IN-PERSON Prague Research & Teaching Conference
Abstract
Initiatives to increase the embracing of Indigenous knowledges in Australian tertiary institutions have led to limited advances in recent years. A critical challenge is the infusion of Indigenous ways of knowing and teaching within pedagogical frameworks shaped by profoundly different Western paradigms. In the case of built environment education, this infusion is vital to influence future spatial designers to understand and embrace their roles in designing for eco-social justice.
Our research investigates how teaching strategies might promote student understandings of Indigenous concepts of place, interconnectedness and identity in the built environment disciplines of Landscape Architecture, Interior Design and Architecture. Through deep conversations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous designers and academics, we focused on these concepts as both critical to student learning in spatial design, and as potentially cutting across cultural boundaries to tap into shared, fundamental Indigenous and Western human values and experiences. We developed and applied a range of teaching strategies to infuse these concepts into our teaching of two subjects within a Built Environment Bachelor Honours degree: a third-year theory subject exploring the role of design in society, and a first-year design studio introducing students to the ideas of site and context. Here, we use an autoethnographic approach to delve into the impact of collaboratively designing curriculum, reflect on the degree to which students have understood these concepts, and examine which teaching strategies contributed to their learning. Our aims are to improve our practice and to offer ideas for other educators to adapt in their own built environment pedagogies.
Dr. Rodriguez lectures in Interior Design and is a researcher with the QUT School of Architecture and Built Environment Human-Building Interaction Group. Her research focuses at the intersection of lighting, architecture, environmental psychology, and health. Dr. Rodriguez is interested in testing innovative research methodologies in the built environment for the benefit of people and has done so over a range of field and laboratory studies. Her research has informed salutogenic design theories, which have been implemented in policy design and higher education teaching.
Ms Narges Farahnak Majd; Owen Cafe; Shannon Satherley Farahnak Majd is a sessional academic at QUT and a PhD candidate working within an Australian Research Council-funded team investigating the influence of vertical school spatial design on student well-being. Her wider research interests include wellbeing and architecture, learning space design, environment-behaviour studies, and salutogenic health promotion through architecture. She is also interested in the role of embodiment and the application of neuroscience in urban design and architecture to improve human performance, use, and expe-rience in the built context.
Mr Owen Cafe is a proud Whadjuk-Pindjarup man and Principal Landscape Architect at Blaklash Creative. He is also a sessional academic and affiliated researcher at Queensland University of Technology. He also teaches at the University of Queensland, and Melbourne University. Owen is passionately driven to improve environmental and cultural interfaces throughout the community, with a focus on First Nations perspectives. Coming from a diverse professional background in Photography, Graphic Design, Higher Education Teaching and Landscape Archi-tecture, Owen has developed a holistic approach to spatial design driving positive outcomes for Indigenous communities and environments now and into the future.
Dr Shannon Satherley is a tertiary educator with over 20-years’ experience in the design and delivery of teaching across undergraduate and postgraduate built environment spatial design programs. A visual artist as well as a Registered Landscape Architect, Dr Satherley has taught design studios incorporating creative arts methods in partnerships with various organisations, and is currently working primarily to incorporate Indigenous Australian perspectives into her teach-ing. Her research broadly concerns the scholarship of teaching, specifically creative arts approaches to spatial design and the pedagogy of authentic design learning; and the intersections between creative arts practice and landscape theories.
1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Thursday 12th June, 2025