New Performing Arts Venue (NPAV)

This project is by far Brisbane’s major cultural project leading up to the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It was won in international competition in 2019 by the partnership of Blight Rayner and Snohetta, and then evolved through a series of concept and detail design workshops. A major purpose in our design was to engage the public realm, both visually and physically. An inspiration for this was a poem by local Aboriginal Elder and artist Lilla Watson and its evocation of river that flows in front of the site. This generated the idea of an undulating glass façade wrapping around the theatre like a veil, creating variously translucent and transparent views into the theatre foyers and conveying the sense of theatregoers as part of the performance. A key initiative was position of rehearsal studios under the auditorium where they are visible on three sides to the public realm. The studios will be available for both performances and rehearsals that can be freely viewed as a way of engaging the public realm with the performing arts. Thus is complemented by outdoor performance spaces. The building houses a 1500 seat two-tier auditorium accessed by lower and upper foyers. The auditorium design expands on the influence of the poem, conveying the sense of a cocoon within an ironbark rainforest, also referred to on the poem. Its folded perimeter is designed to optimise acoustic conditions for world class opera, ballet, dance, drama, symphony and musicals through flexible acoustics creating adaptive resonance. The upper foyer is lit by seven skylights representing the seven water catchments of Queensland recognised by First Nations Peoples. The New Performing Arts Venue is designed to entice people back to the theatre by creating it as an extension of public life, with meaningful connection to Country and our First Nations Peoples.