering. We used the best technology even though it was expensive. Before long the staff began to feel at home, inviting young disadvantaged people who were not students to learn to swim in the villa’s pool, and beginning to help in the community as volunteers. It became clear that the project would require financing for scholarships for poorer students and to undertake research into some of Vietnam’s urgent needs. Project financing for sustainability

Sustainable development is key to financial success and investment in the future. To raise money for any international development project these days you need a business plan with strong demonstration of sustainability. Private and multilateral banks like the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank demand it. These two banks reviewed the project, and the proposal was made available to the public for comment in Ho Chi Minh City, Melbourne, Manila and Washington DC. The original proposal required the resettlement of some 50 households so it was graded category ‘A’, requiring the highest level of scrutiny. These banks require that there be support and compensation for affected people. This meant the expectations of the local population for generous compensation became very high. Most were poor, itinerant rural workers. We had mixed feelings about displacing them. Some said it was the opportunity of a lifetime to be able to afford to own a house somewhere else, or to retrain for an urban occupation; but for others it meant loss of their land and their livelihood. As it turned out, the costs of meeting these demands were so high the project would not have been financially viable. The site requirements for the campus were reviewed and the site was reduced from 62 hectares to 12.8 hectares. There were no affected people on this land. Years before some people had moved from the site for nearby road construction, so after 164


Figure 1. The Ho Chi Minh City city campus before renovation (top) and once opened (bottom). Photos: David Wilmoth.

165


reviewing the records we agreed to reimburse the government for their previous compensation costs. As a result the revised environmental assessment was category ‘B’, which means that ‘a limited number of specific social and environmental impacts may result that can be avoided or mitigated by adhering to generally recognised performance standards, guidelines or design criteria’.6 We obtained financial commitments up to US$34.5 million from the Asian Development Bank; the International Finance Corporation – the private arm of the World Bank Group; the Atlantic Philanthropies, who provided a generous gift; and RMIT. Economic sustainability

The project aim is to make a significant economic contribution to Vietnam in line with the challenges identified by the Government of Vietnam and the World Bank.7 Some of the ways we saw this happening were to: •

• • • • • •

provide training, education and research geared to community needs, the government and private industry, with a particular emphasis on technology produce graduates, improve skills and competencies, develop trainees and support human resources development operate as a good model in technological education, using new teaching and learning methods, know-how and management take part in the development of the greater Mekong region, especially the southern delta region of Vietnam strengthen the links between Vietnam and other Australian communities and organisations provide employment for Vietnamese people and promote cooperation among international and Vietnamese staff and students develop campuses that are examples of international best practice environmentally and socially.

Social sustainability

We hope to create an open institution serving many communities, with active campuses and balanced student life. In the long term there will be a mix of Vietnamese students and trainees with international students from south-east Asia, Australia and other countries, as well as staff, researchers 166


and visitors. Already international students from a number of countries have enrolled. Social life will be encouraged by common academic, sporting and recreational facilities, and through the support of student activities and associations. Sporting and recreation activities and facilities will be open selectively to the public and possibly to national training teams, with an effort made to encourage social and cultural integration with the communities surrounding the university’s campuses and beyond. As the economic outcomes of the plan may not directly address questions of social equity or the roots of poverty in Vietnam, the university has had to demonstrate its commitment to the alleviation of poverty and disadvantage. RMIT Vietnam had to be positioned to be more affordable to students from poorer, remote, indigenous or otherwise disadvantaged backgrounds. Part of income was to be recycled as scholarships for able, needy students early in the process. Later, donor scholarship support of over US$2.6 million was added. An innovative student loan scheme has been implemented. Students are able to explore issues of equity, anti-discrimination, legal rights and other principles. Student leaders from RMIT Australia have met and exchanged ideas with the leaders of student organisations in Vietnam. Further exchanges are encouraged. Standards of ethical behaviour are made important to graduates and staff, professionally and personally. Literacy and participation rates in tertiary education are lower for women than for men. RMIT Vietnam is following and adapting the gender and race anti-discrimination policies and procedures RMIT has for staff and students, to begin to address this. RMIT Vietnam is working to enhance partnerships with donor groups, non-governmental organisations and other universities in Vietnam through a network of learning resource centres in other regions. Voluntary contributions to local assistance programs are strong. The Loreto Vietnam Australia Program is building up to train the teachers of intellectually disabled children with RMIT’s Department of Social and Community Services. Scholarship programs like English for Health Workers are also intended to build relationships with non-governmental organisations including student volunteer movements. Environmentally sustainable campuses

RMIT Vietnam now has three campuses, which have to demonstrate their own sustainability, in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, suburban Saigon South 167


and Hanoi. An environmental management system based on the ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) 14001 series (Environmental Management Systems) has been announced. In the meantime activities are to be consistent with RMIT’s environmental policies and procedures. RMIT Vietnam is also assisting with the development of four learning resource centres at regional universities.8 A challenge for these centres has been to ensure that they are truly sustainable: that trained staff can pass on their skills and that host universities can afford to keep them operating. Electronic library subscriptions and computer upgrades are expensive. Buildings that last, and that maximise natural ventilation and lighting and also minimise air conditioning, can reduce maintenance and energy bills significantly and contribute to an improved environment. But what works in Australia may not work in Vietnam. For example, for Hue University’s learning resource centre a team of Vietnamese and Australian architects planning the air circulation system included a labyrinth, a maze through which the fresh air would come in. We found to our cost that in Vietnam this would attract rats and other vermin, so the design had to be modified. Designing and building the learning resource centres, buying the books and computers and training the people involved became a learning exercise for everyone. Learning-as-you-go and continuous improvement carries over into the refurbished campuses in downtown Ho Chi Minh City and in Hanoi, on existing sites, and into the new campuses. The Saigon South campus will require land development, building and fit-out, so there are greater opportunities there. This will be a purpose-built campus, exemplifying how a delta-based new development can retain values worth keeping and pass along improved environmental conditions to future generations. A number of initiatives are already in train to mitigate the initial environmental effects.9 Construction nuisance

During construction, negative impacts will be minimised and there will be no permanent impact on agricultural practices surrounding the site. Companies contracted will need to have acceptable-quality environmental and health-and-safety management systems and plans. The construction of deep piles into the soft soil to support the buildings will minimise noise. Dust and exhaust emissions will be managed and additional traffic generated during construction controlled. 168


Figure 2.

