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UDAD Awards 2019

Third Award- Broadwalk Beach | Majed Abuseif

Gold Coast, Australia, is a coastal city with 52 kilometres of golden beaches and is considered a world leader in coastal management. Although Gold Coast beaches are not in the lists of Top 10 rankings for the most desired destinated beaches worldwide, this project is proposed to deliver a new coastal experience, which may lead the Gold Coast beaches to be reached the top 10 worldwide rankings. The unique aspects of this project are that users will experience both ocean water and still water, which are linked together with a precinct that accommodates different entertaining activities.

GFDA-2020

Third Award Urban Design & Architecture Design Awards 2019
Firm | Majed Abuseif
Category | Urban Design (Concept)
Team | Majed Abuseif
Country | Australia

Moreover, to add more significant meaning to this experience, research was conducted to identify what could be added in the Gold Coast to improve the coastal experience. Some coastal activities are missing in the Gold Coast because of its unique character, where beaches are only for public use, which prevents it from having a developed project to host these functions directly on the beachfront. However, the selected site is located on the Broadwater, and it is very close to the ocean as well, which can deliver this experience sufficiently.

Design research background

The research was conducted to find what could be added in the Gold Coast to improve the coastal experience. The top 10 worldwide beaches and the top 10 beaches in the Gold Coast were investigated to find what is their significance and then compared the findings to see what is the functions and activities available in the top worldwide beaches and still are missing in the Gold Coast. This proposed project is hosting the functions of the finding of the conducted research. As well as this, other features were extracted from The Southport Spit Master Plan after they investigated the local’s needs and released the master plan draft for the Spit area.

Design research outcome

This kind of experience rarely exists worldwide, but it was straightforwardly implemented in this location. The project has the following qualities and features:

  • It links the ocean and Broadwater by an organised and secure connection.
  • It hosts all the missing activities, which identified in the previous research and the local needs based on the Southport Spit Master Plan.
  • The project’s buildings are buried under the landscape. This enlarges the Parklands area in the project at around three times compared with the Southport Spit Master Plan proposal.
  • Significant improvements in the links within the project,
  • It reduces the footprint of the building to only 9% of the site area.
  • The problem surrounding parking spaces were also solved by increasing the car parks to 1600 and reducing its footprint to 15.8%, which is less than half of the current condition and the Southport Spit Master Plan proposal.
  • It merges the project with its context, and it connected strongly with the key tourist destination such as the Spit, Main Beach, Broadwater Parklands and Seaworld.

 Figure 1 illustrates a comparison between the project outcome and the proposed project from the Southport Spit Master Plan.