Computing, Craft, Climate and Country

27 May 2025

Words by Dave Pigram, Iain (Max) Maxwell, Jo Paterson Kinniburgh, and Shannon Foster

This article explores the productive synergies between design for climate and design for Country, and the ways that computation can contribute meaningfully. Our context is a world experiencing multiple crises (climate, biodiversity loss, equity) and a discipline (architecture) that has historically reinvented itself by embracing the transformative potential demanded (and offered) by such challenges. We frame these lesser discussed use cases of computation via three case studies: a robotic re-enactment of a place-based craft, a system of earth-cast vaults, and a pavilion constructed from minimally processed tree forks.

We position our supermanoeuvre+bangawarra collaborations, which are culturally led by Dr Shannon Foster (D鈥檋arawal eora knowledge holder and traditional owner), as hopeful moves towards an Architecture with Country1, wherein we attempt to hold the multi-dimensional physico-spiritual entities of Country as agents, within a compromised context (competition timelines, colonial briefs, designated locations).

Algorithms, like story, hold knowledge.

GADI-DJUGAMA

Gadi-Djuguma is a proposal for a large-scale public sculpture, a supermanoeuvre+bangawarra collaboration with Indigenous artist Lucy Simpson (Yuwaalaraay). From the Dharawal-eora, Gadigal and Dharug word for dilly bag 鈥� Djuguma positions an ancient and culturally specific stitching technique as a multi-scalar interlocutor: articulating the specific local entanglements of cultural practice, language, being, creative action, collectivity, and intergenerational sustainability with Country. The work offers
a feminist perspective of the Djuguma and the nature of holding the objects, stories, knowledge and language of place. On Gadi Country, women are the keepers of knowledge and are culturally responsible for its sustainable transmission to future generations through concomitant practices of making and sharing 鈥� whereby ancestral stories are disseminated, as string is twisted, and artefacts unfold.

It is the double-twisted looping technique of the Djuguma that differentiates it from cultural practices and woven objects found in other regions of Australia and is an example of the way that craft tacitly couples Country with material, cultural expression, and technique within an open, creative, and skilled system.

Algorithms, like story, hold knowledge. Here, the twists of the Djuguma are emulated within the generative logics of code (Python programming language). Beyond geometry, our computational framework also choreographs the linear displacements and rotational movements that attempt to replicate the Aunties鈥� fingers through a Kuka KR120HA industrial robot arm equipped with a linear-actuated gripper end effector and interfaced to a floor mounted collet-gripper and rebar cutter. Figure, form and process entangle in a hopeful forgery of cultural practice. The resulting stitches, envisaged in copper, mild steel, stainless steel, and bronze rod, aggregate into rings that figuratively suggest a future where we might tie cultural stories and architecture together with Country.

The outcome contributes steps towards an architecture that creates not just on Country but with and within Country.

GIBBAGUNYA: SUPERNATURAL VAULTS

Earth breathes, albeit at a lower frequency than we do. Slow, deep living vibrations. Breath of Country fans the misguided urban heat islands of subdivision development. In the hottest (and getting hotter) part of Sydney during a climate emergency, how might earth-coated alveoli nested under the surface of Country open up the capacity of Country to breathe and for people to shelter among the inhalations. Such spaces increase a city鈥檚 passive survivability (an urban equity concept championed by UTS professor Leena Thomas). GibbaGunya means a rock or stone home and was part of a competition proposal for Bradfield Central Park completed by supermanoeuvre+Bangawarra within a broader collaboration with Arcadia Landscape Architecture whereby cave-like spaces afford the possibility to retreat into shade and cool during heat waves.

In the design, an interconnected chain of thin shell vaults forms indoor/outdoor spaces constructed from sprayed earth-formed concrete which retains layers of soil on its surface. Concrete is responsible for approximately 8% of global carbon emissions. Conventional approaches to concrete formwork privilege labour-cost-reduction yielding significant material and embodied carbon overuse (often over 70%). Deploying structurally informed doubly curved geometries and on-site earth as the formwork for thin sprayed concrete2, the project radically reduces embodied carbon, concrete and waste. Once cured, the earth-mound formwork is excavated leaving an imprint (colour and texture): a trace of Country that celebrates the strata, the geological layers and the story of sediment and erosion over deep time. Minimising the impacts of extraction beyond the immediate site follows the fundamental Aboriginal ethic of Caring for Country and especially avoids disrupting the Country of other nations3. The removed earth is redistributed atop the vaults creating a second set of elevated public landscapes that increase biodiversity, canopy cover, thermal efficiency and contribute a myriad of systemic benefits provided by plants. The outcome contributes steps towards an architecture that creates not just on Country but with and within Country.

