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Site specific: a health centre in a small Australian township responds with great sensitivity to site and place

Architectural Review, The, Jan, 2005

Founded in 1995, Merrima operates as a design unit within the New South Wales Government Architect's Office, specializing in buildings specifically for Aboriginal communities. The name can be translated as 'falling stars', alluding to the Aboriginal myth that deceased elders in the sky have the power to return in order to assist living communities. All Merrima's architects have their roots among Australia's indigenous peoples. Dillon Kombumerri, the unit's founding principal, is from Queensland's Yugembir Nation and has the distinction of being Australia's first professionally registered architect. Over time, he has been joined by a coterie of young architects and designers from other indigenous nations. It is a small, lively collaborative that aims to challenge the established design and cultural tenets that tend to surround dealings with native communities. Kombumerri and his partners not only design buildings, they also teach, lecture, mentor and travel, particularly in the US and Canada, to study projects and share experiences with other indigenous architects. Powerful and unsentimental, their work is characterized by a refreshing authenticity of expression that responds to and reinterprets a sense of place, community and cultural identity, tempered by modern concerns. In an interview with Australian critic and commentator Davina Jackson, Kombumerri observes 'We're trying to achieve some kind of honesty in the contemporary expression of Aboriginal culture'.

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Historically, Australia's Aboriginal tribes were nomadic, adapting existing landforms for shelter or building very lightly and ephemerally on the ground. There is little physical or documented evidence of an architectural culture, but what does endure is a respect for and an intimacy with the land, climate and natural world, qualities that strongly inform Merrima's work. Since its inception, the collaborative has undertaken a range of projects for various NSW Government agencies, including health, arts and prison services. Its first project was a craft workshop for prisoners in a minimum security unit at Bathurst, near Sydney. Working closely with inmates, Merrima's design was based on the organic form of a goanna, a lizard-like creature sacred to the local Wiradjuri people. The external landscaping also incorporated a contemporary interpretation of the 'Burbang', the Wiradjuri male initiation ceremony for young males into manhood. Current built and ongoing projects in New South Wales include an Aboriginal Medical Service in Sydney and an Indigenous Art and Adult Studies Centre in Moree.

Though Merrima's projects tend to be modestly scaled, this suits a small team and offers an opportunity to engage more fully at every level of the design process, from client consultation to detailing. Shown here is an extension to a hospital in Wilcannia, a small township nearly 1000km to the north-west of Sydney on the Barrier Highway connecting Sydney with Adelaide. Established in the 1860s as a river trade centre, Wilcannia evolved rapidly along the Darling River, the source of its initial prosperity, but the subsequent decline of river transport in the 1930s reduced the population from over 3000 to its current level of 1000, of which 65 per cent is Aboriginal. The local inhabitants are the Barkinji or river people, who believe that the great Darling River was created by Barka, a mythical ancestral serpent, as it undulated across the land. The site lies on the edge of town, overlooking the broad sweep of the river. The new building grows out of the original Victorian cottage hospital which was intended to serve passing riverboat traffic. Built out of local white quartzite sandstone, it follows a simple but rigorous cruciform plan, a subconscious testament to the Victorian virtues of health, hygiene and religion. Though its unflinching symmetry, isolated location and regimented medical regime (which segregated Aboriginal patients) made the old hospital a place of foreboding, nonetheless it formed part of the cultural memory of the local community, who proved keen to preserve it when the time came for redevelopment. As the river has immense cultural and spiritual significance for the Barkinji, one of Merrima's principal aims was to reunite the site with the river as a revitalized place of healing and sanctuary. With its mixture of health facilities, social services and respite accommodation, the new complex readdresses and responds to both the current and future needs of the community. Through a series of extensive meetings and briefings with a working party comprising, among others, community elders and government agencies, the design gradually evolved. The old building has been tactfully restored and a jumble of incremental additions removed so that the original Victorian structure is revealed in its stern glory once more. Now housing consulting rooms, offices and a dental clinic, this acts as an anchor for the new addition, a single-storey linear block poised on a ridge overlooking the river that snakes along the southwest edge of the site. Sitting lightly on the site, the long, low bar seems part of the topography, merging with and growing out of the land.