Paul Memmott

Indigenous Cultural Landscape Research

Postgraduate proposals that examine the ways in which Indigenous people relate to and value significant places and cultural landscapes can be supervised. Such topics might extend into human geography, urban design, urban history, landscape architecture, town planning or cultural heritage. Topics may also relate to how buildings are but positioned into and expressed in this cultural landscape.

Indigenous spatial behaviours

Research topics can be supervised in relation to forms of spatial behaviours of Indigenous groups including in relation to customary land tenure, territoriality, setting theory, crowding and privacy cognitive space and people-environment transactional theory.

Indigenous Architecture Research

Postgraduate proposals that address Indigenous architectural problems can be supervised. Such proposals might apply to Indigenous housing design, procurement, policy or management. Proposals might also include post-occupancy evaluation. Non-housing topics might embrace the architectural needs of Indigenous people in correctional centres, courts, hospitals, schools or clinics. Another research area embraces Indigenous cultural centres and museums.

Other research topics on Indigenous architectural issues may relate to theories on customary behaviours, cultural change, cultural identity, material culture, architectural meaning and the role of tradition. Topics may pertain to either architect-designed buildings or vernacular buildings.

Spinifex Research

I was the Team Leader for a research project on Spinifex which was titled, ‘Towards Novel Biomimetic Building Materials: Evaluating Aboriginal and Western Scientific Knowledge of Spinifex Grasses’, 2008-2013, which was the first multi-disciplinary study of spinifex in Australia with three key original contributions. PhD scholars are welcomed who can extend this research into bio-architectural and bio-material applications.

1. New Applications of Aboriginal knowledge: Our partnership is with the Myuma Group who are the Aboriginal Traditional Owners of the Camooweal/Upper Georgina River basin, and who contributed their environmental steward-ship and ethics, their regional Aboriginal geographic knowledge, and human and infrastructure resources. Our project, through a series of published papers and culminating in a museum exhibition, drew together all of the Aboriginal knowledge on spinifex and its uses from the diverse ethnographic sources. We then applied this ethnographic knowledge to broader exploratory investigation of spinifex properties.

2. New plant knowledge: Using electron-microscopy we prepared cross-sections of grass leaves from all 69 species in the Triodia genus. Pronounced differences in leaf anatomy generated a division into 42 ‘hard’ species with stronger fibres, and 27 ‘soft’ species with weaker fibres but having a resin yielding capacity. Hard spinifex species appear to have double the photosynthetic capacity of soft species with stomata located on both the outer and inner surfaces of the folded leaves, as well as larger bundles of fibres for extra rigidity. Soft species have photosynthetic features restricted to inside of leaf only, but have resin secreting cells. Evolutionary modeling of species diversification during the Miocene and Pliocene climate changes has been developed using DNA analysis. We also addressed the different modes of spinifex reproduction and propagation (seeds, runners, re-sprouts), including the ecological relevance of wildfires. We operated on the premise that spinifex materials would have a unique morphology owing to the fact that Triodia is a xerophyte (arid-area plant requiring little water) which could be expected to display different properties to mesic plant species (moderate water content) from which most biomaterials are derived.

3. New material inventions: Our bio-engineering team (material engineers, chemists, botanists, architects, Aboriginal consultants) developed techniques for separating plant fibres and resin, and profiled spinifex resin chemistry (a mixture of volatile and nonvolatile terpenoid and secondary compounds: belonging to the thermoplastic class of bio-polymers). Within a low-tech to high-tech spectrum of possible applications, a variety of products were researched ranging from shade roofs, evaporative cooling walls, spinifex reinforced-earth walls and slabs, spinifex insulation batts (all at the low-tech end), to nanowhisker paper, resin to replace urea formaldehyde, coatings that may have anti-termite and ultra-violet screening capacities, bio-composite materials of fibre and resin, polymer derivatives and nano-fibrillated spinifex cellulose (patented) (at the high-tech end). Although few, if any plant resins have been used to generate commercial polymers, our research indicates potential for both Triodia resin and fibres as potential building blocks for renewable polymers and/or composite materials. One particular interest is the exudation cycle of the resin on the surface of the soft spinifex species and whether it functions to protect against excessive moisture loss from its spongy storage mass, whilst simultaneously allowing an osmotic process of gas exchange for photosynthesis; an ongoing subject of one of our PhD students.