Valuing “Under the House”: Women’s Knowledge and the Architectural History of the Stumped Queensland House

The paper offers a gendered reading of the uses of “under the house” in the raised Queensland house and in contrast to emphasised material and climatic narratives, highlights the value women placed on the everyday use of interstitial housing space under the Queensland house “between the stumps” and beneath the floorboards. There is emphasis on the socio-cultural importance women placed on these informal housing spaces for domestic activities. The paper draws on Australian textual records, re-considers women’s occupation and the implications of this as a rereading of Queensland’s “vernacular” architecture.

Redefining architecture to accommodate cultural difference: designing for cultural sustainability

The Architectural Science Review piece combines ideas about the nature and interrelation of culture and architecture that have preoccupied researchers at the Aboriginal Environments Research Centre (University of Queensland), analysing the living environments of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The article draws a number of examples from the analyses of Aboriginal Australian built environments to illustrate their points.