OPPORTUNITY

Rekindling the Spirit is an Aboriginal-owned organisation supporting the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal families across Lismore and the Northern Rivers.

Following the Lismore floods, RTS found itself operating across three separate facilities. Staff, services and community had become dispersed, creating challenges for an organisation built on connection.
Funding to redevelop 25 Uralba Street created an opportunity to bring people back together. But there was another story embedded within the site itself.

At the convergence of three rivers, the 15 clans of the Bundjalung have gathered for generations. The current site of the showgrounds is a ceremonial ground - the Bora ring - a place of ceremony, storytelling and connection. While located beyond the floodplain, 25 Uralba Street maintains a visual relationship with this significant cultural landscape.

The question became: how could a new health and wellbeing facility draw strength from that story of gathering, to create a place of belonging for the community it serves today?

DISCOVERY

The project began with listening.

Through community engagement, consultation and a Walk on Country, with the Rekindling the Spirit team, a clear aspiration emerged: people wanted a place that felt welcoming, culturally grounded and unmistakably theirs.

That insight led us back to the idea of gathering.

The Bora Ring became the project's conceptual anchor — not as something to replicate, but as a reminder of the role places, culture and stories of connection play in bringing people together. At the heart of the building, a yarning circle replaces the conventional, and clinical, waiting room, creating a place for belonging, connection and community.

A carefully positioned window establishes a visual connection to the Bora Ring, while a perforated storytelling screen envelopes the building with the story of place, and opens at this point of connection. Together, they create a dialogue between two gathering places — one ancient and enduring, the other contemporary and evolving.

Stories of Country, culture and community are woven throughout the project through artwork, landscape, cultural planting and the contributions of Widjabul Wia-bal artists and local families.

Rather than applying culture to the building, the design was shaped by it.

CHANGE

The result is more than a health and community facility.

It is a place that brings people back together. A place where wellbeing, culture and community intersect. A place that reimagines how a traditionally clinical environment might feel — replacing waiting with gathering, and transaction with connection.

Throughout the project, escalating construction costs required careful decisions. Working closely with Marcon, Alders and Rekindling the Spirit, we focused on protecting the elements that carried the greatest cultural and community value.

As the first stage of a broader vision, the project establishes the foundations for future growth while bringing the organisation back together today. It creates a contemporary gathering place that remains connected to a landscape that has supported gathering, storytelling and belonging for generations.

The building provides the framework. The community gives it meaning.