A UK-based architecture firm has proposed a revamp of Brisbane’s Central Station to transform what it called an old, tired and grimy embarrassment into a light-filled gateway to the 2032 Olympic host city.
Train station design specialists John McAslan + Partners, which was behind the renowned 2012 restoration of London’s Kings Cross and Sydney’s Central Station upgrade, have proposed a major makeover for the inner-city hub that would elevate its heritage, ease access and let the light in.
John McAslan + Partners Sydney-based director Troy Uleman, a Queenslander, said Central Station was the city’s gateway for international tourists getting off the train from the airport, so it needed to be a lot more intuitive – and aesthetically pleasing.
“You only get one chance to make a first impression, don’t you?” he said.
“So if they’re coming out in the existing station with its low ceilings and difficult navigation – I mean, people don’t know whether they have to go down into the network of tunnels or up.
“Most people go up toward the light, but where do you go from there?”
Uleman said Central was effectively buried beneath the Sofitel hotel and a brutalist office block, disconnected from its surroundings, and its layout needed to be simplified, so way-finding signage only reinforced what visitors and commuters already saw.
The John McAslan + Partners design proposed new escalators to “end load” the platforms, rather than have all commuters enter around the middle.
“The station used to be accessed from the ends, and this is harking back to that,” he said.
“For a very busy station, this would lend itself to resolving some of those capacity issues.”
Redesigning Central to better integrate into surrounding precincts would open it up to the north – something that would only become more vital once the planned Brisbane Stadium was built at Victoria Park.
“At the moment, it breaks the north-south connection across the city – it’s diabolical to get up the hill to King Edward Park and so on,” he said.
“That’s the green connection that can connect, eventually, Victoria Park and the Olympics, bringing people down into Central Station and into the CBD of Brisbane.
“By doing some works here, there’s an opportunity to reconnect the city through the station.”
Uleman said transport needed to lead, not follow, Olympic precinct planning and Central – along with Roma Street and Fortitude Valley stations – would have to play a major part.
“[Those three stations] will become the most important prominent stations on the network – that’s where people will be coming and going from all the Olympic Games events in Victoria Park,” he said.
Exhibition Station’s use during the Games remained an open question, given its probable location in the security overlay for the athletes’ village at the Brisbane Showgrounds, and no decision had been made about a new station to specifically service the planned Victoria Park stadium and aquatic centre.
Uleman said regardless of whether his firm was involved, something needed to be done at Central before 2032, and he hoped their proposal would at least spark conversations in Queensland’s corridors of power.
It has been almost a decade since the Palaszczuk government announced a $67 million refurbishment of the station – an ambitious project that was not ultimately fully delivered.
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