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m3architecture
A community centre in Brisbane’s suburbs that uses only local bricks demonstrates the variety and vibrancy inherent in just one manufacturing region, and provides a new location for spontaneous and planned events.
“We wanted to understand the implications of using a local manufacturer,” says architect Michael Banney of m3architecture. “From the viewpoint of ecology and the environment, it’s very important for the construction industry generally to begin to source local products to limit long distance haulage, and this is particularly the case for bricks because of their weight.
“We set out to source from one supplier in Brisbane and to test what we could yield from the colour palette of bricks available from that one supplier.”
m3’s proposal – a basketball court and covered shelter flanked by two large brick walls – draws inspiration from artworks by Howard Arkley and Fred Williams, who helped to redefine and reimagine the way Australians perceive built and natural landscapes, through their paintings of suburbia and bushland respectively.
The scheme is situated on the edge of parkland adjacent to a shopping centre and the unique brick walls tie it back into its surroundings, with different imagery on all four sides.
“One faces suburbia and features the silhouette of a one-storey suburban dwelling,” Banney explains. “We were able to subtly and gently depict a single storey residence in the wall. It’s there to make the explicit connection back into suburbia and as an exploration in monochromatic brick with polychromatic mortar.”
That wall features window-sized openings that became the main focus of the reverse side, which faces on to the half-court. “We wanted to see what we could do to the other side of that wall through the use of colour to radically alter its perception,” Banney says. “Using polychromatic brickwork, we subverted the 1.2m x 1.2m ‘windows’ by introducing large circular motifs and polychromatic line work, which alters the way the brickwork behaved on the wall.
“All of these techniques mean that despite strong fenestration and patterning of the wall, the outcome on this side is radically different to the other side.”
The second wall forms the junction between the basketball court and parkland, and uses bricks to reproduce two Australian paintings. “The court side depicts a Howard Arkley painting, by pixelating the painting into the proportion of a brick,” Banney says. “We have colour-matched the painting to locally sourced bricks to test how versatile the colour palette can be. The opposite side of that wall replicates the Fred Williams painting ‘Hillside’, using the same method.”
The floor of the court and surroundings is also constructed with bricks, and the architects explored their graphic capacity by using different colours to define court line markings, to delineate changes in surface level and to create a familiar Australian icon – the brick barbecue.
“The barbecue is a reincarnation of Brisbane’s (now demolished) Festival Hall brickwork,” Banney says. “The bricks are monochromatic and the brickwork steps and shifts in planar terms. That gives an effect like at Uluru, where you have monochromatic colour, but through shadow and texture, many colours are realised.”
It all results in an engaging yet familiar urban space that can be used in myriad ways. “It might be used by children playing basketball or other ball games, or people taking shelter under the roof, or holding fashion parades, or having parties or community barbecues,” Banney says. “It has all sorts of uses, as many as the community can imagine.”
