On Country: Framlingham, Semester 1 2019

On Country: Framlingham An RMIT Bachelor of Architectural Design led by Dr Christine Phillips & Stasinos Mantzis with Kirrae Whurrong Elder Uncle Leonard Clarke and his son Kirrae Clarke Semester 1, 2019

We acknowledge and thank Uncle Leonard Clarke, Lurpeen Clarke, Kirrae Clarke, Uke and the Kirrae Whurrong community as the caretakers and custodians of their Aboriginal owned land at Purnim/Framlingham in the Western District of Victoria. We especially thank Uncle Lenny for the initial invitation and ongoing kindness and generosity he has extended to us since our first meeting.

We acknowledge the Kirrae Whurrong people as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which this project was undertaken.

We also acknowledge the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands we conducted the business of the University.

We respectfully acknowledge their Ancestors and Elders, past, present and emerging.

The Shara Clarke Music Centre A partnership between Uncle Leonard Clarke and the RMIT Architecture & Urban Design School

Project Background In 2018, the RMIT Architecture & Urban Design School received an invitation from Uncle Leonard (Lenny) Clarke to conceptualise a vision he has for his family’s Aboriginal owned land in the Western District of Victoria.

This vision is to create a world class cultural arts and music centre that not only celebrates and showcases Aboriginal culture to a broad and international audience, but to also foster and provide opportunities for youth through music & cultural education programmes as an alternate to incarcaration.

This new centre will be called the Shara Clarke Music Centre, named after and in honour of Uncle Lenny’s late daughter.

“Music is the language of all countries.” Uncle Banjo Clarke

The Shara Clarke Music Centre WHO? Uncle Lenny is a highly regarded Aboriginal elder and human rights advocate from the Western District of Victoria, Australia. He was the first Aboriginal advisor to the Police Commissioner in Australia and currently sits on the County and Magistrates Court as a Koori elder. He is also the son of the internationally renowned late Indigenous elder, Uncle Banjo Clarke.

WHY? Uncle Lenny’s vision has grown out of a frustration around the way Aboriginal people have been so poorly represented in the media. Uncle Lenny instead seeks to project a positive image about Aboriginal culture and talent onto a diverse national and international audience.

The Grampians

Melbourne Budj Bim/Lake Condah Proposed Shara Clarke Music Centre, Framlingham Warrnambool

12 Apostles

The Shara Clarke Music Centre Where?

The Shara Clarke Music centre will be located on Aboriginal owned land in Framlingham in the Western District of Victoria. This region has remained an active and culturally significant place for its traditional owners for over 80,000, where Indigenous Australians remain the world’s oldest living culture in the world.

Encircled by the ancient Indigenous aquaculture system at the Unesco World Heritage Budj Bim Cultural Landscape at Lake Condah, the rugged beauty of The Grampians National Park, the world famous 12 Apostles and the beautiful coastal city of Warrnambool, The Shara Clarke Music centre is ideally situated within this rich cultural triangle within the Western District of Victoria.

This setting makes it the perfect location in which to strengthen Aboriginal culture and the arts and inject new life within the Western District and beyond. Offering facilities like no other within Australia, the new Shara Clarke Music Centre is likely to become an important tourist and cultural destination in its own right.

Edged by the Hopkins River and Framlingham forest, the site offers stunning views of this rich cultural landscape where a deep history of the Aboriginal communities of this region can be explored. Just a short 20 minute drive from Warrnambool train station, the centre is conveniently located and can link into existing bus touring services or offer carparking for self-driving visitors.

The Shara Clarke Music Centre

Aims: • To showcase Aboriginal culture and talent to a national and international audience • To provide world class facilities that could also be used for a range of concerts and festivals that are both national and international • To support the training and education of youth and emerging artists • To provide alternate opportunities for the disadvantaged • To support and nurture the ongoing cultures and languages of Aboriginal communities

Images above are of the Sage Gateshead Cultural Centre, UK

The Shara Clarke Music Centre What?

The facilities the Shara Clarke Music Centre would accommodate: • The Banjo Clarke Stage: generous stage with canopy to shelter a crowd of 5000 people, undercover seating for 1000 people, back of house facilities including green rooms for performers, truck loading dock • Music Education Facility: recording studios, multi-purpose rooms, teaching rooms, truck loading dock • Art Gallery & Artist in Residence: gallery with back of house facilities, amenities & truck loading dock, studio and teaching spaces for artists in residence • Café/Restaurant: Café/restaurant with commercial kitchen, back of house facilities, amenities, teaching space, outdoor eating area, productive garden • Accommodation: 3 blocks of modest accommodation for 10 people, shared amenities, communal kitchen • Kikkabush Culture Shed: A facility that would support cultural and life building skills for the local Aboriginal communities such as car mechanics, boomerang making, textiles, fashion and the arts.

On Country: Framlingham RMIT Architecture & Landscape Architecture Students explore design possibilities for the Shara Clarke Music Centre through an interdisciplinary Design Studio led by Dr Christine Phillips & Stasinos Mantzis.

Following the invitation from Uncle Leonard Clarke, RMIT’s Architecture & Urban Design School ran a Design Studio in Semester 1, 2019 to explore Uncle Lenny’s vision for Aboriginal owned land in the Western District of Victoria.

