From Chicken Coop to House
You wouldn’t make your worst enemy live in a house like the one below.
There is no running water, no kitchen, toilet or bathroom. And it smells like hell. This is a ‘chicken coop’ house at Gurdorrka – an aboriginal community outside of Darwin. Everyone in the area calls this a chicken coop (even government agencies) because of the metal walls, wire mesh and bare concrete floor. This overcrowded community is desperate for more decent housing but the government says an upgrade is not scheduled for ten years.
The community elders and their supporting government agencies (Yilli Housing, Ironbark Employment, Aboriginal Development) asked David O’Brien and Hamish Hill (Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne) to bring some university students to work with local community members to help renovate one of these chicken coop houses and make it liveable.
Discussions were held with the residents to see what they wanted from the experience and the way they wanted the house to look and work. They were appreciative at being asked and amazed that we could fix the house so quickly.
We had 18 university students (11 females and 7 males), some local indiginous labour, ten days and $40,000 to turn a chicken coop into a house. After an initial consultation period, some design work and clever scheduling, the students arrived in Darwin in late June to ‘blitz’ the house – cleaning it out, painting, building a pergola, bedrooms, adding indoor and outdoor cooking and washing facilities.
The project was a mixture of Backyard Blitz, Renovation Rescue and Guerrilla Gardeners (but with sound academic underpinnings and is informed by consultation with community elders). It involved large amounts of culture shock for all involved and some blood, sweat and tears – (maybe not too much blood and tears but certainly lots of sweat).
Construction began on June 21 and continued for 10 days (with a short rest somewhere in the middle).
Max is the resident who moved into this house. Max was born in this very same house in the 1970’s (before he was removed as part of the ‘stolen generation’). He lived in NSW for 20 years before returning to Gudorrka about 18 months ago. He lives with his partner and three foster kids.
The family were VERY excited about moving to a house with washing facilities, kitchen and somewhere safe for the kids to play. They found the consultation process strange (no-one had ever consulted with them before).
We built a new bathroom, a new kitchen, added 2 new bedrooms, tiled the floor, painted the interior and built an outdoor (but sheltered) living area. We fenced a yard for the children to play in which will keep the mangy dogs out. We also built a swing and humps for BMX bikes. Max and some of his mates helped us do the building too.
Renovation cost about 1/10th the cost of building a new house and took just 10 construction days as opposed to a year or more.