Melbourne Park is a multi-purpose sports and entertainment precinct, hosting globally significant events with its flagship being the Australian Open. The precinct has been modernised, increasing its capacity, maximising the customer experience, improving accessibility and connectivity, and enhancing the commercial amenity.

The Melbourne & Olympic Park sites are located between Melbourne’s CBD and Botanic Gardens and are bound by the Yarra River. The sites comprise both Melbourne Park and Olympic Park, totalling approximately 40 hectares of entertainment and sporting space.

AECOM was engaged for the civil, structural, facades and traffic engineering services for the design delivery of the Stage 3 of the Melbourne Park Master Plan which includes:

  • A new 5,000-seat multipurpose Show Court Arena
  • A new Function & Media Centre featuring broadcast studios, auditorium, central and function kitchens and café/hirer space
  • Expansion of the interlinking concourse plaza
  • New outdoor match courts
  • An improved central logistics hub and broadcast compound

Stage 3 of Melbourne Park is now complete and ready for the 2022 Australian Open.

A key requirement for the project was to design around the operational requirements of the precinct and ensure the patron experience for both Australian Open and year-round events were not compromised. As this project was the last phase of the overall master plan it had to integrate with all the boundary conditions and constraints of the previous stages. The engineering systems were chosen to minimise disruption and enable a staged delivery.

The choice of structural material for the central precinct was tailored to the Australian Open shutdown windows, using precast hollow core flooring systems for accelerated construction and composite steel systems to reduce weight which also minimised construction costs. Where the design interfaced with existing structures, AECOM completed detailed constraint assessments such as undermining of adjacent existing foundations and capacity checks. Modification of a pedestrian bridge was undertaken by AECOM’s bridge design team who have detailed knowledge of heavy infrastructure requirements.

Parametric modelling was adopted to optimise column layouts and evaluate the optimal grid layouts for the building. This has allowed the show court arena bowl to be dynamically updated in response to architectural changes. The show court roof structure was designed for efficiency and ease of buildability.