Award-winning oval and footbridge projects the first elements in plan for Adelaide Riverbank revival
The Adelaide Oval redevelopment and the eight metres wide footbridge have helped to transform the city beyond the Riverbank.
Two major opening aspects of the Adelaide Riverbank masterplan were both award winners completed in 2014: the $535 million redevelopment of historic Adelaide Oval and the $40 million footbridge over the River Torrens linking the oval and the southern bank.
The iconic oval was transformed into a state-of-the-art stadium venue with 53,500 capacity without losing its heritage aspects such as cathedral view, 1890s Moreton Bay fig trees and F. Kenneth Milne’s Edwardian-style wooden scoreboard from 1911.
The elegantly curved eight-metres wide footbridge, spanning nearly 75 metres, terminated with a dramatic Belvedere hovering above the river where a water wall aerates the Torrens lake. Its prized concept was by engineers and urban designers Aurecon and landscape architects Taylor Cullity Lethlean TZG.
Adelaide Oval broke through the controversy of making it an open stadium by winning a welter of awards and acknowledged as transforming the city.
Besides attracting millions to the return of Australian rules football to the oval, the venue has hosted international soccer and cricket matches and global music acts, including the Rolling Stones, since it reopened in 2014 after a $535 million redevelopment.
In 2016, it was a nominated with five others (including London’s Twickenham Stadium and Florida’s Daytona International Speedway) to be the best stadium in the world, after being shortlisted for world building of the year at the world architecture festival in 2015.
The oval redevelopment, by Cox Architecture, Walter Brooke and Hames Sharley was hailed in 2015 by giving it the national award for public architecture.
The awards jury said: “The redevelopment of the Adelaide Oval has set a new standard for facilitating a range of sporting and hospitality events within a major sports stadium. All parts of the Adelaide Oval have been carefully considered to produce what must be, nationally, one of the most accessible and most spatially dramatic public buildings devoted to sport.”
The Property Council of Australia’s Brian & Poulter Award gave the oval for the best tourism and leisure development.
