Glenroy Community Hub

DesignInc Melbourne

Glenroy Community Hub provides the City of Moreland community with a welcoming, nature-inspired environment to learn, grow, celebrate and heal. The Hub’s centrepiece is a new contemporary library. Other facilities include Glenroy Memorial Kindergarten, Maternal Child Health centre, a community health provider, neighbourhood learning facilities and childcare co-located with the library.
Framing the Hub as a ‘social connector’ is a key strategy to increase community awareness of the range of Council offerings. DesignInc envisaged the project as an opportunity to imagine what a new model community building might be and do. Connecting the community through a garden experience, biophilic design principles are utilised to create meaningful, restorative and uplifting connections with nature.
The new library will serve as a gateway to knowledge, creativity and leisure; This prompted a key decision to frame the library as an access and connection portal to all the services in the Hub, with spaces designed to foster social connections. Maternal and child health services will nurture infants and their parents as will the integrated long day care and kindergarten. Parents will encounter their community at the health centre, neighbourhood learning activities on site and in the community garden.
The landscaped forecourt arbour provides public activity space, identity and transition from the Bridget Shortell Reserve to the Community Hub. The transition continues into the building with internal landscaping, natural light and views and access to nature and garden experiences.
In a first for community building in Australia, the Hub is Passive House certified, while also built to achieve Living Building Challenge Petal Certification and Zero Energy Certification.

Photography by Dianna Snape

Dissections
Furniture: Modern Teaching Aids, Bellbird Furniture, Redline Interiors, Man Made Creations, Preschool Equipment, Plus Workspace, Zenith, Reaco, The Shelving Shop, Dexion, Resource Furniture, BCA Commercial interiors. Lighting: Versalux. Finishes: Interface, James Hardie, ASG International, Surface Squared, Laminex, Dulux, Lysaght, Croma Coatings Vic, Bona, Forbo, GB Masonry, Corian, De Fazio, METZ, Australian Sustainable Hardwoods, Easy Craft, Gunnersens, Parmate, Boral, Leto Bamboo, Egger. Fittings & Fixtures: Metlam, RBA Group, Bobrick, Winc, Advanced Display Systems, Caroma, T & P Preschool Equipment, Hideaway, Blum, Humanscale, Bilton, Oe Elsafe, Vision Chart, Madinoz, Laminex Waterloo, Vertilux, GWA, Franke, Corian, Roger Seller, Phoenix, Britex.