Date: 2023
Location: North Terrace, Adelaide and
Hallett Cove Conservation Park
Technical Skills:
Hand Drawing
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe InDesign
The brief was to create a writers’ centre and retreat as a permanent site for Adelaide Writers’ Week that could be used for festival events and other events throughout the year. The design was to be developed through exploration of the physical context, a literary text by the centre’s namesake and architectural precedents.
The Festival site in Adelaide’s CBD aims to create an official meeting site to complement the existing Writers’ Week program as well as to provide a permanent location to foster and promote the arts. Bringing the natural environment into an overly urban site, the main hall remains outdoors with a glass canopy to protect visitors from the elements. Entering off The Angels’ Lane, visitors are greeted with an enclosed garden space in which to enjoy the festival program or simply sit, relax and reflect at other times of the year.
The Writers’ Retreat, situated at Hallett Cove offers a refuge for up to six people for short or longer stays. Three prefabricated pods are nested into the landscape of the conservation park with an aim to improve, not destroy, the existing geology. Three different but complementary architectural forms take visitors on a journey through the landscape and highlight how architecture and environment can complement one another.
