Papua New Guinea South Pacific Games Village

PCLA supported Warren and Mahoney (WAM) on the associated games dining hall and accommodation village complex with the pedestrian areas, amenities and landscape treatment.  The robust modular repetition and dynamic roof shades and smaller shelters respond to the need for temperature modulation and also uplifting canopies in multiple village clusters.  The repetition also provides a sense of unity across the campus and bold patterning to lighten the 5,000 bedroom accommodation facility.

Accommodation blocks in the games village are connected by bridges and matching overhead canopy supports creating several courtyard with visual and physical connections/circulation.  The strong apex structures provide shade canopies and enclose the five communal gathering places.  The floating architectural forms are echoed by more primitive thatched hubs, four per court to enable separate and combined social groupings well away from accommodation edges.

Thatched angled shelters are supported by four timber poles with one of these carved with indigenous carvings.  The triangular geometry common in the indigenous art is fundamental to the broad concept of structure and landscape – and the pole motifs become central to each hub of concrete seating.  Low seating walls created shaded corners and focused diagonal routes through each courtyard.  The dynamic diagonal patterning reinforces the architectural forms and form a nucleus at the intersections, providing a social hub and centrepiece in each of the five separate courtyards.

(photo credit – Simon Devitt)