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Munarra Centre for Regional Excellence

Architecture as self-determination. The Yorta Yorta community assembled the partners, secured the funding, and led every stage of design and delivery. ARM's role was to facilitate that leadership into a built outcome and not get in the way of what the community already knew it needed.

Project Details

Traditional Owners:
Yorta Yorta
Client:
Department of Premier and Cabinet, Victorian School Board Authority (VSBA), Munarra Limited
Budget:
$36m
Year:
2024

Munarra Centre for Regional Excellence

Munarra is a world-class education, sporting, and public gathering space led entirely by First Peoples. There are two parts: an upgraded Rumbalara Football and Netball Club to the north and a new community and academic building to the south. One of the most interesting things about it is what ARM facilitated for the design to take form.

The centre was conceived through Yorta Yorta self-determination on a politically charged site, with a complex group of stakeholders, strong but diverse community voices, and competing briefing requirements. ARM's job was to hold all of that, work through it, and produce a building that the community recognised as its own. Delivered by an Indigenous-owned contractor, twelve news jobs were created in the process.

From above – Sky Country – the building unfurls like a flag: the tricolours of the Aboriginal flag rendered in built form, a banner of identity draped across the Shepparton Sports Precinct. Internal spaces pinwheel off a central circular courtyard, with teaching, working and cultural spaces oriented to Country, landscape and sky according to nuanced community requirements. A learning veranda, firepit, and the Nanyak Wall (a photographic record of community history that extends into the landscape) communicate the building's civic and cultural ambitions from every angle. To the north, a new canopy and upgraded facilities tie the Rumbalara Football and Netball Club with the new building across a blue bridge, turning two sites into one place.

Munarra Limited, an all-First Peoples board, oversaw the project and now manages the centre’s operations. The building belongs to the community that built it.

Awards

  • Category Winner – Higher Education and Research, World Architecture Festival
  • Commendation for COLORBOND® Award for Steel Architecture, Australian Institute of Architects
  • Commendation for Urban Design, Australian Institute of Architects
  • Silver – World Design Awards, Better Future Awards
  • Award for Educational Architecture, Australian Institute of Architects

The Munarra Centre for Regional Excellence and the Rumbalara Football Netball Club are so unique they are nation leading. I’m excited and optimistic about this investment’s potential to deliver the future to Yorta Yorta and other First Nations including the people of south-eastern Australia.

Deputy Chair of Munarra Ltd, Uncle Paul Briggs OAM

“From the building to the landscape, it’s all been planned with community. Engagement happening over 12 months, talking to over a thousand people asking what they’d like to see from a building like Munarra. As you’re walking through the centre, you’ll see key aspects of art, culture and landscape from Yorta Yorta Country, from the Warby Ranges with the rocks to the Barmah National Park with the wetlands. These elements have all been put into this building. It showcases Yorta Yorta knowledge, culture and people to the regions, to the nation and internationally.”

Travis Morgan, Chairperson, Munarra Limited

“Munarra is a testament to the empowering potential of community-led architecture, and reminds us that the best spaces are created by those who will use them.”

Jury Citation, ArchitectureAU Award for Social Impact

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Design By Lachlan Siu & Development by Cameron Askin