Resource Recovery Centre | West Nowra, New South Wales, Australia | 2023

Architects: TERROIR
Lead Architect: Gerard Reinmuth
Client: Shoalhaven City Council
Images: Courtesy of the Architects

The Shoalhaven Resource Learning and Research Centre is a new type of education facility focused on one of the most important questions of our time - how to better understand the opportunities for giving new life to our waste materials such that we start seriously reducing our carbon footprint and energy use more generally.

Sited at a regional waste processing center with a large focus on optimization of its waste material, the building is to be used as an education and research center where school groups can come to build knowledge about the potential of material re-use and, most importantly, to be excited by the possibilities. The brief for the resource Recovery Learning Centre is both simple and complex. Simple in its core requirements, being a place of learning on resource management and sustainability, complex in its site constraints, material aspirations, and community access. Through some key strategic moves, the architects have created a robust yet flexible strategy for the project. Addressing site constraints such as the noise, dust, and safety concerns, with the site located on a corner at the entry to the precinct and where numerous large trucks pass every day, was the first step taken in developing a clear strategy for the site, finding opportunities to create a unique building and landscape response from the constraints of the site.

With the site's location being so prominent and visible, the Resource Recovery Learning Centre will act as the entry beacon for the waste depot. The design team found this to be an exciting opportunity to create an exciting façade that reflects the project’s ambitions of waste education and sustainability. The project provides an iconic image of material reuse and recycling at the entry of the West Nowra Waste Depot, while also providing safety and refuge for the children visiting the center. At the core of the architectural concept, is a building that not only houses learning but is itself a key part of the learning process, through material reuse, recycled, and new material types the architecture is an embodiment of the Resource Centre.

The ambition for the project is that the innovations it shows today inspire the leaders of tomorrow, such that in the not-too-distant future, what is now a radical project in material use becomes a standard approach. Understanding this, the design team set out to produce a building composed exclusively of materials that were reused, recycled, or upcycled. In this way, all forms of material optimization are on display, literally, in the making of the building itself. With its gabion walls of various waste materials, recycled timber structures, upcycled ceramic façade panels, and so on, the building is a living exemplar of the options available. At the same time, the landscape - denuded after years of waste burial below - is gradually brought back to life through a landscape strategy focused on phytoremediation.