A century-old pub in a tiny central-west Queensland town has been chosen to represent Australia at a prestigious international architecture expo.
Barcaldine's Globe Hotel, built in 1910, was facing demolition before the Barcaldine Regional Council purchased it in 2011 and converted it into a multi-million-dollar community cultural precinct.
Now the space, which is used as a visitor information centre, art gallery, history room, and bank, will be featured at this year's Venice Architecture Biennale.
"We're one in 15 projects for the Australia exhibition," architect Brian Hooper said, who worked with Brisbane-based company m3architecture on the project.
"It feels pretty surreal for a very small project to be representing Australia — especially western Queensland — and on a very tiny budget.
"We're quite honoured."
Keeping the outback theme
The pub's development began in late 2014, and took the architectural team just over a year to complete.
With the old structure was damaged but still standing, Mr Hooper said the team's main desire was to maintain the old style while creating a new and useful space for the outback town.
"We stripped it back, but we kept the primary bones and frame of the building and added a contemporary bent to it," he said.
"We had to completely rebuild the verandas, but one of the benefits of retaining the building came from the fact that we were able to replace the buildings back in situ, over the footpath."
Mr Hooper said while saving the old building made the project far more difficult, the decision has since paid off.
"If we'd demolished the building, we wouldn't have been afforded the same flexibility of building the veranda over the footpath again, and I think some of those notions retain that old character of the town."
Focus on repurposing
The 2018 Venice Biennale will feature designs from over 60 countries, each based on a theme decided by the county itself.
Mr Hooper said while being selected to represent Australia is incredibly humbling, he believes this years' theme helped secure their selection.
"This time round the curators have selected a theme of 'repair' which is all about adaption and reuse of existing spaces and buildings," he said.
"Because we live in quite disposable society architects need to think about how we can reuse spaces, and repurpose things, so I think the theme has a very strong theme to today's environment."
The 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale runs from 26 May to 25 November, 2018.
