Masters Research - Master of Philosophy / This exegesis is a supportive document to the Sculptural Installation works produced in response to a visual exploration of the tall timber forests of northern NSW. Personal lived experience of the forest environment underpins this investigation and adds to the final presentation of the creative works of art. This particular landscape in the valley of Tanban, Eungai Creek in the Nambucca Shire holds the marks and traces of past human endeavor and is one of many coastal forest sources of the magnificent timber tree – red cedar, and the mythic tales of cedar getters who worked the forests. This place of trees is imbued with memories deeply seated in the cultural identity of the region and is a site of conflict, survival and settlement. Past and present timber practices have left their mark and the landscape bears the scars. Today Indigenous peoples within the region are reclaiming once lost sacred sites within the forest landscape and the once contested forestry practices and blockades have made way for the preservation of old growth, rainforests and cultural sites of significance into reserves and national parks. The sculptural installation works presented here are a reflection of my personal connection to this landscape of trees and the deeply embedded histories the forest contains.

Environments that support physical activity (PA) engagement are now seen as an important part of the solution for accumulating daily physical activity which confers health benefits, particularly transport-related PA (TPA). Despite this recognition, understanding the determinants of health-related PA has traditionally focused on identifying associations between the social environment and non-specific PA domains. As such, prior to commencing this thesis little was known about the relationships between the built environment and overall PA engagement within the New Zealand context. Little was also known about associations between TPA attitudes and behaviours, and urban design. This research sought to overcome this paucity of knowledge by investigating associations between overall PA and TPA engagement and perceptions, health outcomes, urban design, and socio-demographic variables from a public health perspective. The body of research was initiated with two literature reviews that formed the context for the following six empirical chapters. Data in the empirical chapters were drawn from three self-report surveys using adult samples. The research commenced by examining associations between urban design and overall PA engagement, and then narrowed towards TPA-specific relationships. TPA relationships were identified through the development and implementation of a reliable survey that captured associated behaviours and attitudes. Several new findings were drawn from this body of work. Overall, 21% of adults recognised they could replace automobile journeys on at least two days per week, and walking was deemed an acceptable travel alternative. Adult TPA engagement levels were low; 7% commuted to place of work/study and 32% travelled to the convenience shop by TPA modes. Furthermore, when compared with those who commuted to an occupation by TPA, respondents who used motorised travel were less likely to be classified as active (odds ratio (OR)=0.5) and be of normal body mass index (OR=0.5). No significant health relationships existed for convenience shop travel. As well, 4% of adults reported no automobile availability. When this group was compared with those with unrestricted automobile availability, they were less likely to be classified as active (OR=0.3), but were more likely to engage in TPA modes to access destinations (occupation, OR=6.3; convenience shop, OR=9.8). Occupation-related commute distances also revealed interesting findings. Overall, 50% of respondents perceived they could, and 10% of the sample actually did, commute by TPA modes for distances less than five kilometres, and relationships were strongly mediated by distance. Other urban design variables were objectively assessed with TPA engagement for occupation-related commute distances less than five kilometres. Those who travelled along the most connected street networks were more likely to engage in TPA modes (OR=6.9) when compared with respondents travelling along the least connected networks. No relationships were found with other urban design variables and TPA engagement.This research substantially contributes to this research area by identifying associations between overall PA and TPA engagement and perceptions with urban design. It is likely that shifting the perceptions of adults who recognise they can employ TPA modes, into actual TPA engagement will result in promising population health gains. Future PA initiatives with adults should consider promoting walking for transport as a sustainable solution. A lack of TPA interventions is evident; however, methodological issues need to be resolved before developing such initiatives. Although strategies aimed towards changing perceptions may be valuable for future TPA interventions, it is likely macro-scale urban design modifications (e.g., improved job-housing balance, highly-grained street networks) and legislation (e.g., automobile restrictions) will have the greatest success for increasing TPA engagement in the adult population.

To design anything with lightness in mind is perhaps a contradiction in itself. To impose upon the designer such a factor from the outset of a brief surely creates a burden or limitation in the consideration of materials and form. However, the focus of this research project is to examine and apply lightness in a range of contexts or conditions. The aim is to explore the singularity of each condition; then to discuss the paradox and contradictions that are often present in new products that continue to predominate with a duplicitous emphasis on aesthetics and form. For the purpose of exploration of lightness, a series of products will be created to expose the paradox that exists in deploying a strategy such as lightness in singularity, without considering broader implication of product design on the environment, economy and society. These 3D outputs comprise the practice based component of this research, the balance to be a written exegesis. The genuine crisis of sustainable design is the need to design to construct a point of view on design - a paradoxically futile position that is directly linked to the challenge of engaging in true sustainable product design practice. This paradox will be investigated through a range of Sustainable Product Design strategies, examining the irony that exists in producing more goods and services to solve the problems of a world already oversupplied with the 'stuff' of humankind.

