The Cricket NSW Centre of Excellence at Sydney Olympic Park is the newly designed home hub for fostering cricket talent in NSW. It will be the new home ground to the Sydney Thunder, will act as Cricket NSW headquarters and play host to thousands of club and community cricket players each year.

The $50 million investment includes full and junior size playing ovals, over 50 training nets, a high performance gym, recovery pool, lecture theatres and will replace the existing Cricket NSW office at the SCG with a mezzanine office floor. The multi-use and open air space presented a myriad of fire engineering challenges.

How we did it differently

A large, central atrium allows plenty of natural light and connection between the mezzanine office space and cricket nets below, immersing the 100+ employees in the action.

However, accommodating the required sporting equipment and facilities posed a fire safety challenge, with excess volume rendering many training spaces non-compliant. PBC provided a bespoke and tailored compliance strategy that enabled Cox Architecture's vision to come alive.

Additionally, the many uses of the building ensured that PBC needed to account for the varied ways in which the space would be occupied. PBC considered many scenarios, with daily office work, after hours recovery and game day matches being some of the scenarios considered in the Fire Safety strategy.