The City of Sports

The proposition instigates with study of the City Baths which acts as a gateway to the Melbourne CBD and RMIT’s main academic spine. With a new metro station building up right next to the site, it opens up the opportunity to densify with a sports hub that acts as an urban refugee. The new building therefore starts to commemorate sports which plays an important role for university students as well as the Australian culture. Design methodology begins by redrawing and reinterpreting of references extracted from site context and precedent studies. Facade expression of new building extension is then translated as a piece of tapestry as a narrative expression. With reworked stitches of the context and existing City Baths, design outcome becomes the result of threading and restitching of referenced components on the urban fabric. This can be traced back to the origin it derives from a way of paying tribute to civic heritage architecture. With reworked patterning and colourful assembles that is inspired from surrounding buildings, designated parts on the facade begins to open up as porous screens. This ultimately provides the glimpse of theatrical and vibrant expression of sports activities within the hub which is then named as The City of Sports.