Matte McConnell
PREFACE
Fire has always been a part of the Australian landscape, with many native flora and fauna relying on controlled, cool burns to survive and reproduce. The fires also burn up fuel like kindling and leaf detritus, meaning a natural bushfire has less to devour.
Long before Australia was colonised by Europeans, fire management techniques known as “cultural burns” were being practiced. The cool-burning, knee-high blazes were designed to happen continuously and across the landscape.
Country is personified within aboriginal culture and this unique and deep relationship with land and sky shifts priorities around precautionary burning, protecting the environment holistically over property and assets.
As indigenous nations and the landscape in Australia are so diverse there is no one-size-fits-all approach to cultural burning.
AIM
To use architecture as a tool to support and revive Yuin cultural practices.
Establish an adaptable and accessible architectural base that can be manipulated by locals to provide what they need and want.
WHY
The purpose is to reinvorgate cultural fire burning within the Rosedale and Yuin community through community centres at various locations through the landscape, allowing cultural practices across
All types of country. This will enable the Yuin community to heal and maintain country and in turn heal themselves.
Centres will be designed to increase collaboration with land and fire management agencies to facilitate the re-introduction of cultural burning in Rosedale and Yuin country.
Numerous locations allow:
- Cultural burns to protect sites and clear access through Yuin country for cultural uses – hunting, access to fish traps and ceremony.
- Heal and restore sick country
- Wider reach
- Holistic approach to land and water management
- Allow right time, right way practices
- Learning/ practice for different landscapes/ country to be applied elsewhere
