Larapinta Town Camp Bough Shelters

Chris Tucker

Dec 2020 · Pigeon Architecture

About this ebook

The Larapinta Town Camp Bough Shelter project extends the five year collaboration the University of Newcastle (UON) and Tangentyere Council Aboriginal Corporation (TCAC) have in working with the people who live in the Town Camps of Alice Springs. The goal of the project was to develop designs, and a method of construction, for bough shelters to be constructed by the community of the Larapinta Town Camp. They were to be; cost effective, low maintenance, responsive to the local climate, constructed predominantly from locally sourced materials, were able to be built as part of a Community Development Program (CDP), and were great places to sit and talk for a while.

About the author

Chris Tucker is a lecturer and researcher in the School of Architecture and Built Environment at the University of Newcastle (since 2003), and principal of Herd Architects (since 1996). Chris has been awarded regional, state and international prizes for architecture, and his buildings and designs have been exhibited and published locally and internationally. Working between practice and research, Chris has been awarded over $600,000 in research funding. His M.Phil (2010) was an algorithmic study of the visual properties of the street, while his Phd (2017) was a theoretical, critical and practice based study of urban vague. It’s needling of the overtly neat, complete, vague and generic qualities of contemporary public space worked towards releasing these left-over places as new architectural sites within the city. Interested broadly in social justice, our relationship to country, and the public occupation of public space, Chris runs architectural studio’s within Tokyo (from 2019) and the Town Camps of Alice Springs (from 2017). Chris collaborates with local government on public architecture projects, and with the First Nation communities in the Town Camps of Alice Springs with Tangentyere Council.