Walyalup Tower

Alexander Rayfield

Supervisor: A/Prof. Graham Crist

This is Walyalup Tower; a subsidised housing scheme, located in Fremantle, Western Australia. The proposal comprises an apartment tower, woylie memorial, public plaza and roof treatment of an adjacent building. The proposal was born out of dissatisfaction with Fremantle, the site of first European contact on the western coast, in 1829. Present day Fremantle reveres in the folklore of early colonial hardship in its preserved 19th century city, and celebrates the success of this struggle in the working Fremantle port.

Contemporary efforts to preserve and protect the city reflect an ongoing resonance with the colonial misconception of terra nullius, which legitimised settlements to the colonisers themselves. Walyalup Tower is not an indigenous architecture, but an allied architecture. It is a provocation to the colonial city and its sympathisers, using form and sign that ‘breaks the fourth wall’, to address the city with a message in dissent to the norm. Architectural space is conceived of as loose and generic, with efforts made to ensure its climate sensitivity; public space is generous and lacks commercial program. Walyalup Tower is a testimony to the ever-presence of indigeneity in Walyalup, and a nod to a future that reflects shifting understandings of the colonial city in Australia.

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