ARM projects, from large urban masterplans to subtle interventions, share the same hallmarks:
→ In-depth research into history culture and urban context
→ True lateral thinking
→ Individual, outside-the-box outcomes
→ Genuine consultation and collaboration with clients
→ Delivery on time and on budget
→ Satisfied clients
ARM was founded in 1988 by Stephen Ashton, Howard Raggatt and Ian McDougall. With the support of an accomplished and highly experienced team of professionals, they have built a large practice with a national and international reputation.
ARM projects have long influenced clients’ and community understanding of public architecture. We’ve achieved this by combining creative lateral thought, research, new technology and just plain hard work.
We inform our designs with detailed research. We explore the culture and urban background of each client, each site and each surrounding environment. We are known for enriching our design work by incorporating aspects of the local scene and relevant history. Sometimes our research extends to specific building typologies: we don’t reinvent the wheel, we learn to understand it and customise it to the project. It’s how we’ve educated ourselves to design award-winning concert halls, stadia, shopping centres and educational buildings.
ARM has always engaged in public and academic discourse. Many of our architects teach at university schools of architecture around the nation. Our monograph Mongrel Rapture: The Architecture of Ashton Raggatt McDougall was published in 2015 by Uro.
We are a leading-edge architecture, urban design and interior design practice. Our reputation is for scholarship and creativity. We aim to make an inspirational, practical and real contribution to communities and to the lives of our clients by understanding each client’s culture and incorporating into their environment the ideas that underpin that culture.
WE DESIGN AND ACTIVE COMMUNITIES.
DESIGN VIBRANT ACTIVE COMMUNITIES.
GOLD COAST CULTURAL PRECINCT (HOTA)
HOTA (Home of the Arts) is a mammoth masterplan for a landscape and cultural precinct to be built over 15 years. It occupies 17 hectares.
ARM won an international design competition to masterplan this 17-hectare precinct. We completed the masterplan in 2014 and are realising it in stages.
FEATURES
→ the HOTA Outdoor Stage, a 5,000 person indoor/outdoor performance space
→ the new 13-storey Art Gallery
→ a new 1,200-seat theatre
→ redeveloping an existing theatre to seat 800
→ the central Great Terrace
→ a sub-tropical garden
→ new lakes and bridges
→ a water-play area featuring a water slide
→ a sports area including a basketball court
CLIENT Gold Coast City Council
COMPLETION Ongoing
VALUE $300M (at 2014)
LOCATION Gold Coast, QLD
HOTA OUTDOOR STAGE
This is a versatile arts and culture venue: a black-box theatre and an amphitheatre with seating and lawn space for 3,500-5,000. Its landscape and attitude are tailored to Gold C oast lifestyle.
The Outdoor Stage is the first realised element of ARM’s HOTA Masterplan. We completed the masterplan in 2013, in partnership with landscape architects TOP OTEK1, and are now realising it in stages.
The masterplan converts ageing cultural infrastructure and redundant commercial buildings into an arts and recreation precinct for Australia’s largest-growing city.
The double-sided building is a black-box theatre with a riverside entrance and a back wall that folds away completely, opening the box out onto the amphitheatre.
The back wall is literally an aircraft hangar door a massive horizontal bi-fold that collapses against the ceiling.
With the hangar door closed, the black box is suitable for small performances, rehearsals and functions. In amphitheatre mode, the Outdoor Stage can host major public events from rock concerts to orchestral performances.
CLIENT Gold Coast City Council
COMPLETION 2017
VALUE $38M
LOCATION Gold Coast, QLD
AWARDS National Award Public Architecture
FDG Stanley Award Public Architecture
Commendation Colorbond Award for Steel Architecture
he Outdoor Stage is a double-sided building: a blackbox theatre with a riverside entrance and a back wall that folds away completely, opening the box out onto the amphitheatre.
The back wall is literally an aircraft hangar door a massive horizontal bi-fold that collapses against the ceiling. With the hangar door closed, the black box is suitable for small performances, rehearsals and functions.
