Introduction

The importance of reciprocal relationships between place and people has become more urgent as increasingly short-term approach to building, and realities of climate change and our effects on planet compound over time. Most urban environments are built in this mean-spirited, exploitative, and transactional way, as fast means for people with no real connection to place to extract short-term economic value. The separation of design and construction production systems, dispersed multiple global material supply chains, and the economic and physical separation of projects from each other all artificially sever connections to underlying ecologies and frustrate ecological design. The interrelationships of Indigenous people to land and places, and the associated sensitivity of Indigenous practices to their ecological contexts is one theme. Our architecture and design processes affect other projects and contexts in their making, over their lifespan, and beyond. We can evolve how we design and build to recognise, respond to, and connect to the ecological communities we are integral with.