The Quandialla Bakery

The Quandialla Bakery is a final year project that focuses on the nuances of isolated Australian rural communities, specifically, the new south wales village of Quandialla.  The project saw me observe the village as I always had, through the experiences and memories of my grandparents who have resided there their entire lives making the project a very personal one.

Quandialla, a wheat belt town, is desperately fighting to hold onto its dwindling population. Isolated from a wider globalised context the town presents itself as a time capsule for opportunities.

Through breaking down the wheat production industry and introducing the process of bread making, the village creates a new economy; a community food source, and brings renewed hope.

Both dwellings are elongated, oriented and designed passively to provide comfort throughout the changing seasons, while expressing the laboured time and process taken to create bread.

Water troughs and tanks are used to celebrate the vital resource that sustains the community vegetable gardens and fruit trees surrounding the bakery and mill. Utilising vacant spaces in the main street the project brings movement back into the street, an energy that for so long has been lost.  An existing shop façade remains while the building behind is peeled back softening the transition between old and new.

The Quandialla bakery is a catalyst for creating a sustainable movement of community growth and custodianship for future generations, whereby bread making becomes a representation of Quandialla’s ritualistic lifestyle, expressing the nostalgia of time and process evident in the daily tasks of its inhabitants.