The Saigon South site; note how wet the land is. Photo: David Wilmoth.

Stormwater

Stormwater will be discharged to the naturally occurring wetlands and the canal system. The proposed levels of fill will exceed known site flooding levels, and floodways, levees, spillways and detention basins will be used to protect the site and lessen the likelihood of the project contributing to flooding of downstream sites during peak rainfall events. Canals and waterways

While development of the campus will involve some loss of wetlands, we are retaining all natural canals, mains, tributaries, and minor waterways. The buildings have been designed around them. They will act as natural runoffs for the site, with bridges where necessary. To reduce impact on the wetland areas, connected elevated walkways will be constructed.10 Their edges and banks will remain resources for natural fish breeding and mangrove growth. Liquid effluent treatment and disposal

A central sewage treatment plant on the campus will produce effluent of much better quality than required by Vietnamese standards and will be 169


designed to allow expansion as the student body increases. Grey water will be treated in the same plant. The landscaped and conservation areas of the site will be spray irrigated with effluent during the dry season and this additional treatment will assist with odour control and limit nutrient build-up in the canals to prevent algal growth. During the wet season, effluent will be disposed of directly to the stormwater drainage system. This effluent produced will meet World Bank Group standards for discharge to surface waters. Sludge from settling tanks will be composted and used as topsoil or fertiliser on campus. Solid and hazardous waste disposal

Solid waste will be collected daily and transported to appropriate landfill. The nature and quantity of hazardous waste will be assessed and procedures implemented to ensure safe separate storage and collection. The recycling and reuse of goods and materials used by and within the campus will be encouraged, with clean, readily identifiable receptacles for recycling. The material will be collected by recycling contractors on a regular basis. Dredge material supply

Material for the landfill will be obtained from a range of sources including sand from the Saigon River. Dredging practices will be in accordance with government regulations and the material will be tested for suitability as landfill prior to transportation to the site. Air emissions

The service infrastructure will not include boilers. The generators operate only in periods of electricity failure and will have emission controls fitted in accordance with world’s best practice. To further reduce emissions, catalytic converters can be fitted. The air conditioning systems to be installed will not include CFC refrigerants. Air quality monitoring

Monitoring of air quality will be undertaken during pre-construction, construction and operational phases. Ambient air quality measures will include measuring and monitoring: temperature, humidity, wind velocity, dust, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and lead, and motor 170


Figure 3.

Landfilling near the Saigon South campus. Photo: David Wilmoth.

vehicle emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, hydrocarbons, lead, benzene, particulates and carbon monoxide. Fire protection and life safety

The site infrastructure will include a reticulated external fire hydrant system with street hydrants located in accordance with Australian standards. Within the campus buildings, hose reels, fire sprinklers, fire detectors, smoke detectors, emergency warning systems and emergency/ exit lighting will also be installed according to Australian codes and regulations (where higher than Vietnamese equivalents). Disposal of sulphate-rich soils

Acid sulphate soils as they occur on the site may cause problems, so there is likely to be minimal excavation, and disturbance of the soils is to be minimised. Pile cap foundations will be placed on the surface of the fill and excavation will not be necessary, except for the lift pit and possibly for the 171


swimming pool. Water tanks and sewage treatment will be constructed above ground. Where excavation is necessary, the soils will be deposited in local designated sites. Natural environments and species

The natural environment and indigenous species were investigated; a number of species of zooplankton, zoobenthos and phytoplankton were found on the site, as well as 29 plant species. Programs and planning

RMIT plans to provide degree programs in environmental science, environmental engineering, architecture and urban planning. These will be placed in an education model of reflective practice in the planning and delivery of RMIT Vietnam. Campus planners Norman Day and Associates will lead a Masters by project program in architecture to build local capacity and to encourage debate about design and environmental issues. Each part of RMIT’s development in Saigon South and other campuses will incorporate these kinds of projects. In Vietnam there are detailed urban plans but poor compliance – over 70 per cent of houses in Ho Chi Minh City are built without permission. For the environmental values of a campus to be safe there would need to be assurances about neighbouring land uses and water quality. The Saigon South plans were originally encouraging – urban plans for two million people were prepared by Skidmore Owings and Merrill, a well-known San Francisco firm, and won a worldwide award. Development is occurring more slowly than planned. The campus site was designated ‘university’ in those plans and still fits the present-day urban plans well. To ensure that surrounding land uses were compatible, RMIT attempted to make one of its ‘conditions precedent’ that a district plan be prepared; i.e. the project would not proceed unless these conditions were met. However, the foreign investment licence and approvals granted by the Government of Vietnam did not mention such requirements. The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee (equivalent to the metropolitan government) created a special-purpose authority, the Management Authority for Saigon South Development, and there is a reasonably good chance – but no guarantees – that the environmental integrity of the site can be kept, and improved, in its district setting. 172


Three student teams helped with environmental scoping, half from Vietnam, half from Australia. Their fieldwork contributed to the development and to their education as well. This was as much about learning from each other’s cultures and each other as it was about scientific and academic content. These projects won an RMIT award for teaching and learning. The potential to expand such project-based learning is enormous and exciting. Vietnam faces particular difficulties with planning and managing its urban regions. The World Bank asked RMIT Vietnam to make a proposal about how urban planners might be trained better to deal with infrastructure and environmental management issues rather than continue to produce master plans for urban development that are not well related to implementation. This would support the planned Masters degree program in urban and environmental management.11 The challenge of sustainability

