Jennifer Ferng – författare

Corporate Ethics and the Architecture of Asylum engages innovative perspectives to understand our contemporary crisis of forced displacement and detention practices in the Pacific.Multinational contractors responsible for the construction and maintenance of regional processing centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru have flourished as powerful historical actors, exerting global dominance over the lives of asylum seekers wishing to come to Australia. Transitioning from the policeman or security guard towards the subject of the asylum seeker, this book contends that entanglements between architecture and law represent important epistemic models to interrogate how asylum can be understood and reconceptualised. Proposing diverse forms of visual and textual evidence, asylum is repositioned as a dynamic, ever-changing countermeasure against xenophobic sentiments around offshore processing. Over six chapters, Corporate Ethics examines how the regional processing centres of Manus Island and Nauru are deeply connected to the intellectual discourses of care, environmental precarity, human rights, and sovereignty. From Rembrandt’s De Nachtwacht or Night Watch (1642) to recent advancements in artificial intelligence and legal testimonies, picturing the future of asylum serves as a critical tool to resist state authoritarianism and the rise of corporate malfeasance in the built environment.This book will be of interest to researchers and students of humanitarian architecture, architectural history, and Asia Pacific politics.Recommended reading by the Migration Policy Institute, United States.

A ground-breaking volume examining the transnational conditions of the European Enlightenment, Crafting Enlightenment argues that artisans of the long eighteenth-century on four different continents created and disseminated ideas that revolutionized how we understand modern-day craftsmanship, design, labor, and technology. Starting in Europe, this book journeys through France across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas and then on to Asia and Oceania. Highlighting diverse identities of artisans, the authors trace how these historical actors formed networks at local and global levels to assert their own forms of expertise and experience. These artisans – some anonymous, eminent, and outside the margins – translated European Enlightenment thinking into a number of disciplines and trades including architecture, botany, ceramics, construction, furniture, gardening, horology, interior design, manuscript illustration, and mining.In each thematic section of this illustrated volume, two leading scholars present contrasting case studies of artisans in different geographic contexts. These paired chapters are also followed by shorter commentary that reflects on pertinent themes from both chapters.Emphasizing how and why artisanal histories around the world impacted civic and private life, commerce, cultural engagement, and sense of place, this book introduces new richness and depth to the conversations around the ambivalent and fragmented nature of the Enlightenment.

Ephemeral phenomena like fire, precipitation, shade, and wind have emerged as important contemporary protagonists for environmental design due to their dynamic impact on buildings and cities. The importance of including these forces in architecture has gained rapid momentum in the global quest for sustainability. This book investigates the history, theory and applications of climatic design in the built environment examining architecture and landscapes from various time periods. Based on a collaboration between the University of Sydney and the National University of Singapore, the book brings together contributing authors from Australia, Singapore, and the United States. "Dry", "Wet", "Cool" and "Hot" divide the book into categories through which a wide array of representational topics are covered —from dust storms and clouds, to ice and bushfires. A concluding section presents project examples for exploratory application in the design of architecture.