George Rowlands-Myers

THE INTERLACE POOL

The project aims to re-orient the pool as an integral cultural facility via the interlacing of an art gallery, artist studios, an outdoor cinema, and digitally interactive media facades, generating a central hub for local performance events, art and culturally stimulating activity for both St Kilda and the wider community.

Taking inspiration from land artists such as Michael Heizer, the purely functional formation of the solar panel array is utilised as an inherent architectural element of the scheme, being translated into large scale angled planes that slice through the building and the site, creating distinct yet connected functional programs within the interior. Furthermore, greater thermal control of the building envelope is achieved through a reduction in glass, allowing selective light to enter through the skylight voids left behind via the uplifting of the solar array.

A system of Geothermal Pipes run under the Plaza paving, heating the pool through the radiant heat absorbed during the day. The project also makes use of Parisian pool systems in connecting its heat pump and geothermals to the residential sewer line located on Robe Street, taking advantage of the excess higher temperatures associated with residential wastewater from hot showers and the like to maintain a smaller temperature differential and thus create a more efficient system.

A series of pathways narratively pull the user through the solar array towards the central plaza space, with users able to experience short films in the amphitheatre or local art that is both created and displayed within the onsite gallery and studio spaces bordering the Palais Theatre.

Being an integral location in the filming of the first feature film production in the world, The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), the site’s links to the history of cinema are acknowledged, with individual solar panels being interlaced with media screens or ‘pixels’, with the connected capability to display site-wide video art, light installations or local films, returning the site to a place of narrative, culture and community.

Exploded Axonometric
Perspective - Lap Pool Interior
Perspective - Cinema Screen
booklet
View booklet (on issuu)