RMIT now requires reporting from all its subsidiary companies in ‘triple bottom line plus one’ format: that is, reporting on financial, social/cultural, environment and governance issues. RMIT Vietnam has reported this way from the beginning. Each year business plans and performance indicators are agreed. They are monitored quarterly. They have included such indicators as cooperative projects with other universities, training institutions and non-governmental organisations; number of scholarships provided; contribution to community and citizenship; contribution to equity and access; and contribution to sustainable development. This sustainability story is about a beginning. There are now 900 students and 100 staff of RMIT Vietnam – an energetic group strongly committed to making a difference to Vietnam’s development and to contributing to RMIT back in Australia. Putting RMIT Vietnam on a sustainable footing, and helping build the skills and capacity for others to do so, are the key challenges for the future. References Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future, Talloires Declaration Resource Kit: A Guide To Promoting and Signing the Talloires Declaration, ULSF, Washington DC, 2002. Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future, . Bruntland report – see World Commission on Environment and Development RMIT University, . 173


ULSF – see Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future Wilmoth D, ‘Learning resource centres in Vietnamese cities and regions’, paper presented to OECD Conference on Learning Cities and Regions, Melbourne, 14–15 October 2002. Wilmoth D, ‘Strengthening urban planning in Vietnam’, paper presented to the 7th International Congress of the Asian Planning Schools Association, Hanoi Architectural University, Vietnam, 12–14 September 2003. Wilmoth D, ‘RMIT Vietnam and Vietnam’s development: risk and responsibility’ Journal of Studies in International Education, 8, 2, 2004. World Bank, Constructing knowledge societies: new challenges for tertiary education, The World Bank, Washington DC, 2002. World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, Our common future (the Brundtland report), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987, p. 43.


For information about the Talloires Declaration, see Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future, 2001, viewed 25 May 2004, and Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future, Talloires Declaration Resource Kit: A Guide To Promoting and Signing the Talloires Declaration, ULSF, Washington DC, 2002.

2

World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, Our common future (the Brundtland report), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987, p. 43.

3

For the policy approved by Council in August 1994, see RMIT, 2004, viewed 4 June 2004, . For an analysis, see Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future, ‘Institutionalizing a conservation culture at RMIT’, The Declaration, 1(3) 1996, viewed 4 June 2004, .

4 Abbreviated from the Talloires Declaration. For the full text, see Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future, 2001, viewed 25 May 2004, . 5

For the triple bottom line plus one, see RMIT’s Global Sustainability Institute web site at .

6

The environmental documents consisted of an Environment Impact Assessment (March 2000), a Public Consultation and Disclosure Plan (5 April 2001), an Environmental Assessment Summary (5 April 2001), a Resettlement Action Plan (5 April 2001), and a Summary of Initial Environmental Examination (8 February 2001). For project descriptions see and , and for the documents themselves .

174


7

World Bank, Constructing knowledge societies: new challenges for tertiary education, The World Bank, Washington DC, 2002. For more details on RMIT Vietnam’s contribution to Vietnam’s development see D Wilmoth, ‘RMIT Vietnam and Vietnam’s development: risk and responsibility’ Journal of Studies in International Education, 8, 2, 2004.

8

For more details see D Wilmoth, ‘Learning resource centres in Vietnamese cities and regions’, paper presented to OECD Conference on Learning Cities and Regions, Melbourne, 14–15 October 2002.

9

The following points are paraphrased or directly quoted from the documents on exhibition; see the IFC website .

10 Norman Day’s contribution to this section is acknowledged. 11 D Wilmoth, ‘Strengthening urban planning in Vietnam’, paper presented to the 7th International Congress of the Asian Planning Schools Association, Hanoi Architectural University, Vietnam, 12–14 September 2003.

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Photo: Andrius Lipsys, courtesy of Maryan McKenna Architects

12

Sustaining Ormond’s vision of RMIT Robyn Oswald-Jacobs


RMIT was built in the 1880s as ‘Melbourne’s Working Men’s College’. So it has many 19th and 20th century buildings throughout Melbourne’s CBD. Taking on the task of greening those buildings is a challenge! Robyn Oswald-Jacobs tells how complicated the questions and solutions can be when RMIT’s Building 14 is due for refurbishment. Should we have a new chiller? What about natural ventilation? Can the rooms be renovated for innovative teaching where students love to learn? How can RMIT’s buildings be energy efficient, as part of one of the world’s most liveable cities?

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Sustaining Ormond’s Vision of RMIT

In 1887, when RMIT first opened, it was known as Melbourne Working Men’s College. It was established through the generosity of wealthy Scottish emigrant Francis Ormond, who had developed a liberal social vision of empowerment through education, both technical and cultural, for the ‘working man’. Ormond stipulated that his donations should be matched with public or government grants. It was a hot afternoon in December 1881 when Ormond proposed that, if the government would provide the site and there was public support for the plan, he would fund a city-based institute to provide general education. This plan had two facets new in the scheme of educational ideas of the time. One was that the site was to be in the developing city of Melbourne and the other that a general education should be provided, not one tied to any particular industry, and above all one that challenged ‘intellectual narrowness’.

Figure 1. RMIT founder, Francis Ormond. Reproduced with permission from RMIT University.

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On the opening night, 7 June 1887, there were barricades erected around the enrolments office in Building 1, to handle the crush of enthusiastic applicants. Within a week there were 200 students. Within two months there were 600, and within two years there were 2000. Ormond had said he would be satisfied with 400. The authors of The Tech: A Centenary History of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology report: The young people attending the college quickly adopted a sense of pride in their institution and a sense of status in being there … though the rooms might be too hot in one season and too cold in another, though they were often overcrowded and the seats hard, though the students were tired after a long day’s work even before they got to college, though their instructors might sometimes lack teaching skills, particularly on the theoretical side … yet there was often a strong sense of loyalty to the institution and an affection and respect for its staff.1 Frederick Campbell, the first director, wrote in 1925: It is true that a favourable impression [was made] by the number of students who crowded out the College as soon as it was opened, but there were still many who thought this to be merely a flash in the pan – the attraction of something new, which would not last.2 Let’s fast-forward to the 1970s, the most intensive period of capital development in the 107-year history of RMIT. It was then ‘the largest and most complex institution of its kind in Australia’3, and by all accounts at a peak of achievement. It is well known in the property sector, and particularly for those associated with campus development, that at this time there were rapid changes in building technologies and procurement processes. The approval processes in the university’s capital development program became highly regulated and more complex. At the same time property services groups in universities had to present modern teaching facilities in new building types to accommodate a rapid growth in student numbers; a hard call for RMIT on a restricted city-centre campus. 180


