Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation
Victoria
Balam Balam is a campus of diverse elements, a public place supporting cultural production, care, learning and everyday community life for the city of Merri-Bek and visitors.
Design at Balam Balam is heterogenous, disparate, ebullient. The site is a container for a staggering array of cultural and community activity but also a permanent home for a café, a maternal health centre and the wonderful Blak Dot Gallery and associated Blakademy. Balam Balam is not a neutral setting, it has a personality, it is joyous, warm and inspiring – a creative partner rather than a taste-maker or determinative leader. Rawness is embraced, colour is liberally deployed to cohere the uncontrollable influx of multiple creativities and their eclectic accumulation of furniture and objects. The emphasis is on warmth, texture, flexibility, durability, fresh air, conviviality and energy in the interiors. This is a public building but it feels like a home.
“There are moments in the building, gentle, thoughtful moments that allow for the play of light or breeze or people to transport you out of your everyday and into a remarkable hybrid of civic and domestic interaction.” The way a building can show the strength of infrastructure, and the care of home is not an easy task but it has been done here with such rigour and generosity it invokes a reciprocal response from those that come to be here, they arrive in awe of it and leave in love with it.”
Joseph Norster – Co-Director, The Projects, Balam Balam Place
Rachel Nolan, Design Architect
Patrick Kennedy, Design Architect
Victoria Reeves, Design Architect
Michael Macleod, Design Architect
Candice Chan, Project Architect
Bradley Kerr, Architect
Danny Truong, Architect
Wyndham Cameron, Architect
Estelle Peter, Architect
Openwork, Landscape Consultant
Finding Infinity, ESD Consultant
These Are The Projects We Do Together, User Experience & Community Consultant
Jordan Rowe, Spatial Branding & Wayfinding Consultant
Tim Rob Don Dow, Strategic Consultant
Lovell Chen, Heritage Consultant
Greenshoot, Community Consultant
Urbis, Town Planner
Brogue, Engineer
BRT, Engineer
Octave, Acoustic Consultant
One Mile Grid, Traffic Engineer
Architecture & Access, Access Consultant
Zinc Cost Planning, Quantity Surveyor
Metro BS, Transport Consultant
JAZ & DDEG, Engineer