Civic Hall Site Newsletter First Edition

CIVIC HALL SITE

a community design process

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CONTENTS PAGE 1 Issue #10 - 17th Dec PAGE 4 Issue #11 - 14th Jan PAGE 8 Issue #12 - 21st Jan

civic hall site journal edition 10 - 11- 12 Dec to Jan 2014-15 www.civichallsite.org cover image civic hall event graphics Cait Conley, Micha Woodhouse edit Michelle James, Ammon Beyerle

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In the past three and a half weeks the Open Door Studio has seen and heard so many wonderful ideas from everybody, so gearing up for the silly season we in turn will show you a few things we have gathered for you to stew on amidst the much merry eating and drinking. Please take notes!

PRECEDENTS Looking at what has already been done is an architect’s first point of call, so it has been great to see many of you already doing the leg work for us, with many great precedent suggestions being brought into the Open Door Studio. Thanks! Here are a few great examples we’ve had.

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CIVIC HALL SITE EVENTS This past week we have been working with the events working group and Council to get more clarity about events in the new year. Each of the three phases will include one large event that activates the whole site, celebrates our progress and presents an artefact from an artist-in-residence. There will also be many small events like workshops and focused design activities along the way.

To test the ideas that are already coming forward, we are starting to discuss the opportunity for community-run events and even fees for booking the foyer for group meetings. We welcome more interest and input here.

Some news for those of you who are expecting a large event in February that would include activation of the hall itself, news is that it is starting to look too difficult with too much work left to do. Key challenges are access, fire hazards and security.

STILL INTERESTED IN JOINING OUR TEAM? We have now agreed with Council to send out Request for Quotes first thing in the new year. If you are interested in being involved in a formal, paid capacity please look out for more information in the first few weeks of January 2015. This may be for a single phase or for the whole process and could be an individual or a company.

FIRST PARTNERSHIP GROUP MEETING HELD Last Friday we held our first partnership group meeting over lunch just walking distance from the Civic Hall Site. The current members of the group are Ballarat City Councillors, Committee for Ballarat and Save Civic Hall. Last week only Committee for Ballarat and Save Civic Hall could attend the meeting.

The Partnership Group plays an important role in the project to support our core team, offer wisdom, critique and representation. They help to ensure the process and the concepts we produce are legitimate, feasible and relevant. This group keeps minutes which will be submitted as part of the report to the Council Chamber at the end of each phase of the project (300to10, 10to5 and 5to3). The terms of reference of this group were adopted in the Council Chamber on 12 November 2014.

Because the start of the group was delayed, it will begin by meeting fortnightly in the new year.

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SKETCHING In the last week, many of our conversations in the Open Door Studio have been quickly shifting to more tangible ideas for architecture and urban design. With a break coming up we thought it would be a good idea to encourage everyone to think more about design. You may think we are getting a little bit ahead of ourselves here but we were itching to do some sketching this afternoon. We decided that sharing a mix-up of concepts that are already emerging in a visual way would be a good provocation for the holiday season.

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HAPPY NEW YEAR We hope you are having a fantastic start to 2015.

The Open Door Studio has reopened for the year - we hope to see you on Tuesdays from 9am-5pm and Thursdays from 12pm7pm.

WORK WITH US Do you have skills in communications or architectural visualisation? Are you a community-minded event planner or facilitator? Are you a local artist? As we mentioned late last year, we are currently looking for some more people to join our team in a paid capacity over a variety of roles.

Council have sent out a request for quote last week, it is due Monday 19 January 2015 via email to Tim Grace at the City of Ballarat: timgrace@ballarat.vic.gov.au If you are interested in applying, the Request for Quote brief documents can also be downloaded from the Civic Hall Site in the Work with Us section.

GATHERING AT THE OPEN DOOR STUDIO The Open Door Studio has now been open 10 times and we are continuing to gather many ideas, while some themes are starting to emerge. In addition to the notes that we have made of each conversation we’ve had (which can be viewed in the studio and on our website), we are starting to visually represent the ideas and are generating more design material around the themes for everyone to build upon. There are many, but here we share three of the themes to get you going.

THEME: BALLARAT CHARACTER At the Open Door Studio, the issue of maintaining Ballarat’s architectural character has been raised frequently. One visitor proclaimed the Civic Hall Site “not to be Melbournised” So, this got us thinking, what is Ballarat’s character? Does the style of Civic Hall conform to this character? How can the proposal on the Civic Hall Site represent Ballarat without becoming kitsch?

One of the things we’ve been gathering today is Ballarat imagery. Using forms from iconic places such as Lake Wendouree and the Botanical Gardens how can we create all-weather structures, outdoor garden and play spaces that reference Ballarat?

What do you think?

THEME: FACELIFT At the Open Door Studio we’ve heard that some people aren’t too fond of the Civic Hall orange bricks. So, what would be some other options? We have gathered some ideas for the least invasive face lift for poor ol’ Civic Hall.

Rendering and painting looks great but can be costly and needs ongoing maintenance.

Timber or steel screens can be used with climbing plants (“green walls”) to revamp the facades yet this option may not provide full coverage of the bricks. Others have mentioned covering the facades in solar panels.

What are your thoughts?

