2019 National Architecture Awards: National Award for Public Architecture

Jury citation

A generative project for a new cultural precinct on the Gold Coast, the HOTA Outdoor Stage is the first project to be delivered as part of a vast riverside masterplan by ARM Architecture. Rather than an object-based approach, the masterplan uses an ingenious relational strategy that is inspired by a Voronoi diagram, allowing shifts in scale that accommodate the varied future program. A tessellated motif knits a continuous narrative through the work, informing the planning and detail resolution of the architecture.

Conceived as a traditional black box theatre, a giant openable front allows the stage to be almost endlessly reconfigured, depending on the size of the audience and the nature of the performance. The stage is conceived entirely in the round. The backstage area is carefully accommodated under a vast concrete “cliff,” above which a publicly accessible roof garden is densely landscaped with flowering native plants and brimming with birdlife.

This project clearly represents an enrichment of the original brief. Its mounded form not only animates the typology of the public amphitheatre but also reinvents the way the Nerang River is experienced.

HOTA Outdoor Stage is located in Surfers Paradise, Queensland and is built on the land of the Yugambeh people.

— HOTA Outdoor Stage was reviewed by Alexandra Brown in Landscape Architecture Australia 158.