Designed by Collins and Turner, Waterloo Youth Center, Commissioned by the City of Sydney, the revitalized building is a dynamic new piece of community architecture.

The building has been transformed into a welcoming counseling facility and communal workspace for Weave.

The refurbished building has additionally become an extension of its landscape setting, combining architecture and horticulture in a unique way to create a new sculptural form that enlivens the southern area of the Waterloo Oval site.

Where possible, elements of the existing amenities block structure have been retained and re-used in the new plan, now focussed around a new central courtyard and crowned by a planted roof structure.
Photography: Richard Glover
The landscaped roof garden is veiled by a dramatic steel canopy structure that has been designed to support a variety of native climbing and fruiting plants. The canopy is star-shaped in a plan – the points of the star mark the entry and newly constructed bay window areas in the four corners of the building.
The building is also partially submerged in its setting, as a result of subtle adjustments in the adjacent landscape levels, reducing its apparent size.

As the plants mature and grow across the canopy, the building will gradually merge with its park setting, becoming an abstract and sculptural green land-form that punctuates the park boundary and visually merges with the adjacent tree canopies.
Isometric
The building design takes inspirat...