Olympic Stadia Public Domain

The project is structured by a series of key elements, each of which has a role in mediating between deep responses to Country and specific functional and performative requirements of a public domain area ringing a stadium. First are giant cracks in the pavement, revealing a full landscape hidden below – not simply the planting of trees but of a fully-fledged ecosystem with understorey - a circular system of regeneration within the landscape and which not only allows for, but actively insists upon, a return of fauna that are part of this system. If these cracks are the assertion of Country as always there, a “raster” is developed to unify the site around the stadium and coordinates all other design elements. The geometry of the raster is derived from and links to the Hargreaves scheme which is part of our contemporary memory of the site but transforms it into a multi-scalar organisation that affords specific landscape moves responding to movement and micro-climate issues across the site. The raster allows us to “slip between scales” without losing cohesion across the whole. Therefore, in the east the raster is literally broken through by Country, in the west a range of urbane landscape conditions have been deployed. The third element is the pergola that manages the difficult relationship between public domain, stadia and the proposed commercial buildings on the west of the site. Taking the form of a loose circle that rings the stadium, and literally attaching to the podia of the commercial buildings, the pergola winds around the edge of the site to provide shelter from the hot sun. For the Indigenous Knowledge-Keeper on the team, this is a rainbow serpent that takes a scale commensurate with the great Indigenous creation stories while in its intimacy and detail brings a human scale to the site, a buffer between gatherings of people and the towering forms of the stadia and proposed towers. The pergola can be occupied in multiple ways: as a shelter, as a viewing balcony, as a place where intimate connections to plants (biophilia) or interpretation (Country, sports) can take place. It can be a commemoration piece to the volunteers - replacing the current work and now drawn into a huge circle, a symbol of the collective effort of the nation. The experiential impact of these elements belies a hidden logic underpinning the whole project –managing pedestrian flows and safety and security concerns. Rather than allow these issues to determine the design response – risking a functionally-derived and joyless precinct – the moves described above accommodate and enable these issues as part of their design and organisation. For example, pedestrian flows to the eastern corners are significant given the location of carparks, train station, and future light rail stop. Beyond these key pedestrian sources, modelling revealed an interlacing of movement paths of different weight, direction and with different characters. This knowledge impacted on the detailed design in these areas, along with requirements for escape zones and fire appliance access