cocoroc western treatment plant 

Since time immemorial, water holds stories: equally, quickly and interminably erased through inundation, erosion, corrosion, intervention.  Like time, water finds its passage, its transformations rendered by its movements.

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At Melbourne Water’s Western Treatment Plant in Werribee much has been removed and much remade; wetland to farmland, waste to production, treatment ponds to habitat, a town to a myth.

This project continues that story, inverting lost and found, set within a continuously shifting territory of land, water, and material transformation to provide a new sewerage treatment plant administration and educational centre for Melbourne Water across the heritage township site of Cocoroc. 

Cocoroc is a story of recovery, restoration and reimagining, using time and water.  The process uncovered value in items and elements scattered around the site: foundational traces, fragmentary objects, vanished operations and scattered materials.  Through interrogation and interpretation, the project brought long-forgotten things to life, recomposing objects and ideas into a new poetic narrative for the site.  This approach guided site layout, access and movement and infrastructure deployment, recreating the site into a contemporary place, for community, ecology and engagement, while establishing new relationships with the past.

 

The outcomes consolidate and communicate Melbourne Water’s ambitious visions for sustainability and engagement into a comprehensive site response.  Diverse stakeholder input was critical to the outcome, especially in returning social, environmental, and cultural relevance to what had become a site, lost in space and time.

Location

Western Melbourne, Australia

Year

2017/18

Status

Complete

Client

Melbourne Water

Collaborators

JMA Architecture, Alluvium Consulting, Northrop Engineering

Design Team

Jon Shinkfield, Tom Inwood, Bryn Jones