Project Overview
The Victorian Pride Centre is a place of belonging, support and pride for the state’s diverse LGBTIQ+ community. As Australia’s first purpose-built pride centre, this is where everyone can come together, honour the past, celebrate the present, and work towards a more inclusive future. We are home to important resident organisations, engaging cultural programs, vital health services and inspiring social spaces.
An iconic design and connected spaces makes a statement that this is a place for community. A place for pride.
Project Commissioner
Victorian Pride Centre Limited
Project Creator
BAU Brearley Architects + Urbanists + GAA Grant Amon Archtiects
Team
Builder: Hansen Yunken, Project Manager: Case Meallin / Bates & Co., Town Planner: SJB Planning, Quantity Surveyor: Slattery, Structural Engineer, Mechanical Engineer, Hydraulic Engineer, Electrical Engineer, Facade Engineer, Traffic Engineer, Fire Services, Fire Engineer: WSP
Acoustic Engineer: Resonate, ESD: Hip v. Hype, Building Surveyor: Checkpoint Building Surveyors, Landscape Architect: Thompson Berril Landscape Design, Building Surveyor: Hansen Yuncken, Specialist Lighting Design: Schuler Shook
Project Brief
In January 2018 BAU (Brearley Architects and Urbanists) and GAA (Grant Amon Architects) were selected winners of a two-stage design competition. BAU/GAA believe in being well informed, be it a well prepared brief, understanding the site, knowing the client, or the introduction of other physical or intellectual frameworks. Key considerations from the client included.
Pride
Each LGBTQI+ person has a personal challenge in moving from culturally imposed shame to a sense of pride. The fight for equality, mutual support, and community is an essential social project.
Community
Exploring the aesthetics of the un-finished, the robust, the work in progress, the studio, the workshop, the factory; this building reinforces this atmosphere of work in progress and enables the LGBTQI community and the general community to get involved and contribute. This building contains a community of equals not a labour force of hierarchies.
Sustainability
Sustainability targets include: zero carbon operation; rainwater capture to meet WC and on-site irrigation needs; grey water toilets; indigenous flora roof garden, forty-seven bike parking spaces and five showers; zero-energy breeze paths utilising a stack effect; and a 50kW photovoltaic roof installation.
Viability and Constructibility
The project also provides: flexible rentable commercial space; a café fronting Fitzroy Street; a rooftop bar and amenities for events; a theatre-cinema bar to enable a private operator to cater for both private and VPC events; and a bookshop under the atrium stair-stage.
Project Innovation/Need
Even today, 6 out of 10 LGBTIQ people experience homophobic, transphobic verbal abuse while 42% of LGBTIQ people hide their identities at social and community events. While we have come far in gaining equality in a number of areas, discrimination and stigmatisation still exist.
As Australia’s first purpose-built pride centre, this is where everyone can come together, honour the past, celebrate the present, and work towards a more inclusive future. You can be who you are in all senses of the word at the Pride Centre. It also creates a place of connection between parts of the community and organisations so that people feel less siloed and can work more collaboratively.
The LGBTIQ+ community is as diverse as the broader community, we are not one homogenous group. Our challenge is to create a space that recognises and celebrates diversity, brings people together and fosters respect.
Design Challenge
One of the challenges was to reflect the concept of coexistence in the design and building.
The formal, spatial, and ordering arrangements of the building are clear, legible, and without hierarchy.
a.) Circulation radiates from the ellipsoid atrium.
b.) Each floor gathers related programs, visually and spatially linked via the atrium.
c.) Structural and non-structural fabric is clearly articulated, explaining what is permanent and what is easily changed.
d.) A spectrum of hues clarifies levels within the building. On each level tints and shades of the particular hue explore natural light levels. This will be a dramatic building of light and shade.
e.) the interior design explores the coexistence of a series of clear and contradistinctive elements without hierarchy: i.) the container; the contained; ii.) service cores; iii.) floor surfaces; iv.) exposed services; v.) significant site lines; vi.) a timber framework integrated within the front partitions of resident organisations, and hanging rails and track lighting along all walls in public spaces, enable the emergence of an authentic self-expression.
These coexistences lead to an aesthetic that exceeds the idea of the beautiful and presents the more universal and trans-cultural experience of the sublime.
Sustainability
The Pride Centre will be home to around 15 resident organisations. These are well respected and critical organisations focused on supporting the LGBTIQ+ community. Their presence in the Pride Centre is critical to the Centre's success, in turn they are afford long term tenancies which provide stability to their operations. The Pride Centre is required to operate as an LGBTIQ+ inline with its agreement with the city of Port Phillip for 17 years, it will be a community owned asset for decades to come ensuring sustainability of existing organisations and the support of new and emerging groups and organisations.
Architecture - Public and Institutional
This award celebrates the design process and product of planning, designing and constructing form, space and ambience that reflect functional, technical, social, and aesthetic considerations. Consideration given for material selection, technology, light and shadow.
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