A 120 kilolitre underground rainwater tank collects water from the roof of the hub. The rainwater is used for flushing toilets and for watering the garden. Throughout the hub is water efficient taps, showerheads and appliances.
Electric Car charging
Electric charging spots are provided for people to charge their electric cars. Electric cars are a healthy and sustainable transport option.
Bike parks have been provided for both staff and visitors. Staff are also provided with showers and lockers to make riding to work easier.
The raingarden captures stormwater that runs off the car park. The raingardens, pollution traps and a detention basin help stop stormwater run-off and pollution going into our local waterways.
Seating and outdoor spaces
Throughout the gardens are pathways, seating, and gathering spaces for everyone to use.
The community garden space provides a place for people to gather and garden together. The Glenroy Neighbourhood Learning Centre is supporting a dedicated group of volunteers to manage the garden and encourage other local people to get involved. A nearby, well-established community garden group is growing seedlings for planting in the Hub garden. The Learning Centre will use herbs and vegetables in its weekly cooking class as will other local groups.
Natural daylight and beauty
To allow natural daylight into the Hub windows are clear glass and there are high-level clerestory windows. These provide views and access to natural light throughout the day reducing need for electric lighting, saving energy. Interior materials are highly reflective to increase the light levels within the Hub.
Environmental Sustainable Development
The Hub exceeds Councils Environmental Sustainable Development standards. It is also certified Passive House and designed for Living Building Challenge.
Public art has always been important to Moreland’s social and cultural life. Three artworks were commissioned for the Glenroy Community Hub. Artists were invited to explore themes of transformation and connection. Transformation can refer to natural transformation, personal, geological or social transformation. These artworks consider how one thing becomes another and the implicit potential for growth and hope that resides within change.
The idea of connection invites us to remember how we are all linked through our families, our history, our communities and with nature. These artworks reflect on our interdependence and remind us that being together offers people hope and support. Visitors are inspired to feel the strength that comes from being part of a community.
Each of the artworks speaks of local identity and a sense of place. They stimulate the creativity of artists and communities, encourage healthy debate and add beauty to our environment.
Artist: Kent Morris
Material: Wallpaper and giclee print
Kent Morris is a Barkindji artist whose art practice explores identity, connection to place and the continuing evolution of First Nations cultural participation.
His artwork ‘Cultural Reflections – Systems of Sustainability #2’ takes a single photograph that he digitally transforms to create an immersive, kaleidoscopic mural installed in the hub.
The imagery of an interlocking network of native plants and splendid fairy wrens in a repeating pattern speaks of infinity and a deep time philosophy that suggests plants, animals, humans, land, sea and sky as interconnected and interdependent. Intrinsic to this, is the acknowledgement that we are all part of a continuous and universal narrative.
Artist: Isadora Vaughan
Material: Rammed earth and bluestone
Melbourne-based sculptor Isadora Vaughan explores biodegradable materials, biofuels, algae and permaculture, material intelligence, and the interdependence of human and non-human life.
For Glenroy Community Hub, she has created a new site-specific work for the arbour entry point that echoes the accumulation and layering of material and time. A series of curvaceous organic forms made from rammed earth are intersected by cut bluestone protrusions that mimic growths occurring in nature. The work evokes a sense of time and collectivity and invites us to embrace and recognise the continual transformation of the terrain and environment as synonymous with the changing communities that belong here.