The Gold Coast City Council has announced a competition which will look for designers to create a world's best practice cultural precinct on the 17 hectare parklands, Evandale.

The competition which opens in March will look for concepts which reflect the council’s vision for the cultural precinct which will encompass state-of-the-art facilities in the performing arts, visual arts and new media, set in landscaped surroundings. 

The council has released a 'vision document' which identities five key strategies:

  • Rich content (innovative and distinctively Gold Coast and sympathetic to the natural environment)
  • Digital potential (optimising opportunities for digital integration and enabling the precinct to become a virtual hub)
  • Great outdoors (encouraging an artful, accessible green landscape)
  • City links (facilitate foot traffic via a proposed green bridge and a potential  future transport hub)
  • High performance (drawing on innovation and collaboration to achieve excellence in design, construction and operation).

Gold Coast Mayor, Councillor Tom Tate said:

“This is a signal to begin assembling multi-disciplinary teams capable of delivering outstanding contemporary design that is quintessentially Gold Coast,” Tate said.

 “Evandale will become the hub of artistic occupation for the city, a place that showcases the Gold Coast’s unique cultural and creative life and a place where the community will come together to engage with arts and culture.” 

The competition will be launched in March 2013. Design teams will have six weeks to submit entries.

Following this initial submission process, an independent jury will select up to three teams to be offered $250,000 each to develop detailed proposals for the cultural precinct. It is expected that final designs will be exhibited for the public to view and the winner selected by the jury in late 2013.

“The winning team will play a part in changing the face of our city.  And they will enjoy global attention, with the Gold Coast hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2018,” said Tate.

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