Gurrong Weelam Presentation

GURRONG WEELAM

YIRRAMBOI GADHABA STUDIO

LUCY GIPSON-STRATTON & SARITA MISTRY

If we look around Boon Wurrung Country, we can read Country in the materials of the buildings, in the blossoming plants and in old trees,

in the birrarung and in the changing of the seasons.

However Boon Wurrung Country has been built up, waterways moved and buried by the colonial grid, with materials brought in from far and wide causing a ‘collective amnesia’, in a place with over 60,000 years of history.

library and energy is still there, it is just covered over.”

Allison Paige

The task that built environment professionals are facing, is how, in col laboration with Boon Wurrung peoples, can we create a built environment that better represents Boon Wurrung Culture. “Walking through country, is a library through dreaming,” in the Metropolis of Melbourne, the “library and energy is still there it is just covered over” says Allison Paige.

Our response has 2 parts, the first is to reveal memories of what once was and the second is to create new built forms for our future, a future where we represent and celebrate our first people cultures.

BEULAH TOWER

Allison Paige urges us to consider the built environment as an extension of country and we have attempted to use the tools of design and planning to heal country where possible and reduce harm to country where building is necessary.

The master plan demonstrates the locations of planting endemic grasses where the lawn exists in the botanic gardens and a reintroduction of wetlands to the north of our site. N’arweet explained that if “we return the grass we return the memory and that even the birds and animals have memory”. In returning the grass, practices such as weaving can also occur. It is more than rewilding, it is a library, a map, a repository of knowledge.

Our project not only seeks to literally heal Country but be symbolic of healing Country as a strong marker within our city.

Williams Creek / Elizabeth Street wetland intervention

Botanic Gardens Rewilding

GUIDE TO MAKING TIED BARK (GIPPSLAND) CANOE

1. Choosing the tree (seasonality) after the rainy season otherwise theres no sap that is produced during flowering period, bark carries sap up the tree.. trees are also assessed in the area to understand the previous cutting pattern for language consistency.

2. Extracting the bark in one piece, by outlining the shape as a rectangle so the bark comes off as a cylindrical panel. Usually thinner than 25mm thick

Only one face is taken from, straight upward, never full circumference so the tree can continue growing)cut preferred to be done on the side with less sun so its less dry.

3. Wedging the tools of a stick and sharpened stone under the bark to leverage off

4. Prying hands under bark to pull away gradually.

5. Extracting the softer inner winding its fibres into a later for construction.

6.

The bark is pulled across a coal bed/ fire to soften and evaporate the sap and bend the bark otherwise if it was made early in the season the bark would be soaked to soften. Inverting the bark so the smooth inside is now the hull.

7. Thin the ends of the bark down and pleat the ends into the stern(front) and bow(rear) of the canoe.

Tying the ends of the canoe very tightly using a string from the inner bark of the stringy bark tree. This provides a stiffness to the hull and pulls the ends up.

8.

Push a sapling through the pleats to hold in place and plug with soft bark. Placing cross struts to hold curves helps form the curve of the canoe

9. Sealing the canoe ends and plastering the interior using clay and occasionally incorporating grass and grass gum in the mix.

Letting the canoe season in the sun with the clay so it hardens

We have adopted this philosophy throughout our project and embedded mechanisms ensure an ongoing relationship and maintenance or custodianship of country.

away

5. Extracting the softer inner bark and winding its fibres into a string used later for construction.

6. Striping the dead outer bark off the panel to help it flatten out by placing over a log and scraping and putting heavy things on top to flatten and prevent curling.

Our project starts with the Boon Wurrung and Gippsland region’s practice of making a Gurrong. This involves taking what you need to create something new, whilst allowing the original form (the scarred tree) to keep living. ‘Scar’ or ‘Marked’ trees are part of the object, but aren’t cut deep enough to ring bark the tree.

the canoe ends and plastering the interior using clay and occasionally incorporating grass and gum in the mix.

the canoe season in the sun the clay so it hardens

10.

Checking for water tightness by filling the canoe with water or placing it on a still water body

within the design to

SANDSTONE

“...the bones are there, unpack and reuse it”

- N’arweet Carolyn Briggs

GRANITE

To create a cultural centre of this scale requires a lot of materials. It was important to use stones, timbers and sands from the Kulin Nations.

Whilst there are still mines, quarries and plantations of these materials within the Kulin Nations, we wanted to find where these could be taken from in the existing built fabric to not further exploit country following N’arweet’s advice to repurpose, “the bones are there, unpack and reuse it”.

BLUESTONE

BRICK COMPOSITE FREE STONE

Materials from Country

Here are the locations of where materials are taken and what is taken (see right). Some of these are heritage property but “A heritage property is protected when it’s lived in and loved” - many of these locations are no longer put to their full use, so why not use these beautiful materials such as bluestone, sandstone and timber in a new context?

