Ngurra | Cultural Precinct and National Resting Place

Description:

A $315m project, located in the parliamentary triangle and heart of Canberra on Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country. The Ngurra | Cultural Precinct and National Resting Place project was an international architectural design competition. Mantirri Design was engaged as the landscape lead with Oculus and to be part of the Blak Hand Collective, a unique team of 12 leading First Nations design and engagement practitioners from across Australia. Although the Blak Hand Collective did not win the design competition, the collective has forged a new benchmark for design in the architectural world of announcing that we as First Nations people do have the expertise and capability of delivering such high profile and complex projects.

While reflecting upon enduring Ngunnawal/Ngambri relationships to Country. Our design proposal explored the cultural axis to immediate places of cultural significance. Therefore, because the hidden Molonglo River flows underneath the artificial Lake Burley Griffin in silence, water, became the first big design move of our thinking.

We dissected the project site with an ephemeral creek which forced everything else to grow from it, around it, yet still be connected to it and so that the Molonglo River can begin to sing again - its voice that has been sleeping, awakens.

Because of tree canopy restrictions, a grassy meadow was proposed for the rear of the project site. Numerous pathways crisscrossed the meadow taking people on a journey to various gathering places.