Jeremy Bonwick

A repurposed quarry site in rural Victoria, near the town of Colac which, by car, is approximately two hours out of Melbourne. The site is revitalised through the intervention of a festival precinct which will operate during the summer months along with a year-round program — a School of Art which provides for travelling students from Melbourne to stay on-site in accommodation facilities as well as the almost 1500 local students in the area, a camping ground which operates in tandem with the accommodation as well as the festival as well as spaces for dining and events. The acoustic shell which sits at the bottom of the quarried-out landscape is optimised for 2000 seated guests and a further 10,000 on a sloped grassed area. The shell shows its structure, thick and heavy glulam beams, the same as are used across the site in the school and accommodation buildings, which is clad in plywood and translucent polycarbonate. The site is generally arranged around three sets of concentric circles; these epicentres represent 'waves'. Tangentially, the site is also governed by the idea of viewership — four modes of viewer occur across the site and are linked to occupation and function.