The Gathering Place in Parramatta to be a building for those on the margins
An inspiringly beautiful structure designed to evoke the traditional Darug owner’s use of the site on which it will be built, has the ambition of putting real heart back into the centre of Parramatta’s fast-evolving multibillion-dollar tower-scape.
At present just the winning concept drawings of a recently-decided architectural competition – the conical building called The Gathering Place, that Parramatta Mission board member Ian Grey compares to a banksia cone – will house administrative offices, deliver services to “the people on the margins”, and as importantly, appear as an open-armed invitation to “anyone in the community to feel free to enter”.
In form and size, says Grey, “we were committed to it being very people-friendly. We wanted it to be the antithesis of the brick and glass of the rest of Parramatta Square.
“We wanted it to be a rich and inclusive place in an extraordinarily fast-changing city. And to remind the community that not everyone here wears a pin-striped suit.
“We wanted anyone in the community to be able to say ‘I want to go in there’.”
Neil Durbach, principal of the influential Durbach Block Jaggers Architects that won the design competition for a new building to sit alongside historic Leigh Memorial Church, doesn’t totally buy into the banksia analogy.
He talks of the small, circular brick structure with a fun syncopation of curved windows, and a sloping garden and small chapel on the roof, as solving all sorts of complexities, and as being “soft and happy, good-natured, familiar and intriguing.
“It has a real softness in such a hard environment. That it be welcoming and not scary was super important.”
Parramatta Mission – that Grey says meets the social needs in Parramatta that have amplified because of improved transport links to the CBD, and because the pandemic magnified pressures on marginalised people – provides hundreds of free daily meals along with a wide program of housing, advocacy, youth and women’s services. “The Mission is amazing,” says Durbach.
He says some of DBJ’s earliest sketches for the second of three eventual buildings (including the church) that will occupy the Uniting Church’s campus considered “making a contemporary version of the existing church”.
“But some projects are dead ends, or one-liners, that lose complexity or intrigue”.
Because the Gothic-style church is such a strong structure, any new building had to work with and not against it. A new building also could not inhibit daylight entering the church’s interiors. That’s where the circular shape of The Gathering Place will work a treat.
“The new building is slightly kissing the church,” says Durbach. “We wanted it to be a good companion to the church, to not be deferential nor overbearing. It needed to be in gentle relationship.”
The corner on which it will sit, according to Ian Grey, is “the epicentre of Parramatta’s CBD”, and The Gathering Place will become iconic as part of “the council-led plan to create a civic link from the heavy rail area to the new ($400 million) Powerhouse Museum”.
He explains that the mission has given up some of its land holdings to the Link project and in return will be compensated by the council in a deal yet to be finalised.
While architectural plans have not yet been submitted, Grey says the mission has been enjoying good collaboration with a council presiding over the astounding growth spurt of Sydney’s second CBD.
Mr Grey is hopeful that not only will the mission’s constituents and broader community embrace the new building as theirs, but also, that it will become an iconic place marker in a city that should be bustling once everyone gets back to the office and once the leaseholds of many new retail outlets are taken up.
“This will become one of those buildings about which people will say, “I’ll meet you at the banksia building’.
“It will be a building that’s not caught up in being all about bigness but about people and community. And that, I think, is a mark of a mature city.”
