OMA was commissioned by Australian retail developer Sandhurst Retail to design the mixed-use Wollert Neighborhood Center in the suburb of Wollert, in the City of Whittlesea, 25 km north of Melbourne's Central Business District and is one of the fastest growing regions in the state of Victoria.

Offering a well-tempered environment and accessible by automobiles, suburban shopping centers are places for services and entertainment—destinations for consumption rather than social cohesion.

Acording that, OMA released only a few renderings of their scheme and the Wollert Neighbourhood Centre will be a shopping centre conceived as social infrastructure: a place for communal experience where retail and social interaction weigh equal.
The 9,000m² Wollert Neighbourhood Centre designed by OMA will combine community spaces—including a central public courtyard, amenity spaces, and childcare and education facilities— with the retail program.

At the centre, a shaded courtyard with an amphitheater will be used for events and daily activities. An accessible roof offers extra areas for sports and education, and opens up possibilities for urban agriculture and energy saving initiatives.

"Las zonas espaciales organizadas en franjas verticales albergan otros espacios de servicios, instalaciones para niños y ofertas minoristas centradas en el bienestar." Along with the courtyard's landscape design, this spatial configuration was inspired by the product barcodes used throughout the retail industry, OMA says.
 

Project description by OMA

Offering a well-tempered environment and accessible by automobiles, suburban shopping centers are places for services and entertainment—destinations for consumption rather than social cohesion. Located in Wollert in the City of Whittlesea, 25 km north of Melbourne’s CBD and with a growing number of homes, the Wollert Neighbourhood Centre is a shopping centre conceived as social infrastructure: a place for communal experience where retail and social interaction weigh equal.

Existing community activity centres, separated from retail programs, are often underutilised. The 9,000-square-metre Wollert Neighbourhood Centre integrates community spaces—including a central public courtyard, amenity spaces, and childcare and education facilities—with the retail program. With an emphasis on health and wellbeing, the complex offers a range of diversified functions catering to commercial and community needs—a social condenser in the area to serve people across sections of society.

At the centre of the utilitarian-shaped Wollert Neighbourhood Centre is a shaded courtyard with an amphitheater. This is a space for curated community events and daily activities, encouraging residents in Wollert and neighbouring suburbs to spend time in the Centre and engage with each other. An accessible roof offers extra areas for sports and education, and opens up possibilities for urban agriculture and energy saving initiatives. Spatial zones organised in vertical stripes house other amenity spaces, facilities for children, and well-being-focused retail offerings. Such spatial organisation, together with landscape design of the courtyard, evoke barcodes ubiquitous in retail.

Multiple entrances in the elongated façade—facing the streets and the central courtyard—allow access to the building’s public space and through the building. The carpark to the south is separated from the pedestrian-friendly northern façade, while offering clearly-defined routes connected to the centre’s entrances. This single-level carpark at ground level can also be used as an additional outdoor public amenity space. A public transportation connection point to the west connects the centre to the greater Melbourne area—a means to draw otherwise dispersed suburb residents to the centre designed as a civic landmark.

The Centre has been conceived as the heart of a potential masterplan with residential and commercial programs. The mixed-use area, connected to neighbouring suburbs, will offer a new living option typically unexplored by the suburban population.

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Architects
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Project Team
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Regional Director.- Paul Jones. Project Architect.- Clare Johnston, Fedor Medek, Marcus Parviainen.
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Collaborators
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Project Manager.- Case Meallin.
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Client
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Sandhurst Retail.
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Dates
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2020-Ongoing
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Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is an international practice operating within the traditional boundaries of architecture and urbanism. AMO, a research and design studio, applies architectural thinking to domains beyond. OMA is led by eight partners – Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, Jason Long, and Managing Partner-Architect David Gianotten – and maintains offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Doha, and Australia. OMA-designed buildings currently under construction are the renovation of Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) in Berlin, The Factory in Manchester, Hangzhou Prism, the CMG Times Center in Shenzhen and the Simone Veil Bridge in Bordeaux.

OMA’s completed projects include Taipei Performing Arts Centre (2022), Audrey Irmas Pavilion in Los Angeles (2020), Norra Tornen in Stockholm (2020), Axel Springer Campus in Berlin (2020), MEETT Toulouse Exhibition and Convention Centre (2020), Galleria in Gwanggyo (2020), WA Museum Boola Bardip (2020), nhow RAI Hotel in Amsterdam (2020), a new building for Brighton College (2020), and Potato Head Studios in Bali (2020). Earlier buildings include Fondazione Prada in Milan (2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), De Rotterdam (2013), CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012), Casa da Música in Porto (2005), and the Seattle Central Library (2004).

AMO often works in parallel with OMA's clients to fertilize architecture with intelligence from this array of disciplines. This is the case with Prada: AMO's research into identity, in-store technology, and new possibilities of content-production in fashion helped generate OMA's architectural designs for new Prada epicenter stores in New York and Los Angeles. In 2004, AMO was commissioned by the European Union to study its visual communication, and designed a colored "barcode" flag, combining the flags of all member states, which was used during the Austrian presidency of the EU. AMO has worked with Universal Studios, Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, Heineken, Ikea, Condé Nast, Harvard University and the Hermitage. It has produced Countryside: The Future, a research exhibited at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale, including Public Works (2012), Cronocaos (2010), and The Gulf (2006); and for Fondazione Prada, including When Attitudes Become Form (2012) and Serial and Portable Classics (2015). AMO, with Harvard University, was responsible for the research and curation of the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale and its publication Elements. Other notable projects are Roadmap 2050, a plan for a Europe-wide renewable energy grid; Project Japan, a 720-page book on the Metabolism architecture movement (Taschen, 2010); and the educational program of Strelka Institute in Moscow.

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