The Thornton Pavilion in North Penrith is designed by Morris Bray Martin Ollmann (MBMO) and is a 700 square metre area devoted to a state of the art community centre and incorporates a façade that serves as being both functional and aesthetically pleasing.

Architect and director at MBMO, Sven Ollmann, worked on the project and said the building is designed to serve a new residential community and includes a sales office as well as playground and barbeque area.

The firm was instrumental in providing full design services from design development through to completion.

"The design is a typical pavilion typology, a single story building with large glazed facades to the main space leading out onto a terrace and into the landscaped surrounds," says Ollmann.

"The brief demanded the challenging combination of openness and security, which was responded to with architectural screens to the outside of the building which serve as both security screens when the building is not in use, as well as shading devices."

The glazed facades are a commercial aluminium system with Capral profiles and glass by Viridian while the security screens are custom made powder-coated perforated 4 millimetre aluminium elements supplied by Townsend Group.

Architectural products manager at Townsend Group, Ari George says that the advantage of using an aluminium screen is that it offers better longevity as opposed to galvanised steel.

He added:

"In all cases you should use stainless steel fixings to ensue there is no rust as well as powder coat as it is a painting process originally formulated for coating aluminium and is one of the better processes to use."

Ollmann says that the architects selected the products for the façade based predominantly by function and a flush glazed system.

"AWS was detailed originally, and the Capral system was an alternative proposed by the builder (Prime construction)," he says.

The façade also includes feature brickwork which uses a Bowral Brahman brick and was one of Ollmann's favourite products to use on the build.

"The brickwork turned out to be very successful with the feature elements of offset bricks. This required a brick that’s coloured through all the way, as all surfaces get exposed. The Bowral brick does all that and has a beautiful warm tone as well."

Images courtesy of UrbanGrowth NSW.

Madeline Prince

Thornton-Park-Community-Pavillion-by-Morris-Bray-M-1736089155.png

Let’s connect!