Interior

ICHIGO

Cat Rescue and Shelter

Emma O'Brien

“The graffiti and ‘left as found’ bits tell stories and support myths of homelessness, street kids, aerosol art, middle class gigs…”.

Powerhouse Architect, Peter Roy
Brisbane Powerhouse industrial electricity station, Brisbane Powerhouse windows smashed and graffiti, Brisbane Powerhouse today crowded with people during a function event.
Architect Peter Roy conceptualises the Brisbane Powerhouse’s story from its industrial use through to dormancy, and now reinvigoration as a cultural hub. ICHIGO continues the next chapter in the building’s history, uniting unconventional people and unconventional space into a shelter for rehoming and rehabilitating homeless cats.
The Powerhouse acts as a canvas, a playground, and a shelter for these animals in the same way many outcasted lives inhabited the vacant building from 1971 to 1989. The cat’s uniquely flexible bone structure and anatomy allows for dexterious movment patterns, translated into a design language that forms space around how a cat moves.
Brisbane’s lack of an inner-city solution to pet adoption sees the rising accumulation of abandoned, unwanted, and uncared for cats in Queensland. New Farm provides a parkland fabric adjecent to suberban neighbourhoods and the CBD for young families, couples, singles, students, the retired, and everyone in between to find their perfect pet.

ICHIGO functions with three general accomodation spaces (Homes A, B, and C) seperated by feline personality types which provide customer + adoptee meet and greets, along with a specialised vetenariay service, and socialisaion classes and activities.
Cat rubbing against substrate, west elevation arches, east elevation arches.

Emma O'Brien

Emma finds her place in the unconventional and abstract niches of design. Striving to question preconceptions and protest norms, Emma designs through the feminist lens with attention to the quality of human life. She believes design has the power to inspire change in a beautiful way, where conceptuality can balance with its function to shape a spatial world inclusive of all.