Honi Soit
WEEK 1, SEMESTER 2, 2021
FIRST PRINTED 1929
IN THIS EDITION
St Andrew’s residents party while Sydney locks down DEAUNDRE ESPEJO & CLAIRE OLLIVAIN / P. 4
Architecture, Empire and Enterprise RYAN LUNG / P. 10
T
he architectural historian Charles Jencks once said that ‘architects make architecture, historians make history, and what they both make is myth’. Architecture is often used to translate political ideas into thxe real world, capturing our imagination through a visual spectacle to convince us of their plausibility. Across campus, examples of colonial architecture are woven together with contemporary styles. Look closely, and what emerges is an eclectic tapestry that serves as a living record of history and the ideologies that shape it...
Interview with Mark Scott HONI SOIT / P. 6 We chat to USyd’s new Vice Chancellor about online learning, enterprise bargaining, and the future of the University of Sydney.
Western Sydney is becoming unlivable One need look no further than Western Sydney to see that the climate crisis is already here.
W
hen I think of Western Sydney in the throes of summer, I think of burning concrete plains in near unlivable suburbia. When I was in high school, my guinea pig died of heatstroke on a 46°C summer day. I had been at the beach when it
happened, and I hadn’t realised how hot the day had been until I stepped off the train at Wentworthville Station. Trudging home through the soupy air, as the burning pavement pierced the soles of my shoes, I could sense that something was wrong. I quickened my pace, and while turning onto my street, nearly stepped on a dead myna bird that lay on the curb.
There are precious few grown trees in my neighbourhood that offer shade on hot summer days, and on the hottest days, suffocating heat waves quiver above the grey bitumen. Perhaps if there were more trees to offer shelter and reprieve, life would be a bit more bearable. I live on Darug land and before colonisation, the local area would have been blanketed in native grasses weaving
VIVIENNE GUO / P. 12 between sparse groups of trees, with fire stick farming — the practice of setting controlled fires — used extensively in the area by the Darug people to maintain the land. But anything magnificent and unruly that once grew here has long been uprooted to make room for broad concrete roads, powerlines and barren lawns of monoculture grass ...
