Sublime Camping

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1 Jul 2000

This is an article from the Architecture Australia archives and may use outdated formatting

Entrepreneurial architect Ken Latona’s latest eco-trekking lodge, at the Bay of Fires in Tasmania, is his finest production yet. Straddling the crest of a hill, his long, double shed overlooks a dazzling coast from under a folded roof.

Photography by Simon Kenny. Text by Rory Spence.


	Above Looking south-east over the lodge on Bailey’s Hummock with the Bay of Fires beyond. Right Abbotsbury Beach.

The outlook over the Bay of Fires from Ken Latona’s new walkers’ lodge must be one of the most beautiful prospects in Tasmania. Steep slopes of dry sclerophyll scrub, rich with Aboriginal middens, lead down to exquisite beaches of pale sand, flanked by seductive sculptural groups of pinkish granite boulders, their rounded, sensuous forms patched with intense orange lichen. The building itself is hardly visible on arrival, screened by the silky casuarina canopy that crowns the hilltop. Like Latona’s award-winning lodge at Friendly Beaches, this new facility acts as the end point of a four-day guided walk through the national park, camping overnight. Two groups of 10 people are often in the park at one time, each with two guides, spending the last two nights in the lodge, exploring the coastline in a more relaxed way before returning home. The building retains some of the character of camping, but with greater comfort. Latona believes that nomadic instincts still lie dormant within us, and the guided walks offer some remote connection with these ancestral roots, which is subtly acknowledged in the layout and austerity of the complex. Rather than scattering cabins across the site, Latona chose to centralise facilities in two parallel, offset pavilions, a familiar architectural parti introduced in the Short farmhouse at Kempsey by Glenn Murcutt, who Latona acknowledges as one of his mentors. The theme of light, linear pavilions with curved or skillion roofs, sometimes linked by outdoor spines, has been a fertile field of exploration in recent Australian architecture: and is especially fruitful for inserting buildings into sensitive rural sites with minimal cut-and-fill and for encouraging cross-ventilation and winter sun penetration. Latona’s lodge demonstrates the continuing versatility of this type, here used in an unlikely context. The building straddles the ridge of the knoll, just below the summit. Unlike most other buildings of this type, the pavilions do not face the prospect, but peer into the bush: only at the eastern end do they look out to the wider landscape. With so much time being spent outdoors, this seems an appropriate response. It also provides shelter from coastal winds and limits the visual impact on the surroundings to one side of the hill, where the gables and deck project out of the trees above a small beach. The siting took advantage of natural clearings, necessitating removal of only three trees. The uncompromisingly straight circulation spine running between the pavilions is used to powerful effect as a formalized ‘pass’ over the ridge, in total contrast to the irregularity of the natural terrain. Approach is via a narrow bush track winding amongst boulder-strewn undergrowth. On arrival at the western end of the building, the path side-steps onto the raised spine, revealing a dramatic distant view of the ocean framed by the receding perspective of timber walls, with a gash of sky above. This severely abstracted slot of outdoor space is the backbone of the project: providing a link to the cosmos, it emerges from the journey taken by the walkers through the park, connecting up with another winding track on the eastern side leading down to the beach. The two pavilions, stepping down the slope, are similar in cross-section and planned on a 3 x 5 metre structural module. One houses bedrooms and a small library, the other communal spaces, staff rooms and an additional visitors’ bedroom. Both turn their backs on the entrance spine, but the skillion roofs are pitched up to the north, echoing the wind-pruned trees, to receive winter sun. Visitors’ twin rooms are divided into two groups of five, corresponding to the social grouping of the guided walks, each with its own toilet and washing facilities. The rooms and facilities are elegantly spartan in character, reminiscent of the beach shack or even the monastery. The social grouping is marked by the raised portion of the spinal walkway, which also serves to indicate the centre of the building and the point where one enters the communal spaces to the north, via a grand open porch.		Above Looking south-east towards the main deck and folded roof.



Above Looking north-west.



Top Abbotsbury Beach. Right The living/dining area from the kitchen. Far right Part of the 15 metre-long indoor-outdoor kitchen, with cabinets of Tasmanian hardwood. Below left and right Reverse views of the central walk. Bottom Looking from the library to the east end of the central walk.



