S7 EP 1: David Kaunitz, Summer Series

David has combined his extensive commercial experience with his knowledge of living in and working with Aboriginal communities. The result is architecture that places people at its centre and where good architecture does not need to necessarily be a luxury item. 

If you'd like to learn more about the AHDC, please connect with us on our website www.aushdc.org.au or on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/company/aushdc.

Transcript

[00:00:00] David Cummins: G'day and welcome to the Australian Health Design Council podcast series, Health Design on the Go. I'm your host, David Cummins, and today we are speaking to David Kaunitz, who has global experience As an architect, David has more than 20 years of community development with a strong focus on indigenous communities.

[00:00:34] With projects in over 30 aboriginal communities, David has developed unique experiences with Aboriginal stakeholders. Kaunitz Yeung Architecture has received numerous awards, including several European Healthcare Design Awards, Leading European Architect Forum Sustainability Awards, several Global Architecture Awards and multiple New South Wales Architect Awards.

[00:00:58] We look forward today to speaking to the importance of design and how it enhances user experience when connecting to country. 

[00:01:04] Welcome David. Thank you for your time to be here. 

[00:01:06] David Kaunitz: Oh, hi David. Thank you. 

[00:01:08] David Cummins: For those of you that don't know you, you seem the most humble person and humble architect I've actually met.

[00:01:15] To have that bio of multiple Global Awards, multiple European Awards, multiple Sustainability Awards and multiple Local Awards is an absolute credit to you, your team and the effort put in.

[00:01:27] What drives you to succeed so well? 

[00:01:30] David Kaunitz: we 

[00:01:31] David Cummins: are 

[00:01:32] David Kaunitz: architects and we like to make beautiful buildings that people use and make lives better but from the earliest days of working with community, it's become a kind of intoxicating experience really to help people realise projects and high quality architecture where it wouldn't normally be seen or experienced. 

[00:01:51] And to see the positive effect that has on people's lives, whether it's even just having a great piece of architecture in the community that otherwise wouldn't have been there, but obviously supporting their improvement in their life is a great privilege to be honest.

[00:02:05] David Cummins: I think a lot of architects say they understand the importance of connecting to country with design but I've seen a few bad examples of that. 

[00:02:15] How important is it to get the correct 'need' to speak to users and what are the design principles that you guys follow when it comes to connecting to country? 

[00:02:25] David Kaunitz: Yeah. 

[00:02:26] Connecting with country was not a thing when we started, per se. And so our whole practice and our whole process has been born from a very close collaboration with community to realise projects that are for them and to bring in our expertise in a two-way learning process. 

[00:02:45] We bring global expertise, the expertise of making good buildings, and they bring their cultural and local knowledge and often where they're involved in the building, their own skills in building as well. 

[00:02:58] And so really it's that collaboration, which is the secret to how well we do or don't connect a country because we are not relying on, necessarily educating ourselves deeply about country, we are giving community the every opportunity to bring their experience of country into the project. 

[00:03:21] David Cummins: And would that be correct in saying that every community has their own needs when it comes to connecting to country?

[00:03:28] Or is it a one size fits all? 

[00:03:30] David Kaunitz: First of all, there are, I dunno how many hundreds of indigenous nations within Australia, but even that's a little bit simplistic to be honest. Within that, every community has a different perspective and where you have nations that cover big geographical areas, they will have different climactic zones sometimes.

[00:03:47] That's a very simplistic description, but there's a lot of complexity there that, to be honest we would never have the time or the ability to learn across multiple places. 

[00:03:56] And that understanding really comes from, when my wife and I started on this journey, living in the Solomon Islands in a very remote part of the world which still doesn't have any internet reception or running water, apart from the systems that we've helped the communities build, and I lived in these communities and I spent years living in these communities. 

[00:04:15] And it's very different to Aboriginal Australia in many ways. But what was clear is that no matter how long I lived in these communities, there was no way I was going to have a full and comprehensive understanding of them.

[00:04:27] No matter how or integrated myself, how much I learned language (which I did in that case) I was never going to have a full understanding. And so the process of connecting to country and connecting with community deeply, it absolutely relies on that two-way learning, collaboration.

