Take Phive:Welcome to Parramatta’s new living room

For millennia,the heart of modern-day Parramatta was a Dharug meeting place. It witnessed the 1797 battle of Parramatta,led by Aboriginal resistance fighter Pemulwuy,before the foundation stone for the city’s first town hall was laid almost a century later,and it became home to council meetings while markets,cattle sales,and agricultural shows were held outside.

In its most recent years,the historic site at Parramatta square has been a construction zone as the modern CBD rose around it. But from Friday,it will become Parramatta’s new living room.

The council’s new Parramatta Phive building integrates the original town hall,pairing design from French architect Manuelle Gautrand and Australian architecture firms DesignInc and Lacoste+Stevenson,with high-tech council chambers and community amenities that range from the local library to wellness studios and podcasting rooms.

Phive - pronounced five - is a play on its address at 5 Parramatta Square and its function as a community and cultural hub near the railway station.

Parramatta Lord Mayor Donna Davis regards the $136 million project as the “missing piece in the puzzle for Parramatta square”,which has been transformed with a $2.7 billion investment and now includes a university,several office buildings,restaurants,cafes and public artwork. The square is due to be finished by the end of the year.

A pedestrian link being built to the side of the Phive building will eventually run directly to the river,providing a single thoroughfare through the square from the train station to the metro,light rail and Powerhouse Museum.

The colour of Phive’s interior furniture is inspired by Australian flora – a eucalyptus green or banksia orange.

The colour of Phive’s interior furniture is inspired by Australian flora – a eucalyptus green or banksia orange.Dean Sewell

“But Phive is like the pièce de résistance,” Davis said. “It’s a beautiful building,and our community deserves a beautiful building.[Parramatta has] come into its own as the second-biggest city in greater Sydney. A city of that stature deserves a building that reflects its community.”

The colour of Phive’s interior furniture is inspired by Australian flora – a eucalyptus green or banksia orange – while the new library spans two floors,its entrance marked by galleries that honour Parramatta’s Aboriginal history,migration journeys and historical artefacts,such as horse shoes,gunpowder flasks,plates and pipes which were dug up during the excavation of the site.

There are 19 meeting rooms that can be hired by businesses or members of the public,while two sound-proof studios have been set up with audio-visual equipment and a podcast kit that the community can also borrow.

Council will also program yoga classes in a wellness studio,while a separate large “makers studio” has been fitted with a vinyl floor,so that it can be easily cleaned after art or painting classes.

Parramatta Lord Mayor Donna Davis in the new council chambers.

Parramatta Lord Mayor Donna Davis in the new council chambers.Dean Sewell

And the community also will rub shoulders with their elected representatives,with the council chambers on the building’s top floor.

The new design for the chambers has been internally dubbed the “United Nations of Parramatta”;the councillors sit in a horse-shoe formation facing the public gallery,and each seat is fitted with a personal audiovisual system,linked to a microphone,with a built-in voting function. The councillors’ screens – also projected to the public gallery – will display the council agenda and amendments in real time.

Displayed outside the chambers are framed portraits of each of Parramatta’s 60 lord mayors since John Williams first held the role in 1861.

Downstairs,the building’s foyer is layered with art that pays homage to the city’s Indigenous and migrant histories:a world map has been engraved on one wall,and 16 vignettes are digitally projected onto it,tracing migration journeys from across the world to Sydney’s second CBD.

Parramatta Lord Mayor Donna Davis regards the $136 million project as the “missing piece in the puzzle for Parramatta square”.

Parramatta Lord Mayor Donna Davis regards the $136 million project as the “missing piece in the puzzle for Parramatta square”.Dean Sewell

It starts in Dharug language,a tribute to the original inhabitants across the inland areas of greater Sydney,from more than 40,000 years ago,and continues to trace southern European migration in the 1950s and ’60s through to the Lebanese civil war and current wave of skilled migration from China,India and the United Kingdom.

Two other pieces of video art from local artists of migrant backgrounds will be projected onto large screens at the back of the foyer,interspersed with ambient environmental footage taken of the Parramatta river,mangroves,Parramatta Park and the CBD.

The basement level is the building’s “discovery space”,where a long room preinstalled with lighting equipment is ready to host temporary exhibitions and performances. First up is the Royal Agricultural Society’s celebration of 200 years of the Easter Show,which had its start in Parramatta in 1821. A display of historical trophies and show bags is ready for visitors this weekend.

For Davis,Phive ought to be Parramatta’s living room,with bifold doors spanning an 18-metre opening so that people and events can spill onto the square.

“It’s vibrant,it’s colourful,it’s on a completely different level to any other council building you will see anywhere else in Australia. This building is one of a kind - you’ll never see it again anywhere - and that’s Parramatta,” she said.

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Natassia Chrysanthos is the federal health reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age,based at Parliament House in Canberra.

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