Located in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia; with a gross floor area of 1820 sq m, Bayswater Early Years Hub (Sunflower) was completed in March 2019.
The brief from our client, Knox City Council, was to create an integrated hub to support a growing community with additional early years day care, family and maternal child health services. With five overarching objectives, the building was to be designed to achieve future flexibility, universal access, incorporate economic, social and environmentally sustainable initiatives, be functional and have reduced life cycle costs of up to 80%.
K20 Architecture is continuing to push the boundaries of the typical. The curved floor plan mirrors a sunflower ‘turning towards the sun’, and is comprised of two U shaped building forms orientated to maximise the use of sunlight. Key design features include the application of passive design principles, access to natural light for internal spaces and solar control, reduced reliance on artificial lighting and cooling. Sustainable initiatives include design with ‘structure free’ open span for future adaptability/flexibility; air sealed envelope; maximised fresh air with heat recovery, locally sourced and recycled materials; recycling of demolished building; natural and low toxicity materials; solar array; battery storage; rainwater harvesting; native plantings and durable landscape.
The building runs off-grid and has been designed to achieve a 100+ year life-cycle with minimized ongoing operation and maintenance costs. Sunflower demonstrates best practice environmental design can be achieved by local government and is part of the greater movement to normalise environmentally sustainable design in “everyday buildings”.
All the information about how to enter the 2020 WAN Awards is here.
We are very happy to offer support so please don’t hesitate to email Georgia, WAN Awards Event Coordinator with any questions at Georgia.Baily@haymarket.com.
Last year more than 40 countries took part in the WAN Awards with strong showings from Europe, the Americas and Asia-Pacific. And we saw some truly outstanding projects, take a look at the winners from last year here.