The Black Diamond

RMIT University, Master of Architecture, Graduate Project 2011

Supervisors: Michael Spooner & Melanie Dodd

Awarded the Antonia Bruns Memorial Medal

The township of Korumburra, located in southeast Victoria, is an endeavour by its people. Dating from its coal mining origins to its present-day dairy industry, the town of 4,500 people has largely been self-supporting. This project aims to provide amenities for the town, but foremost, to create architecture that will celebrate, critique, and exaggerate the idiosyncrasies and latent conditions that make Korumburra so unique.

At the bottom of Main Street, a proposed supermarket, reception centre, and cheese tasting room mark the entry to the town from Melbourne. Meanwhile, at the top end, an indigenous arboretum, self-storage facility, and a room for listening to giant earthworms address the point of departure. These buildings locate themselves within the larger geographical and topographical framework of southeast Victoria, as the town is situated between Melbourne and the popular tourist destination of Wilsons Promontory. While addressing the transitory experiences of passersby, the needs of the locals are also ingrained within the buildings, manifesting in conditions that only a local might be aware of.

The ambition is that these buildings will be simultaneously both familiar yet also provocative and uncomfortably strange.