A reflection on Naarm-Melbourne’s relationship with Birrarung-Yarra
By Christina Garbi
Punt Road - Richmond, Christina Garbi
Birrarung Parliament
Naarm-Melbourne is a spongy flood-prone city, shaped by the narratives of Birrarung-Yarra. The relationship with water is nuanced and transcends multiple scales, from a dripping tap, to flood mitigation systems and large-scale water management of its living watercourses. Architects in Naarm-Melbourne develop design interventions within and around these scales. Reflecting on the past and present histories of Birrarung-Yarra may help with the development of holistic and sustainable proposals that consciously give back to Country and activate the water’s edge. Non-human living entities have adapted to thrive with the natural rhythms of water, red-gum trees rely on periodic flooding for survival. Architects in Naarm-Melbourne should follow suit and develop designs and systems that work with instead of against water.
The Wilip-gin Birrarung murron - Yarra River Protection Act was established in 2017 to rehabilitate the Birrarung and safeguard a sustainable future, acknowledging the implications of an expanding population and climate change. Co-titled in Traditional Owner language, the Act marks a pivotal point in Australian history. This co-titling already begins to address the significance of literary representation in conveying value, relationships and custodianships. The act which in the Traditional Owner language translates to “keep Birrarung alive” aims to represent the River as “a single, living entity”, inseparable from its Source, Mouth and Lands. In the rest of the article, watery landscapes of the River will be referred to as ‘Hydro-scapes’, Naarm-Melbourne will be referred to as Naarm, and the Birrarung-Yarra as Birrarung.
The Birrarung Council, an independent statutory body supported by Traditional Owner representatives, was also established to help coordinate the Act and ensure a representation of the River in government. With the help of Melbourne Water Corporation, the Council provides the Victorian government an annual report on the management of the River and its Lands. From the latest report released in October 2023, it is evident that one of the greatest challenges the Council still faces includes helping institutional frameworks interpret and understand the River as a single living entity. This comes as no surprise. Legislative frameworks since the 19th century supported radical modifications of the Hydro-scapes of Naarm, treating Rivers as resources and commodities for exploitation, “all in the name of progress: for agriculture, for subdivisions, for infrastructure” (Bertram, Murphy, 2019, p82). These colonial legislative frameworks are deeply embedded in both conscious and subconscious attitudes to hydro-scapes. The report suggests that Responsible Public Entities, such as Melbourne Water, need to “work on articulating their current organisational relationship with the River and their aspirations for what a good relationship with the River should be, and then develop actions for achieving a good relationship” (Birrarung Council, 2023, p22).
Birrarung has historically been stained as “the number one drain”, further reducing its value to an inanimate depository, with connotations to waste and disposal. This further disconnects us from the River. Addressing the River as a living entity helps us reconnect with it by forming an active relationship with both the River and our environment. We often address nature as a separate entity to us, failing to recognise that it is a part of us, and after all, outlives us all. A dialogue with the River and its Lands would encourage us to consider a time-scape where we “greet it”, “ask permission”, and “do things with it instead of on it” (NGV, Birrarung Council, 2024). Through an Indigenous Australian and multidisciplinary-architectural lens of Vibrant Hapticity, we may begin to composite a framework that reflects on our relationships with the River on multiple scales, to ultimately foster a great sense of belonging.
Vibrant Birrarung, Vibrant Hapti-City
Interpreting our experience of the physical world through the haptic sense transforms our experiences into tangible and material dimensions. The haptic and therefore physical manifestations of experience can be measured and analysed, allowing us to look for vibrant patterns, sequences and relationships. This provides us an opportunity to thoroughly understand our surrounding physiography and therefore help us develop sensible and sustainable interventions. Representation through hapticity also draws reference to the aboriginal texture-based dot-painting artwork, a symbolic and spatial arrangement of dots which capture the vibrancy of matter and place.
