Peppermint Bay

Full description

RESEARCH BACKGROUND
Peppermint Bay is a function centre in southern Tasmania. Through a carefully orchestrated promenade, the project reveals a series of disjunctive relationships for consideration: inside/outside, building/landscape, nature/object. Here, these questions are addressed through the architectural device of the surface - a membrane that distinguishes between interior and exterior.

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION
The key design research question for Richard Blythe (Terroir) considers how the creation of a relatively small architectural object may also provide an iconic architectural experience in the context of a vast, politically inscribed landscape. The implicit question of how to negotiate built and natural environments has been integral to Tasmanian politics since colonisation. Such questions also have a wider global relevance in view of climate change and this project suggests an innovative local response to the situation.

RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE
Peppermint Bay toured as part of the Second Nature Exhibit at the Planning and Architecture Exhibition Centre, China, October 2006, curated by Peter Davidson. It was included at the 2nd International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam. The project has also been published extensively to an international audience, including: 'Self-Curating Collectives: Terroir' in Mastering Architecture: Becoming a Creative Innovator in Practice by Leon van Schaik; the Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture by Phaidon Press; 'Terroir' in Next Wave: Emerging Talents in Australian Architecture by Davina Jackson, published by Thames and Hudson; 'Antipodean Charts. Australia and the Pacific, the Inverse Vision' in Global Architecture circa 2000 by L Fernandez-Galiano (ed.). Journal coverage includes: 'Peppermint Bay' by Leon van Schaik in Architecture Review UK and in "AR 25 Year Survey of Australian Architecture" in Architectural Review Australia AR100 Special Edition.