Grafting the Coastal Pool into the City

Gunyama Park Aquatic Recreation Centre

Location

Zetland, Sydney

Completion

2020

Type

Public

Client

City of Sydney

Collaborators

Grimshaw with TCL

Traditional Custodians

Gadigal

Very few Aquatic Centres have been able to offer the pleasures of swimming that can match the primacy and hedonistic experience of swimming in Sydney’s beach and harbour pools. Inspired by our collage of Sydney beach pools, our competition winning proposal established a playful interaction of natural and constructed landscapes that grafts the beach into the urban pool experience.

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Analysis of 20th Century Industrial Roof Span and Post-industrial Insertions
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Beach and Coastal Pool Analysis (L-R: Beach Entry at South Curl Curl, Wiley's Baths in Coogee, Free Pool Area in Bronte Coastal Pool, Social concourse around Bondi Icebergs)
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South Sydney Landscape Analysis (L-R: Pre-European Waterscape, Market Garden Patchwork, Wetland Landscape, Contemporary Park Landscape
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Analysis of 20th Century Industrial Roof Span and Post-industrial Insertions
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Beach and Coastal Pool Analysis (L-R: Beach Entry at South Curl Curl, Wiley's Baths in Coogee, Free Pool Area in Bronte Coastal Pool, Social concourse around Bondi Icebergs)
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20th Century Industrial Roof Forms
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Clovelly Beach

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Botany Wetland Palette
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20th Century Industrial Roof Forms
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Clovelly Beach

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Gunyama Park Aquatic and Recreation Centre (GPARC) is located within the Green Square Town Centre, one of the largest urban regeneration sites in Australia. The project establishes a new recreational heart in an emerging urban context that will become the highest density neighbourhood in Australia. The program includes a combination of 5 pools (indoor and outdoor), a large health and fitness centre, and a park including a sporting field, outdoor gym and outdoor BBQ’s.

Close analysis of the physical and social qualities of Sydney’s coastal pools, synthesised with an extensive analysis of the past and future character of the GPARC’s site at Green Square, defined our approach. We used the studies of coastal pools as a way of re-imagining the Aquatic centre, identifying social and physical landscape elements – free form swimming areas, informal swimming areas with beach entries, wind protected bleachers, to stretch the community opportunities for both passive and active recreation within a more hedonistic conception of the Aquatic Centre typology.

The site was re-imagined as a continuous wetland landscape of the original Botany Swamp, with a series of pool and recreational landscapes embedded through topographic insertions into the wetland landscape, creating a continuous park footprint across the whole site. The enclosure of the Aquatic Centre was created by an industrial scale urban trellis floating over this park landscape – a remnant large span roof reminiscent of the structures of the area prior to its contemporary transformation in the face of industrial obsolescence.

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Cross Section
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Site Plan
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Ground Floor Plan
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First Floor Plan
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Elevations
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Cross Section
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Site Plan
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Rethinking all the scenarios of the change rooms was an important innovation at GPARC. Housed in cabanas reminiscent of beach pool enclosures, we created a change village that housed small spaces for families to change in privacy, individual changing spaces, accessible change rooms, family change with showers, group change for larger events such as school carnivals, as well as more traditional gendered change rooms. Change room innovation to accommodate all the scenarios of modern life was an important part of making a safe and enjoyable inclusive community facility.

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GPARC achieves a 5 Star Green Star Design and As Built rating from the Green Building Council of Australia – the highest Aquatic Centre in Australia to achieve this rating. Sustainability initiatives include: a 150kw Photovoltaic array of 420 panels providing a local renewable energy source for the building, a 200-260kw Cogeneration unit with heat waste used for water heating, heat pumps providing a low carbon intensity pool and space heating, electricity sourced from 100% renewable energy suppliers. An innovative ETFE roof providing natural daylighting in the pool hall, while creating a natural source of heating that reduces the mechanical heating load in the pool hall, an innovative Bauer low velocity mechanical system reducing temperature stratification, condensation, and material deterioration while reducing mechanical conditioning energy loads, an air tight building envelope with high performance double glazed IGU’s, rainwater collection and storage on site used for pool make upwater.

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Physical models were important to our process of testing this new Aquatic landscape, helping finalise the geometries of the bermed landscapes surrounding the pool concourse.

GPARC introduces a completely fresh material palette to the Aquatic Centre typology, including a mass timber structure with translucent ETFE pillows to create a warm and inviting interior pool hall filled withdaylight, playful references to beaches pools through the detailing and colour palette of the cabanas, and an emphasis oncommunity health and well being through the rich timber palette of the gym areas. The timber beams of the pool halls, put together in the 50m pool and craned into place over the two indoor pools, span 36m, the largest mass timber span in the Southern Hemisphere.

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Creating a vibrant public domain is an important part of our community focus for GPARC. The café is positioned so it can serve the Aquatic Centre while also activating the park and street edge. Indigenous cultural history and knowledge informed the artworks by Jonathon Jones and Aunty Julie Freeman, reconstructing a Bangala to highlight the indigenous freshwater history of the site. Djinjama also provided indigenous interpretation, including a playful revelation of local language around the pool concourse using a paint that is only visible when wet.

Credits

ABA Team

Andrew Burges, Chris Mullaney, Gero Heimann, Louise Lovmand, Isabell Adam, Min Dark, Eric Ye, Cameron Deynzer, Regan Ching, Lucas MacMillan, Alex Wilson

Grimshaw Team

Nard Buijs, Marcel Press, Robert Mcfee, Tom Vandenberg

Landscape Architects

Taylor Cullity Lethlean (TCL)

Photography

Peter Bennetts, Brett Boardman

Public Art and Indigenous Interpretation

Djinjama by Annabel Stevens, Isabelle Toland, Sarah Jane Jones, Danièle Hromek. Bangala by Jonathan Jones with Aunty Julie Freeman

Builder

CPB

Awards

2021

Public Architecture Award, NSW AIA Architecture Awards

2021

Public Architecture, National Award for Public Architecture

2021

The Lord Mayor's Prize (Joint winner), NSW AIA Architecture Awards

Press

2020

Green Magazine Architecture and Design

2020

ArchitectureAU

2016

Venice Biennale

Andrew Burges Architects

32/61 Marlborough St
Surry Hills NSW 2010

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