Vibrancy acknowledges a vitality in both animate and inanimate matter, correlating as a consequence of one another (Bennett, 2010, p6). Vibrant Hapticity begins to depict tangible relationships between matter. These relationships transcend multiple scales, connecting our environments and experiences. Vibrant Hapticity can be understood through four scales, expanding from Paul Rodaway’s Sensuous Geographies: global, imagined, reach, and extended (Rodaway, 1994, p48-54). Global Haptic “is the presence of the body in a context, a sense of itself within a world”, ultimately a holistic sense and awareness of being and existing. Imagined Haptic is the movement of tectonic space, and forms an emotional connection with the surroundings, stimulated by “experience rooted in the memory and expectation” and a sense of belonging through tangible relationships. Reach Haptic is the intention touch of the immediate physical surroundings, which can provide a sense of security, comfort and joy. Extended Haptic is the touch of space through another medium, such as tools, systems, interventions and technology.
Watercourses are examples of the physical manifestations of the Vibrant Hapticity of place, connecting landscapes, ecosystems and cultures over fluid time-scapes. Discovering our relationship with Birrarung through the four scales of Vibrant Hapticity may help us recognise that we are all part of one living entity. Naarm is a vibrant city carved from haptic-historic watercourses, a Vibrant Hydro-Hapti-City.
Artwork titled “Birrarung, River of Mist and Shadows, Earthy” by Simone Thomson, a Melbourne based Aboriginal artist and Traditional Owner of Victoria's Woi-Wurrung Wurundjeri and Yorta-Yorta language groups
A Framework for a Vibrant Hydro-Hapti-City
- Identifying our relationship with Birrarung
The draft framework attempts to provide a platform to uncover our relationship with Birrarung, using and expanding from the four scales of Vibrant Hapticity, to ultimately aid architects and institutional frameworks, realising the River as an equal living entity.
Birrarung’s Global Haptic: A Greater Sense of Being, Becoming
- Reflecting on a wider contextualized time-scape
Birrarung covers 242 km from Mount Baw Baw in the Yarra Ranges through to Port Phillip Bay, with 30% of its course running through Naarm metropolitan areas. The River’s catchment areas include 2450 hectares of green space, and provides refuge to over two million people (Victoria State Government, 2017, p2). Naarm’s water supply comes from 10 major reservoirs along several watercourses with integrated aqueducts, dams and pipe-track systems, with 70% provided by Birrarung. Whilst Birrarung also supports the local economy through facilitating industries of agriculture and tourism, it provides habitats for various native aquatic wildlife, most notably for eels which carry a historic Indigenous Australian cultural significance. The eel migration journey becomes a global vibrant haptic, recording and connecting Victoria matter with Oceania, Asia and South America. This alone realises the wider implications of local River uses and conditions which thread through a deep time-scape. Deep time operates on geological and cosmic viscous rates of deep-structure, a rate so slow humans at large disregard it (Bertram, Murphy, 2019, p44).
Architects and urban planners struggle to operate with consideration to the deep time rates of global hapticity, at large relying on data from tangible social history. Social history, which records human patterns and footprints on surface structure, shifts at human-generational speeds (Bertram, Murphy, 2019, p44-45). Within the context of Birrarung, we can work with a consideration to deep time implications through the lens of Indigenous Australian Culture and water(ways). Indigenous Australian Culture, which predates all human living cultures, operates directly with the rhythms of nature, where humans are considered to equally co-exist as one physical living haptic with the natural world. Water(ways), which “does not decay, breakdown or decompose” (Bertram, Murphy, 2019, p47) provides a tangible connection between natural and urban geomorphologies through the water cycle, inheriting a trans-time-scape relationship with the environment. Operating with consideration to both time-scape rates, through collaboration with Traditional Owners and working with, instead of against, water(ways), can help develop sustainable proposals which transform a Hydro-Indigenous-Scape circular economy. At an urban scale, we may develop urban proposals and policy frameworks inspired by the rhythms of the water cycle, that simultaneously respect the social histories and cultural relationships with the River and its Lands. At an architectural scale, architects may consider encouraging clients to engage with Traditional Owners at an early design stage, therefore influencing site, orientation and view lines, whilst celebrating drainage strategies to inform the design.
Birrarung’s Imagined Haptic: Movement of Space: Stimulating a Sense of Belonging
– Reflecting on the spatial values of hydro-scapes
Topophilia, “the array of emotional bonds between place and people” through attitudes and perceptions of the environment, leads to people’s sense of belonging and attachment to place (Presland, 2009, p230). Lived experience of place, with its multi-sensory data of histories and memories, transforms spaces to places of value, forming ‘a sense of place’.
