Mutitjulu Aboriginal Housing + Professional Hub
Nguluway DesignInc was initially approached by a member of the Mutitjulu community to produce an alternative housing design more reflective and suitable for the Anangu people. The current housing stock was said to be a inappropriate and often suffered vandalism related to social problems and lacked cultural belonging.
Our aim was to provide a dwelling design for a particular community member that imbued cultural protocols and sensibilities as an example of better design solutions.
The overall planning needed to include considerations for social dynamics such as extended family connections, male and female specific gender spaces, indoor and outdoor living and sleeping and a way of connecting built form to ‘Grandmother.’
The response was to layer spaces around the cultural idea of journey. An experiential hierarchy was established starting from the point of arrival and carried through into more private introspective spaces. A central covered deck acts as an arrival point with a semi-public quality, whilst creating both connection and separation to two separate living spaces.
Alternate sleeping and living options are now viable for guests with seats that can transform into sleepout beds, and options for people to sleep on the open deck to take advantage of the cool breezes or to adhere to cultural protocols of being separate to certain family members.
A womens business verandah was created with views to Uluru. This is a special place for a grandmother to teach her granddaughter art, weaving and other ‘business’ of which men are not privy to.
It was suggested that if the local production of making sand bricks could be adapted then thick earth walls could be made by local community members from the sand found adjacent to the site. A structural system of portal frames could be erected and the roof installed as the first building elements which offer a shaded building platform to work under. Beyond this the walls would be progressively formed with the raw material being expressed internally and externally as the finished expression of Country.
