The award-winning Marion Cultural Centre, designed by ARM Architecture and Phillips Pilkington Architects, is facing possible demolition.
The City of Marion is currently taking expressions of interest for the development of the site on Diagonal Road in Oaklands Park for a hotel. Proposals must either retain the centre or rehouse its functions elsewhere.
The centre was built in 2001 and received an Award of Merit at the South Australian Architecture Awards in 2002.
Among its novel architectural flourishes was the way the name of the suburb – “Marion” – was used in the design of the building itself and “dragged across the landscape,” as Sean Pickersgill explained in his review for Architecture Australia 2002. An extruded shelter space is shaped like an “R,” for instance, while the library’s outer north façade sits in front of a large, landscaped “O.”
“Projects as theoretically complete as the Marion Cultural Centre put paid to the idea that the architecture of the suburbs is a semantic wasteland,” Pickersgill wrote.
“Marion Cultural Centre remains a critically reflexive exploration of itself and its context. That there is so much intellectual capital present in projects such as this, so much that seriously investigates the idea that architecture can engage with the “tasteless” ordinary in a more than salutary fashion, indicates the relentlessness with which the architects have pursued a critical reading of the program and the site.”
The building houses a library, a theatre, meeting rooms and a café.
In the the EOI on the council website, the City of Marion says, “The bold vision for the site will transform it into an innovative mixed-use precinct, focusing on open spaces, recreation, accommodation, commerce, arts, culture and community services.”
The council also stipulated that “due consideration must be given to the retention or replacement of the community functions of the existing site.”
Adelaide’s The Advertiser reports that the council decided to seek interests after receiving an unsolicited bid for a hotel development on the site, and that a decision will be made about the building’s future following council elections in November.
In a letter to the editor of the The Advertiser, Mario Dreosti, South Australian chapter president of the Australian Institute of Architects, said that while the Institute did not necessarily object to the possible demolition of a building specifically because it had been awarded, it did think further thought should be given to the effect replacing the centre with a private hotel might have on the community.
“The Marion Cultural Centre at its time was a powerful gesture towards the value of civic place and the recognition of community engagement in the context of a primarily retail-focused precinct,” he said.
“It offered the people of Marion unencumbered access to learning, socialization and engagement that only civic enterprise and not commercial development can bring. It was the library or the police station, the school, the sports complex or the community centre in the Main Street, which is so often missing in contemporary retail-based town centre creation.
“In contemplating demolition, the design and details may be rebuilt with any number of new architectural solutions, but the key consideration is how the new development will provide equitable facilities, equitable community access and almost importantly equitable symbolism.
“Perhaps in this situation the question is not simply about the building fabric but the more the metaphor for valuing the local community.”
