Gugan Gulwan’s new home in Wanniassa puts a community organisation’s ambitions at the centre of the brief, with outdoor gathering spaces that deserve as much attention as the building.
A youth centre can have a striking entrance and still leave the most important question unanswered: what makes someone want to come through it?
At Gugan Gulwan in Canberra, the ambition was expressed by the organisation itself. Speaking during construction in 2024, chief executive Damien Coke described his vision as “a home away from home for the community”. That is a more demanding brief than providing rooms for a list of services. It asks how a place can support the relationships that bring people there.
Gugan Gulwan Youth Aboriginal Corporation has been part of Canberra’s community since 1992. Its work spans support for children and families, youth programs, music, art and opportunities to connect with culture. The organisation brought that experience to its partnership with the ACT Government on a new home at its existing Wanniassa site.
A familiar address, with room to grow
Choosing to rebuild on the same site gave the project a useful starting point. Gugan Gulwan could gain space for expanded services while remaining in a setting already familiar to its community. The new facility was completed in March 2025.
For those commissioning community infrastructure, continuity deserves serious consideration. An established organisation has relationships, routines and a place in people’s lives before a new building is drawn. A good brief starts by understanding what should carry forward, alongside what needs to change.
Gugan Gulwan’s new home makes room for different ways of coming together. The facility’s layout includes flexible gathering spaces and a private central outdoor area with a fire pit. Privacy from neighbouring activity was a specific consideration, allowing gathering to have a setting of its own.
The welcome extends beyond the doorway
The photographs show how much of the centre’s character is held at ground level. Paths meet planted beds; low walls and stone blocks define edges; a curved seating area sits beside the building. Trees frame the outdoor spaces, while young planting begins to establish around the entrances.
These are practical parts of the place. A path determines how someone approaches a doorway. A seat offers somewhere to pause. The relationship between planting, paving and building affects whether an outdoor area has a clear purpose or simply occupies the space between other things.
Redbox Design Group, part of Pacific Infrastructure Group, contributed landscape architecture to Gugan Gulwan’s new home. Its involvement sits within a broader project shaped around the organisation’s needs and the cultural direction of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
There is a lesson here for project briefs: make the outdoor spaces part of the conversation early. Ask where people can gather, where privacy is needed and how the arrival connects to the rest of the site. Those questions belong alongside the schedule of rooms.
Give the organisation room to do its work
The centre later achieved five-star Green Star Buildings v1.0 certification, with all-electric services and rooftop solar among its sustainability features. That recognition adds another dimension to a project whose purpose is grounded in the work of a community-controlled organisation.
A new facility cannot take the place of that work. What an investment like this can provide is the space to carry it forward: room for programs, room for gathering and outdoor places that form part of the centre rather than ending at its walls.
For the next client planning a community facility, Gugan Gulwan offers a useful question to take into the first meeting: whose idea of welcome will shape this place?
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