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[Union] :: Newtown Cultural Centre

Part 1 Project 2005
Joshua Morrin
Venusri Harigopal
University of Sydney | Australia
Often the beginning of a student project is to start with a blank canvas, a sort of attitude which says: ‘pretend as though there is nothing there’. This project contends that this is not necessarily the case – that no matter what the site, program etc., there is an underlying geometry – a hidden order, as it were – that will govern the projection and emergence of the building from this blank canvas.

This project is presented in a way which mirrors the post-product, reflective thought process of how this geometry emerged and fused together with the program, social and cultural structures to result in a building which is place-specific, exploratory, and contextually unifying.

Joshua Morrin
Venusri Harigopal


Joshua Morrin’s bold urban design and architectural solution is an outstanding response to a class brief for a small public building. A sculpted ground plane at the triangular corner of the difficult inner-city site links through a softly-landscaped sunken garden to the public part of the program housed in a simple three-storey box reflecting the foreground sculpture. The strength of this solution lies in the architectural skill and originality of its inspired interpretation of program and site as cultural centre, engaging an inner city community through offering a spatial banquet of places providing play, respite, delight, programmatic clarity and robustly appropriate materiality.

Tutor(s)

2005
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