The Adelaide Oval redevelopment has transformed the original aging venue into a modern 52,000 seat stadium: increasing capacity by 50% and providing new roofs over the Southern and Eastern pavilions. The larger roof, at 137m span, is the largest shell structure in Australia. The construction and sequence was tightly constrained to permit continuity of use of the venue through the 2 year phased construction and this was enabled through practical detailing and minimisation of site joints.
The judges admired the engineering designers’ response to the unique challenges of this project: creating an elegant, lightweight, highly efficient and coherent response, integrating the new and existing elements within very tight spacial and programme constraints.