Gold Coast Cultural Precinct

Stage One announced

Stage one of the $365 million landmark Gold Coast Cultural Precinct has been secured with $5.6 million allocated for design and construction planning in the City Budget 2014-15. View the City Budget.

With work planned to start early in 2016, Stage One would include an outdoor amphitheatre for civic and cultural celebrations such as Citizenship and Australia Day celebrations, opera in the park and simulcasts and cultural festivals. Also proposed in Stage One is a Riverside Gallery to store and display more of the city’s wonderful art collection in the lead-up to construction of the Cultural Precinct’s Art Tower in a future stage of development. In addition, Stage One includes early outdoor Artscape works, such as enhancements to Evandale Lake, and landscaping and paving connecting the amphitheatre and new Riverside Gallery.

Completion of Stage One is expected before the city hosts the Commonwealth Games in 2018.

The winning concept for our new heart for arts and culture – by ARM Architecture + Topotek1 – is the result of an international design competition during 2013.

Cultural Precinct designs to tour the city

Residents across the city will be able to picture themselves in the Gold Coast’s future Cultural Precinct during a touring exhibition in 2014. Drawn from ‘The Reveal’ curated exhibition which attracted more than 4500 visitors at the Gold Coast City Gallery last November and December, the Gold Coast Cultural Precinct Touring Exhibition 2014 will visit the city’s libraries and other venues.

The touring exhibition tells the story of the international design competition which led to the selection of a strikingly colourful and distinctly Gold Coast winning design by ARM Architecture + Topotek1.

ARM Architecture’s concept is presented in a scale model, ‘fly through’ animation, designs and images. The community is invited to provide comments and ideas through a feedback box.

Winning design revealed

One of Australia’s leading creative design firms has delivered a ‘seriously fun’ proposal to win the Gold Coast Cultural Precinct international design competition.

The winning team, led by ARM Architecture, was unanimously selected by an eight-member independent jury, an announced by Mayor Tom Tate on 21 November 2013.

ARM’s distinctive geometric web, or voronoi, design was praised by jurors as ‘playful and inclusive’, promising to entice residents and visitors to experience and participate in production of the Gold Coast’s arts and culture.

With everything from skateboarding to opera and contemporary art to fashion, it has the potential to put out the welcome mat to everyone to come and enjoy the precinct and engage with the full diversity of Gold Coast creativity.

The design’s voronoi theme links:

• an expanded Living Arts Centre, incorporating a new 1200-seat theatre; versatile 350-seat black box theatre; refurbished existing performance theatre accommodating up to 600 people; a 10,000 seat outdoor amphitheatre; and a central Great Terrace
• a sub-tropical outdoor garden Artscape, with the Evandale Lake as a focal feature and a spiral-helix encased green bridge providing a dappled shade connection to Chevron Island, and
• a 14-storey New Arts Museum, enticing visitors up through the galleries to take in the art, the view, and perhaps – in true Gold Coast style – a bungy jump from the external viewing platform. Reminiscent of other vertical exhibition buildings, including the Eiffel Tower, Anish Kapoor’s Olympic Tower, and the Guggenheim Museum NY, the tower frees up site area for other uses – including green space.

The new cultural precinct will form the beating heart of arts and culture on the Gold Coast.

The Gold Coast’s cultural transformation

Rapid growth over the past half century has transformed Australia’s Gold Coast from a string of coastal and rural villages into the nation’s sixth largest city and a leading tourist destination.

The Gold Coast holds a distinctive and exciting position in Australian cultural life that needs to be celebrated and magnified.

With the city poised to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games, rejuvenating and energising our central Evandale site into a distinctly-Gold Coast cultural precinct is now a priority.

The City of Gold Coast’s (City’s) vision is for the precinct to become a creative centre for arts, culture and community on 11 hectares of the visually stunning 17-hectare site at Evandale. The precinct will be a place that celebrates, reflects and builds on our unique cultural identity. Importantly, it will become a must-see visitor destination, supporting our arts and allied industries.

Design competition

A two-stage international design competition was developed to find a winning design to help the City turn this vision into reality.

The competition offered designers a once in a lifetime chance to transform our city with a permanent focal point for arts and culture including a New Arts Museum, a Living Arts Centre and landscaped Artscape.

Seventy-five teams from across the globe participated in Stage One, between 26 March and 6 May. The teams were led by Australian and international architects and landscape architects and included a broad range of other design disciplines.

On Friday 14 June, the three teams shortlisted to compete in Stage Two of the competition were announced.

The three successful shortlisted teams were each awarded $250,000 to further develop their design response during Stage Two, from 18 June to 9 September 2013. An eight-member expert jury met in October 2013 to select a winner.

They unanimously chose ARM Architecture.