City of Gold Coast selects AECOM and Fleetwood to deliver iconic play space at Broadwater Parklands

Following a comprehensive joint tender bid, Fleetwood has been appointed to help design and deliver a new adventure play space at Broadwater Parklands for the City of Gold Coast. 

The pitch, to create a playground concept of regional status for the Southport community, was led by our partners at multinational landscape architecture firm, AECOM. Fleetwood Urban’s design, engineering and project team members collaborated with AECOM throughout the submission process.

High calibre creativity

The calibre of competition was extremely high. Ultimately, AECOM and Fleetwood’s design concept was selected ahead of 18 other tender respondents, including many of Australia’s top landscape architecture firms. Further illustrating the creativity, due diligence and depth of the application, Fleetwood has subsequently been chosen by the City of Gold Coast to also construct and install the new playground.

“This project represents the next step in our long association with the Southport Broadwater Parkland. We were competing with some of the best landscape architects in the country, so it was critical we worked closely with Fleetwood to deliver a strong bid to secure this work. Fleetwood really got what we were trying to achieve with the creative vision – a place which marks the confluence of river to ocean and denotes a powerful connection between land, sea and sky. Importantly, we collaborated early on to get key inputs into costings, materials, and constructability. This strengthened our bid and meant we could maintain design integrity, gaining the client’s confidence for being able to truly realise the vision together.”

Ben Newell, Associate Director, AECOM Australia

A rich, place-driven narrative

For the successful pitch submission, Fleetwood helped AECOM create a rich place-driven narrative, bringing together the natural habitat, the local Broadwater estuary, and the sea life the Gold Coast has long been famous for. Supporting the City of Gold Coast’s broader vision for the area, the project will deliver an ecological and free-spirited outdoor play space for Broadwater Parklands. This, in turn, will help further bolster the Gold Coast’s position as a beautiful and unique location on Australian’s eastern seaboard for visitors and local community alike.

“Fleetwood is absolutely delighted to be a part of the team working with AECOM on the Broadwater Parklands project. AECOM and Fleetwood have a longstanding working relationship and play off each other’s strengths very well. We are looking forward to an amazing outcome on this iconic project.”

Adrian Trimmer, Project Leader, Fleetwood Urban

Multi-faceted, deeply layered design

Featuring a soaring and fully custom-designed play tower which will be visible from a distance, the creative concept for Broadwater Parklands represents a new approach to the creation of contemporary play spaces. When complete, the multi-faceted, deeply layered design vision will not only deliver world-class play outcomes, but also provide meaningful experiences for people of all ages, abilities and interests. 

With the final concept recently signed off, the project is now progressing into the detailed design, fabrication and construction phases. The new playground is due to open in the second half of 2021.

Delivering award-winning, highly original play spaces together with our creative partners continues to be a cornerstone of Fleetwood Urban’s success. Wild Play Garden in Sydney’s Centennial Park and Nature’s Playground at Adelaide Zoo are other great examples of our work in this space.

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