Post Woomera

Established in 1947 as a closed Defence Department town, Woomera served as the administrative centre for the vast prohibited weapons testing zone, enacting violence onto the land in service of the broader military-colonial project. Notorious in the early 2000s for immigration detention, Woomera’s identity remains bound to these histories militarism, with renewed interest in further entrancing this through expanded defence activity.

In response to this, this studio invited students to speculate on a condition Post-Woomera, posing the question: can we imagine other futures for spaces once designated as military infrastructure, which have historically been framed through the lenses of remoteness and emptiness?

The semester began with collaborative research and counter-mapping into a specific historical or contemporary condition of Woomera, followed by the individual study of a specific site. Through filmic collage and narrative construction, students produced speculative spatial stories that reinterpreted this site’s histories and conditions. These narratives were developed into architectural propositions that critically reframe and resist the site’s ongoing militarisation, exploring how architecture might imagine and construct alternative futures for this landscape.

Studio Lead: Mark Romei