Cascades Female Factory Competition

2021 AA Prize for Unbuilt Work – Shortlist

The Cascade Female Factory is one of eleven convict sites that together form the Australian Convict Sites World Heritage Property. Our intervention is located in Yard 3, the least intact of the three remaining yards. More than a ‘reception’, Yard 3 is transformed into an open public courtyard defined by a cloister – a community gathering place, a stopping point for travellers following the Rivulet Walk. It is a strategy based on inversion: where there were enclosed compounds there will be open space, where there was austerity there will be sensual richness, where there was spatial division there will be joining together, where there was controlled movement, there will be freedom of movement. Our shortlisted entry was a collaboration with Hector Abrahams Architects (heritage), Sue Barnsley Design (landscape), and Meg Quinlisk (historian.)