IPH was engaged by the DHW Aboriginal Housing Infrastructure Unit in 2003 to design an ESD community facility and office for Walmajarri Inc., an Aboriginal Corportation representing the Walmajarri people of the Great Sandy Desert. Djugerari community is the “beach-head” of the Great Sandy Desert and overlooks the valley and hills that separate Walmajarri country from the Fitzroy Valley and its floodplain to the north. The community is sited on the shoulder of a range of hills from the top of which Walmajarri people would have looked to the north and the colonized lands beyond. Many of the Walmajarri people alive today lived in traditional pre-colonial ways until they were in their teens and tell first contact stories that are powerful and moving. The Chairperson of Walmajarri Inc. Ivan McFee sees the facility as a place to teach young Walmajarri people their culture and history, to keep language and culture alive. Additionally the community plan to generate employment via

Cultural Tourism enterprises. The facility included a large expandable meeting room, mens and womens teaching/activity rooms, an general office, a short term accommodation facility and an adjacent free standing staff house. The building consists of a series of pavilions sited on a concrete plinth arranged to form sheltered our-door rooms that frame views to key landscape features in the valley beyond. These pavilions are covered by a parasol roof which stands free from the pavilions providing shade and completing the framing effect. The construction and detailing of the project is agricultural and robust reflecting both the pastoral history of the place and the pragmatics of remote construction. The building does not attempt to make reference to an “aboriginal architecture”, choosing instead to be a framing device for “country” and a backdrop for activities and murals that the community plan to paint on the internal walls that form the outdoor rooms.