Indiana Tea House
Invited competition.
Neeson Murcutt + Neille, with Simon Pendal Architect and sue barnsley design.
Cottesloe’s enduring quality as a natural attraction is its unfair advantage. Our proposal for Indiana works to this fundamental understanding, curating this place as a compelling and natural fit. New Indiana is primordial, with a quality resonant of a hollowed Moordoorup rock – enduring. As throughout its past, the activities that occupy and surround it are all about play for all ages. Momentary, cyclical, playtime implies a lightness and transience that belies the weightiness of geology – beach towels, picnic rugs, table cloths, hats, parasols, shade awnings, beach tents, flags, jetties, pavilions and Cottesloe’s beach bathing huts on wheels. We draw together the hollowed limestone rock with the lightness of playtime in our reimagining of Indiana in Cottesloe.
New Indiana adapts to climate change, resting back from the beach nestled into the pines and in dialogue with the street. It sits within a park landscape of extended terraces and folded planes that stretch along the linear coast, expanding public space at the beachfront and providing accessible pathways. A pool is reintroduced to Cottesloe as part of the shaped topography, spreading north from the new Indiana. The building embraces the expanse and magnificence of this place whilst providing for refuge within and around it, anticipating shifts in playtime with season, time, weather, and wind.Indiana is located on Whadjuk Nyoongar boodjar (country). We consulted with Brendan Moore during the competition process in order to begin to understand the cultural context of the Whadjuk people, the Traditional Owners and custodians, so that the proposal could respond and give presence, enriching this place for all with genuine site acknowledgement.