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Architectural education is empowered with agency and a capacity to critique socially inequitable issues. It offers unique opportunities to make an impact with communities beset with challenges of infrastructural inequality. One such challenge is the right to adequate house, a basic human right stipulated by the United Nations. Indigenous Australian community ways of being, knowing and doing are predicated through traditional, historical and contemporary narratives that coexist within a settler colonising framework.

Country and First Nations cultures in Australia are continually gaining interest in the wider community. In the architectural profession, recent discourse that has focused on Indigenous issues is occurring in a pre-dominantly non-Indigenous environment. These discussions have highlighted the need for more in-depth conversations that encompass conceptual frameworks relevant to First Nations cultures. I argue that the profession can further engage with, acknowledge and understand Country and culture, its interactions with colonialism and actions of reciprocity. I explore the concept of a Third Space (after Homi Bhabha), as the main proposition in this thesis based on the overarching notion that Country is always giving to all of us. Framing thinking in this way can affect change and allow the profession to engage with cultural differences by meaningfully giving and receiving in spaces between beings—realms, ideological doctrines, cultures, communities, individuals, living and non-living entities—that are always part of Country. These spaces are, collectively, here considered as a Third Space. This thesis presents the relational, translational and transformational qualities of a Third Space. This can inform ways of thinking that link architecture and cross-cultural engagement with placemaking in contemporary settings, deep time living practices and colonial interventions on the Australian continent between beings. Investigations of contemporary placemaking in Hyde Park, Sydney, the ancient designed environments of Lake Mungo and the incorporation of cultural narratives at the University of Sydney are underpinned by the notion that placemaking has always occurred on this continent and has always engaged with beings constitutive of Country. Analysis of these case studies, framed thematically in each chapter, leads to the proposition that thinking behind placemaking gives back to Country as gifts with distinct qualities and narratives to focus and inform architectural design philosophies and engagement practices. The thesis shows how this can enable reciprocal actions between engaged beings within the interstitial void of a Third Space. Reciprocity in thinking—giving back—informs more nuanced and inclusive approaches to architecture and placemaking as always becoming part of Country.

Burri gummin is a Gungganyji term that translates to 'one fire'. It is the name of an ongoing design studio established in collaboration with the Yarrabah Aboriginal community. Sited on Gungganyji Country in Far North Queensland, the Burri Gummin Housing Studio aims to develop appropriate and sustainable housing designs for the Yarrabah community in response to the ongoing housing crisis.

The aim of this design studio is to develop appropriate and sustainable housing solutions for members of the Yarrabah community. The project is a reaction to the ongoing housing crisis in Yarrabah Aboriginal Shire, and the current unsatisfactory ‘one size fits all’ approach to housing for indigenous people. This compiled design book draws upon shared stories and reciprocal cultural exchange to enable new and authentic dialogue.

A compiled design book aiming to develop appropriate and sustainable housing solutions for the displaced members of the Yarrabah community living with disability. The design studio which forms the basis of this book is a reaction to the ongoing housing crisis in Yarrabah Aboriginal Shire, and the current unsatisfactory 'one size fits all' approach to housing for indigenous people.