AAMI Park in Melbourne, Australia

August 06, 2010 Category: Public Buildings, Sports

AAMI Park, designed by Cox Architects and Planners, located in Melbourne, Australia, addresses the functional brief for the provision of hosting world-class rectangular football codes, providing a stadium for rectangular pitch games, including Soccer, Rugby League, Rugby Union and American Football, an elite training centre with additional player-recovery facilities, office accommodation for elite sporting teams, and medical facilities which service the greater precinct. Cox Architects and Planners, in collaboration with Arup, have created a design that optimises the performance of the structure. Rather than separate roof, walls and supports, the structure has been designed to serve as each. Termed the’ bioframe’ for its ability to support various and evolving functions, the structure is a lightweight steel design based on the structural efficiencies of the Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome which uses 50% less steel than a traditional cantilever. Each of the 3D shells uses the combination of three structural systems to produce the lightweight structure.

Critical to the stadium is the whole-event experience it offers, thus the desire to provide the perfect seating bowl with most seats positioned in the preferred east and west flanks, providing excellent sightlines and proximity to the action. This, and the minimisation of the roof pile to the north to allow maximum sunlight on to the turf, drove the form of the concrete seating bowl and in turn the bioframe.

As part of the Melbourne and Olympic Parks precinct, the functions of AAMI Park are linked to the precinct, city and parkland, providing a stadium that is easily accessed by spectators and well used by elite players and their clubs. Subsequently AAMI Park provides Melbourne with a stadium that is functioning every day of the week, representing a move forward by the city to provide residents and visitors alike with a world-class facility that embodies a pioneering approach to public architecture and in turn public life.

AAMI Park Design by Cox Architects and Planners