ALPINE village Dinner Plain will celebrate its 30th anniversary this month to coincide with the start of the snow season.
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Architect Peter McIntyre will speak at Dinner Plain on June 12 about how he transformed vacant land high in the Victorian alps.
“No one else has actually taken a greenfield site and built a whole 5000-bed village in Australia since the Gold Rush,” he said.
“It was a pretty unique project, so in my career it’s one of the most unique things I’ve done.”
A village of multi-pitched roofs supported by buildings of stone, wood and corrugated iron – painted the colours of snow gums – blend with the Alpine National Park.
The Melbourne-based architect said he tried to create an Australian alpine architectural identity, inspired by the cattlemen’s huts that sat above the snowline.
He said the village had a sense of unity but without repetitiveness.
“We built four or five prototypes and the hotel, which was standard for the development of a greenfield site,” he said.
“However, what we did differently was offer contracts of sale with a particular design attached, which had to be built within two years.
“If the owners didn’t build it for whatever reason we had offered to buy the block back from them at the same price they paid; we didn’t have to buy back one block of land!
“Everyone did their own building ... but they all used the same materials.”
In 1987 McIntyre won Australia’s top architecture award – the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) Sir Zelman Cowen Medal – for the design of Dinner Plain Alpine Village. He gained the RAIA Gold Medal for his life’s work three years later.
Mr McIntyre designed the master plan for Dinner Plain – located 11 kilometres from Mount Hotham – and the individual houses on the eastern side of the village.
Other architects put their stamp on the western side of the village later.
“The village has two separate halfs – it’s chalk and cheese to me,” he said.
Having worked part-time in his dad’s firm from age seven, Mr McIntyre has been in the industry for 80-plus years with no plans to retire.
“Architecture isn’t work; it’s a life,” he quipped.
He will be a guest of honour at a dinner on June 12.
