This tactic accounts for the post settlement occupation along the Birrarung, Naarm (Yarra River, Melbourne) by built form such as industrial buildings, carparks, sport fields and so on that disrupt and deny ecosystem functions through vegetation and habitat removal, sealing over of soil and ecosystem modification and fragmentation.

The tactic involves the ‘cutting out’ of built form from an aerial photograph making explicit the occupation and subsequent denial of life through the symbolic white space of the paper.

Widely applicable as a tactic, this example is from the riparian corridor of the Birrarung at the Bolin Bolin Billabong, a gathering site for the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and one of the few billabongs remaining in Melbourne

As a teaching tool the white space is considered: what was there, what could be reparative in the modified ecosystem, how does this white space interrupt systems at a micro and macro scale, what planning tools do we have and do we need to subtract built form rather than add, and can the programs removed exist elsewhere in novel ways that might in their turn regenerate an urban area?