Coffs Cultural & Civic Space

OVERVIEW

We were shortlisted by Coffs Harbour City Council to submit concept designs for this ambitious civic development, bringing the Gallery, Museum and Library under the same roof as Council itself. Our proposal, voted ‘most preferred’ by the Coffs community, sees an internal verandah, overlooking a light-filled double-height public atrium, used to access these services, encouraging incidental exposure to the experiences each institution has to offer. More specialised, secure areas requiring stricter climate control are pushed deeper into the building, hidden behind high thermal mass walls of concrete and local rammed earth. The atrium’s timber canopy roof is the ‘power plant’ of the building, with a network of photovoltaic cells providing power and dappled light to the space below, reminiscent of the Coffs Creek Mangroves. While the building is designed to be an efficient and relatively low-cost structure, a higher concentration of the budget is attributed to the Gallery, singling it out as the icon of the project.