Publications

by Jock Gilbert 27 Aug 2025 

The concept of “stewardship” has long underpinned the way the landscape architecture profession thinks about and presents itself. But given the declining state of the environment, do we need to rethink this approach?

by Christine Phillips‍ ‍26 Jun 2025 

The first of its kind in Australia, a new First-Peoples-led, pathways-based tertiary education facility on Yorta Yorta Country in Shepparton is grounded in cultural values and community leadership, and serves as a catalyst for lasting social impact. 

by Jock Gilbert  26 May 2025 

Jock Gilbert speaks to Palawa woman and architectural practitioner Sarah Lynn Rees about the relationship between Indigenous ways of knowing, the principles of “reduce, reuse, recycle,” and the materials of the built environment. 

by Christine Phillips  21 May 2025 

Against the backdrop of a landmark grassroots remediation project, a deliberately restrained restoration of a Robin Boyd-designed visitor centre honours the original building while making space for the site’s Eastern Maar heritage. 

by Christine Phillips  16 May 2024 

The nuanced design of a local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge and culture centre on a historically complex site in Warrane/Sydney responds to multiple histories, revealing stories of Country.

by Christine Phillips  14 Nov 2023 

Christine Phillips considers the masterplan for the former mining town of Jabiru in the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park, where Traditional Custodians driving the design process. 

By Jock Gilbert, Barry Pearce, and Sophia Pearce  1 Jan 2022 

It means the spirit lingers, alive, living; the spirit continues on. Literally – the spirit continuing, and the exaltation when I look out over my country 

by Christine Phillips  22 Sep 2022 

The 2021 open-air MPavilion in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens explores the ways in which human activities can be amplified by the surrounding natural environment, but also raises the persistent question: What is a pavilion? 

by Jock Gilbert, Sophia Pearce and 4 others  26 Apr 2022 

At a station in south-west New South Wales, Traditional Owners and landscape architects are working together to explore ways to restore the degraded landscape, and to re-engage with the cultural and ecological significance of the site. 

by Christine Phillips and Louis Anderson Mokak 

14 Nov 2018 

In referencing Bunjil the Creator, FJMT’s Bunjil Place raises ongoing questions about recognition, symbolism and community space. 

by Christine Phillips, Carroll Go-Sam and 4 others 

16 Jul 2019 

The RR.Memorial Forum held in June 2018 explored the future of memorials in Australia to the Frontier Wars. The forum included a series of Indigenous-led design charrettes that revealed the possibilities and challenges involved in creating places of healing. 

by Jock Gilbert and Daniel Roe 

22 Jun 2020 

Winding along the coast north of Broome, this 80-kilometre-long Aboriginal trail fosters a deep connection to Country through knowledge exchange and shared experience.

by Christine Phillips and Jock Gilbert 

16 Jul 2021 

A powerful new book by Alison Page and Paul Memmott illuminates the ways that design, through engagement with First Nations knowledges, can become an expression of respect for Country. 

by Jock Gilbert  25 Nov 2022 

Jock Gilbert unpacks the latest book in the “First Knowledges” series edited by Margo Neale. 

by Jock Gilbert  17 Mar 2025 

Jock Gilbert reviews a recent book by evolutionary biologist and gender studies academic Banu Subramaniam that questions the legacy of the relationship between colonial thinking and the world of botany.

by Jock Gilbert and Sophia Pearce 

1 Jan 2020 

This a story of the Bunyip, but not really. It deals with stories; stories of stories, fables, myths, legends, (tall) tales. It’s really a story of a story of the bunyip. The story of the Bunyip starts a long time ago and while it is an Australian story, it starts a long way from Australia, in another tradition—the tradition of ancient Greece and the story of a hare and a tortoise. It ends with a story of a crow and an eaglehawk and says something of the ways that we can work together across cultural paradigms, perhaps eccentrically. 

by Julia Alessandrini, Christine Phillips, and Jock Gilbert 

1 Jan 2021 

Indigenous-led approaches to practice-led design studio learning provide authentic Work Integrated Learning (WIL) engagements that demonstrate good practice and enhanced learning outcomes for students. By exploring a body of work being undertaken in the School of Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT University, this paper presents a germane and iterative model of WIL specifically connecting with Indigenous contexts through the nurturing of sovereign relationships. The work being explored includes consideration of the design studio as a particular pedagogy and the ways that this is mutually supported by informal visits to community by staff and students. This body of work will be examined through three overlapping and mutually informing frameworks; practice-led design, Indigenous-led principles, and work-integrated learning.

by Jock Gilbert  7 Jun 2021 

A recent book by the Landscape Foundation brings Māori perspectives on landscape to the fore.

by Jock Gilbert, Sophia Pearce, and Thomas Flugge 

1 Jan 2023  

This article essay explores a developing body of research in which landscape, as a constructed idea, might be enriched by the concept of Country. Rethinking landscape through Country can lead us to a new practice that emphasizes recognition and respect. Gilbert and Pearce have collaborated on project work including writing across a number of years which addresses the contributions to the discipline of landscape architecture that can be made from an Indigenous knowledge perspective. This piece engages with practice in examining the implications of authorship in this context. 