This legacy leaves RMIT in a similar quandary to many other big public institutions. In the main the infrastructure is a tired, inefficient asset not providing the quality teaching and learning spaces it was designed to deliver. Most importantly, these assets are now draining the limited maintenance and operational funds available. Retrofitting Building 14

One building up for significant refurbishment is Building 14. It is located on the corner of Franklin Street and Swanston Street, Melbourne’s main street. It is a concrete-encased steel frame structure, 49 metres high, with 18 788 square metres of reinforced concrete floors and a forbidding façade, and internal walls of grey concrete blocks. It shares common building materials, heating, and ventilation services with two adjacent buildings to the south, Buildings 12 and 10. Although externally unattractive it is an efficient building in terms of usable space. It is hard to believe now, but at the time of construction in the mid1970s, for a cost of $14 million, it was the most complex, technologically advanced building in Australia and the most heavily serviced multi-storey building in the southern hemisphere. The chemistry, biology, physics and mining laboratories which it housed required reticulated services such as steam, hydrogen, nitrogen, helium, oxygen, acetylene, natural gas, halon gas, compressed air, deionised water, water for safety showers, eyewashes, fire sprinklers, fire hose reels and – almost as an anticlimax – hot and cold running water! A central riser shaft contained insulated reticulation for the hot and chilled water. All wastes from the labs were sent to the basement neutralising tanks through vertical stacks of Pyrex glass plumbing, which was resistant to concentrated acids and solvents. Although it was originally constructed to provide research and teaching activities for Chemistry, Physics and Biology, the ageing infrastructure was failing and in 1999 the decision was made to move the Faculty of Life Sciences and the Department of Applied Chemistry. In 1994 the university made a commitment to ‘environmental respect’. and in 1995 RMIT signed the Talloires Declaration and in 1998 the National Greenhouse Challenge.4 In 2001, with the establishment of the Global Sustainability Institute at RMIT, the Bruntland definition of sustainable development was adopted: 181


Figure 2. Building 14, on the corner of Franklin Street and Swanston Street, Melbourne. Photo: courtesy of RMIT University.

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‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’5 At about this time the RMIT Property Services group in collaboration with Arup Australia wrote the university’s Bioclimatic Design Guidelines6, demonstrating leadership and responding to emerging community interest. The guidelines cover new and refurbished buildings; best practice solutions; and design aspects of façade heat gain, lighting, natural ventilation, thermal mass, mechanical services, water and alternative energy. They include tools and checklists for designers and facilities planners to enable innovation and design for more sustainable solutions. The guidelines have also enabled better evaluation of project proposals. Meanwhile, RMIT Property Services, which included the Greening RMIT team, advocated that Building 14 be the flagship for environmentally sustainable design (ESD) at the university. A $25 million upgrade over a six-year period was proposed to establish the Building 14 refurbishment and the progressive upgrade of Buildings 10 and 12 as a model of sustainable best practice.’7 This heralded a new future for what had been a significant industry example. Developing plans for a new building incorporating ESD principles is currently not a technologically difficult task. Design processes and systems are available and the body of knowledge is growing rapidly. Research has been conducted on site orientation, suitable materials, shading devices and sophisticated building systems to enable architects and designers to utilise new technologies. A report from the Sustainable Energy Authority Victoria in 2001 suggests that ‘energy conscious building design leads to improved building performance, reduced operating costs, lower greenhouse emissions’.8 There are as yet unmeasured and relatively untapped advantages of a building that is intelligently designed to incorporate ESD principles to deliver a healthy working environment. These advantages are the health and performance of the people who work in it. In constructing new buildings ESD principles are a great deal less costly to implement. However, in retrofitting a building, physical issues such as site orientation, material selection and internal layout are all inflexible, often working against basic ESD principles. A complication in this project was the difficulty in determining an energy objective. The Sustainable Energy Authority Victoria states: ‘Energy objectives can be set in general terms i.e. the building must be 40% more efficient than the one occupied.’9 The utilities arrive into the building through one point so the metering systems did not allow for a breakdown of 183


electricity, gas or water use. There was no provision for accurate readings of specific areas. However the energy audit of Building 14 revealed that the building has inherent, very positive ESD attributes: • • • •

correct orientation to the north suitable thermal mass characteristics double glazed and shaded (although internal) windows some flexibility for open planning.

The following checklist of ESD solutions, arising from the investigations conducted by a range of consultants including Umow Lai Associates and Arup, was also noted for consideration: Potential ESD Solutions and Applications Borrowed natural light

Lighting internal areas is difficult given relatively small north-facing windows, which minimise heat ingress but also minimise light. Development of a light-shelf system to direct light within the building is currently being analysed, but the low ceiling heights and the rigid eastwest corridor, which is fixed by permanent features such as the stairs, service-risers and shafts, are a barrier. The original design provided offices on the north side of the corridor and classrooms or laboratories to the south. Analysis on rerouting the corridor to the north wall indicates possibilities in developing borrowed light systems, but compromises layout efficiency. An open-plan proposal, eliminating the internal walls, could provide an excellent flexible learning area with a multitude of computer stations to address the academic departments’ demands and a natural ventilation mixed-mode system or enhanced borrowed light. Water waste systems

The current occupants, Biology, Applied Physics and Food Science, all utilise hazardous chemicals preventing any possibility of grey-water systems. However the existing central neutralising plant is being replaced so that chemicals are treated prior to disposal. Ice storage systems

Could be installed in the basement to use low evening electricity tariffs to create ice, which then generates daytime cooling. This plan has recently 184


Potential ESD Solutions and Applications (Continued)

been challenged by newly evolving phase change materials, including wax based gels, and production technologies. A decision will be made during 2004. Direct digital control systems

