Woodhead designed the Pinnacles Desert Discovery Centre to experience the unique role of fire, both culturally and environmentally, as part of its design and construction process.
The evocative gesture of ritual burning introduces this specific practice into contemporary Australian architecture. The burning and the burnt remains are integral to the scheme and highlight the relationship between fire, the land and its inhabitants.
Located 250km north of Perth in the Nambung National Park, the Pinnacles is made of thousands of protruding limestone formations spread over a vast dunal landscape, a dynamic and ever changing landscape. The design principle for the desert discovery centre is embedded in the mutable narrative of that landscape.
The discovery centre becomes another element of the landscape, specifically ‘of the place’, with the podium walls constructed in limestone. The timber façade is a direct reference to the nearby grove of vanishing tuarts, disappearing under a shifting sand dune. The planting interventions include species endemic to the region.
During in the construction process the vertical timber elements were deliberately set on fire enabling the architecture to become a registration of the role of fire in the landscape.
The Pinnacles Interpretive Centre marks a shift in architectural response to landscape, as an understanding place.
Awards:
- Gold WA Tourism Award – New Tourism Development, WA Tourism 2009
- Shortlisted – World Architecture Festival Awards 2008
