Walmajarri Centre Offices and Staff House

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RESEARCH BACKGROUND IPH was chosen by the Djugerari community to design an office, training centre and staff house for Walmajarri Inc., an Aboriginal Corporation representing a group of Walmajarri people whose country is located in the Great Sandy Desert. The building is a simple cluster of pavilions under a large parasol roof that initially appears informally placed. However as one moves between the pavilions through covered exterior spaces specific views are framed and moments in the dramatic landscape are revealed. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION The remote location forced a simple language of durable materials and direct detailing. It is within the careful assemblage of these simple components that the significance of the architecture by Martyn Hook (IPH) emerges. This project continues a line of research that questions how the qualities of 'environmental architecture' may evolve from landscape, programme and materiality rather than from technological systems. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE The project has been published in the highly influential A+U magazine (Tokyo), A+T magazine (Madrid), the Journal of Architectural Design Research (ADR), Architecture Australia, Monument and Houses magazines. It formed part of the 2007 travelling exhibition and symposium: New Trends in Architecture Europe Asia Pacific, which visited Patras (Greece), Tokyo, Melbourne, Perth, Luxembourg and Barcelona. It also features in the chapter on Iredale Pedersen Hook in Next Wave, Davina Jackson's significant book documenting emergent Australian architecture practices. Walmajarri received a Honourable Mention in the prestigious Architectural Review Awards for Emerging Architecture, London, 2006, the Colorbond Steel Award and a commendation in the Public Institutional Award in the 2006 RAIA WA Chapter Architecture Awards.