These systems manage air conditioning and natural ventilation systems sensitively as they better monitor and report on conditions on occupied floors. An analysis of floor conditions provides conditioned air to the correct level in a quicker time frame. Variable-speed fans

Digital control systems could also drive variable-speed fans so that the correct volume of air is delivered to each floor. Currently, a single-speed fan supplies conditioned air to the total building, irrespective of whether one floor or all floors are occupied. Low-energy IT equipment

Updated computer hardware is pivotal to energy savings, particularly with the proposed intensive occupancy by computer-related disciplines. The technologies behind flat screen computers can use up to 50% less energy than the standard type of screen and they have less heat output. High-efficiency lighting systems

Will occur progressively over the next five years with a changeover of existing lighting and switching mechanisms as floors are renovated. T5 or tri-phosphorous, minimum diameter tube, fluorescent lighting systems, which can be dimmed to provide sufficient light, will remove excessive lighting delivery adjacent to windows and other light sources.

Since it was necessary to define a benchmark for the project, Arup Australia were selected as the appropriate consultants based on their expertise in electrical and mechanical services design. Because some occupants had already vacated, assumptions were made about current usage, and estimates and predictions of future usage, to provide sufficient information for the consultants to proceed. Cooling became a central issue for the team. The central chiller (cooling) plant was close to capacity, and the aspect of the infrastructure requiring 185


most attention. The chiller plant undergoes more constant demand than any other piece of equipment. In summer the combination of hot weather and heat-creating equipment, such as computers, means the capacity of a chiller and cooling tower is often severely stretched, whereas in winter the boiler systems are supplemented by the heat-creating equipment. The Arup report needed to consider many other issues to determine the best approach for cooling: •

•

•

•

• •

Internal/external design conditions: design data providing assumed internal temperature conditions (24°C) and external temperature conditions/humidity (34.6°C) Area by use: proposed occupants, space consumed and activities conducted, e.g. including rapid expansion of computer laboratories. The occupancy estimates were calculated on 15 867 persons. Internal loads: hours of use (8 am to 8 pm), frequency, occupancy, use of lighting, further analysis of activities conducted on each floor. Consequently, the highest cooling demand is in November, when few students are around, and March, with maximum numbers of students. Building envelope: analysis of building materials on walls, floor, roof, type of construction, extent of windows and construction like double-glazing, orientation of building, extent of insulation, blinds on windows. Ventilation loads: calculation of fresh air requirements based on occupancy and use. System inefficiencies: assumptions are made as to the potential for leakage in the air handling ducts and other systems like chilled pipe systems, fan and duct-work systems and the potential for ambient heat gains whilst in use.10

With all this information in hand, block-cooling calculations can determine the amount of cooling and therefore the capacity of the chiller plant required. Interestingly, in a building such as this, 77 per cent of the heat gains are attributable to casual sources: the fittings, furnishings, infrastructure and people within the building. These comprise: 35 per cent lighting, 26 per cent desktop equipment and 39 per cent people. Solar heat gain is relatively small at 11.5 per cent of the total, and the remaining gains are attributable to fabric and 186


infiltration. If heat output of lighting and desktop equipment is minimised, a considerable cost saving will be achieved, both on the chiller plant and, ultimately, on running costs. As two of the proposed occupants are Computer Science, and Electronic and Computer Systems Engineering, heavy users of computer technology, a clear direction was needed to ensure they could minimise their heat outputs and energy use by selecting the appropriate computer hardware. Taking into account all of the analysis to date on Building 14 and the feedback from the top 10 student concerns involving work and relaxation areas, the decision was made in 2000 to install laboratories for the schools of Computer Science and Electronic and Computer Systems Engineering on levels 9 and 10 as the front end of the larger project. The project was staged in three phases over 18 months and was completed in 2002. At the conclusion of an asbestos removal program, extensive services refurbishment was undertaken and then five computer laboratories and office accommodation for postgrad students, sessional staff and academics were installed. At the start of the project academic staff were reluctant to explore innovative teaching methods. The preference was for traditionally configured ‘grid style’ computer labs: i.e. one supervisor/lecturer in front of 36 students in ‘talk and chalk’ arrangements. Eventually agreement was reached for two trial spaces: one flexible delivery model and one traditional layout. As it turned out, staff and students favoured the flexible delivery model and consequently another three similar spaces have been provided. These spaces are immensely popular and when not timetabled for formal classes, are used for self-paced and student project works. The flexible delivery spaces are a series of ‘islands’ consisting of circular, rectangular, oval and asymmetrical desks with a PC at each student station, utilising the same space as a standard room. Supervisors have easy access to groups of four to eight students around each bench. Sight lines to whiteboards or data projection screens are guaranteed because chairs are fitted with appropriate castors for short-pile carpet. Each of these spaces is linked to an ‘oasis’: an area where up to eight students and a supervisor can gather on an informal basis to discuss various issues, away from the larger student group. Other spaces include a lounge with vending machines, a student help desk and an enrolments/enquiries area, with an adjacent staff location to provide support, security and advice. 187


Figure 3. The new computer laboratories in Building 14. Photo: Andrius Lipsys, courtesy of Morgan McKenna Architects.

