URBAN CENTRE – Broadmeadows VIC

This – a prize winning entry into a national design competition, is a scheme for a new ‘transit city’ centre in the City of Hume at Broadmeadows in Melbourne.

The scheme is strategically focused on the economic contribution of technical education and business, the benefits of retail-fed traffic from the existing shopping complex, the instigation of a Transit Silo bridging Pascoe Vale Road, and an envisioned mini-bus network serving the centre and its immediate neighbourhood.

We regarded the retention of water, cars and self-stored effects as a functional, interactive and urban idea about holding site resources and human activity long enough for them to be of benefit to the centre.

Easily accessed from all approaches, the proposed Transit Silo functions as a ‘spill bridge’ in which commuters commence their out-of-car journey from a point between the two sides of the site, preferentially spilling to one side or the other according to daily need.

Civic viewing and illumination were central to the scheme. A safe lighting route from the education precinct to the west continues across Pearcedale Parade as a processional swathe of suspended luminaires through the town centre. These describe a new journey along the Main Street over Pascoe Vale Road to the railway station and carwash, and then back into the site along a vista to the Town Hall. Synergies of luminance and human activity between railway platforms, the carwash and Pascoe Vale Road are harnessed by an overhead program of light and luminous canopy soffits.