The Adelaide Creative Community Hub is a piece of infrastructure for the city to conceive, fabricate and exhibit its creative ideas engaging the public by demystifying the path from idea to realisation. The building footprint occupies the entire site but rather than completing the urban block it releases the ground as an extension to the adjacent civic space of Victoria Square. The articulated civic ground provides permeability and an open stage for events and occupation, encouraging people to enter and inhabit the site.
Above the ground drifts the building, conceived as a facilitator for the imaginative mélange that nourishes ‘Creative Adelaide’. The building draws from its civic ground, inspiration and ambition through openings shaped to create courts of natural light and atriums formed to invite people up into the building. At its heart are workspaces for creative production and fabrication, materialising ideas and forming collaborations that are then portrayed to the city as the fruits of this process. Each step in their development is a transparent celebration of participation and endeavor that fosters dialogue between occupants, participants, observers and the city.
The theatre, podium and part of the tower have a vertical grooved and bush hammered finish concrete paneled façade with punched openings that frame views to and from the Hub. The colour of the concrete panels is generated by the inclusion of a red sandstone aggregate. This replicates the hues seen at the quarried face of opal mines (concealing the gems within) and sits comfortably against the Glen Ewin stone of the adjacent GPO building. The north and south façades of the tower is a multi-layer of curtain wall glazing and internal aluminium perforated pivoting shutters. The intelligent multi-layered system enhances the dynamic appearance of the façade, provides day lighting control for the internal spaces and mitigates solar gain. Deep inset balconies provide shaded outdoor spaces and relief within the plane of the façade.
Adelaide Creative Community Hub // Location: Adelaide, Australia