Habitus Magazine | Issue 13

In June, I was lucky enough to be invited to join a ‘camping’ expedition to the Pilbara in the north-west of Western Australia. The team included New Zealand designer, David Trubridge and local designers, Adam Cruickshank (see the story on Adam and Amber Ward in this issue of Habitus, p.71) and Nick Statham. All three are associated with FORM, the Perth-based cultural advocacy and research organisation who also run the Midland Atelier, a stunning adaptive re-use of the local railway workshops providing design studios and exhibition spaces.

FORM organised the trip to see how these designers would respond to the unbelievable landscape of the Pilbara. After a lot of rain, the landscape revealed a wonderful range of green tones set off against the blazing red earth infused with iron oxide. The Hammersley Range rises out of the ruggedly beautiful desert-like plains – flat until they reach the edge of one of the sensational gorges which have a sheer drop of hundreds of metres down to tropical garden paradises.

The idea was to see how these designers responded to place – but a place utterly different from the urban spaces they normally inhabit. In fact, one was reminded of what place actually is without the filter of urban space with all its activity.

Of course, the urban experience is also one of place, resonating with physical and cultural inheritance, along with a rich tapestry of continuous haptic experience. But the city is noisy – not just literally, but also metaphorically. Noise is notoriously hard to define, but essentially, it is something which gets in the way of pure, unmediated experience.

Out in the Pilbara, there is no noise – except for the sound of silence. Here, the landscape seems to breathe. There is apparently no noise, and yet almost imperceptibly this landscape has a breath.

But, of course, there is no metaphorical noise, either. There is nothing to get between you and the experience of this place. Here one is not just in a space, one becomes part of space itself. In fact, it is almost frightening because there is the sense that one is about to de-materialise and become a part of this place – a feeling captured brilliantly years ago in the film Walkabout, directed by the English director, Nicholas Roeg.

You can make what you will of these reflections. But they are meant as a reminder that Habitus (both the magazine and the concept of habitus) is about place and how place shapes us and our response to living in this world.

We inherit place and, in our turn, help to further shape that place through the dwellings we design and things we put in them to create a home. Art is often important in placemaking. So, in this issue we have given art some prominence, exploring some of the many ways it gives expression to who we are.

PAUL MCGILLICK | EDITOR