A ‘sense of place’ becomes a tangible imagined haptic when we associate our experiences with specific spatial conditions and forms. The spatial conditions offered by Birrarung and its Hydro-scapes have been valued for various reasons throughout the course of history. For Indigenous Australian communities, streams not only offered a mineral, fresh water and material supply, but they also provided social-spatial implications as boundaries dividing different inhabitation language groups. Clans often also “identified themselves by reference to a local landscape feature” (Presland, 2009, p205). The Indigenous Australian lifestyle responded to and worked with the rhythms of the seasons which dictated their spatial environments, for example, winter flooding of the river flats required retreat upland, allowing the River to naturally expand and contract. The Indigenous Australian communities also intervened with the Hydro-scapes for food supply, developing some of the world’s very first aquaculture systems using assembled volcanic rock for the farming of eels. Its success opened up trade routes beyond local needs, giving rise to permanent settlements of stone houses for the preservation of eels. The Hydro-scapes provide spaces of cultural significance for the Wurundjeri people, such as Coranderrk Station, Mount Lofty, and Brushy Creek confluence. The colonial and post-colonial relationship with the water’s edge is a little more complex, changing over time through a correlation between landscape type and social value.
Whilst freshwater supply also informed land dispersant for colonial settles, they viewed the Hydro-scapes as non-productive ‘eyesores’, impediments to both land and water transportation, “sources of disease and as threats to public health and sanitation” (Bertram, Murphy, 2019, p82). Flood and sediment-prone lowland zones by the water’s edge became industrialized zones, where noxious industries used the River for the dumping of waste. Over time, transcending the post-colonial era, the water’s edge has become highly desirable for its associated lifestyle and views. These hydro-sensitive zones requiring urban-renewal, provide “the opportunity to leverage new approaches to water and to reframe place through new understandings of old water and Naarm’s lowland swamp/ wetland systems” (Bertram, Murphy, 2019, p87). With the shift in the spatial value of the water’s edge, and an expanding population, these zones are also at risk of inappropriate private developments. Improving and expanding public access to the water’s edge is crucial to promote and maintain the river’s health and amenity, whilst fostering a communal sense of belonging through equal and shared access to the River. Architects may collaborate with, or be more engaged with the work of, landscape architects and urban designers, to develop proposals that celebrate a communal relationship with the River, offering new experiences of the River on multiple scales.
The Greenline Project, an urban and landscaping development opening up the urban water’s edge, will transform the north bank of Birrarung within central Naarm over a six phased construction process (City of Melbourne, 2024). The areas of the proposal that connect Birrarung to architectural developments, such as retail and hospitality, as well as recreational activities, will particularly increase community circulation through multifaceted engagement. A Vibrant Hydro-Hapti-City requires multidisciplinary collaboration to create developments that foster a greater sense of belonging with Hydro-scapes of Country, activating the water’s edge as the focal point of the city.
Birrarung’s Reach Haptic: Vibrant Body in Vibrant Space + Matter
– Reflecting on the physical processes of hydro-scape intervention
Pre-colonial Birrarung was found untamed, twisted, slow and viscous, clogged with woody debris from woodlands surrounding its soft and porous hydro-scapes of intermittent lagoons, creeks, swamps, grasslands and marshlands. To aid transportation and development for urban settlements and agriculture, the River was cleared of woody debris, dredged and drained, its course was redirected, channelized, and deepened, whilst its lands underwent clearing of vegetation and reclamation works. All these physical interventional processes can be distilled down to three modification methods of: extraction, insertion, and diversion. Understanding these physical processes we rely on may help us better understand the River’s physical needs, for balanced and sustainable interventions.
We perpetually find ourselves attempting to control waterways, convinced that we can determine them as stable and managed entities. Whilst we have developed largely successful water management systems, we often find that the rhythms of nature always find a way to retaliate. “A River that has overflowed its banks and deposited sediment at some time in the past, sooner or later will return for that sediment” (Presland, 2009, p227). As a result, we often experience the devastating effects of land inundation, such as in the flood plains of residential areas of Preston and Fairfield, and the resurgence of creeks flooding major urban areas, most notably the Elizabeth Street flood.
