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Beaconsfield Community College 
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As flocks of young couples and new families flood into Victoria’s Cardinia Shire, the Municipality has been feverishly expanding its facilities to accommodate them and to keep pace with what is now the region’s fastest growing housing development. Indeed, it was not just architectural excellence and innovation that was needed for the new Beaconsfield Community Complex. It was energy.
This new and adventurous community facility model aspired to co-locate Beaconsfield’s new Community Hall, Kindergarten and occasional care services, while also providing a home for the “Neighbourhood House.” But with this co-location came complication: the rowdy and energetic children’s area was incompatible with the tranquil and contemplative community program spaces. Their pace and tone were seemingly irreconcilable. The brief was further complicated by site considerations. The site is surrounded by a large storm water culvert, runs partially up a steep hillside and has a west orientation facing O’Neil Road. The spaces, however, demanded a northerly orientation. The storm water culvert proved to be a determining factor in locating the building. By modifying the overland flow across the site to eliminate a dangerously deep storm water culvert, the flattest areas of the site were also eliminated as useful land, required instead to act as flood paths. Prior + Cheney Architects’ freedom of site use and flexibility of design options were thus inhibited.
The building’s form speaks of these challenges of brief and site, and is the embodiment of the architect’s innovative responses to them.
The facility has been planned so it ‘nestles’ into the steepest corner of the site (at the south-east). This positioning is above the overflow line and promotes greater prominence from the Princes Highway. From the west, the building presents itself as a monolithic composition of block work walls emerging out of the hillside. These walls offer protection from the prevailing winter weather and the hot westerly sun. This sunlight is utilised for aesthetic advantage on the building’s western face by the incorporation of three different types of block face finish: smooth, split face and polished. The split face blocks are 10mm proud of the smooth ones, creating dynamic shadowing across the wall. An outstanding feature wall was thus constructed both creatively and economically.
The Community Hall, which extends the furthest from the hill, is used to form a sheltering mass that protects the entry area, while also defining the public plaza that greets the visitor. To balance this large mass, the Kindergartens are wrapped in a similar block work wall that curves up above the main roof to visually separate it from the main building mass. Between the ‘bookends’ of the Hall and Kindergarten, a low-level roof stitches the two elements together and identifies the respective entry doors behind an array of randomly angled columns.
On the eastern side of the building, the bookends are reinforced by a continuation of the block work. However, the hall element merges into a sleek black clad wall that fragments to form window and door openings. This was designed to soften the effect of the strong horizontal lines striping the façade and to provide a textural quality to the wall. The resulting building face provides a dramatic backdrop to the community activities that will occur within the secure landscaped areas.
The design incorporates responses not only to the challenges of the site and the brief itself, but also to principles of green design. Passive solar strategies such as site orientation are complimented by active climate control strategies such as dual blinds in the Community Hall and double glazed “Low E” glass on all highlight windows. Furthermore, all heating has been ducted to low level to extract the maximum efficiency out of the mixed mode mechanical systems. This delivers air directly to the inhabited area for it to then rise past the occupant to provide maximum comfort and climate control. Conversely, the areas with cooling are delivered at a high level to encourage convention currents and accelerate the cooling process. In the Community Hall, a subfloor void is used to temper the incoming air in a similar way to a Labyrinth. The air handling equipment draws air from this void for reticulation back into the hall. The result is an energy efficient series of spaces.
Words used to describe the building form conceive of it as a dynamic structure, full of kinetic
energy - shielding, curving, emerging, enfolding, protecting, nestling. This is not just a complex that will accommodate, service and nurture the new life emerging from the growing community of Beaconsfield. This is a complex with a life of its very own. +
Top. Kindergarten windows and textured wall using smooth, split face and polished blocks Second. The Beaconsfield Room
Third. The "Purple" Kindgarten Room Photographer: Emma Cross (Gollings Studio) |
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Make It Right Project: NOLA | Elbe Philharmonic, Herzog & de Meuron | Art in Public: Urbanus in Shenzhen | Church of St Mary of the Angels, WOHA Architects | Fitt De Felice | Hugh Gordon | Hartree & Associates | Troppo | Lyons
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