Wunggurrwil Dhurrung

This is a truly integrated centre – a landscape with a building in it, high ESD performance in every element, supporting a user experience of connection to nature, to place, and to community.

The building can be modified by users – opened or closed to the central heart or to the performance space, screens can be moved depending on wind or rain conditions, opening or closing circulation areas.

Carefully designed openings provide natural light and ventilation throughout, mechanically supported when conditions require. The building management system is responsive to both weather conditions and user changes, adapting to maintain optimum efficiency.

The building is carbon neutral, with 420m² solar PVs generating 56.5kw of renewable energy. Electric vehicle charge station and priority bays for low E vehicles compliment the connections for active travel options with end of trip facilities.

As well as the environment, the design supports people, by providing a workplace that enhances well-being. Zero VOC materials are used. The ergonomic work spaces are carefully scaled, connected to nature with expansive views of the sky, and have places to gather as well as retreat.
Visitors enjoy intuitive way-finding, inviting spaces to pause and a calm and uplifting environment.

The stakeholders in this project have come together through a Collaborative design process. The resulting building embodies the values of respect, inclusivity, cultural safety, and access for all. The centre respectfully foregrounds the traditional owners, using Wathaurung language throughout, and re-instating an endemic landscape including food and medicinal plants.

The centre embraces the need to share resources, knowledge, and understanding, by balancing two briefs in one building.

Privacy and openness are considered so that community groups can maintain cultural protocols, with separate areas for men and women connecting to a large sand circle for performance and ceremony, and fire pit.

Early in the design process the team and client held meetings with Wathaurung Traditional Owners, discussing how the building could give something back to the country. Water was agreed to be most critical.

100% of the water that falls on the site is allowed to return to ground water or used within the building. Rainwater is captured in tanks and slowly released through a series of ephemeral creeks that water the endemically planted landscape.

By keeping water on site rather than diverting it to the river via the sewer, the site is restored, and pollution to the river is reduced.

• Dhurrung dhurrung’, and art work by Vicki Cousins, in collaboration with Jeph Neale, Rob Bundle, Dave Ashton and Peter Worland. This is the Centre’s heart beat. The work includes stone, a vessel filled with water, through which sound vibrations travel creating patterns, which are filmed and projected inside the centre.
• Certified 5 star Greenstar As Designed (As Built certification in progress)
• Changing Places Facility provided for people with profound disabilities, and their carers
• Universal Design Green Star credit targeted