TERROIR

Peppermint Bay lies at the core of a $15M multi-faceted tourism development, comprising a wharf side cruise centre in Hobart, high speed multi-purpose cruise vessels, a major culinary venue and a dramatic underwater walk allowing visitors to experience the state's unique marine environment. A first class waterside function venue at Peppermint Bay - an inlet on the River Derwent, located near the country town of Woodbridge, 40kms south of Hobart - will offer a high quality restaurant/function venue alongside significant retail, boutique epicure food manufacture and a venue for art and craft makers from the region to retail their products.

The conception of the project is based around the picturesque journey to and from the peninsula, via river or road. This journey is integral to the visitor experience and generates a site response based in a continuation of this experience to the centre of the site. The destination itself is conceived not as a series of elements comprising building, garden, and associated features, but a singular, complex entity, the sum of which comprises a total "landscape" experience. Thus, the defining aspect and key image of the centre is in the reconfiguration of the peninsula into a single "garden" destination.

The focus of the practice - the formal response to the "terroir" of a given place - drives an investigation into the complex relationships between culture and landscape and reinterpreted here within the Tasmanian context. The opportunity exists to make a statement, in built form, about the potential of future relationships between culture, architecture landscape within the state.