[00:04:44] David Cummins: And no doubt with when you are designing, there seems to be a lot of trust and respect that goes both ways as well. So how do you go about being respected enough to get that trust, from the users to actually design, what their needs are. 

[00:04:57] David Kaunitz: Yeah, well I suppose that takes time and effort. 

[00:05:00] One of the things people always ask us is how do we spend so much time on projects, so much time in community, but there's simply no shortcut to that. You simply cannot make relationships and forge relationships without spending time with people. And that's something we are very focused on doing.

[00:05:17] Often we can enter communities, particularly communities that had difficult histories and there's a lot of pent up negative energy about the project or general things, and the first meeting can be quite fraught and one of the key tactics at that stage is just to listen and not take these things personally and to use that as a real learning experience.

[00:05:38] And I think how you conduct yourself in those kind of situation is a huge step forward in gaining people's respect. The ability to listen, the ability to have empathy and to find ways where the project can contribute to the solution of some of their broader, some of the broader issues and problems in community. 

[00:05:58] We are just architects. We are not going to be able to solve all of the problems or maybe any of the problems, but buildings can contribute to improving the situation in community and that's part of what motivates me. 

[00:06:10] David Cummins: So, would that be fair to say then, because it's a very different approach from a lot of listeners' approach to user groups that program, it doesn't really exist?

[00:06:22] David Kaunitz: Yeah. Well, program does exist. We deliver a lot of projects for government. But what I would say is that the time we invest upfront with community really benefits downstream in the process. 

[00:06:34] Once you've invested all that upfront time, you have those relationships, the community has agreed in a knowing understanding way because they're collaborating in the project, from then on, there's just a "get on with it when's it finished", kind of attitude. 

[00:06:47] So, rather than what can happen is going around and around in circles, and so I think it's a false economy not to spend that time upfront because the worst thing, as we all know is changes after approvals and during construction, they're the things that really create a lot of issues for projects. 

[00:07:05] David Cummins: Yeah. And I think that's a really good principle that we can apply to more acute health as well, especially in bigger cities where taking the extra time to listen and understand and plan, 90% planning, 10% execution, it really, really helps a lot.

[00:07:18] So for people listening, what would you say are some of the biggest design principles that people should comply with when it comes to designing for local communities?

[00:07:27] David Kaunitz: Yeah, so we have eight principles in our practice. 

[00:07:29] The first being community-led consultation, which is the collaboration I've been talking about listening to all voices. This is really important because it's very easy to sometimes listen to the most accessible people or the people who speak English the best or the loudest voices.

[00:07:44] But it's very important to make sure, as best you can, that you are covering all sorts of demographics within community. 

[00:07:51] Time to listen. I've already spoken about how time is important in building relationships and listening a first principles approach. You have gotta leave your preconceptions at the door.

[00:08:00] Of course, we bring our experience and we bring our knowledge, and when we do use our experience in previous knowledge, we make sure we carefully revalidate that for those local conditions. Because as we spoke about each community and each indigenous nation is unique and deserves that kind of first principles approach. 

[00:08:17] Iterative co-design. So that's again, the collaboration to make sure that you are revisiting and iterating the process as much as you can. And then the sixth is really the sort of tectonic connection to country. 

[00:08:29] I would call it the integration of local materials, art and culture into the project. So in our projects, that's the use of local timber, ramed earth. We use a lot of art screens where local artists who are nominated by the community provide art that we turn into art screens and endemic landscaping is another great one.

[00:08:47] And more and more we are using landscaping as a way of creating community and cultural spaces outside to sort of amplify, and amplify the opportunities for community to connect with the project and with country. 

[00:09:00] So the seventh is co-construct, which is a very complicated one in Australia because of all the regulation and processes but in the Pacific, we've had enormous success. 

[00:09:09] With most of the projects we've done in the Pacific have been completely built by community and we are getting better and better at creating opportunities in Australia for that to work. 

[00:09:17] Landscaping is proving an opportunity where that is not laboured with the same regulatory problems of construction and can happen after the building is built in its own timeframe as well. So I think landscaping is always a great opportunity. 