In amphitheatre mode, the Outdoor Stage can host major public events from rock concerts to orchestral performances. It is supported by carefully considered technology. For outdoor use, the equipment is all externally rated but needs to be easily adjustable and removeable between performances.
HOTA GALLERY
This expansive contemporary gallery houses the City of Gold C oast’s extensive collection of art and cultural artefacts plus local and international exhibitions.
The building is the third realised element of our HOTA (Home of the Arts) masterplan, which transforms a Gold Coast governmental site into a mammoth cultural and landscape precinct.
Like its neighbour, our HOTA Outdoor Stage, the Gallery is covered in a 3D Voronoi a cellularlooking web laid over the entire HOTA site to bring unity and distinctiveness.
At 5,500m2, this is one of Australia’s largest regional galleries. It opened in May 2021.
CLIENT Gold Coast City Council
COMPLETION 2021
VALUE $60M
LOCATION Gold Coast, QLD
AWARDS Architecture Awards Public Architecture
HOTA BRIDGE
This bridge spans the Gold Coast’s Nerang River, connecting HOTA to Surfers Paradise via Chevron Island.
The 130-metre green bridge (yes, it’s blue) is the second completed stage of our HOTA Masterplan. We designed and delivered it in partnership with Archipelago and CUSP
It’s for pedestrians and bikes.
The landing at the HOTA end curves out over Evandale Lake. It’s wrapped with a striking three-dimensional façade an artwork called 40 Million Mornings, created by artists Warren Langley and Jess Austin and curated by our partners at Archipelago.
The folded form and golden hue represent the sun on the Nerang River over the past 40 million mornings, using the themes of water and open hands to illustrate the notion of past, present and future.
The bridge façade is lit up at night, becoming a striking beacon reflected in the lake.
CLIENT Gold Coast City Council
COMPLETION 2020
VALUE $14M
AWARDS Commendation Urban Design
SMITH COLLECTIVE
Two years on from its first life as the 2018 C ommonwealth Games athletes’ village, Smith Collective is Australia’s largest build to rent development.
It’s 5 km from Surfers Paradise and comprises 1,252 apartments and townhouses, shops, and a large public plaza a nd park.
ARM, in partnership with Brisbane architecture firms Arkhefield and Archipelago, masterplanned the community and designed the six residential and retail lots for client Grocon.
A blooming double helix snakes through the site a yellow-rimmed arbor that twists around a water feature called The Disc at the centre of the village heart. The Disc references Natural Bridge, the much-loved waterfall that streams through the top of a basalt cave at nearby Springbrook National Park.
CLIENT Grocon
COMPLETION 2017
VALUE $53 3M
LOCATION Gold Coast, QLD
AWARDS Karl Langer Award Urban Design
FEATURES
→ Green Sta r Features
→ Six Leaves using UDIA EnviroDevelopment rating tool
→ 1,252 homes
→ Main Street as an open public space - Commonwealth Game s
The site, a former harness-racing and greyhound track, is ringed by the Gold Coast University Hospital and Grif fith University, as well as remnant bushland. It is a village modelled on a city so the buildings are taller and closer together than in many suburbs. This leaves room for more public space.
Smith Collective is a pilot project for the new Green Star Communities sustainability tool and has achieved a 6-Star rating.
ADELAIDE FESTIVAL
PL A Z A PRECINCT MASTER PLAN
This massive masterplanning project repairs one of Adelaide’s most important, yet flawed, urban places.
It includes the Adelaide Festival C entre, the existing Sky City Casino and the proposed Casino development, Parliament House and Old Parliament House, future retail, a tower development north of Parliament House, Adelaide Railway Station and Station Road and the Torrens River pedestrian bridge.
Our masterplan of the precinct (completed 2013) links the Adelaide O val to the CBD, the Festival Square precinct to the CBD, and the CBD to the Torrens. It improves connections with Parliament House and Adelaide Station.
The masterplan is being realised in stages. Stage 1 (completed 2014) was the Torrens River Pedestrian Bridge. Stage 2, the public plaza, was completed in 2022. We continue to oversee the delivery of the public spaces and how they integrate with the buildings.
