Simon and Steve have since visited Tennant Creek five times. Through forums involving the whole community and small design workshops, they have designed a beautiful home with Norm and his family. It’s been an iterative and highly collaborative process. So much so, the architects prefer to attribute the home’s design to Norm and his wife Serena, rather than take credit themselves.
‘They’re designing, we’re [just] helping them through the process,’ explains Simon.
Indeed, the Melbourne-based design team had a lot to learn from Norm and Serena. One key consideration was culturally appropriate spatial planning and sleeping arrangements.
‘Waramungu people sleep with their head to the east, feet to the west,’ Simon explains. ‘Norm says if you don’t sleep that way, you wake up crazy.’
There also needed to be multiple entries and exits to rooms to maintain Aboriginal avoidance practices, plus additional space to accommodate visitors for extended periods during cultural events and ceremony.
The design is therefore highly flexible, incorporating three bedrooms, two living spaces, and two kitchens — one internal and one external. Two large verandahs at the northern and southern ends of the house enable outdoor living and foster a greater connection to the landscape.
‘The focus for Norm and Serena is that it’s culturally appropriate first,’ Simon says. ‘Their idea of what a good house is [focuses on] how it supports culture for them, rather than it be a shiny thing… so we’re trying to embed it into a landscape and make it feel like it’s a part of the country.’
Another central design feature driven by Norm was the placement of a firepit to the east of the property — a request that initially had Simon and Steve baffled: ‘We knew there was a strong wind that would blow the smoke directly into the house, so we thought it was a poor design choice, but didn’t question it directly,’ recalls Steve.
Later, they learned the placement of the fire on the eastern side of the house would deliberately enable smoke to blow through the home and cleanse it of spirit. ‘It always comes out that Norm is always right!’ Steve says.
Although the design is complete, the house is yet to be built. It will be prefabricated in South Australia in modular sections and transported to site by truck. This approach is efficient, but also ensures the model can be replicated in the future.
The design for a second Wilya Janta home is already in the works, and the plan is to start rolling the model out more widely once the concept has been proven. In this way, Norm’s house is set to be a gamechanger not just for his family, but for future generations living in remote Indigenous communities.
