Select Architects were approached to design a Health and Community Services Centre within an existing site and programme.
The design integrates reception and waiting areas, interview, treatment and consulting rooms with staff offices and meeting areas.
Inspired by the Lake Condah Possum Skin Cloak, one of only six cloaks remaining in Australia from the nineteenth century, the proposed building aims to tell the story of the local Aboriginal community by subtly incorporating symbolic elements / motifs through-out the building wall, window and floor/ground surfaces.
Prior to the mid-nineteenth century almost every aboriginal person living in southeastern Australia wore animal skin cloaks. The possum skin cloak was a highly prized and intimate item, from the beginning of life to the end of life. Babies were wrapped in cloak and people wore cloaks right through life until people died and were buried in the cloak. In a similar way, the proposed health and well-being building will care for people from before birth right through life until death.
The proposed building design aims to draw cultural elements from the local Aboriginal culture of the region and provide a building which generates an Aboriginal identity about itself.
