While the Harbord Diggers Club on Sydney’s Northern Beaches was born during hard times and created by working-class people, the Club today acts as an ‘Intergenerational Community Hub’ to the local community.
Way back in 2012, Architectus prepared the Stage 1 Master Plan.
The brief was to create a vibrant Intergenerational Community Hub that combines a hospitality precinct with the club, health and fitness, childcare, and a retirement village.
The approved Stage 1 master plan fixed the scope and extents of the proposed buildings with well-scaled edges to the surrounding streets.
The Stage 2 design by Architectus, CHROFI, and JMD design reflects the core attributes of traditional hilltop villages.
The mixed-use program was arranged with active uses on the lower ground plane and quieter residential uses above.
Crucially, the design concealed much of the form within the contour of the land to control bulk and scale.
The design challenge for project architects CHROFI and Architectus was to first create a vibrant, inter-generational social environment without impacting the beauty of the natural headland, and secondly, to organise the mixed-use program without impacting the amenity of residents.
The intent was to have coherent materiality throughout the project, but with each building and space within the village being unique.
This approach allowed the overall project to be singular – ‘The Diggers’ – whilst also permitting the complexity of the mixed-use program and site conditions to bring richness and interest to the project.
Sited on one of Sydney’s iconic headlands, materiality was directly informed by the spectacular coastal sandstone formations and the native coastal landscape.
The program included:
- Club and community rooms
- Seniors Village
- Food and beverage precinct
- Health and wellness retail
- Aquatic Centre
- Fitness Centre
- Children’s play
- Childcare
- Carpark
The site is structured around a central courtyard, an ocean terrace, and a grid of public domain connections linking to the coast and nearby Freshwater Village.
This vastly improved the permeability of the headland enabling thru-site connections in all directions, establishing the club as a key destination within the coastal walk network.
The Seniors Living Village is organised around the courtyard with the Club’s public facilities located beneath to avoid conflict between the residential and public areas.
A sunken ‘Palm Gully’ at the centre of the development anchors the legibility of the plan connecting all key public facilities while bringing light, air, and lush greenery to the heart of the project.
The Carrington Parade and Evans Street edges respond to their streetscapes, presenting as a collection of domestic scaled buildings.
To the north, the street edges give way to a much larger scaled response to the headland setting.
The natural landscape is drawn across the development to amplify the scenic quality of the headland while taller feature buildings sit above as sculptural counterpoints with flowing forms framing coastal views from within.
A civic scaled veranda merged into the contour of the headland frames aspect from the public areas to the ocean terrace and coast beyond.
Harbord Diggers Club instills a sense of remembrance through its use of sandstone.
This is enhanced by the integration of Jade Oakley’s sculpture at the Club entry depicting the original diggers at their seaside location.
Collectively, the topography, the native landscape, the materiality, and the sculptural built-form combine to bring a new identity to this long-standing community asset.
Dale Hunt, Group CEO of client The Mounties Group said, “The new venue, betting, the coastal location, has been embraced and adored by our local community since opening as a destination for all to enjoy – evidenced by membership growing exponentially from 20,000 in 2018 to 65,000 in 2021 while visitation levels have almost tripled.
The seamless transition from internal to external areas has provided the venue with greater flexibility, functionality and driven the customer experience, encouraging opportunities for customer engagements that have become a backdrop for social media posts.
As a result, the Club has become financially sustainable and a showpiece of the Club and Retirement Living industries.”
Michael Harrison from Architectus added, “The outcome is a diverse set of facilities nestled gently into one of Sydney’s great coastal headlands and cleverly arranged to amplify the health, social, and lifestyle benefits of coexistence.”
It can be safely claimed that the Harbord Diggers Club has admirably met the brief of creating an Intergenerational Community Hub for the local community.
Project Awards and Accomplishments
2021 AIA Awards – Urban – Shortlisted
2021 AIA Awards – Public – Shortlisted
2021 AIA Awards – MultiRes – Shortlisted
2021 ULI Asia Pacific Awards for Excellence – Finalist
2018 The Urban Developer Award, Mixed-Use category – Winner
2013 Design Competition Winner
Project Details
Site Area – 15,600 m2
Project Size – 68,000 m2
Project Budget – $205,000,000
Building Levels – 8
Construction Period – 2016 to 2020
Project Team
Architecture
CHROFI
CHROFI was founded in 2000 as Choi Ropiha following the win in the international competition for the re-design of the TKTS booth in Times Square, New York.
The practice studio in Manly, Sydney is now home to a team of 35 professionals headed by directors John Choi, Tai Ropiha, and Steven Fighera.
Architectus
Architectus is a top-tier architecture and design studio specializing in commercial, education, interiors, public, residential, transport, urban design, and planning.
Landscape Architecture
JMD design
JMD design is a landscape architectural practice committed to designing sustainable, creative, and liveable outdoor environments that contribute to the social, cultural, and environmental wellbeing of all.
Consultant Team
Project Manager – Cerno
Development Manager – Philon
Town Planner – Urbis
Quantity Surveyor – Slattery
Interior Designer – Fender Katsilidis
Structural and Civil Engineer – Enstruct
Facade Engineer and Traffic Engineer – Arup
Services Consultant – WSP
Acoustic Engineer – Acoustic Logic
ESD Consultant – Cundall
Building Certifier – Steve Watson & Partners
Access Consultant – Morris Godding
Traffic Consultant (DA only) – GTA
Services Consultant – Wood & Grieve Engineers
Photography
Many acclaimed architectural photographers and image-makers have contributed project images including:
- Brett Boardman
- Katherine Lu
- Simon Whitbread
- Grant Leslie
- Martin Tarnawski
- Clinton Weaver
- Pablo Codina
- Tom Evangelidis
- Atelier Illume
- CHROFI
- Bloom Images
- Morean Digital Realities
- MIR
Photo Gallery
Click on a thumbnail image to enlarge.
Design © 2022 CHROFI, Architectus, JMD design. All Rights Reserved.| Images © 2022 Multiple photographers. All Rights Reserved.
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