Top Abbotsbury Beach. Right The living/dining area from the kitchen. Far right Part of the 15 metre-long indoor-outdoor kitchen, with cabinets of Tasmanian hardwood. Below left and right Reverse views of the central walk. Bottom Looking from the library to the east end of the central walk.



			Top Abbotsbury Beach. Second row Detail of the exposed stud wall and ancient casuarina tree. Third row left Looking west with the living pavilion at left and the sleeping pavilion and main sundeck at right. Third row right Looking north from the sundeck, with mitred roof above and the east face of the living pavilion at right. Bottom North facade of the living pavilion, with the west sundeck at right.

This porch, with its tripartite structural frame, opening onto a secluded clearing amongst the casuarinas, is the psychological focus of the building and the only place where the platform meets the ground. This is the outdoor eating area, with barbecues built into the rear wall, and where fires are lit in the evening. In effect an abstracted campsite, it is the most centered, calm space, anchoring the building to the site, precisely at the crest of the ridge. This outdoor kitchen and porch is matched by an equivalent internal kitchen/dining area, which continues into a sitting area and out onto a covered deck, which overlooks the beach to the east. Glazed sliding walls separate the inside and outside at both ends, with fixed panes above, while all other windows in the building are glass louvres. Unlike the porch, the linear character of these internal living spaces draws the eye to the ocean beyond. It is an extraordinary but resolutely simple space, 18 metres long, extending another nine metres at each end to the porch and deck. Food refrigeration is relegated to a store off the central spine, so there is no disruption to the simple timber workbench. The eastern deck is the dramatic climax of the communal area, commanding a view back along the coastline that the walkers have just traversed. At this crucial point, the skillion roof is hinged up to acknowledge and frame the view in a more formal manner. From the beach below, the building, mouth open, seems to be in animated conversation with the landscape. The building and its servicing have been inserted into the beautiful site with extreme sensitivity. Materials were delivered by helicopter allowing minimal clearance for construction; trees grow hard against the building. Composting toilet chambers are discreetly tucked away, black water being taken to an evaporation chamber in the bush. Grey water is taken through a three-stage grease arrestor and biologically filtered before being released into an absorption trench. Lighting and power are generated from solar collectors on the south-facing roof, while cooking, refrigeration, water heating and two small portable space heaters are gas-powered. All service equipment and rainwater tanks are compactly gathered in one area to the south of the building. Construction is equally pragmatic. The communal space is fully framed with laminated timber posts and beams, while hardwood stud partition walls and laminated beams on treated pine stumps are used in other areas. All non-glazed walls are stud-framed and lined in hardwood; external walls are single skin construction, the exposed studs providing a strong vertical rhythm abstracting the surrounding tree trunks. External faces of lining boards are finely grooved, which reinforces the striking horizontality of the building, matching the horizontal striation of laminated beams and glass louvres and echoing the horizon. Painted plasterboard ceilings are used to lighten and unify spaces and mask the hybrid laminations of the roof beams, with painted fibre-cement over the deck; the simplicity of the treatment works well, though the ceiling line cuts awkwardly across the horizontal tie beams and the use of paint, already peeling on the deck, undermines the otherwise direct use of materials and ingeniously minimal detailing which so appropriately reveals the making of the building. Latona’s elegant sheds are another fine addition to the growing Australian genre of the open pavilion, but they have an economy, utter simplicity and directness which is refreshing. Not all junctions are as refined as in more expensive buildings of this type, but the pared-down austerity has its own strong character which is thoroughly appropriate both to its setting and its function as a formalised communal camping experience for urban visitors. The unusual catering arrangements mean that the staff – four guides and a resident manager/cook – also become part of the social group, undermining the served/servant stereotype of the ‘hospitality’ industry. Thus, in a modest way, the building is socially as well as spatially and environmentally challenging. Rory Spence teaches architecture in Tasmania and writes for Architectural Review UK
		Bay of Fires Lodge, Mount William National Park, Tasmania Architect, Developer and Builder Ken Latona; documentation Jonathon Buist. Structural Engineer Jim Gandy.