CLIENT SA Department of Planning
Transport and Infastructure
COMPLETION 2022
AREA N/A
VALUE $180M
LOCATION Adelaide, SA
ELIZ ABETH
Q UAY
Elizabeth Quay is a new waterfront precinct that unites central Perth with the Swan River. Its focus is a 7 30m terraced promenade surrounding a newly formed inlet, and a completely new island created by excavating the land that joined it to the shore.
Our full landscape masterplan was completed in 2015 and the public spaces opened in 2016. O ver time, new buildings including residential, retail, commercial and hotel developments will frame the inlet. There will be restaurants, bars and café s, and venues for an arts festival.
Taylor Cullity Lethlean contributed to this project as landscape architects.
CLIENT Metropolitan Redevelopment
Authoriy, WA
MASTERPLAN
COMPLETION 2015
PUBLIC SPACES
COMPLETION 2016
VALUE $48 3M
LOCATION Perth, WA
AWARDS John Septimus Roe Award Urban Design
Construction stages: Elizabeth Quay has reshaped Perth's shoreline dramatically.
FEATURES
→ 730m terraced promenade
→ Includes residential, retail, commercial and hotel developments
→ Public event spaces
BHP Billiton Water Park is a paved water-play area inspired by Western Australia’s day lakes. It produces mists and jets that create water rooms.
AUR A PEOPLE'S
PLACE
The Aura Lagoon is the anchor for a civic life of adventure, discovery and excitement in the regional centre of Aura, Caloundra.
Together with CUSP, ARM Architecture has developed the masterplan that is to be an urban oasis that provides aquatic and recreational opportunities for all generations.
The masterplan is a decade long vision for a precinct that supports this growing community.
The Lagoon takes its design cues from the Caloundra coastline, with a series of ‘bays’ with associated ‘headlands’ and beaches that allow for varying experiences and group size s.
The sense of water across the site, the generative patterns that are created, gives us a local vernacular which is unmistakable. The forms and geometries provide a formal language that can be applied to the smallest kiosk to largest civic building, to hotels, to retail and so on. For projects that are built now in this first stage or well into the future – the precinct has a unifying character.
Being part of the landscape introduces the Subtropical vernacular - building roof forms include large projected eaves, veranda and colonnaded spaces. They bring much needed shaded space and break out spaces for buildings, but also allow the landscape and vegetation to be brought underneath and through into interiors – blurring the sense of outside and inside, whilst create a cooling micro climate around the architecture.
CLIENT Stockland
COMPLETION
2025
VALUE Undisclosed
LOCATION Caloundra We st
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AUSTRALIA (NMA)
The National Museum of Australia is one of ARM’s most inventive, daring
The National Museum of Australia is one of ARM’s most inventive, daring and controversial buildings.
ARM (in partnership with Robert Peck von Hartel Trethowan architects) won an international competition in 1997 to design it. The Museum wraps around 11 hectares on the Acton Peninsula on Lake Burley Griffin and is therefore closely tailored to its environment.
We began by masterplanning the site, which also includes our Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
There are two big architectural ideas that guide the National Museum’s shape: the Boolean string, which embodies our views on Australian history as tangled and incomplete, and the jigs aw puzzle, which signifies that the Museum is conceptually unfinished. It is a work in progress towards the articulation of the Australian experience that evolves over time.
Each of the jigsaw-puzzle pieces has a different stylised appearance and construction type. Together, the pieces form an incomplete circle around the central Garden of Australian Dreams, an integral element of the exhibition spaces.
CLIENT National Museum of Australia
COMPLETION 2001
VALUE $150M
LOCATION Acton, ACT
AWARDS Public Architecture Awards
Interior Architecture Awards Award of Merit
→ Contemporary public exhibitions/ event spaces
→ 2013 completion of a new cafe
→ Workplace wing for staff memebers
→ Forecourt landscaping
→ Most recent: Children Discovery Centre
The National Museum of Australia is an ongoing client of ARM’s: proof of an excellent and fruitful relationship. ARM completed the Museum in 2001 but we have worked on projects there ever since to expand it and add components to what was always a work in progress. It needs regular calibration to respond to public expectations and technologies, and to offer variety to regular visitors.
