The Yeronga Community Centre is a community hub for activities and outreach for the wider precinct encompassing the Yeronga State and High Schools, Memorial Park and the emerging Parkside Yeronga mixed use residential precinct.

The YCC building is the first step in the delivery of the broader precinct, which places the community as a central and core part of the Parkside Yeronga master plan, designed by Archipelago.

The architectural form and material respond to the cues from the local context so that the building feels “at home” in its context and helps moderate the scale between residential and commercial buildings.

The building responds to its public faces with activation of Villa Street and public plaza via the main community rooms, community kitchen and covered outdoor space. The main entry faces the future adjacent plaza linking Villa Street and the proposed green spine at the heart of the new Parkside precinct. Community rooms are carefully scaled to provide good light and ventilation to the plaza spaces in addition to activation and passive surveillance. The lower plaza connecting to the green spine is activated by the All Gauge Model Railway which occupies the north western corner of the building, providing an address to the northern side of the building providing similar activation and significance as the Villa Street frontage.

The scale and mass of the building is broken into three main public rooms registered by over height spaces with pop up roofs. This breaks up the mass and bulk of the building in addition to providing important access to light and ventilation into the heart of the building and providing a welcoming and comfortable space. The height provides the necessary conditions to create a mixed mode building that can operate much of the year without air conditioning, providing a comfortable but low energy building.

The family of forms is unified by a material language that adopts a residential palette but configured in a civic and contemporary way. A strong brick plinth echo the language of brick throughout the area and helps ground the building and provide an armature for the landscape integration, creating an “occupied ruin” of varying height walls that define and let space flow.

In addition to designing the base building, Archipelago was invited to provide interior fitout services for the Yeronga Community Centre for Community Plus.

Archipelago has had the pleasure of working with Economic Development Queensland and Yeronga Community Centre since 2019 and are delighted to provide a permanent home for the YCC, All-Gauge Model Railway club and the Annerley Stephens History Group.

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