From its beginnings community engagement has been at the heart of the North Central Trade Training Centre (NCTTC). The project emerged when 7 educational providers came together pooling their resources to create a major training facility centred on improving learning outcomes for the community. As the regional centre Charlton was the logical host for the NCTTC and this agricultural township has formed an ideal setting for an engaged program of learning. The facility enhances a well used community space and gives occupants a practical approach to their training, embedded in community interactions that build relationships, networks and skills.
Arriving into Charlton you observe the Silo Complex that appears to rise out of the landscape. Symbolically these Silos are the caretakers of the town’s life blood housing the grain stores of the community. The NCTTC is connected to the legacy of the Silo with its language of resilience and community prosperity in both its function and form. The physical connection is observed in its most literal sense at the South Eastern end of the building where its curvaceous yellow elements form a silo end piece to the facility. Where the traditional silos are containers of grain, the NCTTC silos are containers of sound, protecting and shielding the occupants and the community.
The Silo Complex has evolved over time with a seemingly random array of buildings and rooftop additions built as needed. These practical solutions can be seen as a metaphor of the can do spirit of the community. Jutting out of the roofline of NCTTC is an array of bright yellow pop up structures that pull out of the mass of the building. These Penthouses disrupt and break down the clean lines of the building in an apparently eclectic manner that is based on practical layout. The Penthouses hold both service equipment and roof lights and they have been placed logically to maximise their efficiency and to provide variations to internal spaces, where they carve paths of daylight into the depths of the facility