Image Credit : Photographer – Tyrone Branigan
Project Overview
For 48 years, Oran Park Raceway hosted adrenaline-fuelled events for huge, cheering crowds. From superbike championships to the thundering Australian Grand Prix, memories of the raceway are still cherished by many.
The raceway closed in 2010 to make way for Oran Park Library – a $14 million development designed by architects Brewster Hjorth. It was BrandCulture’s role to design signage and wayfinding features that weave the story of Oran Park Raceway into the built environment so that future generations feel connected to its past.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Design Director: Nick Bannikoff
Environmental Graphics Designer: Julian Frood
Project Designer: Sara Tononi
Stakeholders: Camden Council, Greenfields Development Company, Landcom
Architects: Brewster Hjorth
Construction: ADCO Constructions
Signage fabrication: Central Signs
Photo credit: Tyrone Branigan
Project Brief
BrandCulture’s brief was to ensure the spills and thrills of Oran Park Raceway live on inside Oran Park Library through wayfinding design. Working with Brewster Hjorth Architects, the goal was to make the interiors, directional signage and large-scale environmental graphics as dynamic as the exterior façade, which is adorned with a large sculptural element.
The client challenged us to depict the diversity of races that took place there: the Australian Grand Prix, Touring Car competitions, Superbike World Championships, NASCAR/AUSCAR races and even monster truck rallies. The complex also housed a four-wheel drive course, motocross and dirt tracks, a skidpan and 1000-foot drag strip.
As well as guiding visitors to the library’s hidden gems, nooks and meeting places, a vital part of the brief was to help create “the community’s lounge room” – a flexible, inclusive destination that will welcome residents of Oran Park Town for generations to come. Another important consideration was enhancing the visibility of amenities and community spaces.
Oran Park Town is one of the largest master-planned communities in New South Wales, and Oran Park Library sits at its heart: a gathering space for a fast-growing community.
Project Innovation/Need
The entire wayfinding system is rich with graphic cues that embody the raceway’s speed and dynamism: retro raceway graphics, racing stripes and a slanting, speeding typeface, Swiss 721.
There are tributes to Oran Park’s racing heritage at every turn. Even the directories mimic the curves of Oran Park’s infamous circuit with rounded corners and sharp orange edges, which corner the walls themselves. Super-sized wall graphics pay homage to the different vehicles and events the racetrack was home to.
Once the visual language had been developed, Brewster Hjorth worked with BrandCulture to ensure the interiors supported the experiential graphic design effort: orange car stripes were inlaid in the carpet, echoing the turns of the raceway and guiding visitors from the front door into the spaces beyond.
Design Challenge
Our biggest challenge as wayfinding designers was to create signage and placemaking features that weave the tales of the raceway into the built environment, connecting the site’s future to its past.
The project took two years from kickoff to final completion, with six months devoted to designing a wayfinding system that represents the bold graphic legacy of Australian racing – without being too prescriptive. This became an exercise in form and color inspired by the distinctive shape of the Oran Park racetrack.
BrandCulture’s design team trawled through hundreds of photos to create super-sized graphics that depict the different events the racetrack was home to.
Since opening in June 2018, Oran Park Library has won the prestigious Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue Outstanding Community Project of 2018. The award recognises Oran Park Library as a landmark building – a valuable community asset that is flexible enough to service generations to come. The community’s response to this 2,500sqm multi-purpose library has been overwhelmingly positive with 1,200 people signing up as members by November.
Sustainability
Shifting away from a static wayfinding system and towards ultimate flexibility will ensure the library’s sustainability. All collection signage is movable, allowing Oran Park Library to order and reorder its collection without manufacturing new signage. The wayfinding system includes mobile elements, such as a mobile library information/checkout desk. In 10 years, as analogue books are replaced with digital versions, Oran Park Library’s movable and mobile signage will allow it to easily adapt to a variety of future uses.
Wayfinding
This award celebrates creative and innovative design in the ways people orient themselves in physical space, and navigate from place to place. Consideration given to signage and other graphic communication, clues in the building's spatial grammar, logical space planning, audible communication, tactile elements and provision for special-needs users.
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