Last month Club Glenvale (formerly the Toowoomba Hockey Club) won the Clubs Qld Best Club Redevelopment Award 2009 (over $1M).

Conjuring up images of energetic hockey matches and Saturday morning practice, the newly named Club Glenvale, formerly the Toowoomba Hockey Club may cogent one to think no more of it than a conventional sporting facility. This is one of those suppositions that you quickly put aside when the point comes where you conceive the facts.

The Club is owned by the Toowoomba Hockey Association and is regarded as one of the most unique sporting associations in Australia. While it traits two artificial hockey fields, three competition grass fields and an international-standard water-based field, the site transcendently reserves a fully licensed clubhouse. Located to one side of the 10 acre site on a parcel of vivid western Toowoomba, stretches the now restituted, Club Glenvale.

Originally a 2.4m high ceiling brick building, it was impending a date where it would soon be unworkable and inefficient. This impelled the gamble by the Association to build from the ground up a new Club. The result, quite unsuspectingly, is the only state of the art, energy efficient club of its kind in Australia.

With the terminal building superseding so quickly the Association put high importance on a new building that would last. They engaged Brisbane based architects, Inaspace Architecture + Design, for their expertise in clubhouse design. Together with a team of consultants, Inaspace Architecture + Design, schemed a building that would be the sustainable club that the Association needed.

A simple, elongated façade and an entry framed by steel stands the building’s front elevation toward Boundary Street. Juxtaposing the stylized exterior is a warm and contemporary interior of timber veneers with gold and white acrylic panels. Outdoor areas screened by timber battens allow plenty of openings to the building utilizing high degrees of natural light.

The innovation of the building lies in the push for it to achieve the energy efficient requirements of the Building Code of Australia Part J. No inefficient incandescent or dichroic light sources whatsoever are used to light the building or its surrounds. The majority of light sources are compact fluorescent lamps, with LED feature lighting around the bar and in the gaming area. All lighting is connected to a digital control system, which allows selected areas to be dimmed, and provides automatic switching to ensure no lights are left on unnecessarily.

Mechanical services have also been designed and installed to comply with energy efficient requirements. An air conditioning plant that meets the current Minimum Energy Performance Standards was installed, along with a control system to ensure air conditioning only runs as required.

Crowded with families and professionals from as far as Brisbane, Club Glenvale, continues to be a successful club. What appears to its clientele to be a contemporary new clubhouse is actually a building that at the very source of its design satisfies sustainable issues of today’s environment. As the only building that achieves BCA Part J in Australia, the Club Glenvale proves that true energy efficient design is possible.