SHIFT community centre

This project is located on the corner of a park facing 3 other blocks of towering offices (Flagstaff Gardens, cnr William & La Trobe St). It is the scene of mass transiency from 8 am to 6pm, when workers pour out of the trams and trains and fill the capsules above and then race home leaving a desolate landscape of flickering lights and blowing leaves

The Shift community centre houses pubic space for multiple use such as lectures, exhibitions and functions, and also acts as a Homeless Shelter with refuge lounge, lockers, kitchens and meeting spaces. I was focused on pushing these two (usually) segregated user groups into the same space and to create compromising situations where people are forced to deal with the realities of our social context.

The forms are simple abstractions of typical houses and are all floating free from the ground and some at obscure angles, splicing into and pushing out parts of the other buildings. This should cause poeple to question the permanance of the building and create a feeling of awkwardness. The idea is that the forms could easily be seen one day as one arrangement and then on the next morning the forms may seem to have shifted and skewed over night in the complete abandonment of life this place suffers from in the evenings.

The Shelter lounge with it's pitched roof stands out as a beacon of refuge to the homeless, and stimulates the question of what shelter is? and more importantly who deserves it?

Below: scattering of forms to achieve a plan 'without hierarchy'. elevation drawings. sections through the building. montage on site. final model.