ESSENTIAL RETREAT
The site is a massive piece of land with a 55975.29 m2 area situated in South Gippsland. Narrow Leaf Peppermint and Tasmanian Blue Gum trees are both evergreen, providing canopy and leaves through out the year.
The Essential Retreat helps people escape the heaviness and isolation of the urban environment by surrounding them with nature and the healing scent of essential oil traditionally curated from native flora of Eucalyptus, filling them with nostalgia and leaving them lighter. The Essential Retreat brings together seekers and provides them with a space to reflect and an opportunity to rejuvenate their mind and the depleted forests. When in doubt, follow the fragrance.
The Retreat has three main spaces: Workshop, a Lodging area, and an Aromatherapy room, all connected by one roof, forming a courtyard for community gatherings. Different elements, along with the main spaces, are carefully placed aroundthe site for a multi-sensory experience. The plant is first grown in the nursery; once it’s ready to harvest, it is bunched and hung to dry in the drying pavilion attached to the Workshop.
The drying pavilion is a niche space under the canopy of a Eucalyptus tree filled with aroma and leaves whistling with the wind. The leaves are broken into finer fragments and moved inside the Workshop for distilling. The Lodging area is a flexible communal area with windows facing the nursery and skylights submerging it into nature.
The water feature marks the view of the entrance; here, the water from distillation is recycled for watering the plants, and it also makes an excellent spot for washing up after working in the fields.
The distilling space is placed at a lower height, and the mixing, separating and bottling space are placed on ground level for a seamless transition and lesser partition use, allowing the fragrance to flow. An outdoor product showcasing space is provided in the foyer. As Juhani Pallasmaa says “vision separates us from the world whereas the other senses unite us with it”, the product is then used in the aromatherapy space with no windows but a skylight.
