Nineteen Masters of Architecture students and their lecturers descended upon St Peter’s Gilgering for their first glimpse of the place, an introduction to their Integrated Buildings Research Studio and to receive the brief from Friends of St Peter’s Gilgering. It was a typically hot Gilgering day, lots of flies and not much shade, environmental factors that will hopefully help inform their designs.
The students received an introduction to the studio from their lecturers and Stuart Rapley an archaeologist, who educated us on how to look at a site through an archaeologist’s eyes, covering both the aboriginal and colonial significance of the general location. Glenyse and Emma from the Friends committee gave a brief history of the church itself and then outlined the scope of what was wanted from a Masterplan, with emphasis on reactivating St Peter’s as a place of interest and to make it a place people can come and participate in a range of activities. The students were then let loose outside with tape measures and laser measures to document all possible dimensions of the church (inside and out), tombstones, probable location of unmarked graves, trees, school site, well, bell, sundial and roads. They even launched a drone with camera to get a bird’s eye view of the place.
As the day progressed the stories of St Peter’s helped the students developed a deeper
understanding of the complex layers of cultural and social history imbued there and the changes it had witnessed over the last 159 years.