Essay On Australian Identity

It was only a semester ago when I took part in a design studio named “Australia House” at University of Melbourne. This particular studio discussed and questioned what Australian identity was, and most importantly how this identity could be portrayed through current means of architecture. Through a series of researches into this topic, students tried to come up with a single definition on what Australian identity was, especially on a cultural level. However, we all could not agree more but to conclude on a note that Australian identity wasn’t defined, but is shown through various cultures becoming unified in one nation.

Although I have had Australian citizenship for almost 10 years, I still cannot erase my cultural background of being Korean. Living in between the two cultures definitely influenced me during my studies in architecture, and this sense of experiencing multiculturalism in Australia became strongly apparent to me. This interest in multiculturalism then led me to inquire how cultural identity can influence our architectural design, and primarily, how a building can depict not just one, but a “collective identity” of multiple cultures.

He later mentions that the most important thing in architecture is the adaptive process that architects need to go through, including the environmental responses as well as consideration of the inhabitants’ needs. Thus, if the building is to be designed by an architect of a different race, it does not mean that it cannot be defined as Australian. Rather, it is this process of negotiating the insertion of other cultural modes into the existing Australian context that possibly leads our architecture to be defined as having multicultural