The new Quakers Centre in West Melbourne, built into an existing 2 level 1960s office building (and former funeral parlour), includes a new Library, a Research centre and meeting rooms for the Victorian Quaker community.
In establishing a new home for their faith in Victoria, the Quakers aimed to avoid normal church tropes, prompting a design response that avoided monumentality and overt Christian symbolism.
The circle and light are used throughout the project to represent ideas of community, fellowship and the numinous, all central ideas and motifs in Quaker thought. Rippled polycarbonate lets through light, but maintains privacy, while the new timber framed street facade provides light to the interior and projects openness.
The circle, an architectural motif of great antiquity, as evidenced by Bruniquel Cave, Gobekli Tepe, Stonehenge and the Pantheon, along with light, is used throughout the project to represent ideas of community, fellowship and the transcendental nature of the divine.
The core of the project is the large upstairs Meeting Room, used for Quaker worship “meetings”. This circular space floats in the triangular plan and mediates between the complex geometries of the building and the site.
A luminous space, the Meeting Room uses the ancient symbol of the circle to construct a sacred space, which aspires to the sublime. The central circular skylight, suggestive of the numinous, connects the interior with the sky, puncturing the tent form, one of the oldest architectures of worship, forming a quiet oasis on the edge of the city.
The tensile roof appears in distant views from the city like a primitive mountain or tent. From close up it becomes increasingly difficult to view the building except in fragments. The understated street frontage reveals the interior reception and library. The interior worship space hides from the city under the tent form and relates to the outside through the balcony to the courtyard (and future garden), and aims to connect those inside to the sky and garden outside.
Project Team: Toby Reed / Peter Hogg / Bruno Rabl / Melissa Spencer / Di Hu
