Krakani Lumi in Mount William, Tasmania by Taylor and Hinds Architects.

Translating to ‘place of rest’, Krakani Lumi is a standing camp in Tasmania’s North East National Park, designed by Taylor and Hinds Architects for the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania. Fringing the northern edge of the Bay of Fires, the camp serves as a two-night stopover for a four-day guided walk through the surrounding cultural landscape. The brief called for accommodation and communal facilities for two guides and ten hikers. The first of its kind in Tasmania, the guided walk is entirely owned and operated by the Aboriginal Land Council.

Groups approach through an exposed and pristine beach dune, surrounded by open coastal heath rich in diverse flora and animal life. Krakani Lumi is impossible to spot until arrival, enveloped within a thick grove of Banksia Marginata trees. The individual structures appear as a series of discrete, dark pavilions. Clad in charred Tasmanian timber, the cabins merge into the shadows of the dense banksia, camouflaging the camp when it is not in use.

The timber exteriors are robust, tautly detailed, resilient to the corrosive sea air and any tampering. When opened, a contrasting half-domed, arresting blackwood-lined interior is exposed. The proportion and materiality of the vaulted interiors are derived from the siting, form and qualities of the traditional seasonal shelters of Tasmania’s first peoples. Made predominantly of arched branches and sheets of bark, the traditional half-dome structures were often covered in charcoal drawings of circular motifs and depictions of the constellations – an initiation into the cultural and spiritual interior of the landscape.

This context and the notion of a story-telling interior is integral to Krakani Lumi. The unexpected interior tells a story of concealing and revealing, a privileged cultural experience. “The exterior charred ‘skin’ which conceals and protects the narrative of the interior forms, ensures agency to the Aboriginal community in the telling of their story,” explain the architects.

Built-in ways to minimise the impact on native flora and fauna, the individual buildings were constructed in modules and airlifted into place. Small hollows throughout the wall cavities allow occupation by endemic birdlife and other hollow-dependent marsupials. Within the sleeping huts, bedding is supplemented with quilted wallaby furs – known traditionally as ‘reore’. The huts are scented with the essential oil of the local maleleuca ericifolia, a flower that was traditionally used to aid sleep.