Realizing design projects in the mountains of Australia: a repositioned problem-solving approach

An Australian design education mostly equips architects, landscape architects and planners to realise built features in places where nearly two-thirds of the country's population live, temperate or continental urban landscapes, and not the nation's mountain environment. Paramount to their education is the development of an aesthetic and the safeguarding of their aesthetic visual expression. Unfortunately, their education does not equip them to produce appropriate design outcomes in the Australian Alps, a setting effected by climatic extremes and a detailed Alpine Planning Regulatory Framework. Experts in the administration of the regulatory framework indicate that there is a considerable lack of understanding when designers utilise and apply (or not) the Alpine Planning Regulatory Framework, a lack which seems to stem from their educational background. This chapter raises the issue of designers' lack of conceptual and applied understanding of this mountain environment when employing a 'traditional' problemsolving approach to realise built features in the State of Victoria's mountain setting. This work then discusses how a repositioned approach can utilise the Alpine Planning Regulatory Framework to the benefit of designers so they can produce 'appropriate' project responses, genuine budgets and responsible environmental solutions.