AILA Members join advisory panel for Ngurra Cultural Precinct competition

AILA Nominees Vanessa Margetts and Des Cloake have been appointed as technical advisors to the jury for the Ngurra cultural design precinct competition.

Des Cloake, Principal Landscape Architect at RPS’ Brisbane office, is an award-winning designer, Co-Chair of RPS’ Reconciliation Working Group, and a proud Yuggera man.

Vanessa Margetts is the founding director of MudMap Studio, an award-winning Broome-based landscape architecture practice that focuses on community-driven landscape architecture and public art.

The Ngurra Cultural Precinct will be nationally significant in speaking to the central place that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples hold in Australia’s story.

It will comprise two key and distinct elements:

A National Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Centre with new and expanded facilities for AIATSIS that empower and support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to tell their own stories and celebrate the 65,000-year history of this nation.
A National Resting Place to house and care for repatriated limited provenance ancestral remains and any associated cultural material on their journey back to Country.

The Ngurra Cultural Precinct will sit on Country that is home to the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people who have lived for thousands of years amid a landscape of limestone plains, mountains, swamps and streams.

The appointment of Registered Landscape Architects as technical advisors follows the success work of AILA in liaising with the federal government and AIATSIS as part of our renewed advocacy focus for the profession.