Adelaide's oldest theatre, newest casino top SA architecture awards
Adelaide’s oldest continually running performance venue, Her Majesty’s Theatre, swept up a clutch of state architecture awards on Thursday for a design that updated the 108-year-old theatre to accommodate the biggest touring musicals and meet modern accessibility and technical standards.
The last remaining venue from a one-time circuit of music hall, or vaudeville-style, Tivoli Theatres across Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide took out the state’s top awards for public and heritage architecture, as well as the City of Adelaide Prize for the $66 million Cox Architecture-led redesign.
The near-complete rebuild, which demolished all but the Grote Street facade and original eastern wall of the 1913 building and expanded seating from about 900 to more than 1460, showed the importance of being able to extend the life of a community’s working buildings, said Catherine Startari, SA Architecture Awards director.
“It’s about being able to use an existing facility and reminding people what that history is, not just giving up on it and saying ‘We’ll go and do it somewhere else’,” Ms Startari said.
“You don’t just build a facility because you need something bigger. It’s about keeping what you had, remembering it and building on it.”
The project involved acquiring an adjacent 255sq m site for a new western wing encased in glass to create ticketing desks, mingling spaces and a rooftop terrace.
It increased seat capacity by restoring the dress circle that was originally built into the publicly owned theatre but subsequently removed and rebuilt a higher fly tower above the stage and new loading dock.
In contrast to the city’s oldest theatre, one of its newest hotels took out the top award for interior architecture.
The EOS by SkyCity, designed by Walter Brooke & Associates and Hecker Guthrie, stood out for the way the hotel above the casino set out to create a visual and mental break from gaming activity below.
“It’s this craziness and this speed of lights and activity and adrenalin and all the things some people really do enjoy,” said Ms Startari, GHD Woodhead’s assistant director of architecture.
“It’s a step away from that. It’s almost about calming down a bit.”
The top award for commercial architecture, however, went to a low-rise office building out of the CBD, on the arterial Sir Donald Bradman Drive in the inner western suburb of Hilton.
The building, designed by JPE Design Studio, managed to accommodate the varied administrative, food preparation and community functions of not-for-profit organisation Meals on Wheels, but also created a landmark building that stood out and at the same time did not look out of place.
“It’s given that organisation an identity and a place that is important, on a street where the other buildings aren’t so memorable,” she said.
The state’s top award for residential architecture went to a single-storey red brick house in the inner-eastern Adelaide’s St Peters, which replaced a dilapidated cottage on the site at a price of $1686 per sq m.
“It achieved a really great outcome for the budget of the project,” Ms Startari said. “You can have a great house and great place to live and designed by an architect that is of value.”