Next door there is an open area for up to 20 research and postgraduate students which is central, but separate from academic administration. There is a hot desk for sessional and visiting staff, with storage and preparation spaces adjacent to the flexible delivery rooms, and students can directly access the enclosed offices for senior academic staff from the central corridor. The choice and colour of the interior surfaces – carpets, paint, benches and computer hardware – were treated very seriously, resulting in significant aesthetic improvement. Dark, viewless, aesthetically boring interior spaces were transformed into appealing, light ones. This small but impressive project, which delivered the innovative design solutions provided by Morgan McKenna Architects, significantly enhanced the quality of the teaching and learning, and developed confidence and insight in both Property Services and academic staff. It has provided an excellent blueprint for responsible design in building refurbishments, balancing the ability to incorporate cutting-edge advances in technology with new modes of teaching and learning. One aspect of the rapidly evolving 188


areas of research and practice in environmentally friendly technologies, which will impact on the next stage of the upgrade of Building 14, will be the cooling source and distribution systems emanating from the ice storage unit in the basement. Again, expert consultants have been approached to further investigate and provide up to the minute advice. Considerations include whether to install ice-making equipment or the more advanced solution – ice gel or phase change material – which is being used for the City of Melbourne’s new state-of-the-art headquarters known as the ‘Council House 2’ (CH2) project. Discussions with the City of Melbourne, and particularly with Rob Adams, Director, City Projects, concerning both the development of the Melbourne 2030 Strategy and the CH2 building, have enabled Property Services staff to tap into current thought leadership in an active project. On campus, local, pragmatic refurbishments are being informed by changes in global thinking and responses to newly available technologies and materials. The decade between Francis Ormond’s seminal bequest and the opening of the Working Men’s College was to be ‘the most remarkable decade in the history of a remarkable city’.11 In the 1880s ‘Marvellous Melbourne’, as the city was known, was ‘leaving its trading and primitive industrial stages behind and gradually acquiring the broader functions of a fully fledged metropolis’.12 Ormond’s requirement was that the Working Men’s College be in the newly developing city centre; one building was provided at the opening of the college. There are now 125 buildings, which accommodate around 38 000 students and 3000 staff. The contemporary RMIT, part of the fabric of the city, has enriched Ormond’s vision and has enriched the Melbourne experience with the mix of heritage and contemporary buildings. The vision of our founding fathers, and of our contemporary planners, is celebrated with the recent recognition of Melbourne as one of the three most ‘liveable’ cities in the world.13 It is against this landscape, both physical and cultural, that RMIT will need to be at the forefront of technological change and of real applications and solutions for the benefit of our current and future students and staff and the population of Melbourne. Acknowledgement

The writer acknowledges assistance from: Laurie Cuttiford, Manager Campus Planning; Graham Bell, General Manager, Facilities Services; and Peter Navaretti, Strategic Planner, Heritage. 189


References and further reading Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future, . Australian Government, Greenhouse Office, . Bell G, ‘RMIT building 14: exploring the environmentally sustainable retrofit of an existing building’, research paper for EP 516 Energy Policy and Management Lecturer Alan Pears, RMIT, 2001. Brown & Root, Report on potential to implement mixed mode air-conditioning at RMIT, Brown & Root Service Asia Pacific Pty Ltd, January 2001. Brundtland report – see World Commission on Environment and Development Carter G, RMIT buildings 8, 10, 12, 14, 28 cooling load assessment, Ove Arup & Partners, May 2001. Davison G, The rise and fall of Marvellous Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1978. Energy Service Group Australia Pty Ltd, Report on HVAC Energy Efficiency Initiatives at RMIT University, City Campus, Buildings 8, 10, 12 & 14, 6 August 2002. Murray-Smith S & Dare AJ, The Tech: a centenary history of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Hyland House, Melbourne, 1987. Ove ARUP and Partners, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology bioclimatic design guidelines, RMIT University, December 1999. SEAV – see Sustainable Energy Authority Victoria Sustainable Energy Authority Victoria, ‘RMIT University site visit energy and operations appraisal’, report prepared by John Osborne, Energy Efficiency Victoria, 24 December 1999. Sustainable Energy Authority Victoria, Energy smart building design, SEAV, 2001. Thompson B & Caswell T, ‘Sustainable building showcase for RMIT’, RMIT correspondence, January 2001. Umow Lai Associates Pty Ltd., RMIT University Lighting Controls Report, 1 August 2001.


S Murray-Smith & AJ Dare, The Tech: a centenary history of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Hyland House, Melbourne, 1987.

2

ibid, p. 50

3

ibid.

4

For background to the Talloires Declaration see Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future, . That web page links to the text of the declaration. For information about the National Greenhouse Challenge, see Australian Government, Greenhouse Office, .

5


190


6

Ove Arup and Partners, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology bioclimatic design guidelines, RMIT University, December 1999.

7

B Thompson & T Caswell, ‘Sustainable building showcase for RMIT’, RMIT correspondence, January 2001.

8

Sustainable Energy Authority, Energy smart building design, Sustainable Energy Authority, Victoria, 2001.

9

ibid.

10 G Carter, ‘RMIT buildings 8, 10, 12, 14, 28 cooling load assessment’, Ove Arup & Partners, May 2001. 11 G Davison, The rise and fall of Marvellous Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1978. 12 ibid. 13 In a survey of 130 cities, the Economist Intelligence Unit named Melbourne, Vancouver and Vienna the best cities for expatriates to live in, or the ‘most liveable cities’, in February 2004. (Perth was fourth and Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney equal sixth.)

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13 Rubbish, students, passion and the greening of RMIT

Photo: Adele Flood

Donna Noonan


RMIT’s ‘Green Team’ were diligent, environmentally aware and able students. Young engineers, young scientists who couldn’t walk past a rubbish bin without an audit of its recyclable waste and contamination. Like students all around the world in the 1990s they were determined to green their campus. They used RMIT waste, water and energy issues for their academic projects. They volunteered and then some – became employed, dedicated to raising awareness with students, lecturers and RMIT’s operations managers to develop a Green Star Office Program, thinking globally acting locally.

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Rubbish, Students, Passion and the Greening of RMIT

What environment?

