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New Health Place / New Community

Part 2 Project 2003
Richard Blight
Alan Green
University of Melbourne | Australia
The project is located in Sunshine, in Melbourne’s outer-west, and attempts to re-interpret and hybridize the shopping mall type to accommodate the civic facilities and to form a revitalizing centre for the city. Public architecture can exist as a community resource while coat-tailing on the shopping mall attractor. The dual aspirations of civic presence and commercial imperative compliment each other and offer speculations on a way forward in rejuvenating areas of suburban neglect. It is recognizes the mall as a place of meaningful community.
Richard Blight
Alan Green


Richard Blight located his project in Sunshine, a blue-collar area in Melbourne’s outer-west. In the commercial centre he inserted a series of facilities for community, healthcare and physical and psychological well-being, accommodated in buildings that integrate with the conventional building type of the location; the shopping mall. The result was a hybrid condition acknowledging tensions between commercial and community aspirations. The health care facility borrows from the supermarket it displaced, while the other buildings borrow from retail sheds.

Richard’s work was evaluated highly for its inquiry into the programmatic issues of community health, its commitment to its difficult context, and its critical engagement with architectural strategies and precedents.

Tutor(s)
Ed Frith
2003
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