Sports entertainment an increasingly sophisticated and fluid global commodity.
But what gives it real currency is its appeal to raw tribalism.
Beyond technology, psychology and marketing, team sporting encounters are still fundamentally fueled by a collective memory of past triumphs, injustices, and enmities.
The Suncorp Stadium at Lang Park was the result of a successful architectural collaboration that draws together both the head and the heart of this sporting equation.
For this project, the international stadium and urban design expertise of HOK worked in association with PDT Architects, a practice with strong sporting links in Queensland.
Set in a residential area at the edge of Brisbane’s CBD, the multi-award winning, 85,000 m2, Suncorp Stadium has become one of Australia’s iconic venues.
Designed to reflect Queensland’s subtropical lifestyle the stadium showcases open air terrace bars and viewing galleries.
Other features include community sports facilities, commercial spaces, a museum and office spaces and successfully integrates the city and the venue with direct access to main transport hubs.
Crowd flow, hospitality, and catering solutions were all part of the challenging design brief.
The brief also called for operational flexibility and incorporates convention facilities, 2,196 fine dining spaces, merchandise outlets, and ticketing facilities.
75% of the stadiums spectators are covered to the roof drip line offering protection and adding to the stadiums truly unique atmosphere.
The architects’ shaping of the experience of arrival, entry, and occupation of space in this building is effortless and masterful.
The remarkably beneficial site topography allows a single plaza level to start on grade at Caxton Street and continue through to the plazas and walkways to Milton Road and Milton Station, while allowing bus and service access under from Castlemaine Street.
The sectional design exploits this single plaza/concourse datum to stunning effect.
As milling fans funnel through the single line of turnstiles that separate inside from out, within a few paces, they invariably halt in awe as the seating bowl drops away in front of them and they are enveloped in the vast floodlit stadium volume – the sacred turf stretched out before them and the goalposts seemingly touchable.
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