Honouring the whole of the tree, by caring for parts that are currently wasted, cares for Country and the sacred nature of the peacekeepers.

WADIWADI: TREE-CANOPY BIFURCATIONS

Operating through the framework that Country provides, the Wadiwadi prototype assembles minimally-processed, locally-harvested tree forks and demonstrates the potential for the careful use of super local material streams. The forks here, were sourced from the sacred Dharawal peacekeeper Boo鈥檃ngi, aka Eucalyptus Punctata [Grey gum] endemic to eastern New South Wales.

Extractive colonial forestry practices privilege uniformity. Unique, sacred peacekeeper trees are converted into standardised rectangular profiles by discarding approximately 60% of the timber, including 100% of the forks. Timber construction typically employs one of two connecting strategies: relatively complex carved joints or generic steel connectors. The first is labour intensive while the second is carbon intensive. Using naturally grown forks for all bifurcating joints leaves only simple straight connections while taking advantage of natural grain alignments and the impressive structural performance inherent in trees. Honouring the whole of the tree, by caring for parts that are currently wasted, cares for Country and the sacred nature of the peacekeepers.

Wadiwadi employs a digital springs model to hang a network of Y-shaped tree-fork models selected from an inventory of scanned pieces. Using a genetic algorithm framework, outcomes are assessed for structural performance, kink-angle, and wastage. A process literally repeated thousands of times with promising outcomes bred with each other in an approach based on evolutionary improvement. Any project鈥檚 ultimate form can be inextricably anchored to Country through the geometry of the underlying tree forks, each indexing the soil, wind and geological qualities of their place, as well as the sacred nature of each component.

However, computation like any methodology that has emerged from the upper echelons of privilege, can鈥檛 deliver listening and cultural sensitivity inherent in human collaboration.

Our collaborations point to the possibility that computation, despite its unlikely artificial and high-tech underpinnings, has the potential to offer a valuable medium through which design can reacquaint itself with matters of culture, material and Country through its ability to encode craft-based knowledge and to support operating with increasing orders of material volatility.

However, computation like any methodology that has emerged from the upper echelons of privilege, can鈥檛 deliver listening and cultural sensitivity inherent in human collaboration. This is the place where the future of Indigenous-computational collaborations will either become something truly extraordinary or, if not enacted with cultural respect and co-design, mere tokenistic cultural inputs for an algorithm. As a collaborative team we are hopeful that we can serve mattering, respect and care while we simultaneously counter the need to homogenise material in the industrial economy, and point to a return to making places, spaces and objects that provide a better fit for people, purpose and planet.

Notes
1. S Foster and Paterson Kinniburgh, J (2018). Architecture with Country. Presentation to the Myer Foundation Placemaking Symposium, Melbourne, VIC.

2. Unlike the recent example by Juniya Ishigami, these earth-cast forms were to be realised as sprayed thin-shell vaults, not massive volumes cast in-situ with flat tops.

3. This ethic mirrors Mahatma Gandhi鈥檚 challenge to Laurie Baker to build only with materials within a five-mile radius (8 kilometres) from a given project鈥檚 site. The contradiction inherent in the distant extraction of concrete ingredients is acknowledged by the authors as yet unsolved.

Dave Pigram
invents new design and material systems to produce memorable experiences and climate positive outcomes. He is co-director of the architecture and innovation practice supermanoeuvre and associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney. A pioneer in algorithmic architecture and robotic fabrication, his work has been widely exhibited internationally.

Iain (Max) Maxwell
is an architect, educator and researcher known for design-led approaches to decarbonising construction. He is co-director of the architecture and innovation practice supermanoeuvre and associate professor at the University of Canberra. His work is in the permanent collections of the FRAC Orleans and the Powerhouse Museum.

Jo Paterson Kinniburgh
is director and co-founder of Bangawarra. Former director of Education for Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Landscape Architecture at UTS, together with Shannon, she has led Connecting with Country undergraduate and Masters design studios since 2015. Descended from people enslaved under colonisation, she dedicates her work to honouring Country.

Dr Shannon Foster
is a D鈥檋arawal-eora (Sydney) Knowledge Keeper, Sydney Registered Traditional Owner, and director and co-founder of Bangawarra. An interdisciplinary creative practitioner focusing on research, development and delivery of Indigenous cultural design, Shannon is inspired by her Elders to work for generations of Knowledge Keepers who will emerge after her.