Penguin Parade Visitor Center / TERROIR

People have been coming at twilight to watch Little Penguins come ashore on Phillip Island for almost a century. The ability to get close to the penguins in a spectacular but sensitive landscape, makes this one of the key places in the world for this experience and subsequently the Penguin Parade on Philip Island is the number one wildlife attraction in Australia - with up to 4000 visitors every evening. In the 1980s, Summerland Estate consisted of 177 houses and research identified the penguins would disappear from the Penguin Parade by 1997. The state government secured the future of the little penguins by committing to buy back the entire estate – a world first in environmental conservation. At the same time, Philip Island Nature Parks has become a pre-eminent authority on care for penguins and development of penguin habitat. The new Penguin Parade Visitor Centre has to carry the ambitions of this tourism and conservation program across iconographic, experiential and functional contexts.