Ontological Upgrade

This paper uses ‘deep time’, as an alternative ontology to crisis management to argue for the application of a broad decolonial approach in lieu of contemporary green design practices. Methodologically, this paper substantiates it claims by utilising conventional academic ‘knowledge’ production, as represented in literature, references, and case studies, but also supports the expansion of knowledge through a deeper exploration of place, pattern, and time demonstrated by intermingling deep time principles with Indigenous spatial practices. Fearing that urban life will descend into obsolescence and irrelevance if no such knowledge systems are taken up, this paper proposes an alternative trajectory as a preventive measure, which has all been exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic. By exploring alternative Indigenous design ontologies, specifically in Oceania, alongside deep adaptation and deep time, this paper’s authors intend to provide an important basis for research and teaching that reinvigorates connections to Indigenous epistemologies and knowledge systems. This paper proposes that by taking up notions of deep adaptation and Indigenous epistemologies as critiques of Western notions of time, property, etc. architecture, design and planning might re-situate ideas, ranging from stewardship to maintenance, within time and place-based technologies outside of the discourse of crisis.