To understand the River’s retaliations and needs, we may consider looking into some examples of the consequences of extracting, inserting and redirecting. The extraction of woody debris implicates ecologies of insect and fish habitats which rely on its matter and pool formations for habitation. This can alter various vibrant food chains with widespread implications, especially when we consider the extent of eel migration routes. The extraction of vegetation, which is also often replaced with non-porous concrete and bitumen landscaping, causes flooding due to the increase in runoff rate into streams, causing additional land erosion, which often leads to the collapse of bridges. The insertion of dams and pipelines for the creation of reservoirs, recreational lakes and hydropower, an attempt to change naturally intermittent Hydro-scape qualities to permanent basins of storage, form unsustainable thirsty systems which require continuous filling using diversion works from existing natural Hydro-scapes. Irrigation management systems, utilising open channels to divert water and feed pasture and crop farmlands, further expand the ongoing environmental, political, and economic complexities of water management (Bertram, Murphy, 2019, p86).
The diversion and artificialisation of waterways impact flooding cycles, bank erosion, temperatures and aquatic populations. Water management systems also require extensive maintenance including the trimming of reeds, the redistribution of accumulated sediment and the diversion of waterways, both for collecting water and flooding mitigation. We may work towards decentralised water management through a series of local circular water systems, of sensitive and porous infrastructure. Whilst the scale of water management infrastructure doesn’t directly implicate the daily role of architects, decentralised water management reduces the scale of operation, therefore, offers architects the opportunity to be more engaged with the Hydro-ecosystem of place and inherent flood protection strategies.
Birrarung’s Extended Haptic: Sensing Vibrancy Through Interventions
– Listening to and respecting the rhythms and reverberations of hydro-scapes
Waterways consist of an ever changing Vibrant Hapticity, rhythmically etching the boundaries, shapes, contours and layers of topography. The intermittent nature of the watercourses can be explained through the presence and absence of sand, silt and alluvial deposits, a sort of haptic sound-scape, choreographed through rhythms of water and wind, forming sequences of erosion and sedimentation. These rhythms form a system that transcends legislative boundaries. The urban environment that surrounds or intervenes with these systems could also be considered as a living and vibrant ecosystem. A Vibrant Hydro-Hapti-City requires the development of interventions that are informed by data extending past its legislative metropolitan boundaries, therefore addressing the implications of its “industry, areas of food production, employment and residential accommodation in its hinterland” (Bertram, Murphy, 2019, p43-p44). As suggested by Openwork, a landscape architecture practice in Naarm, Birrarung could become autonomous and redefine administrative spatial boundaries, placing catchment areas at the heart of policy, planning, and development, redrawing mappings with Hydro-legislative edge conditions (NGV, Birrarung Council, 2024).
The permeability of the River and its Hydro-scapes could also inspire a permeability in the forms of urban systems. Inflexible concrete urban constructions are made to control water, rather than work with its rhythms, abruptly orchestrate its flows, requiring continuous maintenance (Choi, 2024). Whilst this might be necessary for extreme conditions, we may also consider a Vibrant Hydro-Hapti-City with additional porous localised designs. This would more effortlessly and effectively mitigate flooding throughout the year, absorbing and re-directing water using the rhythms of nature, whilst feeding surrounding vibrant ecologies. The urban systems could gradually distribute water through designing localised and layered nature-based solutions (Coastal Imaginaries, Venice Biennale 2023). Prioritising a Hydro-infrastructure would eventually lead to the development of local architecture that responds to the River. This architecture would require water to become a central aspect of the design process, incorporating adequate rainwater harvesting, grey water recycling. Drainage and ventilation design strategies would confidently inform the architectural experience.
Naarm is a Vibrant Hydro-Hapti-City with a multi-scaled haptic relationship with Birrarung, a narrative that unravels and transforms over a deep timescape. Through multidisciplinary collaboration, engagement with Traditional Owners, and celebrating designing with water and for Birrarung, architects can safeguard a vibrant and sustainable future for both the city and the River through a Hydro-Indigenous-Scape circular economy. The Reimagining Birrarung talk at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in May 2024 expanded on speculative design propositions to safeguard a sustainable future for Birrarung in a 50 year vision, through the help of several leading landscape architecture and design firms. From August 23rd 2024 until 2nd February 2025, further design proposals will be exhibited at the NGV.
NGV Facade, Christina Garbi
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Citation:
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Image credit:
Christina Garbi
Simone Thomson
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