Olympic Park sets new goal

Austadiums • Thursday 10th November 2005

Designers of a big-ticket sports stadium in Melbourne are promising an iconic venue to help lure large crowds to soccer and rugby.

The new Olympic Park stadium could be "wrapped in its skin" with a futuristic design to set it apart from the city's existing stadiums according to Cox Architects.

The firm, one of the five architectural groups behind the MCG's $434 million northern stand, has won the contract to design the new venue.

Intended to replace the existing Olympic Park stadium, the new centre will initially seat about 20,000 with room to grow by an extra 5000 seats.

Offering some early insights into how it might appear, Cox director Jonathan Gardiner said seating would be concentrated on the wings of the field.

He said that while existing Melbourne stadiums "really express their structure" with trusses and cables visually prominent in the design, the new Olympic Park venue was likely to be different.

Unlike the last three stadiums built in central Melbourne, it will not feature a retractable roof.

The stadium could help bolster the fortunes of its principle tenants, the Melbourne Storm and Melbourne Victory rugby league and soccer clubs, Mr Gardiner said.

"It really does need to be sustainable, not just environmentally, but in terms of the health of the codes that are playing out of it," he said.

"The history of rugby league, for instance, in this state is not particularly long yet.

"We would like this to be this city's way of saying these codes are important to us.

"The whole design will be based around getting people as close to the action as possible. You can no longer just put a game on and throw a few seats around a boundary and hope that people will come."

The Melbourne Demons, Australia's oldest football club, will also train at the country's newest world class sports stadium, to open in 2008.

Mr Gardiner said the elite training centre would take Collingwood Football Club's much-vaunted Lexus Centre nearby "the next step".

Dining areas and bars will also be features of the new venue, to be built on a 50,000 sqm site between the existing stadium and Gosch's Paddock, to the east.

Though it has been trumpeted as a $100 million project, Mr Gardiner said the final cost would not be known until the State Government decided on a design.

The stadium will do away with the athletics track which currently separates Olympic Park spectators from the action.

The fate of the existing stadium, built for the 1956 Olympics, had not been decided, Mr Gardiner said.

"I know that the Olympic Park (Trust) is looking at some options for that site with the government," he said.

The venue will also provide a new option for concert and special event promoters, already spoilt for choice in Melbourne.

With its 20,000-25,000 capacity, it would hold more than the two arenas at neighbouring Melbourne Park that seat about 15,000 and 11,000 respectively.

Olympic Park Stadium

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Designers of a big-ticket sports stadium in Melbourne are promising an iconic venue to help lure large crowds to soccer and rugby. The new Olympic Park stadium could be "wrapped in its skin" with a futuristic design to set it apart from the city's existing stadiums according to Cox Architects.
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