A groundbreaking new creative and community hub in Melbourne's Brunswick neighborhood is demonstrating how architecture can honor the past while creating welcoming spaces for the future. Balam Balam Place, designed by Kennedy Nolan, Openwork, and Finding Infinity and managed by Siteworks, represents an innovative approach to community-centered design that acknowledges the emotional memories buildings hold while fostering new chapters of cultural connection.

The project takes its name from the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung word for butterfly, a name endorsed by the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation. Located in Brunswick, a vibrant Melbourne suburb known for its eclectic mix of retail shops, second-hand stores, diverse restaurants, pocket parks, and street art along Sydney Road, the area has become a magnet for designers, musicians, young couples, and families. However, despite the bustling community life, affordable creative spaces have been increasingly limited in new developments.

The site's complex history spans over a century, beginning as the location of an Italianate mansion built in 1888 for pottery-works owner Alfred Cornwell. The property was later sold to the Catholic Church and eventually became part of Trinity Regional College. Merri-Bek Council purchased the former school site with its heritage house and open space in 2010, operating it as a creative cultural hub until 2022, when redevelopment work began to increase public space and community amenities.

"There were some really enlightened people in Merri-Bek Council who ended up with this asset, [which has] a textured past," shares Victoria Reeves, director of architecture at Kennedy Nolan. The design team conducted extensive early community engagement and consultation to understand the community's relationship with the existing buildings, information that proved critical to unlocking the precinct's navigation and use.

Today, Balam Balam Place consists of three distinct buildings, each representing a different chapter in the site's history. The central Italianate mansion house, containing hireable spaces, sits surrounded by native landscaping designed like a protective moat. The design team was particularly mindful of the house's sensitive history, recognizing that demolishing it would waste resources and ignore both its heritage overlays and lived experiences. Instead, they created pathways that give visitors the choice to avoid or engage with the house as they feel comfortable.

"There's essentially a boardwalk to get from one condition to another," explains Mark Jacques of Openwork. "Landscape divorces the house from everything else and recasts the building's role." Although the mansion sits at the center of the site, the design deliberately avoids giving it center stage, instead integrating it thoughtfully into the broader community space.

To the north of the mansion stands the structural skeleton of the former school building, now known as "The Steps" because of how it steps down toward the street. Until 2022, this building housed Blak Dot Gallery, a First Nations-run gallery and performance space, and Siteworks, an initiative by creative-space design and management team These Are The Projects We Do Together. Both organizations had celebrated and connected the Brunswick community, creating positive new memories tied to the site, and their reinstatement at Balam Balam Place continues this important work.

The design team chose to keep the skeletal concrete structure intact, acknowledging the community's relationship with the former school building. This rough-and-ready concrete framework now serves as a shaded space for practical, messy, and informal use. "It's something that's not too precious, allowing the community to use the space as it wishes – offering something different to its newer counterpart," the designers note. The structure's upper level is wrapped in chain wire fencing, creating the impression that it can be accessed and used, though this sun-drenched location now hosts solar panels as its primary function.

The Steps serves as both the site's boundary marker and its "grungy grand entrance," holding the edge of Balam Balam Place while maintaining connection to the neighborhood. Its concrete structure filters views toward the adjacent Woolworths and inward to the mansion. However, most visitors enter via the main pathway, walking past Kamilaroi artist Reko Rennie's mural titled "Always," past the mansion, and toward the new building beyond.

The newest addition, a five-level building situated south of the mansion, houses the relocated Blak Dot Gallery and Siteworks, along with spaces available for hire and areas designated for creative commercial tenants, maternal and child health services, and informal meetings. This mixing of creative and community uses represents the next chapter of the site's evolution. "Sometimes projects are finished and the potential has been reached. For Balam Balam Place, the potential is to come – which makes for a very unusual project," shares Rachel Nolan of Kennedy Nolan.

Externally, the new building features distinctive design elements including a curved external staircase, stepped eastern facade, angled verandah, and geometric cutouts and extrusions that create a structure markedly different from its predecessors. However, the building's interior design truly sets it apart by dismantling the institutional qualities typically found in council-owned community buildings. Kennedy Nolan applied their residential design expertise to create moments of domesticity within the public setting.

The double-height entry space choreographs movement and conversations between the foyer and the communal canteen on the level above, where anyone can come for a cup of coffee. Artworks of various sizes hang on yellow-painted walls, while operable windows in tenant spaces encourage users to open them for fresh air. Communal bathrooms feature timber detailing and natural light, and corridors are bookended by large openings that spill onto verandahs bathed in northern light. These deliberate design choices combine to create spaces that feel like living rooms, designed for human experience and interaction.

Sustainability played a crucial role in the project, with Finding Infinity guiding the team toward resource efficiency. The building operates on 100 percent electricity, incorporates heat pumps for hot water, and features a high-performance facade designed to reduce energy consumption for heating and cooling. By advocating for natural ventilation in the central corridor, the team reduced the building area requiring climate control by 35 percent. "We pushed the design to the practical limit without going beyond things that didn't make sense," explains Will Young of Finding Infinity.

The careful attention to detail throughout Balam Balam Place's design and construction process is both visible and felt by visitors. The project's delicate handling of lived experiences and emotional memories serves as an exemplar of how the built environment can reconcile with history while encouraging new chapters to unfold. This approach raises important questions about how similar sensitivity could help protect, recognize, and retain First Nations places of significance in urban areas and beyond.

The project challenges the architecture industry to consider how buildings might be shaped by histories that remain unseen or unacknowledged. Such an approach could lead to Australian architecture with greater depth, spaces that give more to Country than they consume, and environments where First Nations people are considered as end users from the project's conception.

As the industry continues pursuing greater Indigenous representation in architecture, Balam Balam Place demonstrates the necessity of empathy in the design process. Working collectively, Kennedy Nolan, Openwork, and Finding Infinity have created a facility that accommodates both intentional and spontaneous uses. The result is a space perfectly suited to Brunswick's ever-growing eclectic community and a project that could inspire the design industry to recognize all layers of the nation's history as significant heritage worth preserving and celebrating.