This thesis investigates Australian middle management teamwork in private and public sector organisations. The research sought to understand key teamwork variables previously overviewed in the literature, but never synthesised and substantially investigated. The main aim, and value, of the study is to bring greater clarity to business organisation teamwork in Australia by determining the variables that define teamwork, and creating a practical model for teams to manage their development. the research rests on a paradigm of post-positiveness, with a particular emphasis on critical realism.The main data collection methodology employed was a survey instrument. The selected paradigm of critical realism allowed a mixture of exploratory methods, and therefore team member focus group reviews were employed to triangulate and confirm the teamwork concepts extracted from the extant literature review. The results indicate that the research hypotheses were not all supported by the data. In general, the hypotheses logically theorised that people in the same teams in the same organisations shared the same attitude and effectiveness perception of their teams. This model could also be used to gain a first pass understanding of team success potential. It should be of assistance to operational management review team processes and human resource departments trying to decide if team members need specific help in the form of education, team member rotation or team member mix adjustment. The model may also help senior management individuals better understand the process required for successful middle management teamwork. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The study described in this report attempted to describe some high school classrooms in terms of such physical features as lighting, acoustics, thermal comfort, furniture design and spatial arrangements. It also sought to explore the possible associations between student seating preference and such "ecological features". The study first tried to confirm some previous research findings with regard to the existence of "zones of participation", associated with student personality traits including academic ability. The researcher then explored whether the "physical conditions" prevalent in classrooms were as much the determinants of student seating choice, as much as the student's personality traits and relationships with his peers and teachers. It further sought to confirm whether seat selection was consistent and to explore whether it was characterised by a range of factors which could be identified and classified. The study lastly aimed to obtain anecdotal data about the students' perceptions of their classroom environments. Information was obtained from one thousand and eighty-six completed questionnaires from students in years seven to ten, in two different types of classroom, in two separate high schools in the Australian Capital Territory. The results in general supported previous findings regarding associations between central and peripheral seating locations and a student's personality traits and academic achievement level. The results, furthermore, suggested some possible dependence upon the classroom's dimensions and opportunity for teacherstudent eye contact as a crucial factor in the relationship between seating location and student achievement level. The data further confirmed that a number of physical as well as social factors were determinants of a student's choice of seat. These factors were found to be consistently identifiable over various age groups, in different kinds of classroom, in different subject areas and between separate schools. The anecdotal data further established the degree of concern and importance attributed to the physical environment by the students.

The film script Mangrove is both an eco-warrior thriller with science fiction elements and a documentation of the quirky, multicultural milieu of 21st century Auckland. It deals with the issues surrounding experimentation with genetic engineering and human alienation and disability.The script references the tradition of New Zealand film and its development as a "cinema of unease" through the character of Nat, who lives as a "man alone" on a moored yacht, and through its setting in a desolate mangrove estuary adjacent to a suburban industrial estate. It features characters who are recent immigrants from varying cultures and offers insights to world views that contrast with the pessimistic colonial outlook on life that pits man against the environment in a struggle for domination.The title, Mangrove, is a metaphor for the rich human environment that can be found in outposts of society that are often maligned and overlooked for their perceived lack of value.Mangrove's main character, Talia, is a disabled woman whose desire is to be accepted for her difference, her insights and her humanity. She is confronted with her past and her origins that may be part of a late 20th century genetic experiment.She meets Nat, a former journalist hiding out from society who is searching for a way to express his idealism. Likewise, Shiva, an indo-Fijian living in a nearby car wreckers yard has a love of music and the environment and shares Nat's idealism and desire to work for a better world. The three uncover a potentially world-altering genetic experiment with sugar. The antagonist multinational has Russian mafia allies that have to be dealt with, while the protagonists have the assistance of some Thai monks and Pacific Island street kids as they strive to expose the experimentation, and work out their relationships with one another.

