Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation
Victoria
The Port Phillip EcoCentre is a community education and research centre set within the St Kilda Botanic Gardens. The project consists of a multi-purpose space, meeting rooms, commercial kitchen, staff offices and the first citizen science laboratory in the southern hemisphere. Â
The building is embedded within the botanic gardens and camouflaged in garden views with a weathering trunk-like timber cladding.  The massing and orientation creates a semi-public urban edge on the busy pedestrian street corner at the Gardens entry.
The structure, services ands materials used all aim to provide a ‘net positive’ effect on the environment. The project is designed to be carbon negative across its life cycle, as an exemplary environmental facility.  It provides a new model for flexible space to serve emerging civic needs from one carbon neutral asset.Â
The existing site is a small education centre within gardens with a collection of indigenous and exotic planting.  The intervention maintains the existing land use but provides new capacity for regenerative transformation as a community-led organisation to connect, act and transform through education, citizen science, story telling, network building and outreach to connect communities with their ecosystems across Naarm (Melbourne).  The project includes a new participatory science lab to support climate and environmental research. The site transformation provides an exemplar for the community and a new model for flexible space to serve emerging civic needs from one carbon neutral asset.Â
Michael Bouteloup, Design Architect
Sarah Bourke, Design Principal
Monica Shanley, Project Architect
Tong Su, Project Architect
Xin Yan Choo, Graduate of Architecture
Tim Daborn, Graduate of Architecture
Introba Victoria Pty Ltd, ESD Consultant
Introba Victoria Pty Ltd, Services Consultant
PD Structures Pty Ltd, Structural Engineer
PD Structures Pty Ltd, Civil Consultant
Melacoustics, Acoustic Consultant
City of Port Phillip, Building Surveyor
Bourke and Bouteloup Architects, Landscape Consultant
Trethowan Heritage, Heritage Consultant
Harlock Consulting, Cost Consultant
Equal Access, Access Consultant