ACU Jim-Baa-Yer Indigenous Resource Centre
How HATZ Architecture Designed a Purpose-Built Indigenous Learning Space for ACU: Jim Baa Yer Resource Centre, Fitzroy Melbourne
HATZ Architecture redesigned the Jim Baa Yer Resource Centre for the Australian Catholic University, delivering a purpose-built Indigenous learning space at Melbourne's Mary Glowrey Building in Fitzroy. Shaped by deep community consultation and anchored in the Wurundjeri river-waterflow motif, the project places cultural identity at the centre of every design decision - not as an afterthought, but as the organising principle from the outset.
The Design Challenge: Creating an Authentic Indigenous Learning Space for ACU Students
A purpose-built Indigenous space is not a fit-out category. It is a responsibility. ACU understood this. So did we.
The challenge was simple in principle: to create a space the ACU Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student community could recognise as genuinely theirs. Cultural identity would not be applied after the fact but would shape the design from the beginning. Every functional and spatial decision needed to respond to what the community actually required, not to institutional assumptions.
Jim Baa Yer Resource Centre, ACU Melbourne: Community Consultation and Cultural Design Process
Tucked within the Mary Glowrey Building at 115 Victoria Parade, Fitzroy, the original Jim Baa Yer Resource Centre served the ACU Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student community without truly belonging to them. The entry carried no cultural weight. The interior offered no clear invitation.
We did not arrive with a concept. We arrived with questions. In deep conversation with the JBY user group, one symbol emerged: the river. The Wurundjeri river-waterflow motif - a symbol of connection, continuity and movement through Country - became the organising idea that unified every design decision. We listened until the right idea emerged. Then we designed it.
That symbol is expressed in the timber and finds its fullest expression in a sculptural slump-glass artwork at the entry, manufactured by Wathaurong Glass and Arts, featuring a translation of ACU's First People Logo. Not art placed in a building. An architectural statement: culturally grounded, expertly resolved, unmistakably theirs.
Why Cultural Authenticity Defines the Jim Baa Yer Resource Centre
When a student walks into a space and recognises it as theirs, that is not a design outcome. It is a human one. At ACU, HATZ approached the Jim Baa Yer brief with one starting point: genuine listening. The architecture follows from that. It always does.
This is architecture that shapes how we learn. And how we belong.
Designing a Future Worth Learning In™
Overview
Client: Australian Catholic University
Location: Level 1, Mary Glowrey Building, 115 Victoria Parade, Fitzroy VIC
Type: Institutional Fit-Out
Role: Principal Consultant
Scope of work: Full Services
Budget & size: 150 sqm
Completed: Feb 2020
Credits
Design: HATZ
Project Team: Steve Hatzellis, Shenia Lay, Kyle Liu and Belinda Smole
Project Manager: ACU Development & Capital Projects
Services: BRT Consulting
BCA: PLP Building Surveyors & Consultants
Builder: SHAPE
Specialist Trade: Wathaurong Glass
Photography: HATZ