Sydney’s newest urban pool and recreation centre opened to the public on 1 February.
The Gunyama Park Aquatic and Recreation Centre is designed by Andrew Burges Architects with Grimshaw and Taylor Cullity Lethlean, who won a City of Sydney design competition for the project in 2014.
The facility contains four pools and an extensive fitness and wellness centre. Its concept is inspired by the rock pools of Sydney’s beaches.
“We felt there’s a kind of fundamental pleasure in swimming in beach pools and that wasn’t evident in aquatic centres,” said Andrew Burges.
“The site itself was literally unconstructed and because there was no existing condition, it was a really important to remake the landscape and the place of where the pool would be. Looking at the beach pools with the goal of rethinking the typology in terms of what kinds of recreational spaces it makes was pretty fundamental to our concept.”
The design team analysed beach pools around Sydney, including Curl Curl, Bronte and Coogee, and brought elements from each into the design of the aquatic centre.
The outdoor 50-metre lap pool includes an unprogrammed pool area that allows for recreational swimming without disturbing the lap swimmers, which was inspired by Bronte pool.
It also has a beach-like entry zone inspired by the Curl Curl rock pool. The “beach” edge of the outdoor pool is also surrounded by umbrellas, cabanas, bleachers, rocks and boardwalks that lead to a 25-metre indoor pool with a hydrotherapy pool adjacent.
The Gunyama Park Aquatic and Recreation Centre sits at the heart of the Green Square urban renewal area.
“There’s a spine of public facilities within a continuous park which starts at the town centre and moves across the axis,” said Andrew Cortese, managing partner of Grimshaw’s Sydney studio. “The pool has a really public and civic role in the way that it builds cohesion and community life.”
Andrew Burges added, “One of the things we were very conscious of was how dense the area was going to be, and as a result, how much passive recreation – or idle time – would have to be accommodated in this aquatic centre, relative to active lap swimming.”
The site was hence conceived as an integration of park, pool and recreational centre.
“There was an opportunity to reimagine it from the ground up starting with the landscape vision, and then working into a park and recreational vision and then an enclosure and pool concept,” Burges said.
The entry to the centre is conceived as an urban living room and movement through the centre is carefully orchestrated to create separate zones of climate controlled spaces.
The site was also an important area for the local Indigenous people of the Eora nation where fresh and salt water flowed together. This has influenced the public artwork commission, Bangala by Aunty Julie Freeman (Eora/Yuin) with Jonathan Jones (Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi), which features two bronze casts of bangala, or Eora bark water carriers.
Gunyama Park Aquatic and Recreation Centre is the first recreation centre in Australia to achieve a 5 star Green Star design and as built rating thanks to its energy saving climate control system, photovoltaic panels and other sustainable design principles.
Andrew Burges Architects and Grimshaw also collaborated on a successful competition entry for Parramatta Aquatic and Leisure Centre with McGregor Coxall. Parramatta council approved the design in 2020 and the project in slated for completion in 2023.
