The curvilinear geometries of Parramatta River and Parramatta Park lie as wonderful counter points to the gridded urban intensity of Parramatta CBD. As the city evolves and intensifies, this condition of calmness, nature and environmental relief in juxtaposition to the busyness of life in the city will become increasingly valuable.

The Western Sydney Stadium (WSS) development is vitally important in this equation as a bridging element between the two conditions. It is a convenient relationship whereby the park contributes a picturesque, spacious and practical setting to the stadium while the energy of the stadium remains connected and palpable within the city itself. The WSS is composed to capture and magnify this energy with an event space that celebrates the core sporting culture of Western Sydney and expresses this outwardly back to the city.

The two key stadium entries are framed to provide an intense ‘snapshot’ of the stadium interior and project these toward Victoria Road and the north-east approaches as well asParramatta CBD to the south-east. These two portals amplify the build-up to the game as visible elements that guide the journey of fans into the stadium precinct.

The stadium precinct is designed to create a festival setting to the game with a generous activated public domain to facilitate gathering and socialising during the pre-game build-up. The urban park along the O’Connell Street frontage transforms into an active stage set providing performance opportunities as well as being a location for F&B popups.

Once in the stadium, the contemporary vertically designed bowl further contributes to amore intense game experience by bringing spectators closer to the game while containing and reinforcing the atmosphere of the crowd and game itself.

From within Parramatta Park, the stadium exists as a quiescent plateau nestled within the landscape that from time to time, emits a warm glow during evening games and events.

Outside of game days, the stadium is very much an integral part of Parramatta Park. Embedded tenancies address and activate the Urban Park and O’Connell Street, while the‘Alfresco Plaza’ provides a sunny meeting place as a threshold into the park from the north-east. The perimeter public domain improves accessibility to the park by bringing people to the stadium’s western curtilage which has aspect toOld Government House, The Crescent, and Old Kings Oval. The VIP areas within the stadium similarly have this aspect and are used for conferencing and function occasions that can derive value from this relationship to the park.

A series of interpretive elements animate the journey from the Urban Park on O’ConnellStreet and into the park proper enriching people’s awareness and understanding of the park precinct while strengthening the character of the park itself. The stadium architecture has to manage a delicate relationship with its heritage neighbours while establishing both a landmark presence in the city and an iconic identity for sport in Western Sydney.

The architecture exhibits a directness between function and form to maximise economy of material and exploits the stadium bowl geometry to form its two key entry portals where the energy of the stadium can be focused and expressed. The remainder of the building is enveloped with an architectural wrap to achieve its ‘quiescent’ character. This both reinforces the legibility of the entry portals but importantly presents an elegant foil to Old Kings School on O’Connell Street and more generally, the World Heritage listed environs of Old Government House and Parramatta Park.

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