Kevin O’Brien of MERRIMA design and Michael Markham of tUG recently collaborated to produce a short-listed entry around the theme ‘Meta-city’ for the recent RAIA competition for Creative Directorship of the architectural Venice Biennale, 2006. The approach to the entry was to avoid the mediocrity of a didactic display of selected architectural works and instead, offer a ‘response’ to the theme as investigation into the way Australian cities may reclaim ‘spirit’. The proposition imagines that as a city decays that opportunities are presented to acknowledge historical cultural moments that can be synthesized into current urban places. This idea worked into the Australian condition suggests that the acknowledgement of Indigenous places is a necessary part of rethinking urban strategies in order to engage a complete sense of place and ‘spirit’. The submission will be presented as a way of introducing these ideas.