The Building and its Environment
The building plays an important part in its surrounding environment. It is set in a small community park on the river, which is in constant use the the public. The centre does not impose on its surroundings, by trying to stand out to get noticed, but merges in with the communal area that is is part of. It creatively compliments its environment through its layout and materiality. The way the two buildings are split with a steel walkway sitting between encourages the public to engage with this space and the people who work here. The materiality of the building was specifically chosen to help it blend in with the surrounding boat yard, warehouses and local housing estate; which are all coloured a similar rusty brown shade. This public project works in contrast to many others, as normally the council strive for an attention seeking, juxtaposed design. This commonly used style of design would not work here, it would only draw attention to the contrasting decay and general run-down feel of the local area. It is the buildings subtlety and its similarities with its environment that encourage the success of the community based centre.
Through this sketch of the Cremorne Riverside centre and its surrounding I wanted to show how the shape of the building corresponds with its context. The boats parked on the river wharf have all same shapes forming elongated ovals and the CR Centre have the same stretched form that is supposed to represent the form of the boat itself. I wanted to emphasize it on the sketch through repetition of the boats parked nearby. I think the building perfectly fits into the surrounding and the architect did it on purpose to make it look like it supposed to be there.
Sustainability of Cremorne Riverside Centre
The building was designed to work in relationship with its surroundings. This means that not only does the building need to fit in with its surroundings it also needs to be environmentally conscious. Materials that appear on the original site were re-used such as concrete, cobbledstones and original bricks; with this in mind the site also tried to retain some of the original features such as the timber bridge. This is a very environmentally conscious way of constructing as the less material brought in and more materials re-used means that a less of an impact on the environment would occur.
Ground Source Heat Pump
The site of Cremorne Riverside Centre is powered by a ground source heat pump. The pumps work by taking natural heat from the ground this is then absorbed at low temperatures into a fluid inside a coil of pipe (horizontal ground loop) this is hidden underground. The fluid is passed through the compressor which then raises the temperature to a higher temperature. This heat is then what fuels the hot water and heating around the site. The cooled fluid is then passed back into the ground where the cycle then begins again. The ground source heat pump is environmentally friendly in comparison to other methods of heating. The heat pump does require electricity to run but the heat then extracted from the ground is constantly renewed.
Heat pumps are also are less expensive than the conventional electric heating methods, and if more people were to switch to renewable heating methods this would drastically change the carbon emissions provided by other sources of heat.