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Our project creates a social condenser that functions as an ecosystem. An ecosystem in the context of the site, reacts and reciprocates its external surroundings while simultaneously enhancing its existing environment. Analysis of contextual materials of neighbouring blocks highlights what materials can be reused and reimagined back onto the site to ensure a cyclical material ecosystem. Additionally, the fragmented materiality currently existing in Waterloo highlights the need to coalesce the built ecosystem through our application of form in our project. By introducing innovative methods of recycling and readapting materials, a more appropriate and sensitive approach to the site is conceived. It will allow for site context and heritage nature to be responded to and incorporated with, yet recontextualised to better connect with Country and the growing need for decarbonisation.
The central courtyard space serves as the ‘lungs’ of the site, attempting to heal the wounded environment and allowing it to ‘breathe’ again with its strong relationship to Sky Country and the native scrubland landscape. Additionally, a space of refuge is created that pulls away from the hustle of Bourke Street and connects an area of commercialised and industrialised sites with Sea Country (found at its final destination of Woolloomooloo Wharf). Shell waste from the restaurant industry and stone offcuts destined for landfill have been recontextualised through design elements to embed stories and fragments of Country extending beyond our site boundaries.
At the scale of the building, the ecosystem is imagined through interconnected programs that emanate from one another. For instance, products created in makerspaces, including ceramics and textile upcycling, can be sold within the commercial marketplace or displayed in the exhibition space, with workers and makers able to use the building’s coworking areas. Transparency across programs, established by large oculi penetrating through the floor plates, encourages ‘cross-pollination’ between individuals and activities that create a hub of reciprocal relationships, mirroring the interdependence within a natural ecosystem.
Appropriating key concepts from the Soviet Constructionists, our project aims to act as a creative beacon for the Waterloo precinct. Channelling ideas from the Constructivist social condensers, it fosters dynamic interaction and resource-sharing through interconnected programs. Embracing Koolhaas’s concepts of layered transparency, the design features large oculi that penetrate floor plates, creating visual links and encouraging cross-program engagement.
Systems and services allow for the project’s core concepts to be embedded in the bones of the building. Structural systems build off and reuse steel elements to actively decarbonise the building at its core. Mixed mode ventilation and daylighting are maximised through a punctured oculus providing necessary depths for cross ventilation within a deep floor plate. Facade sequence allows for porosity through glazing at the ground floor to connect with the broader landscape. Sectional design represents the vertical progression of an ecosystem and its canopy with the porous glazed ground floor bleeding to perforated brick and above fabric mesh mimicking the dappling of treetop canopies.
Ultimately, our project will emerge from its surroundings, recontextualised to better connect with Country and align with the current and future social, political, and economic climate. The existing habitat will be enhanced by utilising and repurposing materials within the broader ecosystem to create a unified, thoughtful approach.
