Biripi Nation
New South Wales
Dovetailing ritual with the rhythms of the land, Magenta Outhouse floats within a big landscape. The architecture providing a platform as a primal response to celebrate rituals in the open air, to distil the human experience.
This is as much a cultural construct as it is an architectural form, as much a symbol of a certain way of life as it is a marker of the human relationship to place. Anchored by the naturally existing basalt boulders, a platform delicately coalesces with the moss and lichen, leading towards the bath. Connecting this experience, the elegant strokes of the folded steel expresses a structural cohesion, a gesture of canopy, softly intersecting and floating above the ground of the rolling landscape.
Â
The theatre of the form glistens, exploring the ethereal beauty of light, space and shadow.Effortlessly restrained and intent, Magenta Outhouse shares as a reminder to pause, breathe, observe and immerse.Â
The Robert Woodward Award for Small Project Architecture
Magenta Outhouse is an architecture of subtle interventions that deeply immerses human experience into landscape. Set within a secluded hillside setting on the Bulga Plateau, amongst a cluster of basalt boulders, this project is a personal exploration into the basic rituals of ablution and bathing.
The project is carefully and meaningfully stripped back to its essential elements – a skeletal steel frame that anchors the structure, a timber deck as a platform for inhabitation, a folded steel canopy for shelter and translucent screens to enclose and direct views. An adjacent boulder is a natural threshold to the bath (a repurposed watering trough) – all set within remnant subtropical rainforest that resonates with birdsong.
Constructed with recycled materials, the project has been made with exceptional resourcefulness, craftsmanship and detail on an ultra-small budget. Weathered steel, concrete and timber are thoughtfully positioned alongside touches of copper and crafted ceramics, creating a rich and tactile materiality. Magenta-toned screens filter a dynamic and ethereal atmosphere as it changes throughout the day.
Magenta Outhouse is an evocative, deeply site-responsive work that reveals the extraordinary potential of architecture to connect with Place.
The Robert Woodward Award for Small Project Architecture
Magenta Outhouse is an architecture of subtle interventions that deeply immerses human experience into landscape. Set within a secluded hillside setting on the Bulga Plateau, amongst a cluster of basalt boulders, this project is a personal exploration into the basic rituals of ablution and bathing.
The project is carefully and meaningfully stripped back to its essential elements – a skeletal steel frame that anchors the structure, a timber deck as a platform for inhabitation, a folded steel canopy for shelter and translucent screens to enclose and direct views. An adjacent boulder is a natural threshold to the bath (a repurposed watering trough) – all set within remnant subtropical rainforest that resonates with birdsong.
Constructed with recycled materials, the project has been made with exceptional resourcefulness, craftsmanship and detail on an ultra-small budget. Weathered steel, concrete and timber are thoughtfully positioned alongside touches of copper and crafted ceramics, creating a rich and tactile materiality. Magenta-toned screens filter a dynamic and ethereal atmosphere as it changes throughout the day.
Magenta Outhouse is an evocative, deeply site-responsive work that reveals the extraordinary potential of architecture to connect with Place.
Envisioned romantically as a personal exploration into the human condition.
Dovetailing junctures which actively engage the thresholds of architecture within a landscape to distill and connect both the raw beauty of mankind and the natural elements of this wild site.Â
Â
Magenta Outhouse explores a space in a natural landscape, coalescing craftsmanship, strength, form and delight. This reference to Vitruvian principles has instilled a deeply rewarding and harmonious project whose enduring beauty and ever-electric theatrics continue to inspire, nurture contemplation and allow for communion with nature as I lay here breathing in the mountain air through the wafting baths steam.Â