Evandale Parkland: a Memory of Place Part 2 Project 2011 Katrina Torresan University of Queensland | Australia The following design proposes a cultural base to ‘ground’ the impetuous developments of Australia’s “City of Leisure”. While Gold Coast City is known for its golden beaches, dazzling glitter strip and tourist-driven enterprises, the city also supports a local growing community that is bound by majestic hinterlands. Natural wonder and landscape phenomena of the greater regional context, together with an interest in coastal living, drives and inspires the architecture of this scheme. Located on the Nerang River the following proposition aims to reconnect with the Gold Coast Hinterlands (the river’s source) by celebrating memories of a mountainous forest landscape to enrich a local sense of place. Realised through a civic cultural program, the scheme promotes fading value and vigour for quality public space that in this instance strives to reconcile tourism with local interests, while strengthening the region’s creative pulse. The project addresses two interrelated programs- a performing arts complex on the river’s edge, and an art gallery and children’s art centre in the heart of a park. The performing arts complex is bravely perched on the waters’ edge and demonstrates a sense of civic pride, while engaging with adjacent high-rises of the city skyline. The building acts as a protective arm that shelters the remaining park and art gallery pavilions, thus allowing a woven experiential sequence of building and landscape. The built work is consciously arranged to embrace and activate terraced ‘events’ plazas, which is intended to mediate the site’s diverse program and offer a consolidated nucleus for community activities. Tutor(s) Elizabeth Musgrave Rebekah Vallance