Balert Mura Consultancy Good Practice Award

PICAC Brunswick began with a vision to create something truly exceptional. We worked alongside the dedicated PICAC team to define an aspirational brief worthy of this groundbreaking project. The project, designed to create a new training facility for the Plumbing Industrial Climate Action Centre (PICAC) at their foundational Brunswick campus elevates the vocational school into a place for future learning while setting a new industry benchmark of excellence.
Significant to this project in Brunswick is PICAC’s intention to establish the flagship industry training space for new sustainable technologies, including the burgeoning field of hydrogen. Training and research in hydrogen as a fundamental field of specialist plumbing is at the core of PICAC’s commitment to green technologies. The facility at Brunswick provides the infrastructure to train from rooftop through built form and into sub-surface installations, a feature unique to PICAC Brunswick and a major leap forward for plumbing training facilities throughout Australia. 
The architecture of the building has been carefully considered – discussions held with Traditional Owners are reflected in form and materiality, while the internal plan remains a functional space that is adaptable to PICAC’s dynamic education delivery needs.
PICAC’s purpose and role as an industry leader and educator in water conservation and sustainable plumbing methods is put on display throughout the design, mixing visual cues with physical connection to water across the architecture and landscape design. These continuous reminders of PICAC’s championing efforts in environmental sustainability act as a storytelling mechanism to show the history of PICAC, as well as the history of the land it now stands on – representing the return of water and nature to the site and the beginning of healing for Country.

Traditional Custodians of the Land

Location

Status

Client

Architect

Consultant

First Nations Consultant

Landscape Design

Town Planner

Engineering + ESD

Quantity Surveyor

Timber Consultant

Traffic Engineering

Waste Consultant

Acoustics

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PICAC Brunswick concept sketch for First Nations knowledge incorporation

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As part of the design process, Decibel Architecture engaged in discussions with Traditional Owners (facilitated by Balert Mura Consultancy) – a collaboration focussed on reaching design decisions that respected both Country and the complex, interwoven history of place. Through investigating Indigenous learnings, Melbourne’s recent colonial past and PICAC’s current role within the built environment, we have crafted a project at PICAC Brunswick that blends cultures and history of Country into one continuous future.
<h6>History of Country</h6>
The land around Merri Creek and what we now know as Brunswick (Bulleke-bek) was once a forested waterway, with the Wurundjeri people living on the rocky banks and utilising the natural abundance. British colonisation of this area in the 1800’s resulted in the establishment of clay quarries for brick production, the remnants of this industry still evident on Country to this day.
Large clay deposits from floods tens of thousands of years prior offered the growing settlement a local resource to mine and produce clay bricks. PICAC Brunswick is located adjacent to the largest of these quarries on the site of Cornwell&#8217;s Pottery, where the extracted clay was used to produce terracotta pipes used in facilitating Melbourne’s extensive sewerage system.
<h6>Future Stories</h6>
Our work with Traditional Owners made it clear that this project presented an opportunity to begin the process of healing Country by weaving the stories of First Nations’ history and knowledge of the area with its recent colonial history into the design of the building, particularly through materiality and form. The history of PICAC as a vocational educational institution concerned with the environmental importance and conservation of water also shaped how this meaning was echoed in the architecture.
The ground plane tells the story of the land – one of clay and terracotta used by both by the Wurundjeri people and the British settlers through brickwork and landscape. The new building is enclosed by a brick wall that mixes different textures and red-brown hues, acknowledging the industrial history of the site while returning that same material back to its origins. Brick is also incorporated into the landscape design by Aspect Studios, with the arch entrance to the building reflected in the garden structures, creating gathering spaces within the curved forms that embrace and create space. The organic, oblong shapes of these semi-ellipses are formed as such to symbolise the common representation of people in Indigenous art and storytelling, evoking a familiar sense of comfort and protection. With the banks of Merri Creek (once an important meeting place for the local First Nations groups), these walls scattered among the outdoor area, allow for protective spaces for people to gather and share knowledge.
The concept of the possum cloak, a ceremonial and protective garment worn by the Wurundjeri is also present in the architecture as a storytelling mechanism. For Wurundjeri people, the possum cloak is a sacred and unique signifier of identity, telling the story of the person who wears it through a series of etched and painted lines on each skin, detailing significant moments of that person’s being. A patchwork set of windows encloses an atrium space on the northern facade, creating an abstracted version of the possum cloak motif as means of establishing cultural protection, pride of history and storytelling at PICAC. It stitches together the two cultures working, living and learning on Country, visibly embedding the narrative into the architecture to encourage cultural awareness and understanding.
Water and its regenerative meaning and purpose to the Wurundjeri people is expressed in the design of the building, while also acknowledging the role of PICAC in conserving and working with this precious natural resource. The soft, milky glazing of the facade was chosen to represent the healing rains brought by Bundjil, the Wurundjeri creator spirit, with the drops falling onto the possum cloak and the grounds below to renew the land and Country. The landscape also reflects this theme, with endemic native plant species interspersed between cylindrical water pools, regenerating the land through the reintroduction of indigenous flora. This area of Brunswick has most recently been a place of hard surfaces and man-made structures with limited respite in nature. Aspect Studios have taken this opportunity to soften the interface of this new building by bringing back local species that in time will create new habitat for native flora and fauna, as well as providing wonderful amenity for humans in the space. Building on this theme, the use of specific trees as way-finding markers is another layer to the story – becoming more and more visible over time. 
Images 
Unknown, Brunswick Potteries (1866). <a href="https://viewer.slv.vic.gov.au/?entity=IE436266&amp;mode=browse" target="_blank" rel="noopener">State Library of Victoria</a> 
H. Hansom, Melbourne Air Services, View of the Brunswick Potteries (c.1920). <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131203134516/http:/www.auspottery.com/Brunswick%20view.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Australian Decorative Pottery of the 1930s</a> 
Mandy Nicholson, Possum Skin Cloak (2012). <a href="https://culturalcommons.edu.au/mandy-nicholsons-possum-skin-cloak/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">University of Melbourne Collection</a>