Jessica Hordern

The Growling Grass House aims to recaptures the urban state of Coburg into a new habitat and connection to Country. From street view walking up to it, the structure is encroaching onto the street in an attempt to direct you inside to explore it.
Through sensory-stimulating design, living beings can find connections to the land, sky, water and the diverse ecology.

The building opens up to the environment where the roof is open to the weather and sky, this creates the internal experience to be influenced and changed depending on the outside experience.
Having open level platforms creates connections between the roof, mezzanine and the stage where they all can hear, see and interact with each other.
Each space is meant to have its own atmospherics and activates therefore overlapping with proximity for new atmospherics.

When the weather turns bad in Melbourne, the open roof allows for the rain to become an experiential factor, falling on the tin roof of the toilets for an audial experience. Water influences the whole building, as the underground river is surfaced and cut through the above platforms, then rain enters the uncovered spaces and large swales fill with water surrounding the building in wet seasons. The water acts as a way of passing on knowledge of the Country through its interaction with the building and people.

Each space has been carefully designed for the waters place in the design as well as the Growling Grass Frogs habitat needs. This frog is critically endangered in the Merri Creek area and as a result there is specialised water catchment designs to for the best habitat for their rejuvenation.
All existing walls are covered in algae tiles which filter water vertically and aid in the overall collection of clean rain water for the building.

The first level and roof level are visually and spatially connected to the river below through the division and height difference of varying platforms. On the roof the platforms hold the food production garden for public use and open staged areas for community events.
Everything is designed to be both purposeful for the environments uses and double for community interaction and use.

The design is as much for the animals as for humans, and you can see an endangered growling grass frog enjoying a swim in the river.
Depending on where and when you are in the environment, sensory experiences will provide knowledge and/or connections to different aspects of Country, regardless of being human, a frog, or somewhere in between.