Helmast Park: A thoughtfully designed equestrian facility in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs
Located in Park Orchards on the north-eastern edge of the Melbourne metropolitan area, the owners of Helmast Park were looking to transform their recreational horse property into a dedicated agistment business.
The property already contained equine infrastructure including an open air arena, stables and a grassed summer arena. Our first task was to develop a masterplan for the site, assessing the best location for renewed and enhanced infrastructure.
“Our vision was to be able to create exceptional equestrian facilities in Melbourne's east that would be without peer. Something with a sense of thoughtful design about it, without being ostentatious,” says Craig Winkler, of Helmast Park. “We also wanted it to be a sustainable facility, to have a very light footprint.”
The existing homestead, stables and open air arena were located atop a high ridge that fell away sharply to farmland below featuring picturesque stands of indigenous trees. Our site analysis revealed that retaining these basic locations was advantageous for passive solar orientation, views, ventilation, ecological and access reasons. It also provided the opportunity to extend the new arena building beyond the existing ridge to create a useful undercroft area.
This configuration also enabled the site access road to be relocated to bring traffic past the historic homestead, directly to the stables building, colocated day yards and parking area. This creates a dignified sense of arrival and bypasses a dangerous and unsealed former access road to the south. The new access road continues past the southern side of the new covered arena to the undercroft area, which houses water, hay and float storage space providing an ample area for manoeuvring several vehicles with floats attached.
“It was a great process of working together and sharing ideas with Equitecture, and helpful to have a very clear scope for the project”
“We came to it with some thoughts of our own, and they brought expertise in architecture and equine knowledge. They were able to rearrange elements and arrive at a design that was really lovely, but also sensible in terms of budget and build time.”
The existing open-air arena was not level and required significant extension to bring it up to standard Olympic size.
The availability of cut and fill within the property made levelling part of the arena floorplan feasible. Ultimately, a hybrid at grade (compacted fill) and constructed floor slab foundation was required. This enabled the establishment of the substantial undercroft area below the constructed floor slab portion. However, combining these two very different substrates to create a well-drained seamless arena surface, suitable to support the weight of a horse and its rider, presented a significant technical challenge.
Via much research and investigation, we settled on a surface that consisted of a layer of wax coated perforated rubber, followed by 150mm of compacted rock, finished with a sand fabric and rubber aggregate that provides a springy yet pervious surface to enable drainage. Furthermore, the need for an expensive and complicated underground drainage system was avoided by this approach.
The covered arena is essentially an open air structure featuring a translucent colourbond facade to the north designed to mitigate the heatload introduced by direct sunlight from that side of the building, perforated metal sun-shades to the west and an open southern edge, framing the tree canopy in the immediate vicinity and enabling views across the landscape. A skillion roof structure floats above the timber clad exterior, creating a sweeping structure that sits gracefully atop the ridge.
There is a detailed focus on the comfort and safety of horses and their riders on the inside of the arena, who benefit from this large, naturally ventilated space that requires minimal artificial lighting, provides a strong connection to the landscape and features a customised angled internal wall, free of protruding fasteners. This deceptively simple and elegant detailing mitigates the chances of injuries that tend to occur when horses and their riders are forced to manoeuvre along the internal edges of an arena.
“Horses are big and powerful, so you have to design for that, without making things harsh and chunky. It takes skill to do that, and Equitecture’s equine experience came to the fore with all those things”
“And they’re also flight animals, so if something spooks them they can be quite dangerous! But the horses are very happy here.”
The stable building is designed to support the efficient running of the agistment business while providing a highly functional preparation space for competition and training days and a gallery space from which to view the activity within the arena.
Conceived as a pavilion with functional areas arranged around an open air area and light-filled central courtyard, the stable building contains two washdown bays, two enclosed stable bays, 6 tie-up bays to accommodate horses in the moments leading up to their entrance to the arena, tack room, tractor store, dedicated office and meeting room space for the agistment manager, laundry and bathroom facilities.
The stable building features Equitecture’s proprietary internal wall system designed to minimise equine injuries.
A metal frame within a frame supports sturdy rubber sheets, affixed with flush self-tapping screws. Beyond the outer rubber layer there is an air cavity, so any kicks are met with a highly resilient yet absorbent surface that is also extremely hygienic and easy to keep clean.
Windows to each enclosed stable feature another proprietary feature, a double shutter window opening comprising an internal shutter of metal bars for ventilation and an external shutter clad with the same exterior timber as the surrounding walls. This configuration enables the horse to be completely enclosed, enclosed with ventilation and a view or able to move its head completely through the window opening to the exterior, depending on what is required.
“We’ve had nothing but delight from our clients using the space. Given its location, it is the only one of its kind in suburban Melbourne, but the new design makes it pretty exceptional”
“I think the highest praise is when clients say, ‘it just works’. That it’s nice to be here, and they can do what they need to do, because the built environment works and everything’s been thought through. It’s not flashy, it’s not ostentatious, but it’s lovely to be here.”