RSPCA Kennels in Burwood, Victoria

In their design of the first stage of redevelopment for the RSPCA’s facilities in East Burwood, Victoria, NHArchitecture had to consider what few architects must in their careers; how to design a building for which dogs are the primary users. According to the architects, the 5-wing quarantine and boarding kennels are the first fully enclosed, naturally ventilated and day-lit facility of its kind in the world. The aim of the new kennels were to increase adoption rates (which were previously affected in bad weather), to maintain best practice in caring for the dogs by making their stay as safe and stressfree as possible, and to reduce the impact of the facility on its neighbours.

The building is a highly ordered, rational, and economical one. One might even go as far as to say it appears austere, especially given the black and white colour scheme, which was designed to provide visual stimulation for the dogs and to break up the otherwise relentlessly regular ribbed metal clad forms. The overall appearance of the facility does in fact betray its practical function, which, after all is said and done, is something akin to that of a prison. Each of the facility’s 5 wings contain two levels of 40 regular northfacing kennels, accessible from a scissor ramp friendly to dogs.

But if the architects took a highly rational and regular approach to the master-planning and landscaping of the building in the interest of meeting a tight budget and minimising the embodied environmental cost of the project, they also took pains to rationally apply best practice principles in the design of the dog kennels themselves, with the help of fabricator BigFish which produced the kennel enclosures.

Each kennel is separated visually from the next, keeping the dogs from becoming agitated at the sight of other dogs. They are naturally day-lit, having a glazed (and therefore insulated, thermally and for noise) opening on the north side facing the landscaped courtyard. The kennels are sheltered from the sun in summer but allow full solar penetration in winter. They are also naturally ventilated, each having a flue which operates passively on the stack effect to draw out odours and hot air. Spent air is extracted through air inlets which lead to the front of the building, to prevent germs and odours traveling from kennel to kennel. The inside of the flues are painted black to encourage solar gain and therefore convective air flow. Dual layer Venturi caps and wind-scoops catch the prevailing winds to replace this air. Even cooling is passive, using shower towers – the cooling method based on condensation which was featured prominently in the much celebrated CH2.

If the kennel facility seems relentless and laconic, perhaps this is because it is a pure functionalist expression of the necessary evil that is a dog pound in achieving the RSPCA’s compassionate mission. While the architectural language of the project might have been more sympathetic, it is a definite improvement in the living conditions of quarantined or impounded dogs, and having been constructed using local materials by local contractors and tradesmen with a limited material palette, is a statement of the RSPCA’s commitment to environmental responsibility as well as its mandate of animal protection. +

1 The facility consists of 5 wings, each housing 40 kennels on two levels. 2 The double glazed windows of the kennels ensure barking does not disturb the courtyard of the facility’s neighbours. The passive ventilation system is also designed to dissipate any barking noise before releasing spent air. 3 Each kennel overlooks a courtyard landscaped to provide visual stimuli for dogs. To prevent dogs from becoming agitated at the sight of other dogs, each kennel is separated by a screen. 4 The black and white patterns break up what is otherwise a relentlessly regular metal clad building. 5 A dog-friendly scissor ramp allows access to the second floor kennels.

PHOTOGRAPHY by Peter Bennetts