Seaford Life Saving Club

The local Surf Life Saving Club is an essential icon of Australian beach culture: red-and-yellow caps; hot chips from the kiosk and the seagulls that love them; melting icecreams and sandy suncream; noisy nippers competitions, and surfboat racing at dawn. Traditionally, this quintessential Aussie scene would all play out around a concrete, brick and/or timber club house: usually a slapdash, piecemeal construction built sometime between 1900 and 1970.

The new Seaford Life Saving Club is just as iconic and just as Aussie, but gone are the bare-minimum amenities and beach-shack ambience. In its place is a new generation of Surf Life Saving Club: a sophisticated, layered, timber construction the colour of sand, tanned skin and sun-bleached hair.

But the brief was not confined to a single building for club members: the aim was to return the beach and shorefront to its role as a shared community place. The footprint therefore encompasses a community multipurpose room, café and kiosk and public toilet facilities, with new landscaping and carparking, linking the site to the Seaford Village. These elements were conceived as landscape objects, pavilions mainly enveloped in that timber batten screening that gives the project its distinctive look. The sightlines formed by the timberwork draws attention to the spatial characteristics of the building – it is lofty on the vertical plane; spacious and sprawling on the horizontal; and the sense of layering when seen from the beach elevation shows the club as a place of interest and intrigue, drawing them to explore the courtyard within. Moreover, the screens are an integral part of the buildings functionality and thermal control system. The spaces between the timber slats allow natural light and air to penetrate all areas, and may be adjusted to provide protection from prevailing winds from the South and West, or to shield against the Summer sun. The layer of screenings also creates a void in between the external façade: a semi-static thermal space which reduces the movement of air, so that the environment directly beyond the built space is at a more comfortable temperature, and remains conducive to outdoor use, even in the cooler months.

The internal, external and interstitial spaces are further manipulated by folding screens which envelop the pavilions. These screens can be moved to control accessibility and to adapt the spaces according to purpose, season and time of day. The layered sight-lines they create also ensure that visitors are aware of the carefully articulated visual layering, through which they must journey before encountering the view to the sea vista beyond.

There is an orchestrated and intentional overlap between inside and outside spaces, so that the built forms feel as though they are at one with the beachside environment, linked in with the beach, and serving as an extension of Seaford Pier. And yet, the footprint of the project does also provide for a certain level of shelter and enclosure. The courtyard is well sheltered by the surrounding buildings, and serves as a link between the multifunction space and the café (the latter of which now supplements the kiosks of yesteryear with modern-day staples: espresso and traditional ice-cream). The rooms facing the courtyard are oriented to take advantage of the sunlight at one end and the cool shade at the other, and the floor structure is raised to allow cooling breezes to pass below the building, keeping even the internal spaces at the most comfortable temperature possible.

Knowing that the new Surf Life Saving Club would be a sensitive issue for its local community, Robert Simeoni Architects’ consultation process involved not only the client, Frankston City Council, and the Seaford Life Saving Club, but also the Department of Sustainability and Environment, the local community, the Seaford Village Traders Association, the Friends of Seaford Foreshore Reserve. Local Aboriginal representatives were also actively engaged in examining and reviewing the site, especially during demolition of the existing building and throughout the excavation period. A particularly important contribution was that of geo-morphologist Dr Eric Bird, whose decision it was to set the initial footprint of the building envelope much further back from the shoreline than had been covered in the original council outline. As a result, the higher elevation renders the club a natural lookout, connecting its visitors from the landward side to the ocean beyond. This altered placement also effects a much reduced impact on the sand dunes and nearby vegetation – an impact further constrained by the use of screw piles in place of concrete foundations. All other building materials were carefully selected: for their environmental sensitivity of course, but equally important was their durability in coastal conditions: and these conditions are about as coastal as they come, without actually being cast out to sea. Engineered structural timber was used in lieu of marine grade structural steel, reducing the energy consumption embodied in the construction process, and the Spotted Gum cladding was sealed with a non-toxic combination of linseed oil and citric acid.

The quintessential Aussie Surf Lifesaving Club has a new face, and it is embodied by Robert Simeoni Architects’ Seaford transformation. Gone are the days of the early roughand- ready beachside club, fit for storing the gear and serving out a few hamburgers on the weekend. This timber scene-stealer is as blonde, tanned and resort-style as they come, with the eco-street-cred to match. It is the high-profile ‘look at me’ clubhouse: a place that evokes a sense of local pride and draws the community in, inviting them to own this shared local place, and – just on the other side of a gloriously wide Aussie deck – their local beach. +

1 A much gentler materiality sets this surf livesaving club apart from the concrete bunker-like shelters of the past. 2 With scre-piles in place of concrete foundations, and a smaller set back footprint at the suggestions of Dr Eric Bird, the Seaford Surf Lifesaving Club does in fact sit lightly on the earth. 3 But the function of a surf lifesaving club has not changed. 4 to 6 The club's most salient feature is surely its sensitive layering, which filters air, light, and vistas. Removeable screens of timber battens, interstitial spaces which throttle airflow, and sliding glass doors allow users to seal or open spaces at will.

PHOTOGRAPHY by John Gollings, Brendan Finn