The Vault
The recent mining boom in Western Australia’s Pilbara region has profoundly impacted local communities, creating tensions between long-term residents and transient workers. Rather than attempting to resolve the cultural challenges of this transient workforce, the architectural response takes a different approach: to establish a separate, self-contained environment tailored to this fringe culture’s unique needs.
The chosen site, Cossack, lies on the north coastline of the Pilbara. Once the vibrant heart of the pearling industry, it now stands largely abandoned, a ghost town marked by a handful of heritage-listed buildings gradually succumbing to the relentless assault of extreme weather. The landscape surrounding Cossack is unforgiving, a deforming wasteland subject to relentless flooding, searing sun, and violent cyclonic storms that batter the region season after season.
In response, the design proposes a structure that confronts these conditions head-on. A circular fortified wall emerges as the primary gesture, offering both shelter and defense. However, the geometry is deliberately fractured and distorted by the site’s topography, as the Tien Tsin lookout and the high tide zone encroach upon the enclosure’s western and eastern edges. This tension between the natural environment and built form defines the project’s character.
Within the protective embrace of the wall, housing and community spaces are integrated, providing refuge from the harsh external environment. The inner courtyard offers flexibility for temporary, portable architecture, allowing occupants to adapt and assemble structures as needed. Central to the compound are the existing heritage buildings, preserved and woven into the new development, alongside a proposed domed structure designed to serve shared community functions.
The Vault stands as an alternative model for inhabiting remote and inhospitable places. It consciously rejects the conventional suburban layouts that have often been imposed on such landscapes without regard to their unique conditions. Instead, it embraces a form of architecture deeply responsive to site and climate.
While the extreme and unpredictable weather of the Pilbara cannot be tamed, The Vault demonstrates how architecture can mediate these forces, prioritizing human interaction, community cohesion, and above all, protection. It is a thoughtful response to an environment that challenges survival, an architectural refuge designed not only to withstand but to foster life within a seemingly inhospitable wasteland.
