 | CENTENNIAL PARK AMENITIES REVIEW Helen Norrie
PHOTOGRAPHY Brett Boardman
| Lahz Nimmo’s new amenity blocks for Sydney’s Centennial Park. |
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Lahz Nimmo’s
Centennial Park
Amenities carefully
sites five similar blocks
through the parklands.
The framed views from
within the blocks’
central spaces highlight
the specificity of each
surrounding landscape.
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A subtle exercise in
repetition and variation,
the context of each
facility results in varied
ablutionary experiences.
Approach to the
Centennial Square toilet
block from the open
cricket field.
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The
Centennial Square block
seen from the adjacent
bushland.
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Oblique
view of Dickens Drive toilet block showing the
facade articulation.
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Western approach to
Grand Drive block, with
the Federation Pavilion
beyond.
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The toilets
adjacent to the McKay
Sports Ground.
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Looking across
Musgrave Pond towards
the toilet block, which
services a barbecue and
picnic area.
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Batten screen detail.
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Detail of entry to
female toilets.
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Interior view of one
of the toilet blocks.
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The elegant detailing
of the central open
space within the
pavilions.
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I have a theory that if shoes are the windows to the
soul of a person, then toilets are the windows to the
soul of an architect. I have been developing this for
some time now and each building I visit (and most
people I meet) seem to provide further evidence. In
terms of shoes, it’s the way they are worn as much as
the stylistic choices made. The same applies to loos.
As with shoes, it’s not about ostentatious
over-design, most famously encapsulated in Phillipe
Starck’s lavs at Café Beauborg in the 1980s where
every fitting was reinterpreted. (Apparently it’s
almost impossible for the blokes to differentiate
between the handbasin, the urinal and the
ornamental water features.) Neither is it about the
fancy tricks of transparency and voyeurism now in
vogue – one-way glass over urinals and other such
pervy interpretations of the “loo with a view”.
The theory is more about the ideal that moments
of true poetry make great architecture and that
this should follow through from the grand,
memorable room to the smallest room in the
house. The corollary of this is that if an architect can
do a good dunny, they can do a great building. This
theory was tested with the first new works to the
Sydney Opera House – the refitting of the toilets.
The inventive and elegant solution suggests that the
building is in good hands.
So it’s a delight to have the opportunity to review
a building that is, on the surface, just a series of
thunderboxes but, on closer inspection, is actually
the perfect architectural project. The Centennial Park
Amenities Blocks required a response that spans
from a landscape strategy to material detailing. Lahz
Nimmo Architects’ careful master planning subverts
the obvious approach of reinventing the form of the
traditional public toilet through an aesthetic exercise
of designing the pavilion as an object in the
landscape. The strategy locates the five buildings
along the edges of various routes, rather than in the
centre of spaces. Each is subservient to the park, and
as a result they are easily identifiable but not
dominating, dancing the fine line between visibility
and invisibility.
In an effort to reduce the perceived mass of each
building the “male” and “female” parts are separated
by an open porch-like central space that houses the
handbasins, creating a long, thin building pierced by
an open space which frames the landscape beyond.
This articulation is carried through to the structure
and materials. The various elements of screen-wall,
roof and service areas are separated to reduce the
visual mass, but also to attain maximum light and
cross ventilation. The buildings are a beautiful,
subtle exercise in repetition and variation. The
prototypical building is repeated on each of five
sites, with four identical pavilions and one adapted
with the addition of a space for changing facilities.
However, the context renders the experience of each
differently, because the siting emphasizes the
particularities of its location, and every building is
approached from a slightly different angle.
The net effect of the siting and the formal
articulation is a series of optical tricks, which distort
the perceived size and scale of the buildings. The
subtle positioning of each building also considers
the dramatic effect available in a deliberately
orchestrated route and acknowledges the
picturesque qualities of the park. The slatted screen,
which forms the “front” wall, is monumental when
approached from the end of the building and thin
and screen-like when approached from the distance
across an open field. The vertical battens allude to
the rhythm of the trees beyond, while the horizontal
slot created by the central entry porch frames the
view, contrasting the individual characteristics of
different landscapes within the park.
Along Dickens Drive, the first block appears from
behind a hillock as the road curves around a bend in
the centre of the park. The block is positioned
symmetrically between two existing trees and the
central porch frames the rocky outcrop of the
Brazilian Fields to the north, drawing attention to
the contrast between the landscape of this space and
the Lachlan Reserve opposite. Further along this
road is Centennial Square, a paved area used for
formal events, weddings and ceremonies. It is
serviced by a second block that sits in the mediating
zone between an intimate shady grove adjacent to
the square and the bright open green playing field
beyond. The building has two fronts and is
experienced differently depending on whether one
enters from the cricket pitch or from the formal
square through the bush in between.
To the east, a third block nestles between
Musgrave Pond and One More Shot Pond, servicing
a favourite barbecue and picnic area. This siting is
important as the pavilion needed to be hidden from
view yet easy to find. Seen across the pond, through
the trees in the foreground, it appears more like an
elegant picnic pavilion than a toilet block.
Adjacent to McKay Sports Ground, amongst the
cricket site-screens another block sits up on a ridge,
against the edge of the Horse Track. On a summer
afternoon the sun filters through the south-westfacing
skylight, back-illuminating the front screen
wall and rendering it visually separate from the mass
of the building behind. At this moment the subtlety
of the formal modulation of the blocks is most
clearly apprehended. The building appears to be
only a screen, with the masonry mass of the service
zone visually melding into the earth bank behind.
Perhaps the most magical moment of optical
illusion occurs along Grand Drive. When
approached from the west the building is a large
monumental screen that foregrounds the distant
Federation Pavilion, but as one continues along
Grand Drive and turns into Lock Avenue to the east
the scale flips and the strange formal modulation of
the pavilion comes into play. It suddenly seems
massive, and the toilets in the distance become, by
contrast, a miniature battened box.
The Centennial Park Amenities have been
entered in the Public Building category of this
year’s awards. These fine, grand commodes, another
kind of Australian architectural icon, should be a
serious contender.
HELEN NORRIE IS A TOILET ENTHUSIAST AND LECTURER IN
ARCHITECTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TASMANIA. THIS
ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN TO THE SOUNDS OF THE ELECTRIC EEL
AND THE PLUMBER’S JACKHAMMER DEALING WITH HER OWN
DOMESTIC SEWERAGE SOAP OPERA.
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CENTENNIAL PARK
AMENITIES, SYDNEY
Architect Lahz Nimmo
Architects—project
team Andrew Nimmo,
Annabel Lahz, Andrew
Lamond, Peter Titmuss.
Project manager
Incoll Management.
Structural consultant
D.W. Knox + Partners.
Hydraulic and civil
consultant Acor
Consultants. Electrical
and lighting consultant
Art + Science. Quantity
surveyor Cave +
Associates. Landscape
architect Pittendrigh
Shinkfield Bruce.
Builder Les Moore
Projects. Client The
Centennial Park and
Moore Park Trust.
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