RMIT’s School of Architecture and Urban Design (AUD) engages with spatial thinking through a practice-led model of vertically integrated teaching and research. The design studio is a disciplinary approach to design pedagogy where students, tutors and partners engage to explore an issue through a mutual enquiry. The design studio provides a particular learning space where a range of design approaches and techniques are employed to develop spatial propositions which take into account society, place, culture and the material environment. These approaches are often underpinned by knowledge exchange especially when design studios are undertaken in the field as live projects.

One of the great advantages of undertaking a design studio in the field, outside the traditional learning environments, is that students are asked to encounter new and alternative ways of knowing through direct experience. As such, the field-based studio is an opportunity to investigate future potentials of such speculative projects in a way that can transform the project itself. In doing so the design studio can offer a space in which assumptions and biases about the project can be reflected upon, new knowledge can be generated and new partnerships can be drawn into the project - a process of enrichment which is also transformative. This model, therefore lends itself well to field work investigations on Country.

The ‘On Country: Framlingham’ Design Studio required students to consider what the Shara Clara Music Centre might look like by explore the following themes: • How can the history, culture and physical attributes of a place can inform a narrative for the site • Research and respond to the idea of a colonised country and how we might design a future architecture charged by multiple histories and different cultures • To consider what Aboriginal sovereignty means within architecture and how nonIndigenous designers • To consider Aboriginal notions of Country as different from western concepts of landscape • How can the architecture accommodate different modes of operation from the temporary to the permanent and how might this inform the architecture The Design Studio was framed through the principles of deep listening and the technique of yarning - a process which is enabled through the invitation to participate in a shared sovereign relationship through Country. This yarning between the non-indigenous practitioners and Indigenous community leaders has transformed the project ambitions as an ongoing process.

Deep listening involves a commitment to respecting Indigenous knowledge systems as different yet equal and begins with sharing stories and offering an opportunity for each party to situate themselves in the story of the other.

The work in the following pages represents the students attempts to visualise what the Shara Clarke Music Centre might look like and consider the potentials of the site and where the various programs might be situated. They are concepts only. The students worked in groups to produce these various schemes. Each group produced their own interpretation of the material and of Uncle Lenny’s vision.

Studio Leaders Dr Christine Phillips Stasinos Mantzis

Indigenous Partners/Leaders Uncle Leonard Clarke Kirrae Clarke Lurpeen Clarke

Participating students Group 1: James Rumanovsky (architecture student from Australia) & Carl Mordaunt (architecture student from Australia) Group 2: Elizaveta Zyuzina (architecture student from Russia/New Zealand), Lara Birdogan (architecture student from Australia) & Su Ze (landscape architecture student from China) Group 3: Munene Kithinji (architecture student from Kenya) & Mads Vagn Jacobsen (architecture student from Denmark) Group 4: Juana Joceline Acevedo Hulsbusch (architecture student from Germany), Rafael Buzali (landscape architecture student from Mexico) & Haoyu Zheng (landscape architecture student from China) Group 5: Alice Gooi (architecture student from Malaysia) & Wenzheng Wang (architecture student from China) Group 6: Tatyana Wenczel (architecture student from Australia) & Owen Humphrey (architecture student from Australia)

THE EPHEMERAL Group 1: James Rumanovsky (architecture student from Australia) & Carl Mordaunt (architecture student from Australia)

Water Feature

Sound Shell Temporary Stage

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Gallery aerial view

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Gallery plan

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Restaurant Kitchen Bathrooms Chefs Office

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POSSUM CLOAK STORIES Group 2: Elizaveta Zyuzina (architecture student from Russia/New Zealand), Lara Birdogan (architecture student from Australia) & Su Ze (landscape architecture student from China)

Masterplan non event-mode

Masterplan event-mode

Restaurant external

Gallery external

Camp grounds external

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Early learning centre external

Early learning centre internal

Artist in residence external

Artist in residence external

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Gallery external

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DELTA FESTIVAL Group 3: Munene Kithinji (architecture student from Kenya) & Mads Vagn Jacobsen (architecture student from Denmark)

Masterplan non event-mode

Masterplan event-mode

Restaurant external

Sound shell internal

Restaurant internal

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Festival aerial view

Restaurant plan

Gallery plan

Weaving Stories Group 4: Juana Joceline Acevedo Hulsbusch (architecture student from Germany), Rafael Buzali (landscape architecture student from Mexico) & Haoyu Zheng (landscape architecture student from China)

Masterplan event-mode

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Site aerial view

Gallery External

Forrest Internal

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Truck Loading Dock Gallery Space

Truck Loading Dock

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Gallery Space, Administra Informa

Gallery Space Underground

Gallery plan

GSEducationalVersion

Restaurant section

Restaurant plan

FRAMLINGHAM FOREST FESTIVAL Group 5: Alice Gooi (architecture student from Malaysia) & Wenzheng Wang (architecture student from China)

Tree pattern inspired by the aboriginal dot painting style.

Gallery External

Accommodation external

Gallery External

Accommodation external

Exploded axo gallery

Shara Clarke Memorial Centre Group 6: Tatyana Wenczel (architecture student from Australia) &

Owen Humphrey (architecture student from Australia)

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Yarn Gardens

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Sound shell external

Masterplan event-mode

Masterplan event-mode

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Recreation Block

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Accommodation Block 1

Accommodation Block 2

Accommodation plan

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Rec Space Rec Space

Studio Space Studio Space Studio Space Fire Area

Studio Space

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Loading Zone

Gallery

Amenities

Courtyard

Office Space

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Restaurant

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Teaching space

Restaurant plan