ADELAIDE CONVENTION CENTRE TRANSFORMATION
It's our newest landmark building, changing our skyline, and behind its bold and beautiful face there's a heart that loves other people's money. But they are going to love parting with it as they come from near and far to Adelaide's new convention centre.
Haven't we had one since the late eighties? Yes, but now it's more than twice as big, and from next week everybody will enter from directly off North Terrace under a flying wing protective canopy.
From the new entrance way, visitors will swing left into a reception area at one end of a lofty bending foyer. They'll connect with the old centre next door through a concourse which also provides north-south access through to the Torrens riverbank. While Adelaideians will get their chance to sort out its geography during the open days, 29 and 30 September, their convention centre is already well and truly on the map. It has been voted in the top ten centres in the world, not once but for the last two years.
From the nearby Morphett Street bridge, you can see where it fits, namely, over nine railway lines that terminate further up North Terrace at the grand Adelaide Railway Station. It's a heavy duty use of airspace, too, engineered like a freeway bridge so that a truck ca come up and ramp (with, say, a cabin cruiser for a boat show on the back) and simply turn through giant side doors and drive all the way in.
On the other hand, the new hall interior could be divided into conference spaces, and we can't have the three o'clock train from Salisbury rumbling through a keynote speech. And so the centre is floating - on hundreds of elastomeric bearings on top of the many support columns. They are rubber cushions.
Inside, the kitchens are designed to feed an army, with the largest convention centre “rational cooking system” in the world. It means everything is cooked fresh. More than four thousand diners will fit into the new space, and they can all be served their main course in just over twenty minutes.
Back to the exterior of the space again for a moment. There are tall posh modern flying buttresses on the western side of the hall, and they are not just for show. They are chimneys, at the out-end of a computer designed and tested diesel exhaust system that takes out the fumes from all the suburban railcar traffic that comes and goes.
As visitors to the end of September Open Days will discover, the new hall's vast interior space is what the extension is all about . . . there's enough space to make even astronaut Andy Thomas feel lonely. Remove the massive sound-proof-wall-doors and you're talking “pillar-free-space” that exhibition convenors dream about. You could easily assemble a full size jumbo jet in here. Plenty of head room too - it's like looking down from a three storey-roof from the catwalks above. The sweeping arches under the curving roof are very strong. If you want to hang a one-tonne Commodore from a span, why not add a Magna as well? It'll hold them comfortably.
The real strength of the centre, you might say though, is its staff and training. The massive extension has brought 255 new employees on board, making it 600 in all. While they'll expect their meeting guests to hold sessions in the old tiered seating sections, it is all very flexible. It can now seat 7000, for example, for a meeting under one clear-span roof.
If all that is sounding a bit too busy, downstairs at the Torrens Lake is the place to go. A cool designer café awaits, offering breakfast through to dinner seven days.
With a modestly priced menu, a good wine list and indoors-outdoors eating, Regatta's is going to be the place to drop out from its opening on October 2, 2001.
The new extension starts working for South Australians at the end of September, bringing in interstate and overseas convention delegates to leave their money with us (and they're high end spenders). The extension is dauntingly tall and commanding from the court outside the café. It could have been just a dirty big box. It would have been functional, but the state government kicked in further funds to transform it into a $92 million Federation landmark that ties in with the optimistic Riverbank Project that will in turn bind the Festival Theatre complex and Elder Park in with all along the South bank of the long city lake.
A new arts piazza looks down over the riverbank, linking the Playhouse with the new Convention Centre's curving glass façade, and at last we have constructed a building to celebrate these northern parklands - it faces the Torrens!
The northern face of the new hall transforms an awkward hexagonal duckling into an elegant swan that looks good by day and by night. (In fact, it looks superb across the water after dark). Some elegant solutions were required on the inside too, and the curving and soaring glass wall is the triumph for its designers Chicago architects , Skidmore, Owings and Merill combined with Adelaide's Woods Bagot and Connell Wagner engineers made it all happen.
The builders were Baulderstone Hornibrook. That glass wall, by the way, stretches up about five stories at its highest, and it's hanging there, with the glass sheets suspended on double steel rods. They are “solar-e” panels which keep out infra red rays, making them good for insulation and shading.
We're all invited to come and see the new Adelaide Convention Centre on its Open Days, when they'll road test the new space with 300 booths putting the State's economy on show, under the theme “World Stage S.A.” With international bookings as far ahead as 2012, the venue is already out there! See you at the Convention Centre.
Adelaide Convention Centre
North Terrace
Adelaide, South Australia, 5000Phone: (08) 8212 4099
Facsimile: (08) 8212 5101
Email: sales@adelaidecc.com.au
Web: www.adelaidecc.com.auOpen Days September 29 and 30, 2001 10.00am - 5.00pm