by Jock Gilbert and Campbell Drake 

1 Jan 2016 

Examining the criteria by which events-based modes of spatial practice are discussed, this paper critically reflects on a mapping workshop that took place in September 2015 at Culpra Station; an 8,500 hectare property situated in rural NSW. Titled 'Interpretive Wonderings', the project sought to build upon a body of critical cartographic work that approaches mapping as 'performative, participatory and political'. Thirty indigenous and non-Indigenous participants were invited to the station property to produce interpretive mappings through which to explore multivalent understandings of country. 

by Jock Gilbert  7 Jun 2021 

This article takes the form of a yarn between Gunditj Mirring Elder, Aunty Eileen Alberts and Jock Gilbert on a journey through time and place on Country in the UNESCO World Heritage-listed cultural landscapes of Budj Bim in western Victoria. The article was commissioned by This article takes the form of a yarn between Gunditj Mirring Elder, Aunty Eileen Alberts and Jock Gilbert on a journey through time and place on Country in the UNESCO World Heritage-listed cultural landscapes of Budj Bim in western Victoria. The article was commissioned by Landscape Australia Editor Emily Wong as a piece exploring the concept of place and challenging non-indigenous landscape architect practitioners to understand and reflect upon their own place in relation to Indigenous knowledge systems. The essay explores a developing body of research around the ways in which non-indigenous design practitioners can respond to issues of sovereignty through Indigenous-led approaches, challenging the profession to make a place in a national discourse of social, environmental and cultural justice. 

by Jock Gilbert and Sophia Pearce

1 Aug 2019 

Landscape, as a constructed idea, can separate us from our environment – with often drastic consequences for our surrounds. Rethinking landscape through Country can lead us to a new practice that emphasizes recognition and respect.

by Jock Gilbert   19 Jul 2018 

Agricultural scientist, farmer and writer Charles Massy advocates for a stronger relationship between humanity and the non-human world in agricultural practice. A workshop with Massy and members of the landscape profession offered opportunities to explore the relationship of Massy’s ideas to broader landscape practice.  

by Carroll Go-sam, Christine Phillips, and Jock Gilbert 

14 May 2025

This paper explores the ways that three built-environment academics have developed design studio pedagogies which engage students directly with First Nations people through real-world projects. It explores how relationality is integral to supporting the aspirations of First Nations projects in the context of design studio teaching. The authors argue that whilst their pedagogies necessarily differ in relation to the specifics of context and Country of each project, the shared approach to pedagogy is underpinned by recognition of sovereignty of First Nations and collaborating with community representatives who are active agents in the project through the process of socialisation. The ways in which these design studios facilitate the envisioning of First Nations projects becomes critical to understanding diversities among and within First Nations communities. 

by Jock Gilbert  1 Jan 2016 

Migratory Wonderings offers an encounter of country through a series of works developed on Culpra Station in regional NSW; an interdisciplinary mapping workshop in collaboration with the Culpra Milli Aboriginal Corporation, exhibited at Mildura Arts Centre as Interpretive Wonderings. Framed as acts of critical cartography, these mappings seek to contest dominant and hegemonic power structures inherent in conventional cartography by opening a space of encounter through interpretation. 

by Jock Gilbert  1 Jan 2015 

Following an invitation from the Culpra Milli Aboriginal Corporation which is, through the Pearce family, the custodian of the land that comprises Culpra Station, Jock Gilbert and Campbell Drake proposed a research project. In September 2015, thirty Indigenous and non-indigenous invited participants took part in a workshop held on country to produce mappings both in response to and as interpretations of that country through stories told by elders. These responses culminated in the exhibition Interpretive Wonderings: Mapping Culpra Station which opened the Mildura Arts Centre 2016 Diamond Jubilee year.

by Jock Gilbert   19 Jan 2018 

Agricultural scientist and farmer Charles Massy has published a book that calls for a deeper understanding of human effects upon the landscape and for practice that is by its nature regenerative. 

by Carroll Go-Sam, Christine Phillips, and Jock Gilbert 

18 Sept 2024 

An ever-increasing feature of architecture school design studio programs in Australia is to set project briefs grounded in real-world problem scenarios of Indigenous peoples. Mediated by the studio coordinator, students participate in project-based learning related to specific situational and contextual elements derived from the community setting. Little has been explored in how deep listening methods are employed within the context of design studio teaching in relation to visualising, valuing and informing the aspirational dreams of Indigenous communities. Employing critical reflective methods, this paper will explore relational approaches to project-based problem learning which employ ‘deep listening’ methods to meet, capture and elaborate three dreams of Indigenous communities, senior Elders, leaders and knowledge holders, explored within three Indigenous-led design studios by three built environment academics. Many Indigenous communities express aspirational dreams as part of their Story; these are often ‘big’ and ambitious and have remained unrealised due to a lack of resources, land title and/tenure and the ability to navigate regulatory or governmental barriers. The paper will focus not on how deep listening techniques are taught to students, but rather how the authors as design studio leaders engage in deep listening methods that are particular to each studio context.

by Jock Gilbert  1 Jan 2015 

Following an invitation from the Culpra Milli Aboriginal Corporation which is, through the Pearce family, the custodian of the land that comprises Culpra Station, Jock Gilbert and Campbell Drake proposed a research project. In September 2015, thirty Indigenous and non-indigenous invited participants took part in a workshop held on country to produce mappings both in response to and as interpretations of that country through stories told by elders. These responses culminated in the exhibition Interpretive Wonderings: Mapping Culpra Station which opened the Mildura Arts Centre 2016 Diamond Jubilee year.