Hassell is facilitating three activities across 2021 to gauge community opinion on the design of the beloved Melbourne cultural precinct.

Last year, The Abbotsford Convent Foundation secured Commonwealth funding support to update their Master Plan, appointing Hassell as the lead consultant.

The firm’s ambition is to create a holistic vision for the Convent, addressing gaps in previous iterations and informing the protection and enhancement of the precinct over the next decade, and beyond.

As part of the development of the Master Plan, Hassell is hosting three activities across 2021 to engage the wider community and gather people’s feelings, ambitions and ideas for the Convent. The first of these engagement strategies is an online survey.

This survey is the beginning of a conversation about how the precinct can function better as a community hub.

Access the online survey here.

The firm has also been hosting a number of Master Plan Community Sessions at the Convent. At these drop-in sessions, visual results from the initial site analysis are explored and there’s the opportunity to speak directly with the architects about the Master Plan.

The final two sessions are taking place at the below times:

• Wednesday 24 February, 2pm – 7pm
• Saturday 27 February, 7am – 1pm

“Our purpose is to design places people love. Places that facilitate connections, between people as well as between people and the ecosystems, cultures and histories we live in,” says Hassell principal Ben Duckworth.

“The Convent is a much-loved place that does exactly that—it represents the qualities that make a city a worthy place to live in: a place of genuine exchange between people, through personal interactions and expressions of culture.”

“Without people to bring it to life, architecture is just a beautiful sculpture,” said Hassell’s Evodia Alaterou. Read our interview with Alaterou on the occasion of her appointment as the first principal of Hassell’s strategy team.