The thesis is a retrospective reporting and a critical examination of HyperSteel. This is a hypermedia application for architectural education intended to function as a learning bridge between structural knowledge-acquisition and intuitive use. It is one of many parallel developments in software design that have occurred around the world in the last decade (Mitchell 1995). Hypermedia is a set of procedures applied to computer aided learning that is based upon interactive software, typically Apple Computer's Hypercard©, and its successors. How can this medium with its strongly cinematographic characteristics best be used in the imaginative and intuitive processes of an architectural education? The term cinema - whether it means the discipline and industry of film making or whether it is the architecture of a place of entertainment - evokes diverse concepts and images. These include illusions of time and space, the sense of seeing more than one reality at the same time; and of existing at the intersection of art and technology. This thesis argues that these related concepts and images can be distilled from cinema and other established disciplines, and adapted into a common aesthetic for hypermedia. The thesis posits a chronotopic theory with respect to the computer-human interface, whose integral imaginative mechanism is the click-jump of the user interface device. Mikhail Bakhtin's chronotopic event is borrowed from literary theory to describe the progression and development of time and space as they intersect (Bakhtin 1937). It is argued that this moment of the man-machine coordinated action is the act which puts imaginative control of the learning process into the hands of the learner and thus becomes the central vehicle of knowledge delivery. The theoretical underpinning for this argument refers to depictions of architecture as a space-time experience used by historian Sigfried Giedion (1941). The perception of the intuition as tacit knowledge is developed from Michael Polanyi (1969), and the conclusions of cognitive psychologist Allan Paivio and others provide an educational principle of dual processing as a model for learning by hypermedia (Paivio 1986).The writings of Paul Ricoeur (1988) on the nature of a meaning for narrative which encompasses both time and space along one horizon in which the traveller - in this case the student architect - arrives at perceptive understanding in their learning The thesis is a retrospective reporting and a critical examination of HyperSteel. This is a hypermedia application for architectural education intended to function as a learning bridge between structural knowledge-acquisition and intuitive use. It is one of many parallel developments in software design that have occurred around the world in the last decade (Mitchell 1991). Hypermedia is a set of procedures applied to computer aided learning that is based upon interactive software, typically Apple Computer's Hypercard©, and its successors. How can this medium with its strongly cinematographic characteristics best be used in the imaginative and intuitive processes of an architectural education? The term cinema - whether it means the discipline and industry of film making or whether it is the architecture of a place of entertainment - evokes diverse concepts and images. These include illusions of time and space, the sense of seeing more than one reality at the same time; and of existing at the intersection of art and technology. This thesis argues that these related concepts and images can be distilled from cinema and other established disciplines, and adapted into a common aesthetic for hypermedia. The thesis posits a chronotopic theory with respect to the computer-human interface, whose integral imaginative mechanism is the click-jump of the user interface device. Mikhail Bakhtin's chronotopic event is borrowed from literary theory to describe the progression and development of time and space as they intersect (Bakhtin 1937). It is argued that this moment of the man-machine coordinated action is the act which puts imaginative control of the learning process into the hands of the learner and thus becomes the central vehicle of knowledge delivery. The theoretical underpinning for this argument refers to depictions of architecture as a space-time experience used by historian Sigfried Giedion (1941). The perception of the intuition as tacit knowledge is developed from Michael Polanyi (1969), and the conclusions of cognitive psychologist Allan Paivio and others provide an educational principle of dual processing as a model for learning by hypermedia (Paivio 1986).The writings of Paul Ricoeur (1988) on the nature of a meaning for narrative which encompasses both time and space along one horizon in which the traveller - in this case the student architect - arrives at perceptive understanding in their learning process, will also inform this theoretical perspective. The intention of the thesis is- to identify, and theorise digital chronotopicity as it functions in architecture education. My conclusion is that there is a role for the media practitioner and theorist in making interactive software tools effective in the context of computer technologies and architecture education.

