"the estate developed a stigma and that stigma was then extended to the people who live there and it persists"
/In this episode, we dive straight into the heart of Kate Rodgers’ very personal story: the Triptych of Karawara.
Kate takes us through a deeply impactful childhood … painted in three distinct panels. The first is architectural—a childhood spent inside a literal panopticon, a hexagonal state-housing block in 1980s Perth, surrounded by the inward-pressing, incomplete loops of a Radburn-designed suburb. The second is socially influenced—navigating the heavy stigma of a shifting welfare state as the child of a fiercely protective single mother, finding solace not in school, but in brutalist university libraries and piles of classic books. And the third is a rare beacon of agency—the Karawara 'Fun Factory,' a Danish-inspired adventure play-space where kids were handed raw, recycled materials and told to shape their own worlds.
Together, these three panels form the canvas of Kate's life, showing how she reclaimed her agency in systems designed to constrain it. It's a masterclass in how our physical and social environments shape what we are allowed to be curious about—and how we can design a more regenerative, self-thriving future for ourselves and others.
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