It’s been a long road to the top for award-winning architect Brian Hooper and for the community of the western Queensand town of Muttaburra.

The Muttaburrasaurus Interpretation Centre, designed by Yeppoon architect Brian, is an outdoor museum that showcases the history of the most complete fossilised dinosaur skeleton found in Australia.

The museum won the prestigious FDG Stanley Award for Public Architecture at the Australian Institute of Architects’ Queensland Architecture Awards, presented at the State Library of Queensland in Brisbane on Friday, 24 June, as well as receiving a commendation in the Sustainable Architecture category.

It’s not the one-man architectural firm’s first award for projects based in Western CQ – Brian has also worked on Barcaldine’s Tree of Knowledge project and Globe Hotel Development, which have won national awards in past years.

Brian said the genesis of the Muttaburrasaurus Interpretation Centre project dated back more than 10 years ago when he was approached by then Barcaldine deputy mayor Jenny Gray to design a shed to house a fiberglass cast of the Muttaburrasaurus, nicknamed ‘Dino’.

“Dino was sitting in the park among some pool fencing and some cycads and they wanted to build a rudimentary shed around it,” he said.

“Time got away from me, but I thought we could do better than a shed and when I ran into Jenny again a year later I started sketching some designs.

“At that stage council wasn’t involved, just the community of Muttaburra, who had no money, no funds to build this thing.

“Initially I was working pro bono as it was a ‘love job’ and a nice little project, but eventually Barcaldine Regional Council took the project over and were able to put some of their own money in, as well as apply for state funding.”

Brian said the project had been gestating for some time, from his earliest emails in 2011 to the building’s completion in 2018 and the exhibition component’s competition last year.

One of the major concerns was how to create something with architectural merit but without the ongoing costs.

“A lot of projects fall over after three or four years because they don’t generate the income to keep it running successfully,” he said.

“In this case, there wasn’t any money to man the building, so we had to make it robust – in terms of its economic benefits it’s a massive drawcard for the town but it doesn’t cost them anything at all as there’s zero maintenance.

“They don’t even have to clean it, just get a leaf blower in there every now and then to blow the dust out.”

The building was open to the public for three years before the interpretive display was completed but was popular even then.

“The idea is to give the visitor a sense of discovery, as that’s what paleontology is all about, the sense of discovery,” he said.

“The dinosaur doesn’t reveal itself until you cross the threshold of the building – the entry also goes up and down, so it feels like you’re going underground a little bit.”

The awards jury praised the centre’s connection to the environment, observing that the building “rises from the landscape as though it was always part of the town’s story”.

They also praised the “striking gabion walls made from local stone” and the lightweight roof – “a floating orb structure that invites natural daylight and ventilation into the space”.

Brian started his own business in 1998 in Brisbane, before relocating back to Yeppoon from Brisbane in 2001.

“I’ve been fortunate to get to work on some pretty exciting projects over the years and have done a lot of collaborative work with some fantastic partners,” he said.

“I’m very fortunate as a sole practitioner in a very regional area to be able to do these rather unique projects.”

Some of his favourite projects include the Tree of Knowledge and the Globe Hotel, as well as a toilet block on the Yeppoon beachfront made from precast concrete pipes and the ceiling at The Rocks restaurant which incorporates a 14th century Arabic poem.

“I’m always looking at finding a point of difference rather than doing the rote response,” he said.

“Having a unique approach to the design process brings unique architectural outcomes – it’s about bringing that vision that no-one else has.”