The Silver Bullet Cafe at Alice Springs in outback Australia is like a pattern book of adaptive reuse and recycling projects.
In fact it has more than 90% recycled materials. Consisting of several 4.2m x 15m Silver Bullet caravans once used as remote area schoolrooms it also incorporates the remains of a WWII ordnance depot.
It’s all set within an arid zone garden furnished with buses, trucks, recycled oil drums,
clothes hoists, road sign tables and more. They’ve even got a tyre swan – bliss! Is this the Mad Max future as heaven rather than hell?
We love it because it looks a mess and where we live “tidiness” is regularly used as an excuse to destroy heritage sites. We think messiness is next to genius – as Einstein once remarked “If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”
All photos by jogaroopy