We also propose to demolish the Rialto Tower as it overshadows the Birrarung and in doing so we can repurpose the lifts, cords, glass and concrete throughout our tower.

Following the words of Narweet, to “Regenerate old knowledge to new knowledge”, The textile is developed with natural weaving fibres endemic to Boon Wurrung country such as Kowat and Beal which were traditionally used to weave baskets and rope.

1. Planting and Harvesting

These grasses and are grown and harvested both on and near the site.

2. Research

The fibres are extracted In the in-house lab and woven into panels on site.

3. Co-Design

This textile skin is a co design opportunity, where the designs of First Nations artists wrap the skin, much like a wuhlert-gurn(possum skin) that is added to throughout someone’s life. Here we have suggested a collaboration with Aretha Brown.

4. Skin Manufacture

This textile is updated with artwork over time and is manufactured in-house.

Artwork: Aretha Brown

5. Tonimbuk / Maintenance

This constant and localised maintenance is taking place as panels are replaced with age. This process is a performance, a firing removal whereby land and building management become one.

6. Marking/Scarring

This textile is also used to infill where the materials were taken to create a recognisable scar in the built environment.

Returning Country.

Textile exists in the gaps left behind when removing the building materials.

Co-existing with Sky Country

The form of the gippsland gurong has been applied to the skin of our proposal. Here the canoe is not a sup porting structure for the tower but an interdependent element.

Its form is a projection from the internal “heartwood” of the tower that is populated by people to host sky country. This ensures that its internal activity does not die and is a representation of how extracted elements can go on to support other entities of the dreaming in a new context.

Clustering

First Nations Assembly Cluster.

View towards CBD and Naarm.

Cluster Mix #4

View towards upper levels of City road developments.

Cluster Mix #3

View towards Botanic Gar dens and Birrarung Marr.

Cluster Mix #2

View towards Birrarung Marr, Botanic Gardens and the Arts Centre.

Art Gallery Cluster

View towards NGV contemporary and NGV International.

Wominjeka / Entrance Cluster

View towards Arts Centre, Sturt street and City road.

Ilbijerri Cluster

Presents view of activity to City road passers.

Cluster Mix #1 View towards City Road.

First Nations Assembly Cluster

First Nations Assembly Hall Break out spaces

Assembly Offices

Cluster Mix #2

Localised cluster circulation

Public terrace

Theatre

Multi-purpose + Music Rehearsal +Teaching Space

Artist Residence

The tower is made up of a collection of clusters. These are designed programmatically to yield individual connections to their adjacent context. There is a reciprocity in the arrangement of arts and performance spaces, allowing each program to inform and assist the other.

Archie Roach Performing Arts Centre

Pictured: Deborah Cheetham (Yorta Yorta)

Occupants are afforded a more intimate relationship to their surroundings and pedestrians a visual reminder of residing on Boon Wurrung Country in the civic extensions of the tower.

Public Terrace Space

The terrace hosts a reunion of materials and objects extracted from our proposed scarring process around the CBD. These scarred materials are reinstated in the undulating terrain and sculptural infrastructure to facilitate play and stimulate culture in the union of neighbouring occupants.

Boon Wurrung Parade view towards site entrance and Tanderrum space. Artwork on skin by Gumbaynggirr artist Aretha Brown.

YARRA WARNEET

ITY ROAD

FANNING STREET

BUNGGUNY-EEK

BOON WURRUNG

The lower ground Sturt Street has been revitalised with a chain of small ponds that are designed to flood

YARRA WARNEET BUNGGUNY-EEK

BOON

ITY ROAD

FANNING STREET

WURRUNG

Foyer + Gift Muga-dji

Pictured: Elder Phoebe Nicholson (Wadi Wadi), Aunty Fay Muir (Boon Wurrung), Laura Thompson (Gunditjmara), Sarah Sheridan (non-Indigenous), Thomas Weatherall (Bundjalung), Meyne Wyatt (Yamatji, Wongatha)

First Nations Assembly

Pictured: N’arweet Dr. Carolyn Briggs AM (Boon Wurrung), Melissa Jones (Latje Latje, Wotjabuluk), Auntry Geraldine Atkinson (Bangerang, Wiradjuri), Jamie Lowe (Gunditjmara), Jordan Edwards (Gunditjmara, Arrernte, Waddawurrung), Ngarra Murray (Wamba Wamba, Yorta Yorta, Dja Dja Wurrung, Dhudhuroa, Wiradjuri), Reuben Berg (Gunditjmara), Trent Nelson (Dja Dja Wurrung, Yorta Yorta)