2018 Pascoe Vale, Melbourne, Australia
Community
SIA Awards 2020 - International Design Award

Prominently perched atop the hill at Rogers Reserve, the Pascoe Vale Community Centre is in every way meant to be a landmark and a piece of placemaking for community interaction and activity.

We hope to breathe new life into the park and its surrounding facilities. Its high exposure inspired us to feature two diverging prisms as the centre’s main form, providing a unique and responsive spectacle to the passer bye – no angle provides the same visual outcome.

Its prominent structure arouses images of welcoming and beckoning arms, enticing observers to further explore the Centre and its surroundings. Further, its two slender forms allows the centre to stretch across the site, blending architecture and landscape.

We set two prismatic forms into the hilled land with their slender, diverging forms splayed like a pair of welcoming arms—an architecture that piques interest and beckons, drawing curious passersby to come inside.

Colours in stained glass windows further enliven and animate the building, while working conceptually to symbolise the coming together of diverse people as a community. And whether they are here for art class, childcare or healthcare services, visitors pass through a perimeter fence—stakes arrayed in colours reminiscent of flags and banners so the fence is a gesture that greets and welcomes rather than keeps out.