[00:09:31] And I think the eighth is very important to remember, which is innovation. Just because we are going to a remote community or a place where there's not much means, doesn't mean we shouldn't be bringing the best of global practice there.

[00:09:43] We have great health projects that almost run off grid, that are very low in operation costs and, increasingly sustainable and moving in a much more low embodied energy direction and the health planning is just as sophisticated as anywhere.

[00:09:57] So these eight principles are really what guide us in all our projects. 

[00:10:01] David Cummins: Yeah. 

[00:10:02] And I think a lot of them can be applied to other practices like acute health, mental health, city, buildings, hospitals and aged care as well. 

[00:10:10] So I think a lot of them are, are really good principles.

[00:10:12] My limited knowledge of design for connecting to country is that there are certain principles which you've talked about, but also certain practical principles that need to be applied. 

[00:10:25] Is it not true that we should always try to actually have access to the earth where people can actually come onto the earth during treatment or during aged care? Is it not also true to have visibility to the sky and to have limited mirrors and to have co-location of patients, especially for women to have double rooms as opposed to single rooms? 

[00:10:46] They're the general idea, from what I've understanded about the principles of health. Am I correct or am I incorrect? Or is that completely wrong? 

[00:10:56] David Kaunitz: Yeah, and I think that's part of it. At the end of the day, we are talking about human-centred design right. And human-centered health delivery and ideas about putting health and wellbeing at the centre of community.

[00:11:08] All these ideas that we talk about at a broader sense in healthcare design today, these are applicable. The connection to country is a more personalised bespoke way of delivering a project to that place and we have the great fortune of working directly with elders and community and cultural knowledge holders on almost all of our projects.

[00:11:30] And so we are able to leverage that. But there are instances where that's not the case or not possible and then there are other collaborators, indigenous architects and indigenous practitioners that can be brought in to provide some of that knowledge and that understanding.

[00:11:46] David Cummins: So what would be some of the lessons learned from all your projects that people can apply to a more practical sense for people interested in this world of design? 

[00:11:55] David Kaunitz: I think the genuine connection to people, the empathy and the genuine way of collaborating with local people can be quite scary for designers and architects to hand over control.

[00:12:07] But there is a skill to that, in handing over control and still guiding the process so that it's a coherent outcome, and it meets the regulatory requirements and the broader requirements. 

[00:12:18] Honest conversations with stakeholders about some of those things is also completely appropriate that they understand why certain things are, and certainly with our buildings, where we are designing in very traditional communities, quite modern health buildings, there is an acceptance that it's not a completely cultural, traditional building.

[00:12:35] David Cummins: So for a lot of people, especially in main capital cities, they hear the word connecting to country or importance of design for Aboriginal and respect to elders and literally only put up a piece of artwork, which I think is important, but surely design has gone beyond just a piece of artwork and a painting in a hallway now. 

[00:12:57] So how can we connect more to country, respect more of our First Nations people than just artwork, which is important, but is there a way to challenge that and push that boundary? 

[00:13:13] David Kaunitz: Sometimes what's holding people back is the fear of the unknown or the fear of how the project may turn out and part of that is about control over the design. 

[00:13:23] My overarching message would be just to be brave. 

[00:13:27] We are just architects. We are not neurosurgeons, we are just architects and if we go honestly and genuinely in a brave fashion to do something better for the people who are going to use the building (this is the case for all sorts of architecture) then I think the outcome will be better and 

[00:13:44] If it isn't, I think people will be forgiving of that if the process is genuine and collaborative. 

[00:13:50] David Cummins: And there's some good examples of your projects where you've challenged that beyond just simple paintings and potentially some art screens as well, correct? 

[00:13:59] David Kaunitz: Yeah, the latest project, which we haven't quite published yet (hasn't formally opened yet, but it's been operating for a number of months) as an age care facility in the northern the northern tropics of Australia and that is age care like you wouldn't often see.

[00:14:11] I would describe that project as halfway between eco-resort and age care and there's a lot of effort to do the things you were talking about before, around connecting to natural ventilation, connecting to the sky, allowing opportunities.

[00:14:24] We have two or three views from the bed to the outside, bringing the landscaping right up to the building, allowing outdoor spaces facing in multiple directions for seasonal habitation breaking down the scale of the building to try and de-institutionalise the building using local materials, buildings clad in 29 linear kilometers of local timber to humanise the building and integrate it with the landscape.

