Victoria Square/Tarntanyangga: Productive friction: (Re)making Tarntanyangga/Victoria Square and other essays in edited monograph

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: Prof Sue Anne Ware (RMIT) and Prof Gini Lee (University of Melbourne) commissioned 17 essays by local and international writers, academics and curators and designers for Making Sense of Landscape, an illustrated book that celebrates the work of the award-winning landscape architecture firm Taylor Cullity Lethlean (TCL). Prof Ware wrote 3 sole-authored essays in the collection (on Victoria Square, National Arboretum and Australian Garden) and 5 editorial statements (co-authored with Gini Lee). RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: In 2013, TCL won the World Architecture Festival landscape of the year for Australia Garden, Cranboure (stage 2). Ware's engagement with TCL's work includes 'Site thinking', an essay that situates Australia Garden into its historical context, a 'time of awakening' for landscape architecture in Australia and a time of intense political debates on Australian history and national identity. Likewise, Ware's essay on Tarntanyangga/Victoria Square - the first place in Australia to fly the national Aboriginal flag (1971) - also examines the politcs of place-making. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: 'Making sense of landscape', the edited monograph in which Sue Ann Ware's essays and editorials appear, has received wide peer review locally and internationally. It has been reviewed in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald (Megan Backhouse, 'Zen and Now' 19 April 2014); The Australian (Stephen Brook, 12 April 2014) and Open Journal (12 May 2014). It featured on the highly regarded 'The Architects' show on Melbourne community radio station 3RRR (1 April 2014) and on 'The Plan' Radio Adelaide, Uni of Adelaide (19 Mar 2014). It has also been reviewed in by Edward Valauskas, curator rare books, Lenhardt Library, Chicago Botanic Garden (Chicago Botanic Garden, vol.16, no. 2, 2014) who described the book 'as a delightful collection of thought-provoking essays and delicious images', a 'homage to the values and creativity of Taylor Cullity Lethlean'.