Cox Architecture wins big in Queensland's regional architecture awards, and there could be more on the way
With 500 people working across its national and international offices, Cox Architecture is not a small practice. Still, its representation in this year’s Queensland regional architecture awards – on the ground in such diverse form and in certain concentrated locations – is remarkable.
During this preliminary awards month of May, which whittles down from within the massive state the top 59 of the best of the latest built projects that will be further refined at the June 24 Queensland Australian Institute of Architects award’s announcement, Cox is again showing up as a masterful force.
Over the past two days, three very distinct structures have either won or been commended in the regional awards to demonstrate how an affinity with the specificities of place pays dividends for a studio that often takes it to the outer edges of originality.
The only museum in the world paying homage to a song, the Waltzing Matilda Centre in Winton was named Central Queensland’s building of the year for the way in which its lyrical, if earthy, structures reflect the landforms.
The $22 million project replaces the original Matilda museum, which burned down in 2015. The new facility is made in concrete embedded with opal-bearing rock and rusting steel. It is, according to the jury’s appreciation, a building “that speaks directly to the magnificent landscape”.
Those leaping exterior profiles evoke a local geological phenomenon known as “jump up rocks”.
The wavering, undulating walls and the light and dark journey leading through “chasm-like” interiors all add up to “an exuberant” building that celebrates Banjo Paterson’s ballad first performed in the town in 1895.
The Winton Shire commissioned the new building as being vital to the economy of the region. Yet in a town of fewer than 1000 people, Winton has another stellar tourism drawcard also designed by Cox: the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum completed almost a decade ago.
The studio is currently adding two more buildings to the facility that showcases Australia’s largest local concentration of dinosaur bones and footprints.
Another of Cox’s winning designs this year was the 2021 building of the year award for the North Queensland region for the shiny new and curving canopy as the centrepiece of Townsville’s James Cook University.
A collaborative project with Counterpoint Architecture and Quandamooka artist Megan Cope made with 479 perforated panels embossed underneath with local words and land stories, the campus’s new chill-out zone and gathering place is also very beautiful.
The jury decided that, like a public sculpture, it gave the “impression of a floating, moving structure”.
Also in Townsville, and standing now as its largest building, the new Cox and Counterpoint Architecture-authored Country Bank Stadium – which orients spectator views across the field of play towards the town and Magnetic Island beyond – is another building that takes inspiration directly from its locality.
This time, the shape insignia of the roof form is a stylisation of the leaves of pandanus trees. The jury that gave it a regional recommendation in the North Queensland awards said, “the elegant roof provides an expressive, playful presence within the Townsville landscape”.
As well as these three contenders, Cox has a further two previously picked out in the Brisbane regional awards. They have another possible project in the mix of the Far North Queensland awards that will be announced on May 28.