Growing up in the outback Pilbara region of Western Australia and then later in central Victoria, I always had a strong connection to the environment, although I didn’t recognise it back then. My father worked in the mining industry so I got to see the impacts of mining firsthand. Childhood photos taken in our front yard in the Pilbara mining town of Paraburdoo show a huge hill in the background, gradually being stripped away over the years as vast amounts of iron ore were extracted. We left Paraburdoo in the mid-1980s but I have heard that the hill has since been levelled. Looking back, I now recognise the vastness of the environmental impacts that were occurring around me. The mining machinery was huge and the harsh desert environment was no barrier to progress in opening up the region. Rivers were diverted and groundwater was tapped. Roads and railways slashed through the ancient landscape. But there was also a human side to the opening up of these mining towns. Thousands of people worked in Paraburdoo in the 1970s. Hundreds of young families like my own, who had been struggling to etch out a living in the eastern states, flocked to the region with the promise of good wages and a new life. These families could live out the Australian dream – a new brick veneer house, new furniture, a big yard and a good car. This lifestyle was something that had previously been out of reach to them. My experience growing up in mining towns showed me the quandary of sustainability: balancing the needs of people and the environment in a world of finite resources. I think it was this experience that led me down the path leading eventually to enrolling in Environmental Engineering at RMIT. I wanted to help solve the environmental problems that I had seen firsthand. This story is about my experience as a student and staff member at RMIT and how this university has allowed me to learn about the complexities of sustainability. It is also a story about the growing recognition that universities have a key role to play in tackling the sustainability quandary in society and how the involvement of students can enrich the process. The Green Team emerges

In the past RMIT has been renowned for the environmental activity of its students. Its Student Environment Officer, who convenes a collective of student environmental activists called the Ecology Action Group, was at one stage one of the most financially supported student union environment 195


positions in Australia. Many environmental activist initiatives have sprung up and been driven from the RMIT student union body. This sense of community spirit was immediately evident to me when I started my studies at RMIT. I relished the first year of my environmental engineering degree. Our classes were littered with guest lecturers from industry and our projects were based on real world problems that we could see around us. I think it was the applied nature of our studies that captured our interest and made us want to begin changing the world right away, and led to the formation of a group called the Green Team. It all began with a simple assignment. As an assessment task in our Environmental Engineering Design course our lecturer, Ed Horan, asked us to produce a waste management strategy for Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market. We had to develop ideas for reducing waste and then diverting waste from landfill to alternative uses such as recycling and composting. Although the environmental issues identified at the food market were real, the assessment task was a hypothetical exercise, and as such, was never intended to be implemented. We were disappointed that although we had conducted the research and made what we felt were viable recommendations, our work was not going to be used or implemented. And to make matters worse, the food market continued to practise poor waste management processes. We wanted to see our knowledge and developing skills utilised and applied to real world problems. We wanted to see our ideas implemented. By coincidence RMIT’s Sustainability Coordinator, Michael Nolan (who was employed in the Property Services department of the university), was also taking the course in Environmental Engineering Design and could see the untapped potential of our enthusiasm. Michael made us aware of the number of environmental problems on our own campus and the potential for focusing our energy on local issues where we could have some impact. Over a lunchtime discussion between classmates, the RMIT Green Team was formed. We thought that if we formalised ourselves into the Green Team we could have a collective voice to make recommendations to the university and we could provide a resource of people-power to assist the university address its environmental issues. As the Green Team formed we found a new enthusiasm for issues such as waste management and energy conservation. Perhaps it was because we were studying engineering, or perhaps we were all a little bit mad, but out of the 196


group sprang a generation of students who couldn’t walk past a rubbish bin without peering into it to assess the amount of recyclable waste or contamination it contained! For some of us it became something of an obsession as we stood mournfully shaking our heads at rubbish skips full of perfectly good second-hand furniture or polystyrene packaging that we were sure the Arts students could do something creative with. From this new interest (and the idealistic optimism of first-year university) came the need to see something done by RMIT. We felt that if we provided the right information then the university would surely change the error of its ways. One of the first projects we carried out was to collect a day’s waste from the university cafeteria and conduct a waste audit. We were amazed to find that over half of the waste in the rubbish bins was recyclable. The team put together a report documenting our findings, showing that the costs of the cafeteria’s waste disposal could be halved if the university upgraded its recycling facilities. We made recommendations as to how this could be implemented and sat back waiting to see the results of our recommendations appear in the cafeteria. The Green Team then had its first experience with university politics! The reply eventually came back that one day’s data did not provide enough proof and that we would have to carry out an audit every day for at least a month for the information to be validated. Disappointed but not beaten, the Green Team, with the support of Property Services, went on to conduct other great waste audits to demonstrate the amount of waste the university was creating. Our obsession with waste was voracious! The ‘RMIT End-of-Year Clean-Out’ in 1999 provided an excellent opportunity for staff to join the Green Team in the fun of rubbish worship. The clean-out was held in December in an attempt to avoid the annual ad hoc clean-out of offices that usually led to rubbish being dumped around the university. Skips were provided around the campus, and staff were asked to bring out their junk. A paper recycle skip and a rubbish skip were provided, and a space was created for reusable items and furniture. The event was a screaming success, with even the Green Team being impressed by the amount of waste rescue that took place. As fast as rubbish was brought out of the buildings, it was confiscated for reuse (with encouragement by the Green Team) by other staff and students. It was likened to Melbourne’s annual suburban hard garbage nights in broad daylight (without the sneaking around); 197


Figure 1. The RMIT Green Team was formed to address issues such as waste management processes within the university. Photo: courtesy of RMIT University.

and for once it wasn’t just the Green Team playing in rubbish, it was everyone! It gave us all a warm glow. Of course the novelty of sifting through rubbish bins eventually wears off, even for first-year engineering students. As students moved on and changed so did the Green Team. The group began to evolve into an informal network of interested students, loosely convened by Michael Nolan in Property Services. Some students were also employed by Property Services to carry out projects. The Staff Waste Outreach Project is one example that is close to my heart. Three students, including me, were employed to review the waste and recycling practices of staff, using Building 10 as a pilot study. Over the course of six weeks we worked our way through a myriad of issues, which personally taught me the complexities of trying to apply sustainability in large organisations. The greatest lesson that I learned was to look at processes as a system, and to recognise that others might have a different view of the system. It taught me that understanding different points of view allows us to determine some common ground on which to build a working solution. 198


The Staff Waste Outreach Project was our first ‘real’ job as environmental engineers, and we found it extremely challenging. But we learned a great deal and our recommendations worked. Within six months we had managed to double the amount of recycled paper being captured at RMIT University. The success of the Staff Waste Outreach Project excited my interest in environmental management, and so when the position of Sustainability Coordinator became vacant in Property Services, I jumped at the chance to take it up. I cut back to part-time study and threw myself into the task of carrying on from where Michael Nolan had left off, with the challenge of turning RMIT into a green university. The greening of universities – it’s not easy being green