THEME: A MULTIPURPOSE CIVIC CENTRE FOR BALLARAT? The Civic Hall Site is right in the heart of Ballarat.

It has great access to the CBD, train station and heritage precinct.

Many people who have visited the Open Door Studio have commented on the opportunity to create a Multipurpose Civic Centre for Ballarat.

In this scenario, what programs or uses would be on the site and where will they be placed? Do these programs complement each other? What should be the balance of community, retail, and commercial spaces? Should carparking be considered on the site? What do you expect the construction cost and operating budget for the site would be? How long would it take to build and would the project be staged?

We invite you to share with us your urban plan of the site based on these considerations...

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Welcome to your weekly newsletter for all things happening at the Civic Hall Site.

This Tuesday at the Open Door Studio we had our 300th visitor and had a record 39 people visiting in one day! Thank you for joining us and continuing to encourage more people to visit the studio and participate in this process.

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS: THE BIGGER PICTURE We are hosting a series of workshops in the first week of February starting at the Civic Hall Open Door Studio.

What is the role of the Civic Hall Site in Ballarat?

How does it relate to other places, projects and futures of Ballarat?

Library renovation and extension? Train station redevelopment? Her Majesty’s renovation and extension? Ballarat West Employment Zone? Mair Street redevelopment?

What is the bigger picture?

Numbers are strictly limited so don’t miss this opportunity to get involved and please book your place at one of the 3 workshops by RSVPing on our website via this link or coming into the studio to let us know.

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STEPS IN THE PROCESS We have designed the participatory process to gradually bring together the many ideas out there into something Council can act upon in November 2015. From there, a large project like this would typically go into design development.

Last week, at our first meeting of the year, we discussed our process with the partnership group – which includes Mayor Cr Philips, Deputy Mayor Cr Innes and Cr McIntosh, Committee for Ballarat and Save Civic Hall – and our milestones and initial deliverables were endorsed. We are all committed to a successful project and encouraging your active participation.

The first stage will put forward 10 concepts for the whole site. It comes to completion at the end of March with our report to be endorsed in Council Chamber. The second stage - 5 concepts - ends in July, also to be endorsed by Council before going forward. To produce these concepts we will use architectural and urban design thinking to integrate your responses to the key themes that are emerging from our conversations with you in the Open Door Studio.

We are getting closer to halfway through the first step of the process – from 300 ideas down to 10 concepts. You will see that all the conversations we have been having with you are starting to influence our design thinking and the development of key themes. We have been gathering all your ideas, noting them on large sheets of butchers paper on our back wall and archiving them each week in the studio and in the special section on our website.

Please come into the studio to understand more about the process and have your say. Come in and add to where we are heading or listen to others ideas. There’s lots of work to do.

A FEW MORE THEMES Last week we aimed to provoke discussion by sharing some recurring themes. This week we continue the conversation by sharing you three more. We want to encourage you to come to the Open Door Studio to discuss these with us.

SKATE PARK / STREET PARK The more time that we spend in the Open Door Studio the more we realize how frequently the skate park on the Civic Hall Site is used, despite the newer purpose built one in Main Rd. Many parents tell us that our skate park is great for the little ones to learn, as it isn’t as busy or competitive as Main Rd, yet the metal can get quite hot in the summer and it is a bit old and run down. The teenage skaters also tell us that they like how central it is in the middle of town. In December we had the original designer Matt Turner (who was age 18 or so at the time) of the skate park come in to visit us at the studio.

Currently a high fence segregates the skating area from the rest of the Civic Hall Site – in a new redevelopment could the skate park be integrated better into the rest of the site?

The concept of a ‘Street Park’ is designing a space that can integrate skating facilities into other public open spaces such as seating areas, allowing the space to be used for multiple purposes. Here are a few examples, including the Waterfront skate park in Geelong, Lincoln Square in Carlton, Slack Plaza in West Virginia and Sishane Park in Istanbul.

LIBRARY AT CIVIC HALL SITE Ballarat Library is a well-used and well-loved facility with over 1000 visitors a day and it is expanding! We have received a copy of the Ballarat Library and Community Hub Proposal, put together by Flightpath Architects in 2013, and it is on display at the Open Door Studio. The proposal sees the library doubling in size, and also includes a youth hub with its own entrance, a cafe, childcare, and a multicultural hub. How will this affect the redevelopment of the Civic Hall Site? What is the potential relationship between the library expansion and the Civic Hall?

p12 STARTING TO THINK ABOUT BUSINESS MODELS Often when we think about redeveloping a site, we focus on how much it will cost to build upfront – the capital costs – but how might we tackle the ongoing maintenance and management of the building(s) and public spaces? What might be the operational budgets and how can we consider environmentally sustainable design options to decrease running costs?

Many people visiting the Open Door Studio have mentioned that it is important to get many commercial uses on the site to financially support community uses. Everyone seems to agree that the site needs to be economically, environmentally and socially sustainable into the future.

We’ve also had some people talk to us about using the large surface area of the Civic Hall to install solar panels or considering setting up a district heating system. We’ve received some excellent case studies about Jyväskylä (a city of 130,000 people in Finland) and Malmö (Sweden’s third largest city with 300,000 people) which offer some valuable lessons that can be related to our situation in Ballarat.

Have you got some business models ideas for the Civic Hall Site?

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