[00:14:48] These are some of the things that we are doing and always trying to push the boundaries of what's possible within the project constraints.

[00:14:54] David Cummins: So on that project and other products, have you actually had the opportunity to engage local artists when it does come to art? And has there been any good case studies or lessons learned with that?

[00:15:06] David Kaunitz: Every time we do a project, and we always start a collaboration process with local artists that are usually selected by the community or by the indigenous board, if that's the client. And we are looking for opportunities of how to integrate art meaningfully into the project.

[00:15:21] In many of our projects that's resulted in art screens. That's a way of creating privacy at the windows of replacing elements such as crimsafe for security on glazing. That's sort of how that's developed. 

[00:15:33] We work closely with those artists and every project, particularly my wife Ka Wai, who's the fellow director in Kaunitz Yeung says, "we are going to do this again, should we think about not doing this again"? 

[00:15:43] But every time that we do this in a project, this is actually a profound outcome, a profound connection and so we've had, in some of the remote clinics we had in one of the remote clinics, we had an old lady literally leap out of her chair when she saw her artist.

[00:15:57] We had a very old artist on Wanarn clinic, Mrs Bates who was born before first contact ,met a white person for the first time as a teenager. She was infirmed in the aged care next door for many, many weeks. She hadn't been very active and she was wheeled over to see her art screen and she came alive. 

[00:16:16] At one stage we thought she was going to jump out of her chair and she was explaining the art in language and pointing to the elements of the art screen completely came alive.

[00:16:25] Done in the right way these elements are extremely important in connecting with community and connecting with people. And of course they have deep cultural meaning, and they also provide opportunity for younger people in community to experience art that they wouldn't necessarily experience and to have teaching experiences around the dreaming and the meaning of the artwork.

[00:16:47] David Cummins: That's a phenomenal story, even to the level of respect to connecting country, but to the level of including elderly generations who have that history into your building. Because certainly the way most buildings are these days, the latest artists and the latest trends and the youngest and hippest person, and the coolest colors, whatever it may be.

[00:17:10] But that's what a phenomenal story on so many levels from a Aboriginal perspective, from an elderly perspective, but also from an architectural perspective. 

[00:17:19] And I think that's a phenomenal take home message for a lot of people to actually listen, understand, learn, use the resources around you because there are so many valuable resources around there, especially the elderly community who are in aged care because they've got so much wealth of knowledge.

[00:17:36] So that's a phenomenal story.

[00:17:37] Just before we go, what's next on the horizon for your team? 

[00:17:40] David Kaunitz: So at the moment we are working on a whole series of indigenous aged care projects that are going to take aged care, sort of develop the ethos. 

[00:17:48] We've been developing over a number of years to a sort of another level and some of those are in extremely remote parts of the country. One of those is right in the middle of the desert, so that's very exciting. 

[00:17:57] We are working on a series three remote arts centres as well and we are always working on primary healthcare projects and housing projects and education projects. 

[00:18:06] We are working on a beautiful little primary school in Arnhem Land as well. So there's a lot of exciting work on the horizon for us. 

[00:18:14] David Cummins: That sounds amazing. No doubt you'll keep busy, and I have no doubt you'd be winning a few more awards as you have in the past.

[00:18:20] I just wanted to quickly say thank you so much for your dedication and time to this important topic. I remember at uni only a few years ago, It was never even really heard about and talked about, and so you've really dug deep. As an artist and an architect, to make sure that we really bring this to the forefront.

[00:18:38] You not only are an Australian icon, but a world leader in this space and it's just absolutely an honour to speak to you and your team and discover those principles and how best we can improve our design when it comes to healthcare and to patient experience and use experience. So thank you so much for your dedication to this art.

[00:18:53] David Kaunitz: Oh, thank you Dave. It's too kind. And thank you everyone for listening. 

[00:18:58] David Cummins: You have been listening to the Australian Health Design Council podcast series, Health Design on the Go. 

[00:19:02] To learn more about the AHDC, please connect with us on our LinkedIn or website. Thank you for listening.