Dunn + Hillam's West MacDonnell National Park project
Sydney-based design and architecture firm Dunn & Hillam Architects has won a major contract to masterplan & design new facilities for a new world-class camping facility in central Australia’s largest national park, the extraordinary West MacDonnell National Park west of Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia.
Dunn & Hillam, a multiple award winning practice with specialist expertise in remote and regional work, won the contract in the face of strong competition from some of Australia’s and The Northern Territory’s leading architecture firms.
Called Tyurretye by the Arrernte people whose ancestors have occupied this country for tens of thousands of years, the West MacDonnell Ranges is a rich, arid and ancient landscape steeped in indigenous culture and Dreamtime stories. Tyurretye country is a particularly important physical representation of the dreaming – called Alyerre in Central Arrente - which among other things, refers to a mythological period when the ancestral beings created the world of the people still living today.
First made famous in the 1960s, by West Arrernte artist Albert Namatjira, West MacDonnell National Park stretches for 200 kilometres to the west of Alice Springs, and contains some of the oldest exposed rock on Earth, including Ormiston Gorge, together with diverse cultural sites and internationally significant plant & animal life. Design and masterplanning is set to start immediately.
Dunn & Hillam Director Ashley Dunn said, “ As a practice, we believe that architecture is an important tool in shaping the way we interact with landscapes, in the creation of community, and the way people engage with each other. This project brings all three together, in a very exciting way”.
“Here, the physical landscape is overlain by a rich cultural matrix of tangible and intangible qualities. It is both an immense challenge, and a privilege, to work within this context” he said.
“ This is a rare and exciting opportunity to design a world-class facility that protects and maintains a national treasure, ensuring that people from all over the world can share and enjoy its riches, now and into the future,” he said.
The Northern Territory Government has committed to nominating the West MacDonnell National Park for World Heritage Listing, a register of properties worldwide that exhibit outstanding universal cultural and/or natural values which are important to all the peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory in which they are located.
Dunn & Hillam, a multiple award winning practice with specialist expertise in remote and regional work, won the contract in the face of strong competition from some of Australia’s and The Northern Territory’s leading architecture firms.
Called Tyurretye by the Arrernte people whose ancestors have occupied this country for tens of thousands of years, the West MacDonnell Ranges is a rich, arid and ancient landscape steeped in indigenous culture and Dreamtime stories. Tyurretye country is a particularly important physical representation of the dreaming – called Alyerre in Central Arrente - which among other things, refers to a mythological period when the ancestral beings created the world of the people still living today.
First made famous in the 1960s, by West Arrernte artist Albert Namatjira, West MacDonnell National Park stretches for 200 kilometres to the west of Alice Springs, and contains some of the oldest exposed rock on Earth, including Ormiston Gorge, together with diverse cultural sites and internationally significant plant & animal life. Design and masterplanning is set to start immediately.
Dunn & Hillam Director Ashley Dunn said, “ As a practice, we believe that architecture is an important tool in shaping the way we interact with landscapes, in the creation of community, and the way people engage with each other. This project brings all three together, in a very exciting way”.
“Here, the physical landscape is overlain by a rich cultural matrix of tangible and intangible qualities. It is both an immense challenge, and a privilege, to work within this context” he said.
“ This is a rare and exciting opportunity to design a world-class facility that protects and maintains a national treasure, ensuring that people from all over the world can share and enjoy its riches, now and into the future,” he said.
The Northern Territory Government has committed to nominating the West MacDonnell National Park for World Heritage Listing, a register of properties worldwide that exhibit outstanding universal cultural and/or natural values which are important to all the peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory in which they are located.
