National Trust of Australia (NSW)

Suburbia

A Conference
25 February 2002

The Contributors

Mahalath Halperin runs an award-winning architectural practice based in Armidale, north-west NSW, with a strong focus on ESD related issues. Working on both domestic and commercial projects, she travels throughout regional NSW, servicing a diverse culture of clients, organisations and communities. Active within the NSW RAIA Chapter and Country Division, assorted state government roles have also led to involvement with regional planning and needs, embracing not only the built environment but also business, economic and ecological issues. Mahalath Halperin has not only won many architectural and design awards, but also several Small Business awards.

Dr Tony Recsei is President Of Save Our Sydney Suburbs Inc, and is an environmental consultant. He has a B.Sc. Chemistry and Zoology from Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, a Masters degree in Eng. Sc. in Waste Management, and a PhD in Civil Engineering from University of New South Wales. Dr Recsei has a commercial pilot's licence, and is Past President of the Royal Aero Club of New South Wales. He is chairman of the Turramurra Zone Salvation Army Red Shield collection, and a committee member of Sydney Mozart Society.

Ian Latham is a barrister and councillor on Canterbury Council.

Tanja Dreher is a researcher at the Institute for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney and teaches media studies atthe University of Technology Sydney. Tanja's research focuses on representations of Sydney's western suburbs and cultural diversity. She maintains an active involvement in community media projects.

Paul Graham is a Cultural Planner, Fairfield City Council

Joanna Besley is a post graduate student in the Department of Architecture, University of Queensland studying home improvement and home renovation in Brisbane suburbs. She has worked as a researcher in the fields of housing, cultural heritage, public art and community consultation.

Meredith Walker is a conservation practitioner, Heritage Futures, former president of Australia ICOMOS, and a conservation activist. She has had a long-term involvement in heritage management including community-based identification programmes.

Noni Boyd is Conservation Architect, she is a member of the Historic Buildings Committee of the National Trust and is currently undertaking a PHD at RMIT in Melbourne. Her topic involves a study of the contemporary influences on the work of the former NSW Government Architect Walter Liberty Vernon.

Trevor Creighton is based in Canberra with 20 years experience as a visual artist. He is a commercial photographer and teacher, currently teaching part-time at the Canberra Institute of Technology and at the Canberra School of Arts Photomedia Department, Australian National University, while pursuing his interests as a practising visual artist Over the past several years his photography has revolved around themes of placement and displacement as shown in his exhibition Familiar Surroundings?, completed as part of a Master of Creative Arts Degree at the University of Wollongong in 1999. The frames of reference for this and other projects on which he has been working have been largely domestic and suburban. The intent has been to attempt to portray the 'ordinary' and otherwise ignored spaces in which we dwell and the objects with which we evidence habitation as worthy of the scrutiny normally reserved for those objects and spaces which are generally thought to be 'extraordinary'. This is, in part, a reaction against what he came to see as our society's self-denying obsession with exotica, particularly as this obsession is in evidence in advertising and magazine culture - of which he was once a part.

Sue Webber is a Masters candidate in Cultural Heritage Management at the University of Canberra, currently researching, Houses as sites of Memory. She holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Local and Applied History from the University of New England, 2000. Museum Assistant, Lanyon Homestead, ACT Historic Places, Cultural Facilities Corporation. From a childhood fascination with other people's houses she became a regular contributor to Country Style magazine which gave her an opportunity to visit a wide variety of homes and talk to their owners about them. As a migrant to Australia she was acutely aware of the limited choice of objects and photographs she could bring to her new home. These objects symbolise her grandparents, her parents and the houses of her childhood. Now as a student of history and historic places she has an opportunity to develop an insight into other people's relationships with the past through the triggers to memory offered by houses, objects, smells, tastes and touch.

Nancy Cushing is Lecturer in History at the University of Newcastle's Central Coast Campus. As a cultural historian, she has published on topics including the beach, holiday making and perceptions of Newcastle. Her current project takes a broad view of the history of the Pacific Highway as a modernist project and an ongoing site for the expression of Australian culture.

Dr Richard Griffiths, MSc, MA, PhD, studied Resource Management at Edinburgh University, where he won the Institute of Ecology and Resource Management Prize for his dissertation on urban agriculture. He has taught Environmental Ethics at the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University. At the time of writing he is about to move with his family to the Blue Mountains.

Sheila Owen is currently a doctoral research student in the Department of Town and Regional Planning, University of Sheffield, U.K. Her research focuses on the negotiation of housing change at the local level. Prior to coming to Sheffield, she was a Policy Officer/Researcher for the National Assembly for Wales in Cardiff. Sheila Owen will present the paper which was jointly written by John Hughes.

John Hughes is a Lecturer in the Department of Town and Regional Planning at the University of Sheffield, U.K. His teaching and research specialisms are in housing. He has undertaken research for the Economic and Social Research Council, the Department of Local Government, Transport and the Regions and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, among others.

Click here to see Preliminary Conference Program