VISION 42 — CIVIC STAR
Simon Tothill discusses the Adelaide Convention Centre East Building and the trials and triumphs of a project that celebrates its site and sublime setting :
VISION How important is this site to your design ?
SIMON TOTHILL This site is brilliant . It is right in the hallmark of Adelaide , the buildings around it are champions of the creative spirit of Adelaide . Ours is right in the middle of all of those . It ’ s also a public and civic building . It has brilliant views out , but also has brilliant views towards it . We needed to create a building with a great feel from the inside that would also appeal to its neighbours .
How relevant is appearing genuinely visitor friendly ? The shaping of this building was a very long , crafting exercise of getting to know the site and also producing a building of the right scale . When you walk around it , it has to feel comfortable as you approach and that you ’ re not going towards a great monolith . A lot of convention and exhibition buildings have shock and awe as their main design criteria . This is an Adelaide convention centre and it has that sense of scale we ’ re trying to achieve .
There ’ s quite a history of Adelaide ’ s Arts precinct here . Adelaide has a proud tradition of punching above its weight in the creative arts . This was a difficult site , we wish that the centre had more land around it , and we wish that the centre was able to accommodate more and more , but we answered that challenge with creative design solutions and I think Adelaide does that really well . I think we ’ re a city that recognises that we ’ re not the biggest , but we just want to be the best .
The architecture is really an assembly of remarkable parts – the seating flexibility for instance . There are so many moving parts within this building . I ’ ve never see it anywhere else . We ’ ve spring-boarded off this project with projects in New Zealand , Dubai and we ’ re looking at North America and Asia . They ’ ve never seen buildings quite like this with seating that lifts up , theatres that rotate and ceilings that move and all the adaption between meeting room to exhibition space we can create in this building . I haven ’ t seen it anywhere else in the world . The sleeping giant of this building is the story that we ’ ll tell over the next couple of years as people start to discover how flexible and how unique this building is . Each of the rooms has a triple bottom line . It needs to be an exhibition space , auditorium and meeting room all in one and so this centre works exceptionally hard .