Sports and Recreation
Places for communities
We believe strongly in ensuring our projects are embedded in the urban fabric and designed and delivered to maximise opportunities for building communities.
Sporting grounds and recreation facilities often become the heart of the community, a meeting place for all ages, cultures and genders. These projects are more than just sporting infrastructure and well designed facilities will have multi-generational enduring legacies.
We understand that each sports and recreation project, regardless of size and scale, is unique, and a project specific approach ensures that community need is met – there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach. We have the legacy of work and scale of organisation to ensure our teams are tailored with the right experience to respond to project challenges and opportunities. Our projects have been ‘tried and tested’ giving our clients confidence that we can achieve their vision.
We are a team of deeply passionate sports and recreation enthusiasts who see the wider benefits of this infrastructure beyond ‘just a playing field’. We actively research the latest in sports infrastructure design and delivery to stay abreast of the latest trends, technologies and innovations.
This benchmarking is always undertaken through the lens of the local context to deliver site specific outcomes tailored to the client’s requirements, whether that’s delivering an upgraded local playground, or considering the opportunities for embedding a multi-sports stadium into the surrounding urban context.
Our role as designers, planners and landscape architects of these facilities means we also routinely consider the ‘bigger picture’ of the legacy opportunities that such facilities can provide.
Our services and expertise
We recognise that sports and recreation projects are complex, and we embrace not only the physical, but also the social, environmental and temporal qualities of each brief.
- Legacy
- Campus
- Community Building
- Stadiums and Arenas
- Access and Universal Design
- Embedded Cultural Expressions, Unique Identities and Community Engagement
- Recreation Reserves
- Spatial Activation and Flexibity in Design
- Ecologically Sustainable and Climate Responsive Design
We have worked on, and continue to work on, state and nationally significant projects that have structured the development of cities we live in including:
- Olympic Park
- Melbourne Park
- The Gabba
- Skilled Stadium
The modern University Campus typically acts as a ‘city’ with all the needs of its student base being catered for on site. We have worked on the following campus sports precincts:
- Monash Sports Precinct
- La Trobe Sports Precinct
- University of Queensland Synthetic Sports Fields
- We strive to create vibrant, attractive, healthy and sustainable precincts that respond to the unique qualities of place, its people and the environment
- We aim to enhance the connection between community, sports and landscapeto ensure our designs respond to existing natural and environmental processes. We appreciate that sports and recreation are critical to the character and quality of communities and this is where, as designers, we can have the greatest impact.
We are working on the latest sports stadiums and arenas, tailored the growing and changing needs of a diverse community in sports including:
- Eureka Stadium
- Mernda Sports and Aquatic Centre
- State Basketball
- Great Barrier Reef Arena
- Its essential these precincts are accessible by all so we utilise 2D and 3D digital modelling, we test accessibiliy outcomes across a range of project scales for safety, mobility and compliance with AS1428 (2021).
- Our staff are proficient across a variety of platforms and approaches that can enhance accessibility and universal design outcomes.
- We listen to community voices – their history, shared memories and traditions and we successfully collaborate with community leaders.
- We work with First Nations representatives and artists to develop meaningful and culturally appropriate public expressions of culture.
- We cultivate First Nations connections beyond immediate project involvement.
Our recreation reserves encourage health and fitness in our communties. Typically these spaces are multipurpose, catering to a wide range of users:
- Hanlon Park
- Eyensbury Recreation Reserve
- Pardipardinyilla Park
- Doohan Reserve
- Employing a range of strategies, our spaces are adaptable to ensure they feel comfortable for people using the site both during game day with thousands of other supporters and after work when being used individually, promoting 24/7 and year round use.
- Our designs allow for change over time to reflect the every growing user base.
- Our skilled landscape architect’s and horticulturists select trees and plants that are tolerant of and resistent to climate change, heat, wind and drought and resistent to pests and diseases.
- We select materials to have a low environmental impact, measuring and evaluating the embodied carbon in materials and the life-cycle impacts of our designs
Collaboration
We understand that multi-use precinct based projects requires a multi-disciplinary approach where clear communication and coordination is paramount to successful delivery.
We have enduring, long-standing relationships with a range of leading Architects, Engineers, Horticulturalists, Field of Play Experts and Financial Analysis Experts to ensure the seamless delivery of the project, whether that project is a small upgrade to a local community multi sports precinct or a multi million dollar boutique sports stadium.
With national experience and offices in multiple states we deliver projects across the country, sharing resources and knowledge to ensure best practise and innovative solutions are achieved. Our national approach to harnessing sector experience ensures knowledgeable project experts are included for design review regardless of project location.
The national, and often international, appeal of such facilities means that careful consideration of the integration of these facilities into the surrounding landscape is integral to their success. As a design and planning firm, we know how to look beyond the stadium and sports infrastructure to envisage a usable, functional and aesthetically pleasing public realm that is befitting of the enduring legacy that these facilities provide.
