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Was this one of those ‘Ahaah’ moments, to discover that
the city hadn’t really connected with the bigger picture?
Many people forgot about Moe’s physical attractions.
In the building you hear people saying, “Whoa, what
a fantastic view!” So, it was quite deliberate in its form
and it does respond, I believe, to its context. It was also
deliberately formed onto the main street, and the plaza
wraps nicely into the train station connection. It is bold
but some areas are very gentle.
This could easily pass as the very grand,
modern residence rather than civic building.
That’s to do with scale. We were very keen to spread
the butter thinly on the toast at ground level. We could
have had a more compact square, or form but it wouldn’t
have engaged as well with a broader community and city,
so the ground floor is deliberately stretched to have
maximum interaction with the shops on both sides.
The upper level is pushed to a more volumetric feel
for a broader visual impact. Those two approaches
hopefully make it feel like a very comfortable building.
It’s obviously quite a task getting user circulation zones
right because you don’t want to dominate, protrude
or exclude building functions.
We’re not ones for great, long corridors, for example,
with lots of little rooms off them. We prefer to blend
break-out spaces, circulation and functional space into
the one zone. The stairs, for example, are directly in axis
with the main street to Mount Baw Baw, so every time
visitors use those stairs, they look through those windows
and in winter see a snow capped mountain. In a library,
in a community building, you want to feel comfortable
and say to yourself “I can go into that space. I don’t
have to ask permission.”
How do you assess whether this type of project
is truly successful?
You know they’re successful when the community
takes ownership. It has become their building and from
day one we’ve picked that up when people walk around
and enthuse about their building. So, a successful
community building is not about winning architectural
awards, it’s really about people having a legacy, which
they’re proud of and they enjoy using.
Reading rooms are accessed by a floating
Viridian glass floor that accentuates
transparency and the transition to
cantilevered reading ‘cubes’.