Pathways ECI Centre

The new Pathways ECI Childcare Centre in Sydney’s inner west by RAW Architects incorporates dignity and a touch of humour as part of the process of care. Architect Adam Russell explains this important community project, designed to lift the spirits of kids and their carers.

Pathways Early Childhood Intervention is a not-for-profit centre that provides family-focused services to children with disabilities (0–7 years of age) and their families. Its new care centre flanks a park in the inner-western Sydney suburb of Marrickville.

Our involvement began when Pathways approached us to assist with imagining a renewal of their centre. The land on which the centre sits is owned by Marrickville Council. The centre had remained unchanged for the eleven years Pathways had leased it, and they were obliged to make improvements to the property in order to secure a 20-year renewal of the lease.

We prepared a renovation concept on a pro-bono basis, volunteering our time and the necessary visual material to kickstart a fundraising initiative for (eventual) construction. Some time later, armed with DA approval and support from Marrickville Council for the design, Pathways successfully lobbied for a State Government grant and some corporate funding, without which the centre could not have been realized.

Much of an original building, including two playrooms and service spaces, was retained and adapted. Learning spaces and administrative areas are re-housed in a robust new building that accommodates a diverse range of programs including playgroups as well as group and individual therapy sessions. Therapy spaces are downstairs, with the primary open-planned ‘hot-desking’ office space upstairs. Pathways offers a combination of day services at the centre and home visit services to more than twenty surrounding suburbs, so the hot-desking layout accommodates around thirty carers, some of whom spend a lot of time on the road.

Upstairs is a flexible hot-desking office for in-house and home-visit carers.

Upstairs is a flexible hot-desking office for in-house and home-visit carers.

Image: Brett Boardman

Given the diversity of its programs and the age of the children using the centre, we designed it to be as as family-friendly as possible – we wanted its expression to be both playful and civic. The centre adjoins Jarvie Park, which it addresses through overall scale and fenestration, while At the scale of the children, it operates through ground-level breezeways, colour and smaller scaled openings.

External materials are durable and robustly detailed to be carefree for up to twenty years. Inside, a clean palette of white walls with joinery and Australian blackbutt timber accents sets a neutral backdrop for the daily activities. The new sensory therapy room is engineered for kinetic therapies with rubber flooring that continues throughout and high-load ceiling fixings to suspend kinetic therapy equipment, and a padded rubber stair.

A sensory therapy room with kinetic therapy equipment suspended from the ceiling.

A sensory therapy room with kinetic therapy equipment suspended from the ceiling.

Image: Brett Boardman

Each of the three collective learning spaces has an immediately adjacent outdoor space. A play-scape of soft-fall, concrete and hardwood elements by Landscape Architects Carmichael Studios provides a safe terrain for kids to explore. Endemic low-water planting will naturally shade the outdoor spaces in time while providing further texture and colour to the playspace.

A ‘big-small’ motif is used for window fenestrations and emerges again in the joinery. On several elevations of the building, windows appear in pairings of large and small, representing the special relationship between carer and child. We repeated this motif inside with the crafted timber cupboard handles, similarly paired in large and small.

Pairings of big and small cupboard handles references the carer-child connection.

Pairings of big and small cupboard handles references the carer-child connection.

Image: Brett Boardman

At the entry undercroft we nested a ‘house within a house’ to represent the volume of a demolished house as a residual ‘imprint’ in a new structure. This is an idea developed in an earlier proposal for the Australia House Japan and relates to memory and evolution. Psychologically the undercroft marks the ‘arrival moment’ at the centre for children. For their families, it offers a secure, sheltered area to park the pram and organise themselves.

From the undercroft, the entry path extends beyond the play areas right through to the rear of the centre, deliberately over-scaled to invit informal gathering for families, staff and kids and keeping a visual connection through the interior to the outdoor play areas and the park.

Pathways ECI Centre Marrickville, viewed from Jarvie Park elevation.

Pathways ECI Centre Marrickville, viewed from Jarvie Park elevation.

Image: Brett Boardman

The building is a remarkably efficient and robust steel-clad structure designed to reconcile flooding and aircraft noise pollution issues and minimize the cost of up-keep, always an important consideration to a not-for-profit organisation.

Colour has been used purposefully in both abstract and concrete ways. Windows are given a collective expression through the use of a burnt red Alucobond Spectra composite panel surrounding them. The panel can vary from a reflective gold through polished copper to a deep rust-red, depending on the colour of the sky and angle from which it is viewed. A burst of colour on the ground floor is limited to the undercroft where weather protection is optimal and where the children can engage with it at eye level.

The emphasis of the centre is on children with mental disabilities and/or other social disadvantages, some severe, and the focus is on nurturing these kids and their families in an holistic way. The centre has grown steadily over past fifteen years, largely thanks to the hard work of its generous volunteers and ongoing fundraising initiatives.

Credits

Project
Pathways ECI Centre
Architect
RAW Architects
Sydney, NSW, Australia
Project Team
Adam Russell, Imogene Tudor, Nick Sargent.
Consultants
Builder Total Construction
Electrical engineer Steensen Varming
Landscape Carmichael Studios
Structural engineer Cantilever Consulting Engineers
Site Details
Location Marrickville,  Sydney,  NSW,  Australia
Project Details
Status Built
Category Education
Type Early childhood
Client
Client name Pathways ECI Inc
Website pathwayseci.com
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