Bellambi Station Upgrade
Located north of Wollongong, Bellambi is a primarily residential suburb between the Illawarra Escarpment and the Pacific Ocean. Our team applied a designing from Country methodology to bring stories from Country into the design.
The upgraded station caters to the needs of the rapidly growing population, providing accessible facilities as well as a distinctive place that integrates stories of the cultural and natural context. Applying a holistic approach, the place-specific design emerged through a context analysis followed by an iterative design process, testing the public domain elements and their interplay to arrive at the final design.
Dharawal Stories
The physical experience of entering the station is an intimate view reflecting the natural geometry an important Dharawal stories of the local area. The form of the new canopy takes inspiration from the Illawarra Escarpment, falling gently to the south, with the soffit and walls that frame the station entry integrating textures inspired by rocks at the nearby Bellambi Point.
Bellambi Point has major aboriginal significance as a burial ground, tool site, bush schoolroom and meeting site and one of the major sites for the whale ceremony. It is also the location of one of the largest Aboriginal shell middens in NSW, testament to its use as a place where resources were stored and consumed over a long period of time.
