Delacombe Stadium

Delacombe Primary School is located in the growth corridor of Ballarat West with enrolments expected to increase. Previously the school did not have a dedicated Gymnasium facility and had partial use of the adjacent Doug Dean facility which was not at competition standard, and provided poor internal comfort levels due to a lack of insulation and ventilation. In addition, the school had identified the need for a flexible multipurpose room designed into the Gymnasium, nominated as a school funded item. Detailed elements of the brief called for an indoor facility that would provide the maximum use potential from a wide range of users including school students and staff, local basketball and netball clubs as well as cricket/rugby/football clubs that would be seeking to use the amenities as an extension of the neighbouring community sports field. Additional briefing items were for the project to provide a high quality internal series of spaces that would be welcoming and warm, and appropriate for a range of activities beyond sports.

The siting and planning of the building arranges the much larger internal court volume facing the street, thus allowing for a student-scaled wing of lower height spaces to the north and east. These lower height spaces allow for direct amenities access from the outside, canteen access and strong visual links between the internal spaces and outdoor areas allowing strong passive surveillance systems to operate. The project has been designed with full wall and ceiling thermal insulation as well as acoustically absorbing internal wall and ceiling linings which reduce noise transmission and reverberation in the space. The built outcome is a much calmer and quieter environment to occupy, with school assemblies, community events, presentations and a wide range of other learning activities easily accommodated.

Passive design strategies have been used to allow the Gymnasium to operate comfortably without the need for extensive airconditioning or heating. Insulation is provided not only to the roof, but also to the full extents of the walls, and rigid insulation is also provided below ground slab. As Ballarat can be an environment of extremes, this insulative ‘coat’ allows the internal spaces to remain temperate during sub zero temperatures, by providing a base stable internal temperature. Natural air is brought in through low level fans, with hot air exhausted at the high point of the roof. Two large high level industrial fans provide air circulation and an evaporative cooling effect for sports players. These are virtually tuned to provide optimal air flow in warmer weather, increasing comfort in hot weather conditions and allowing extended usage and curriculum delivery beyond sports activities. Southern diffuse natural light allows for reduced glare amenity, and reduces the requirement for artificial lighting, whilst a deep undercover ‘eave’ surrounds the northern and eastern aspects, protecting from inclement weather and also reducing heat load in winter. All external glazing is high performance double glazing to allow the building higher levels of internal comfort without the need for mechanically augmented systems and fresh air is controlled by ‘smart’ C02 sensors distributed throughout the internal spaces, which continually monitor for occupancy levels and introduce fresh air as required automatically. Rainwater is also being harvested from the new roof for use in irrigating school grounds.

Careful consideration needed to be given during the early design stages as to the scale of a building of this size relative to the students, given its’ adjacency to a number of key play spaces. Indoor sporting facilities can also be a challenging environment to manage acoustically and also from an environmental amenity perspective – for cost reasons they often have uninsulated walls and ‘aurally reflective’ surfaces that can make them unpleasant to occupy for some modes of use