Overview

"Personal, philosophical, and conceptual essays by an Australian architect, on the meaning of ""home"" and ""place,"" on architecture in Australia, houses for Aboriginal people, Australian history, her personal connection with Aboriginal red dirt country, all centering around the Hojoki, an early Japanese text on the human-sized house, and on the metaphorical meaning of a number of Japanese characters."

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9781736525869

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Reviews

An enjoyable and illuminating read, Gillian Barlow's, The Hojoki: Re-membered is a rhizoma-tic memoir exploring a multifaceted journey of coming home to oneself. From a series of transliterated extractions of the Japanese literary classic, Hojoki: The Ten Foot Square Hut which wax somehow both profound and whimsical, Barlow explores everything from the architectural value of the verandah, to a flash of childhood memory, to aboriginal housing projects, travel misadventures, aikido, gardening, and an accounting of her own heritage. These zuihitsu-styled juxtapositions wend a scenic route into her discovery of what is truly needed: a feeling of 'home' in architecture, in language, in the body, in red dirt country, despite vast uncertainty, and in connection with everything else. - Carrie Nassif, author of lithopaedian (forthcoming from Finishing Line Press) This text is a patchwork of interwoven stories from many diverse settings and standpoints. As a reader you are instantly captured by the gentle and yet highly informative channelling that takes you on a journey through the translating of Japanese kanji and hiragana into photos of Aboriginal housing, poetics, brave literacy encounters that are in no way mundane. Let me explain. As an architect I am required to translate your word into a 2 dimensional representation, the plan...' This book takes you into the 3 dimensions of good and sad, strong and vulnerable encounters. I could not put this down. - Professor Juanita Sherwood Jumbunna UTS, and CDU. There is nothing else quite like the trip this text takes us on as it morphs kaleidoscopically from genre to genre, taking us on a tour through personal essay, story, road trip and reflection. Constructing the novel prism of an invented method of translation from a language and a script unknown to the writer, it keeps opening unsuspected new optics - conflicting cultural and political and personal perspectives on home, house and housing. As it does so it questions what it means to practice architecture while on the move through new terrains in which ideas of settlement are the source of radical unsettlement. - Anna Gibbs, Adjunct Professor at Western Sydney University

Author Information

Gillian Barlow is a writer and registered architect. She has had stories published in a variety of journals. She has a PhD from the Writing and Society Group, University of Western Sydney. Her exegesis was on Aboriginal housing from which this book emerged. For most of her career, she has worked in housing and health, particularly Aboriginal housing and primary health buildings as well as in disability housing. She has written guidelines as to how to do these. She was awarded a Gold Premier's Award for her work with Communities on an Employment and Training Program. She was selected and attended twice the residencies with A Room Of Her Own (AROHO) in New Mexico, USA. In 2019, she was a writing fellow at Can Serrat, Catalonia and will again stay at Can Serrat in October, 2022. She lives in Sydney, Australia, with her partner where she works as a researcher on cultural safety and a range of First Nations' projects. She continues to train in aikido.

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