SPORTING clubs are often a critical factor in building and maintaining a sense of community in small regional towns and the facilities used to house them are often much more than just change rooms for sport, providing a meeting place and social hub as well as community facility used for larger functions.
Wellington Council in Victoria’s East Gippsland recognised this pivotal role and set out to rejuvenate the town’s sporting pavilion as part of a wider master plan to upgrade the Gordon Street Recreation Reserve.
The pavilion, which hadn’t been upgraded for 30 years, is a central hub for the community of Heyfield and home to the local football, netball, basketball, cricket and even pigeon racing clubs.
Architect Paul Katz describes the pavilion upgrade as providing “a fresh lease on life with new and upgraded features. The new and existing façade is expressed with timber battens wrapped around the building creating a strong and inviting presence to the pavilion.”
Wellington Council had expressed a keen desire in its brief for the building to lead by example, incorporating a design that was sustainable and beautiful. The solution was to use timber in a dynamic and highly visible way on the pavilion’s façade and to incorporate timber into the flooring, joinery and cabinetry as well as bench seating.
To ensure the timber satisfied the brief’s sustainability criteria, 100% of the timber used in this project was certified. The flooring, timber battens around the
façade and kitchen bar and server joinery were all sourced from the ASH mill in Heyfield, which is a mill that is certified by Responsible Wood to Australian Standard 4707 relating to chain of custody.
A spokesperson from ASH explained the importance of this project to the company: “This project is very close to our hearts, as our head office and mill are located in the heart of Heyfield. This community is such a caring, supportive group of people, we wanted to give a little back to the town that has given us so much.”
The Gordon Street Reserve Pavilion has been short-listed as a finalist in the 19th Australian Timber Design Awards in Sydney on October 16. Responsible Wood is the sponsor of the Australian Certified Timber category.
