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| Right Bent Street, showing retail buildings by Lend Lease Design with Gensler (USA) at left, Tonkin Zulaikha at right and Allen Jack + Cottier in the background. All photos by Patrick Bingham-Hall. |
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Sydney’s own Hollywood lot – Fox Studios at Moore Park – has replaced the old agricultural showgrounds with minimal sheds, maxi-screens and a street of shops and outdoor cafés. The scheme has significant implications for theme park design; highlighted here by Philip Vivian.
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At Fox Studios, replacing the old RAS Showgrounds at Moore Park, a collection of new buildings by well-known Australian modernist offices challenges the representational imagery generally found in theme parks internationally. At Euro Disney, for instance, initial concepts by modernists Rem Koolhaas, Bernard Tschumi, Jean Nouvel, Arata Isozaki and Christian de Portzamparc were abandoned, and only representational designs built. In contrast, the developers of Fox Sydney and their architects have created a commendable entertainment precinct which balances commercial requirements for theatrical architecture with the modernist desire for tectonic clarity and integrity.
The film studio and entertainment complex now occupies the historic site of the Royal Easter Show for 115 years. Coordinated by Lend Lease with partners News Corp, the property comprises professional studios and offices for film-related industries, a movie theme park, and a retail and entertainment precinct known as Bent Street. The latter acts as the public entry to the complex and is the site of most of the new buildings.
Upon arrival at Fox, visitors are welcomed by the striking carpark designed by Hassell. Using the language of functional modernism with overlaid graphics, this firm has created an elegant and economical architectural solution to a mundane typology. Charcoal-painted concrete upstands, perforated screens and a palette of primary colours used on the columns and lift core of each floor provide a compellingly simple, de Stijl-like composition. Curvilinear vehicle ramps are pulled to the exterior to articulate the overall form and are clad in a perforated metal screen which is the introduction to architecture-as-billboard on entering the site. This building balances architectural integrity with its theatrical role of activating the public realm. Unfortunately its scale and highly visible location at the entry is perhaps more pertinent to a shopping mall partithan a theme park.
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Top left Hassell’s car park at the public entrance to the site. Top right Bent Street plaza with music/book building by Daryl Jackson/Robin Dyke and Arthouse cinema/retail building by Allen Jack + Cottier. Bottom Tonkin Zulaikha’s Bent Street shops at left, with buildings by Lend Lease Design and Gensler at right. In the foreground is a light fitting chosen as part of the Hassell public domain landscaping. |
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Hassell were also responsible for the urban design and landscaping of the overall development. Working within the showground’s original street framework, they have created a well orchestrated and scaled promenade that maintains an intensity appropriate to the retail environment without feeling unrelenting or claustrophobic. A robust palette of materials balances the desire for authenticity with the theatrical requirements of a retail/entertainment precinct. The palette is not employed to create a single ‘big move’ but rather a series of well proportioned and detailed spaces that respond to the specifics of their location and yet are coherent as part of a greater whole.
Allen Jack + Cottier were responsible for the restoration of the 1901 Exhibition House. This building has been pared back to its original form and converted to a restaurant and bar, in keeping with its long association with the wine industry. AJC were also responsible for the Arthouse Cinema, which has been successfully contrived to appear as several structures. The design is a composition of modern fragments assembled to create a lively streetscape. In its avoidance of a more heroic, monolithic expression, this building makes a significant contribution to the public realm by creating an experiential, pedestrian-scaled streetscape.
The same cannot be said of Daryl Jackson/Robin Dyke’s Music and Books building opposite the Arthouse Cinema. The concept of a minimalist shed enlivened by images and graphics fails to create an active streetscape. Its reductive use of steel, glass and perforated screens is more interested in its own tectonics than in contributing to the public realm.
Jackson/Dyke were also responsible for the sensitive restoration of the historic Hordern Pavilion and Royal Hall of Industries. The Hordern has received a new glass-and-steel entry foyer and canopy. The latter, detached from the historic pavilion, is appropriately scaled to the building and adjacent open space yet there is little evidence of celebration of the original facade in the detail resolution of the entry foyer.
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| Right Market tents, designed by Hassell, in the showring. Bottom The Hoyts cinema complex by Lend Lease Design with Gensler. |
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Tonkin Zulaikha Architects were responsible for four playful object buildings around the showring, including corporate pavilions for Fox and Sony. These structures gesture towards the parade ring, continuing the tradition of pavilions and stands around the ground; however, this is at the expense of the Bent Street side where the experience of the promenade is given less attention. An elliptical theme, no doubt from the oval itself, animates the roofs and forms of the buildings. Tonkin Zulaikha manipulate the structures with a self-referential game of forms and materials, creating variety from a minimal program.
Lend Lease Design were responsible for the conversion of the Frank Hurley Stand to film industry-related offices. While the deterioration of the original structure prohibited its retention, the curved rear facade and landmark clock tower have been kept and exposed concrete frame offices inserted. This building suffers from the late inclusion of an enclosed theatre on the showring side, originally intended to be an open-air amphitheatre with a fabric awning. Lend Lease Design (with Gensler from the USA) were responsible for the overtly historicist Hoyts Cinema Complex, with its bombastic entry tower. Clearly drawing on the language of 1930s Hollywood Art Deco and its subsequent replication in American movie theme parks, this is the only building in which imagery is the dominant generator of the architecture. Adjacent to it is the stage set entry to Fox Backlot, with a Deco fantasy incorporating a kangaroo with a director’s megaphone and an emu behind a film projector. We are here confronted with the difference in approach between American theme park image architecture and the alternative of balancing architectural integrity with retail entertainment theatrics.
The continuity of the RAS as an entertain-ment precinct open to the public is highly commendable; however, the absence of a function to occupy the central space leaves a hollow ring. Unfortunate also is the inability of the public to circle the entirety of Bent Street, as it is now compartmentalised into three separate precincts. These points aside, the historic character has been retained sufficiently to still imagine encountering livestock being herded along a street.
Philip Vivian has a Master of Architecture & Urban Design from Columbia and is an Associate Director of Bates Smart in Sydney. He is responsible for the adaptive reuse of Pier 8/9 at Walsh Bay  |
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Copyright © 2010 Architecture Media Pty Ltd
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