SIDNEY MYER MUSIC BOWL
The Sidney Myer Music bowl is a celebrated landmark of Melbourne’s urban fabric for over 60 years. The architecturally and experientially innovative structure opened an era of music appreciation in Melbourne: it brought world-class performances out of the theatres and halls.
The SMMB is deeply embedded within the historic psyche of Melbournians. It is one of those physical and cultural places which makes us who we are. Everyone has their own personal story and experience of ‘The Bowl’ whether it be the multiple myths associated with the Seekers concert of 1967, the annual “Carols by Candlelight ” or the magic of “Summerda ze”; Melbournians have all grown up with ‘The Bowl.’
Contemporary expectations of concert experiences from audiences, artists and promoters goes way beyond anything envisaged when the SMMB was opened in 1959, and ARM’s design challenge was to resolve a series of key building, access, infrastructure, operational issues, whilst preserving Sidney Myer’s original vision of an outdoor place for all Melbournians and all music styles.
CLIENT Arts Centre Melbourne
COMPLETION Business Case
VALUE -
LOCATION Melbourne,VIC
ST. C O LLINS LANE
INTRODUC
ING THE NEW ESTABLISHMENT ON COLLINS STREET. AS WELL AS OFFERING THE CIT Y A UNIQUE RETAIL EXPERIENCE, ST. COLLINS
LANE IS A REMARK ABLE NEW ADDITION TO MELBOURNE’S FAMOUS LANEWAY CULTURE.
Clean, clear sightlines will give flagship stores a well-defined and visible frontage from street level. A distinctive palette of soft bronze and metallic brown will blur the edges between urban cool and established sophistication. Passers-by will be compelled to walk inside and be a part of ‘The New Establishment’. St. Collins Lane will be the chic new icon on Melbourne’s most iconic street. And it will look the part.
Collins Street is famous for its historic shopping arcades. Collins Street is a destination and shopping there is an experience. We want St. Collins Lane to evoke the same passion. This is why we’ve designed St. Collins Lane to be a bespoke retail experience.
We’ve achieved this through prominent and visible shop fronts complemented by a palette of materials that acknowledges the tradition of the 19th century arcade.
There will be a new clarity to the pedestrian circulation through St. C ollins Lane, with clear visual sightlines to all levels. A dining terrace on Level Two will be defined by a lightscape reminiscent of an illuminated canopy of leaves.
CLIENT Lasalle Investment Management
COMPLETION 2016
VALUE $48M
LOCATION Melbourne, VIC
MELBOURNE CENTR AL
The centre is now GP T’s highest rating centre in Australia for customer satisfaction, with a healthy
Melbourne Central is a major retail and commercial development interlinked with the busiest commuter rail station in Melbourne. ARM Architecture won an invited international competition for the masterplan, design and delivery of a complete revitalisation of the 60,000 m2 nett lettable area retail component.
A major masterplan objective was to substantially improve the relationship between the retail/commercial components and the existing rail station, integrating the various components into a new 'urban commuter hub.' Detailed analysis of people movements, circulation and arrival and departure patterns were undertaken in consultation with various authorities. Demolition commenced on site in January 2003 in the LaTrobe building and continued as more of the complex was closed to the public. Documentation was done in association with NH Architecture.
The new Melbourne Central, with its matrix of city 'laneways' providing a much improved direct and logical circulation system, contains a diverse mix of retail traders, including fresh food, cafes, restaurants, homewares, fashion and recreation facilities. The upper levels of the LaTrobe building now provide a new city location for Hoyts with the inclusion of 11 cinemas.
