90 REGIONAL STUDIO

Bachelor Of Architectural Studies Course Convenor Dr John Gamble

STUDIO LEADER (REGIONAL) PROFESSOR OF PRACTICE RACHEL NEESON

Studio Tutors

DAVID OSTINGA • BRENDAN RANDLES

Broken Hill has starred in the movies Mad Max and Adventures of Priscilla, Queen on the Desert This isolated place, set in the arid rural landscape of far western NSW, has a ‘perfect light’ that has long attracted filmmakers, photographers and artists.

This regional city thrived in its mining heyday. Now, Broken Hill is a little quieter; like many cities, large shopping centres on the periphery have pulled life from the city centre. It is a place of extreme heat and cold, frequent strong winds, dust storms, blinding rain and searing sunshine. With high lead levels because of its mining heritage, architecture’s role is to filter these environmental conditions.

This studio asks: how can we sustain the urban communities in regional cities?

Students were tasked with designing a new library to be the cornerstone of Broken Hill’s rejuvenation. This typology is fundamentally collective. Libraries have evolved from archives of knowledge to urban living rooms catering to community diversity. Libraries are strategic urban assets that are powerful activators of the public realm. Students learnt to ‘read’ place through its layers, looking for enigmatic relationships between elements – topography and street pattern, hydrology and floor levels, climate and wall thickness, dust, and landscape to produce architecture that is a response to the city of Broken Hill.