As a community centre, it should be representative of the identity of Coogee, and should be drawn from various aspects of the suburb, housing the local community within its boundaries.
Site Analysis :
The approach to the site analysis was first to intermediate space. The theory behind this investigation was process, where the act of moving from the public realm to the private was seen as a chain made up of a series of events, which involved different spaces :
Main roads - Lanes/Back alleys - Footpaths - Private
Lanes, back alleys and footpaths were taken to be thresholds, where transitions between public and private occurred. Thresholds within the area, as well as directly adjacent to the site were identified. From observations, it was concluded that a larger area of threshold was needed with respect to the site, as the existing threshold was just limited to the footpath around the oval. Thus, it was decided that Brook Street would be taken as the threshold, between the site and Coogee Bay Road, this allowed a more significant transition space between public and the site. Even the site, would become the threshold between public and the oval.
The observation of back alleys and lanes led to the investigation of infrastructure. The network of roads surrounding the oval aligned with another to create a grid plan, which in its nature is space equalizing, privileging no single point. This meant that Coogee, in terms of planning, has no physical center. A study of hierarchy showed that the major roads (Arden Street and Coogee Bay Road) are disconnected from the site, creating an accessibility barrier. To overcome this, streets directly surrounding the oval (Brook St, Alfreda St, and Dolphin St) would be changed and altered to increase traffic flow AND pedestrian access to allow greater accessibility to the site from the main traffic ways. Parking services and availability were also taken into consideration when investigating the transport network around the site.
This then led to the investigation of insertions within the surrounding area. Of the surrounding blocks, each has its unique orientation and order of buildings, and those which broke this order were identified. The blocks directly surrounding the site has a unique placing, in that instead of looking onto the beach and ocean, the blocks were oriented to look directly onto the site and the field, which hinted at how the planners had intended for a certain importance on the oval. This informed the possible orientation of the centre proposal and how it should respond to the surrounding buildings, setting up a conversation between centre and adjacent buildings, a spirit of community. The investigation then went into landscape, where the trees which had been inserted directly surrounding the site were analyzed to see their impact on the site. The next step was to combine both themes of buildings and landscape and to observe a pattern within the surrounding areas. It was decided that the community centre, being an insertion in its nature, should have a balanced composition of building and landscape, for a better integration into the existing man-made nature.
The study of composition ratio between building and landscape then led to the investigation of materiality, where surfaces of the adjacent buildings were observed, which helped form a pattern language to inform the surface and material of the proposed community centre, where it might take from the materials of surrounding buildings, or stand as a different building in its own.
The investigation into reciprocity looked into spots where there was integration between human activity and landscape. This meant that there exists a duality in these spots, and are not limited to just one defined function per spot. An integration of building, human activity and landscape within a specific area, hints at the direction the proposal for the community should head in.
Design Proposal :
The approach to the design proposal was that each program requirement for the community centre was seen as composing a mass, and each program was then overlapped and joined with one another, constituting to a single building, rather than the centre comprising of various smaller centers, much like its existing structure. A problem identified with the current configuration is that the Grandstand has its back against the adjacent buildings, closing off any interaction between the public space and private spaces. This proposal responds to this problem by having selected programs directly engage with surrounding buildings, exhibited most clearly by having its orientation aligned with the existing order of buildings. The proposal also has a much more defined entrance, which will make it more identifiable from the street as the community centre. This configuration of masses allows for channels and pockets of space for internal circulation, protecting the users from the strong winds coming from the beach by channeling them into light breezes for ventilation purposes.
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