PROGRAM_ Government
CLIENT_ Government of Western Australia
AREA_ 3,200 SQM
STATUS_ Complete
CONTRACT_ Architecture, Interior
CREDITS_ Assoc. V.Chow with TAG
The feeling of the approach and entry to the building is of “community” rather than “threat” or “civic pomposity.”
The red, light ochre and grey, locally quarried stone leads us in. During the design process, Aboriginal Elders advised that backs were not to be seen from the entry.
To the right are stairs up to the Jury Court, interview rooms and a large waiting area for the selection of jurors. Views out ordered by louvres protect the privacy of those waiting. Two intertwined serpents at the foot of the stairs symbolize the joining of the laws of two cultures and this is evident wherever you look – from the brass handrails and fittings gathering a patina to the artwork.
On the ground floor, the feeling is less formal. A frieze of Indigenous artwork goes around the walls and past meeting rooms. The jarrah, Tasmanian ash and blackwood wall panels and seating zigzag the undulating peripheral walls in the waiting area – unlike the usual “serried rows” for waiting – like jagged rock formations. Like the work of Hans Scharoun, what is inside is outside: the seats push and pull at the stone base of the front elevation.
Kununurra is 16º S, Cairns 17º S and Darwin 12º S – all three well inside the tropics. Australia struggles with tropical building and towns, its building regulations and energy ratings generally devised for temperate climates. Moreover, the heat island effect, which can mean that towns are 10ºC warmer than their surrounding countryside, needs to be mitigated. This means coating tarmac with a white reflective coating, and increasing the tree canopy so that it covers more than 30 percent of an urban area – particularly shading tarmac.
Though the sun is higher in the tropics, it hits nearly all the surfaces of a building – not just the north, east and west.
The all-embracing and protecting parasol roof of the Kununurra Courthouse is an appropriate tropical move, but it would absorb and reradiate less heat if it was white. The parasol roof and screen shading on the northern elevation and the overhang and screen on the western elevation are responsive and deftly handled, and will be richer when the trees grow taller.