The implementation of environmental sustainability on university campuses is broadly referred to as ‘greening the campus’. ‘Green’ universities actively attempt to minimise their environmental impact through a series of policy decisions, implementation strategies and cultural change programs. Campus greening is becoming a common issue amongst universities all over the world, and Australian universities are no exception. Most of Australia’s prominent universities have some kind of campus greening activity; however, the form that these activities take varies widely between universities. In my opinion, the level of success generally depends on the level of commitment shown by each university’s upper management and the influence of their respective departments. Although the agenda for campus greening appears to be well advanced in Australia, I believe there is still a long way to go before we can say Australian universities are showing commitment in line with global best practices. Some universities, such as the ANU in Canberra, are taking a high-level strategic approach to campus greening and providing the funding to support staff and students in implementing green initiatives. A few universities are showing signs of fantastic green initiatives in marginal parts of the university while business continues as usual in the rest of the organisation. Other universities are showing little initiative in addressing sustainability, apart from the commendable efforts of a few individuals battling to change the culture of the organisation. Overall there is a definite shift towards the recognition of environmental sustainability as an issue in Australian universities; however, as with any cultural change process not driven by finances or legislation, progress is incremental and slow. One common thread that runs through many of the campus greening activities around Australia is the involvement of students. Students differentiate the 199


university workplace from other office-based workplaces. Various campus greening projects that I have investigated show that students have played a significant role in progressing the sustainability agenda and ensuring that environmental and social issues make it onto the radar screen of university decisionmakers. Universities are in the fortunate position of having a wealth of ideas, drive and enthusiasm available to them in their students. Sustainability is a relatively new discipline and so it makes sense that it is the younger generation driving change in the area. There are no real experts yet, and the ideas of students are just as valid as the ideas of those grappling with the agenda in other sectors of society. Tertiary students are semi-trained professionals. They are the product of their university. If the university has confidence and pride in the students it is producing, it makes sense to use them as a resource. Students at the beginning of their career are given the opportunity to gain valuable workplace experience. Students relish the opportunity to be treated as professionals and to test their new skills in a real but supportive environment. The university also gets to know and understand its product, the students. Staff who employ students get to understand firsthand the skills and limitations of students the university is producing. This has the potential to provide an excellent feedback loop for the university to ensure it is producing the best possible students it can. It doesn’t matter how good the academic program is, nothing can substitute for the skills that come with participating in a workplace; and employers value this. Another benefit of utilising student resources is that they get to know and value their university in a way they never could as a student. The number of final-year students I have spoken to who did not know who the Vice-Chancellor of the university is, let alone know about the Property Services department, would always astound me. If RMIT would like students to have a connection with their place of study then the students need more than a classroom experience. They need to see the university as part of their community, and to be empowered to contribute to it as a community member. Bringing students and staff together to work on common problems will, in my view, help build such an empowered community. The greening of RMIT – it’s really not easy being green

In my new position as Sustainability Coordinator for RMIT I quickly felt overwhelmed by the number of issues that needed to be addressed. The 200


Green Team became an important resource for me. I created projects for students to do in their academic programs. Through the Green Team, and other less formal networks, students were encouraged to use the university as a blank canvas to apply their academic projects to issues within RMIT. Students produced a number of reports ranging from small essays to draft policies, strategies and final-year engineering major projects, where they applied their knowledge to environmental issues at RMIT. These reports were formally submitted as assessment tasks to the student’s lecturer but were also often offered to Property Services with the intention of informing and assisting the operational processes of the university. The Green Team also provided a constant supply of willing potential employees. With the support of my manager in Property Services, Laurie Cuttiford, I was able to employ students on specific projects ranging from the recycling of books in the RMIT library to the review of transport facilities for staff and students. Many of the students employed used this work experience as a basis for formal assessment in their academic programs, and as a platform for seeking further employment in the environment industry on completion of their studies. The paid employment of students for small projects led to the next evolutionary progression of the Green Team: the longer-term contract employment of students within Property Services. As the environmental projects driven by Property Services expanded, there was an increased need for human resources to implement them. One example was the full-time employment of a new graduate, Nia Emmanouil, to assist with our growing number of projects. Nia had been one of the founding members of the Green Team and had been employed on a casual basis for odd projects. On graduating from her degree in Social Science (Environment), Nia was contracted to head up the RMIT Green Office Program – GreenStar. The aim of GreenStar was to play an outreach role in providing RMIT staff with the information and assistance needed to address environmental issues that were within their control; for example, reducing energy consumption or the consumption and waste of paper. For a small investment in a salary, and by leveraging off the enthusiasm of students and new graduates, we were able to increase the outreach potential of the projects of Greening RMIT. The GreenStar project was extremely successful in communicating the environmental policies and commitments of RMIT, and ensuring staff were empowered to implement these commitments across the university. 201


Figure 2. Greening RMIT has benefits for students, staff and the environment. Photo: courtesy of RMIT University.

The future starts here – the future greening of RMIT

Who knows what the next evolution of the Green Team will be? As particular students come and go, so do ideas and enthusiasm. This is all part of the transient nature of students, and to some extent staff, in the university environment. The Green Team has to date provided an amazing history of student contribution to RMIT University. In large part this has been thanks to the open-mindedness and innovativeness of the staff in Property Services, particularly the Campus Planning branch. All six of the succession of sustainability coordinators employed by Property Services started as volunteers from the university’s student body. Students have had an opportunity to apply the knowledge that they gained in their academic programs and to give that knowledge and skill back to the university in their role as an employee. It is difficult to tell if the Green Team has had much of an impact on RMIT over the past six years but I can honestly say that the university has had a huge impact on me. For me personally it has been an incredible opportunity to cut my teeth in my chosen profession. I have learned lessons – some positive, some negative, but all valuable – that will carry me through my whole career. And after all, isn’t that what a university is all about? 202

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