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FLUID FORMS
Clustered around a central axis, CRAB_Vogt_DBI have assembled a village of fluid forms, ranging in scale from modest to monumental.
This axis, defined as the great terrace, frames the view on arrival, of the river and city skyline and represents a beguiling and sculptural presence on the site. Structural volumes are carved out to create a series of vaults, arches and scooped out undercrofts.
Apparent gravity-defying cantilevers thus created, serve the dual purpose of protecting visitors from the elements while creating a theatrical spatial setting for the heart of the Cultural Precinct. In the context of the Gold Coast, with its blue skies and deep shadows, these forms promise great potential to generate poetic, transient shadow plays on the surface of the buildings.
Similarly, inspired deployment of real-time informatics and projections serve to transform the buildings into large-scale digital canvases, with particularly remarkable opportunities for dramatic night-time illumination.
Alongside these large dominant forms, small and incidental buildings and shelters are proposed across and beyond the site, establishing a dynamic tension between large and small, formal and informal, institutional and ‘ad hoc’. This approach provides for the precinct’s potential staging and changing uses, and suggests rich potential for engagement with local creative communities. The design’s informal elements, including its ‘confetti of kiosks’ that appear dotted across to Surfers Paradise, provide opportunities for one-off and small scale participation by individual artists and creative producers.
At the fulcrum of these built forms lies the Great Terrace, intended as a large, open-air room. To the east of the terrace is an open amphitheatre looking out to a water stage. To the west the terrace leads diagonally to the corner of Bundall Road and Crombie Avenue.
A meandering river is introduced, delineating the core cultural precinct area from a zone for potential partnership development on adjacent land abutting Bundall Road.Many built assets are retained and a staged approach invests early in an arts walk from Surfers Paradise, linking up to the Artscape.
Two innovative ‘car pads’, doubling as programmed spaces for a range of community and arts activities, are incorporated into the overall landscape. Shared loading and other efficiencies are pragmatic responses to operational needs.A dense, wetland forest dominates the concept’s landscape theme with a thickened edge to the water.
Thoughtful sustainable innovations include a considered approach to shading, diurnal cooling, thermal massing, and waste water processing, as well as outdoor evaporative cooling using seawater walls and evapo-transpiration cooling using the principles of the oasis.
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