CLIENT GPT
STAGE 1 2005
STAGE 2 2012
NEW MASTERPLAN 2022
VALUE $350M
LOCATION Melbourne, VIC
AWARDS 2006/ RAIA (NATIONAL): WALTER BURLEY GRIFFIN AWARD FOR
URBAN DESIGN
RAIA (VIC CHAPTER):
COMMERCIAL ARCHITECTURE
MELBOURNE PRIZE
Q& A BRISBANE
The Q& A Building at the centre of Brisbane’s Queen Street Mall forms a cornerstone precinct for the city’s major meeting place.
Our client, QIC, wanted to enliven and refresh a three-level retail centre on the corner of Queen and Albert Streets in the heart of Brisbane. They also wanted a new retail complex on an adjacent site, with a 10-storey commercial office building above.
We rationalised the circulation through the existing site to increase the lettable floor area, in particular the existing underused basement space. We designed exaggerated coloured picture frames to unify the interiors of the retail zones.
The rather squat box-shaped commercial building is draped with an external curtain of laser-cut vertical louvre blades on the Albert Street facade. The louvre blades vary in profile depth to form undulations and when you look at them against the reflective glass façade, they appear to ripple.
Q& A was ARM’s first Brisbane project. ARM and Arkehfield won it via an invited design competition. Following on from ARM’s original design concept created in early 2005, ARM and joint venture partner Arkhefield worked closely together on all project phases. After some timing delays beyond our control, the project achieved practical completion in October 2009.
CLIENT QIC
COMPLETION 2009
VALUE $60M
LOCATION Brisbane, QLD
BOX HILL MASTER PLAN
The Box Hill Central Conceptual Masterplan will be a vision, a set of guiding principles, and a detailed strategy for realising that vision. The vision is for a magnetic precinct— conceivably Melbourne’s second CBD by 2030—that combines retail and residential amenity with quality public and civic infrastructure.
This urban model has enormous potential, proven internationally to expand and prosper. It is well equipped to attract overseas investment into Australia because it is familiar to overseas investors, and because it works.
Box Hill is a suburb of Melbourne, set to transform by 2030 into the CBD of Melbourne’s East. It is also a major transport interchange with buses, a tram terminus on busy Whitehorse Road, and an underground railway station.
Perhaps Box Hill’s most distinctive drawcard is its large and excellent fresh food market, whose offering reflects the large Asian community in the area. There are also many Asian-focused café s, restaurants and grocery stores. However, much of the other retail offering is outdated and under-performing.
CLIENT Vicinity Centres
MASTERPLAN
COMPLETION 2018
VALUE $1b +
LOCATION Box Hill, VIC
WESTP OINT
The new Westpoint ELP will revitalize the existing rooftop precinct as a vibrant and memorable open-air precinct in the heart of Blacktown. It will be a place of community belonging, a place of gathering, of family dinners, of breakfast in the sun, of special nights out, of memory-making.
The project involves an upgrade to the Level 4 Public Realm, with the scope area as defined through the Concept Design phase bounded by the existing carpark to the south, Patrick St terrace to the north, taxi drop-off area to the east, and ex-Myer box to the west.
The project scope generally calls for:
→ Retention of all existing LSA’s, enhancing definition through new integrated landscape and common seating elements
→ Ground surface treatment within the scope area
→ Surface treatment of existing walls and soffits within the scope area
The design concept turns back the clock to 1973. ‘Westpoint Report No.1’ perhaps prescient, perhaps in a good piece of graphic design, or perhaps just fortuitously presents a logo on the front page that seems to traverse time, as if destined to reassert its relevance today.
CLIENT QIC
COMPLETION Current
VALUE $50M
LOCATION Blacktown, NSW
AWARDS
2022 → HOTA Gallery
2021 → St Leonard's College Redevelopment
2020 → Monash Chancellery
→ University of Adelaide
Barr Smith South Redevelopment
→ HOTA Bridge
Public Architecture Award
Shortlist for National Architecture Awards (due Nov. 22) AIA (QLD Chapter)
founding directors, Howard Raggatt, Ian McDougall and the late Stephen Ashton, won the 2016 Gold Medal the highest accolade awarded by the Australian Institute of Architects.
