12. Pumphouse Restaurant
Design and Documentation by Troppo Architects; On-Site Advice and Historical Research by Mark Phillips Architect.
The Pump Station building is a heritage listed, iconic structure housing three enormous pumps on Lake Kununurra. It was once an integral part of the Ord River Irrigation Scheme; designed to pump water up to the main channel when the level in Lake Kununurra got too low for gravity feeding. When the Argyle Dam was constructed in 1971 it contained sufficient reserves to maintain the water level in Lake Kununurra at a constant level in order to gravity feed the main channel all year round, and the pumps were decommissioned.
Kununurra locals, Thomas and Dominique Breig, had long held a vision to develop the site into a restaurant over the water because they recognised the enormous potential that the structure of the Main Pump Station represented. The tenure and planning constraints on the site were complex and it took many years for the Breigs to finally secure a lease over the site in 2007. The Breigs engaged Troppo Architects (Fremantle) to undertake the design and documentation work, and the “Pumphouse Restaurant” opened for business with much fanfare and excitement among the residents of Kununurra in September 2008.
The design of the restaurant is based on minimal intervention to the existing structure, which allows the heritage-listed site to be conserved for future generations and interpreted at a high level. The minimal intervention also allows the unique over-water position and stunning views to be the focus of the building – the design allows the site to speak for itself. The design retains as much as possible the industrial aesthetic of the existing building, to the extent of using the traditional galvanised coating on the corrugated iron rather than the Zincalume coating in common use today. The small bridge is retained for access to the Pumphouse, where patrons have the experience of being suspended above the “moat” of water separating the building from land. The restaurant layout keeps the pumps in their original location, with the tables arranged in the spaces around the pumps and the old maintenance gantry crane in position overhead. Clear glazing is installed to the gaps between the floor and the pumps to allow people to see down into the pump chamber and follow the huge steel pipes that feed the channel. A new ablutions unit is perched on these steel pipes, as they extend from the pump chamber across to the start of the M1 Channel.
