Galina Beek

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Looking south towards the verandah off the conference area.



Looking north-west to the sales area with the entry porch and path at left.














Clerestory windows and ceiling of the conference room.













More photos can be found in the version!

Review Kim Dovey Photography John Gollings

Continuing cultural tensions are evident in stage one of the Galina Beek Living Cultural Centre at Healesville, Victoria–by Anthony Styant-Browne.

How are architects to express Aboriginality in architecture? How can the interests of client communities and the pressures of tourist marketing be resolved in a nation where Aboriginal reconciliation has not been achieved? The Galina Beek Living Cultural Centre is an important project which offers some clues on these issues.

This building is the first stage of a larger project on a 35-hectare bushland site near Melbourne which was part of an Aboriginal reserve from 1863-1921. The cultural centre has a complex brief—to nourish and service the community activities of the local Coranderrk Koori community, and to create, display and sell Aboriginal culture to visitors. Inevitably then, the building is an icon for Aboriginality and a primary site of cultural exchange. It is located opposite the entrance to the Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary, one of Victoria’s primary tourist attractions. This juxtaposition of Aboriginality with wildlife on the same tourist menu generates architectural problems which have been addressed here with integrity and flair.

The stage one building consists of a large conference room, gallery, shop and offices. An ancillary wing of workshop and display space is planned for stage two. The plan, centred on the conference room, is derived from a circular/spiral motif symbolising the gathering as portrayed in Aboriginal art. The conference room, a double-height, drum-like form with clerestorey windows, is enclosed by a ring of service rooms and offices on three sides, which are in turn encircled by a gallery/foyer. The building sets up an axial pathway from the street entry through the gallery/foyer to the conference room which frames the forest through a northern glass wall. This beautifully lit, central meeting space has a serene and contemplative presence. The pathway continues across a verandah and ceremonial ground to connect with a path through the forest of messmate, stringybark and manna gums.

The design attempts to fuse the Aboriginal and the contemp-orary, avoiding the literal or organic. It also embodies some of the tensions that surround the construction of Aboriginality in Australian society. The colours are mostly ochres, yellows, natural timbers and reds, but the octagonal steel frame of the central drum is painted a distinctive and non-Aboriginal purple. Most notably, the design generates some unease on the street frontage. Wall junctions splay and crack in a manner that generates the spiral form with a certain edginess, reflecting an unfinished process of reconciliation. The projecting corrugated iron shop contrasts with the wood-shingled drum and can read as both a segment expelled from the centre and a wedge inserted into it. The shop introduces a range of tensions—formal, historic and economic.

While these uneasy formal gestures show a tendency to speak over the clients’ heads, this is not a radically deconstructive move to decentre the experiences of either clients or visitors, and nor is it a reduction of architecture to text. This is a finely composed building which uses these tensions for aesthetic interest. The building shows respect for its Aboriginal client community without a simplistic reliance on reassuring stereotypes. It celebrates the forest setting and creates a place for a centred cultural identity without ignoring the problematic relations with the dominant culture.

To illustrate this last point in a disappointing way, the Victorian government has appropriated the conference room for subdivision as a museum exhibition area. This displacement of living culture with historic displays will spoil the central space of the building and will hopefully be temporary. The segmentation of the gathering place paradoxically damages the experience of the building, yet underlies its representation as a place of ongoing struggle.

Kim Dovey is an associate professor in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne.

GALINA BEEK LIVING CULTURAL CENTRE, HEALESVILLE, VICTORIA
Architects Anthony Styant-Browne Architect—project team Anthony Styant-Browne, Jen Rippon, John Simmons, Carlos Lay, Ming-En Lim. Civil and Structural Engineers Ove Arup & Partners. Services Engineers Scheme Group. Landscape Architects Graeme Bentley. Acoustics Graeme Harding & Associates. Quantity Surveyors Currie &Browne, Cameron & Middleton. Building Surveyors Anthony Stokes & Associates. Signage Julie Jame Design. Builder A&M Martino Holdings. Proprietor Coranderrk Koori Cooperative. Funding Bodies Aboriginal Affairs Victoria, ATSIC.

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Published online: 1 Sep 1996

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Architecture Australia, September 1996

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