The thesis is an attempt to find whether there is any perceived or actual correlation between people (personal characteristics, or characteristics of subgroups) and the environments they choose--in particular, their houses; that is, to correlate identifiable physical aspects of environment with various identifiable personal or social characteristics, and to attempt to explain why such correlations occur; thence to postulate theories which will enable environments to be designed to be acceptable to particular groups of people. "The thesis", part 1 of the thesis, is a theoretical statement comprising, in Chapter I, an explicit statement of the theoretical framework in the form of five premises derived from philosophy and theories of psychology, art and architecture, and sociology. And, in Chapter II, a statement of the two hypotheses (that dwelling environments are perceived as "meaning" the people who live in them and that people choose dwelling environments, other things being equal, according to their concept of the kind of people they are) and the assumptions necessary to test them. In Part 2: "The Research Method" Chapter III covers the development of the measure of closure in dwelling environments. Closure was chosen in Chapter II as the environmental variable to be used for the purposes of this study. The final measure comprises five sets of four bird’s eye view perspective line drawings depicting five situations in a typical house in which closure is varied in four steps from very open to very closed. Chapter IV describes the development of the measure of household identity. The measure of household identity was developed especially to be of relevance to the choice of degrees of closure in dwelling environments. The measure is derived from actual verbal responses of the respondents to open ended questions asked in pilot studies. In Chapter V, the last chapter in Part 2, the research design of the survey study is described: the research model used, the design of the questionnaire, and the sampling method. The first chapter of Part 3: "The Results and Discussion of the Results", Chapter VI, presents the sample size (610) and shows that the sample is representative of the population of the Auckland greater urban area. In Chapter VII, the results relating to hypothesis I are presented and discussed. The results weakly support the hypothesis but the correlations are not of sufficient strength to be used predictively. In Chapter VIII the results of hypothesis 2 are presented and discussed. These results also support the hypothesis but even less strongly so than for hypothesis 1. Chapter VIII also covers sub-hypothesis 1, that people choose dwelling environments according to their "objective” household identity, In Chapter IX the results of the hypotheses are compared and summarized. And in Chapter X the implications of the results are outlined: an attempt is made to relative the results to the theoretical framework and from this implications for a possible theory of aesthetics are drawn. The implications of the results for the theory and practice of architecture are delineated and finally suggestions for future research are outlined.

This thesis explores the contention that planning is a moral activity concerned with the way in which people live in relation to nature or the environment. It suggests that planning is the moral framework by which communities and individuals confront their relationship with nature or the environment. It argues that certain disciplines such as town planning, resource management, environmental ethics, aspects of theology and of art are but isolated and narrowed aspects of a wider activity of planning. The rationale for embarking on such a discussion of planning relies in part on the observation that when modern planners take a more contemplative approach to their craft, they have often been perplexed about their frequent failure to deliver the good they assumed that planning set out to achieve. It is suggested that this intent to achieve good is inherent to planning and that it is a moral concern. Planning, under this analysis, is part of the wider realm of moral philosophy and decision-making - that is undertaken by all people. Planning extends beyond mere moral discourse to encompass a number of mechanisms that bind individuals and communities to the moral norms they have adopted. These mechanisms, one of which is the key institution of property rights, are also affected by ideas that change over time; they exist in a dynamic interrelationship with both planning discourse (debates about moral structures and norms) and planning codes (norms adopted by individuals and communities as standards for action). This thesis takes this broad interpretation of planning and considers it in relation to four periods in planning history. In doing so, a number of themes are identified in relation to the role of planners, the decision-making structures of planning and the nature of planning discourse. These themes are considered in relation to the way Maori planning systems have developed in New Zealand since European settlement. They are also considered in terms of whether it is possible to identify certain universal moral rules within planning and whether there are certain tasks that all planners must address. / Whole document restricted, but available by request, use the feedback form to request access.

University of Technology, Sydney. / The study critically examines definitions of "informal learning", focussing on the term's application in workplace training contexts. Drawing on Foucault, Heidegger and Habermas, it is argued that we cannot understand ourselves (and thus our informal learning) without challenging the assumptions of modernity and coming to terms with what Lyotard has termed "the postmodern condition". Industry trainers are at the forefront of implementing "designer" corporate cultures which, in the rhetoric of "work-based learning", make enterprises more innovative and competitive. This study challenges that rhetoric, showing that the implicit philosophy of contemporary workplace learning and training is framed by an economistic "human capital theory". The "stories" of industry trainers from several multinational corporations challenge assumptions about what is learnt through competency-based training and about corporate uses of informal learning. It is argued that being at work entails far more than simply performing the tasks one is required to do, which, in turn, effects the links between informal learning and formal education. The final chapters are directed towards expanding and realigning interpretations of "informal learning" away from the narrow and instrumental purposes for which the term has been appropriated. Equity, respect for the dignity of others, and a philosophy of ethics have a place in "workplace learning". Informal learning is shaped by our deepest ethical and moral responses. It does not follow that measurable tasks, what one can be observed doing at work, represent one's learning.