David O’Brien, the leader of Bower Studio, Melbourne school of design

O’Brien build a lot of installation and buiding. He also done a lot of project, building
something with a narrative background behind it.

Wave Hill ‘bough shelter’ pavilions

 Location: Jinbarak, Junardi and Kalkarindji Northern Territory

 Dates: June 2016 on time and on budget

The Wave Hill walk-off changed the course of Australian history, yet the event
suffers from a lack of recognition. Now, architects have become its unlikely champion
(By Sara Brocklesby, University of Melbourne)

The Bower Studio, led by the University of Melbourne’s Dr David O’Brien, had just
two weeks in May to build three four-metre high steel and iron pavilions in 38 degree
heat.

Two years in the making, the Wave Hill Walk-off project has brought together six
designers, 12 students, eight labourers and the Gurindji people of Kalkarindji and
Daguragu in the Northern Territory to give physical form to remembering the birth of
Australia’s Indigenous land rights movement

The 50th anniversary of the Wave Hill Walk-off was celebrated at the Freedom Day
Festival, where the Bower Studio pavilions were launched. Tourists used them for the
first time as they walked the original trail. With Indigenous tourism in its infancy,
Kalkarindji is a focal point of efforts to grow the industry.

Until the work of the Bower Studio, no physical marker had been created to
remember this nation-changing story. Conventional thinking around architecture
focuses on the design of large-scale buildings and the high-end redesign of private
residences. Dr O’Brien, from the Melbourne School of Design, says: “Following this
kind of thinking, architects are seen to offer their expertise to a very small percentage
of the population. Fundamentally, design is about solving problems and improving
our quality of life. Architects do so much more than design big buildings. We tell
stories of culture and the past through our built environment.
For more than nine years, Dr O’Brien has been consulting with Indigenous
communities to collaboratively design and build the infrastructure of their choice. The
Gurindji people commissioned the Bower Studio to build shade pavilions and trail
markers, which would embody the story of the walk-off along the path taken by the
strikers in 1966.

The designs, as well as their materials, express the artefacts left behind on the
abandoned Wave Hill Aboriginal worker camp site. The designs, as well as their
materials, express the artefacts left behind on the abandoned Wave Hill Aboriginal
worker camp site. bed frames are reflected in the attachment of perforated frames onto
the pavilion structures. Dappled sunlight floats over the original, abandoned bed
frames through the overhanging trees. We brought this dappled light into the pavilions
through perforations in the steel. A balance between literal interpretation and
abstraction needed to be found. “Somewhere in that mix there is that perfect
expression of the cultural and historical narrative that the Gurindji people wish to
tell,” Dr O’Brien says.