To Learn and to Frame (Fire).

This project looks to the devastated landscape of East Gippsland after the 2019-20 summer Bushfires. The land now bears the scars of the fire; houses now ruins, trees now blackened. We drew out the imagery of the twisted remnants of the dwelling and the inherent allegory in the bushfire of renewal — specifically the Banksia seed pod which germinates under the high temperatures of the fire. This is diagrammed through a simple relationship between the architecture of the line and the point — journey and destination; a move from learning to understanding, a move from observing to interaction.

The line forms a Boardwalk, a series of elevated experiences at a distance slightly above and removed from the forest floor which seeks to engage a tactility under foot and an interaction with the landscape and the intervention through material. The devastation of the site acts as stimulus, making the walk an adaptive typology that responds to the events of the fire on the site.

The boardwalk leads to the Pod, which is a structure offering a space for the passing on of knowledge about fire and fire regeneration. The shelter, an abstraction of the Banksia pod, opens to receive the visitor. The exterior is clad in charred timber, as if burnt by flames, while the interior surface is made of timber unscarred by fire. There is an intrinsic link to fire management led by the First Nations People, a space for them and others to disseminate knowledge and local methods of renewal.