Killing Our Darlings

D’Arcy Newberry-Dupé 

A research project funded by the Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship
Awarded by the Architects Registration Board, NSW

Commencing in July 2024
















This is an upcoming research project to be conducted by D’Arcy Newberry-Dupé over a three month period of fieldwork. It is made possible with the support of the NSW Architects Registration Board, through the award of the Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship. 

Killing Our Darlings proposes a mapping of settlements along the Murray Dhungala and Darling Baaka river systems that looks to the major tributaries of the Murray Darling Basin, to find ‘confluence’ between the conditions of the river system and the ailing townships along their banks.

The project aims to attend to the challenges the built environments of these places face, that tangles with the social, cultural, political and environmental backdrop of the Basin, on a road trip that passes through NSW, VIC and SA.

In doing so, it acknowledges, and reworks architecture’s role in the mistreatment and degradation of this Country through colonial settlement practices of resource extraction, agricultural overburdening, and heavy industry.

The project looks to generate conversation about radical rural futures, and the ongoing position Architects might take in an engagment with regional settlements and their fragile ecosystems.