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Sydney “Second” Parramatta occupies the land of the Brahmatgarh people of the Darug tribe. It was colonized in 1788, the same year the first city was founded. The invaders moved along the harbor to the headwaters of the Parramatta River, where fertile land was thought to be the site of colonial farms. Many artists documented the early settlement with pastoral watercolors of Mount Metz, a ridge south of the Viceroyalty.
The city’s contemporary predators tend to move along train and subway lines rather than waterways. Over the past two decades, the rising city of Parramatta has relied on the generosity of powerful development sponsors. This brought with it considerable errors of urban judgment, but also an undeniable vitality and vitality.
Parallel to these forces, state and local governments have been aggressively balancing citizen books. The most ambitious public building project in Australia’s modern urban history is responding to a commercial frenzy. Among completed or ongoing projects we can count Parramatta Light Rail, Parramatta Metro Station, Parramatta Square, Phive (Library and Civic Center), Parramatta Stadium, Arthur Phillip High School, Parramatta Public School, Western Sydney University, Powerhouse Parramatta (Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences), Riverside Theater Complex and Parramatta Aquatic Center (PAC).
For PAC, we return to the former Viceroyalty and Mount Metz. Although officially part of Parramatta Park (gazetted as a park in 1858 and now listed on the National Heritage List), this smaller southern parcel was separated from the western part of the site by the severing of the western railway line in the 1860s. The site is detached. It was a chaotic place until 2015, when a golf course closed (previously restricting access to the area). Tyrrell Studio developed the 2017 Mays Hill Precinct Master Plan on behalf of Parramatta Park Trust to diversify recreational opportunities on the 20-hectare site. The master plan identifies space for a new aquatics center: a triangular wedge of land that slopes towards the city.
Together with Andrew Burges Architects (ABA) and McGregor Coxall, Grimshaw won Parramatta City Council’s International Design Excellence Competition in June 2018. Grimshaw and the ABA are building a successful competition for the Green Square Aquatic Center at Guyama Park in the City of Parramatta. 2014, Sydney. Through this project, they experienced first-hand the intricacies of the processes that would then play into the intellectual tension of the competition’s winning idea. The simplicity of PAC’s signature circular form is not only an architectural response to the site, but also provides enough strategic clarity to absorb the unpredictable engagement and procurement processes of the future.
The project includes 25 and 50 meter swimming pools, a 15 meter learning swimming pool, a children’s paddling pool, a spa and sauna area, a large wellness center and gym, as well as administrative and community spaces. With a top area of a staggering 14,330 square metres, it was no small feat to place on steep heritage-listed parkland, let alone one traversed by a Statutory Important Heritage Landscape. The ridge to the west of the pool is made up of mature eucalyptus, shea and turpentine trees, their canopies framing the skyline when viewed from the city below: an underground solution is almost a fait accompli.
The geometric freedom of the walls surrounding the PAC inground swimming pool contrasts with the precise platonic language of the elements visible on the surface. Tangents and curves move in and out, dividing the pool and concealing associated service spaces. The technical drawings of these walls (see page 27) are surprisingly lyrical, recalling the productive tension between play and control explored by Enric Miralles and Eva Prats in their 2000 article “How to Lay out a Croissant.” 1 The original intention was to have these walls lined with gabions filled with recycled construction waste, but this was abandoned for technical reasons in favor of precast concrete panels with formed, notched rib profiles. It’s a braver, less sentimental architectural decision that more frankly expresses the powerful physical and material realities of cutting and retaining buildings in the earth. At the base of the wall, along the edge of the pool, a continuous datum folds into smooth concrete for bleacher seating to accommodate the exposed skin.
Each indoor pool space uses a different type of ceiling light to create a unique atmosphere. The 15 and 25 meter pools are filled with light from linear ETFE skylights aligned with the pool edges and supported by concrete beams that emphasize the scale of the infrastructure. Light is abundant and diffused, shining from the pool surface onto the walls and soffits. Above the paddling pool, beams are suppressed to create a sense of intimacy, and circular skylights puncture the flatter ceiling like escaping bubbles.
Walking to the pool from the city side is almost a ritual. Carefully designed, two pathways by McGregor Coxall rise skyward, skirt the edge of the PAC Circle, and provide access to the higher (park) level to the south or the lower (pool) level to the north . At the lower level entrance, a linear gabion wall brings you inside and helps to separate the gymnasium volume to the north from the retained earthworks to the south. Suspended from legs and covered with perforated silver mesh, the gym had to present an active face to the traffic corridor on the north side of the site. In fact, its higher vistas completely suppress these intrusive elements; its ensuite rooms and tactile planes of black butt paneling face the tree canopy on the north side of the park, a move that physically and conceptually unites north and south.
The southern upper passage – an elevated circular promenade – is a strong public good. It circulates along a system of park paths, creating an electrified connection between the distant city and the oasis of the outdoor swimming pool. Most descriptions of the project are keen to emphasize its respect for and submergence of the landscape. To me, these interpretations underestimate the complexity of the plan’s urban response. If the panopticon is a place of isolated surveillance and control, then this is a panopticon—a place that attracts complex wholes, constructing stimulating civic voyeurism and heightened city/landscape adjacencies. As Robert Venturi reminds us in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, “both” is more compelling than “either/or.” 2
This feeling of mutual landscape enhances the atmosphere of the outdoor swimming pool and lawn located in the center of the oculus. Fun fact…it’s a great place to be on a warm spring night. The mesh enclosure on the upper level does not feel like a barrier but a privileged moment of connection with the enclosed space of the pool below. The spatial proximity of the indoor and outdoor pools guarantees a similar sense of engagement; however, this is inhibited by tinted high-performance glass thresholds and controlled access points that limit visual and acoustic permeability. Elsewhere, any necessary moments of privacy are obscured by the solid surface of the black butt-lined cladding, which channels the materiality of the parkland into the representational maelstrom of the circle.
The most striking aspect of the circle is its scale, which lingers seductively on the edge of architecture, infrastructure and landscape art. The complex’s civic ambition is a significant achievement for Western Sydney, adding a touch of confidence and sophistication to Parramatta’s public life. In the first three weeks of the pool’s operation, 46,000 people visited it – a sign that the so-called second city is finally starting to exert its civic influence.
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