Australia’s Forgotten inland: how can we re-inhabit the 70% again?

Research work that focuses on documenting historical and current, notable pieces of Vernacular Architecture throughout the built history of Australia. The work deciphers their passive cooling (without electricity) techniques and creates a framework, working guide and supporting information in which to carry out a site analysis of an existing building and apply these vernacular-inspired cooling techniques.

Notable vernacular Australian Architecture includes the Bourke Lands Department Building which incorporates vents throughout the inside of all walls and drew air across tanks of water underneath the building, through the internal spaces via the integrated vents, and out through a cupola in the roof. Similar techniques were used in Adelaide House in Alice Springs yet water-dipped hessian membranes in ducts under the building cooled the air as it got pulled through the building - The fundamentals of evaporative air conditioning!

This work was a part of Bobbie’s Masters of Architecture Research work and a topic we are very excited about. Contact us for more information about this work.

“A country's architecture is a near perfect record of its history. Every building captures in physical form the climate and resources of a country's geography, and the conditions of its society ... Every building explains the time and place in which it was built.”

Max Freeland (Architecture in Australia: A History 1968)